emarsh

We're in the Valencia province and the problem is there's no off field landing here, Orange groves are unforgiving and I suspect that whoever owns an orange grove would be unforgiving too. But there's a glider club near Toledo that I plan to visit when things get normal again.

My wife and I had always figured that we would travel part time or move elsewhere after I retired. We actually had four acres of beachfront property on the island of Roatan and had planned to build there. But as the years went by Honduras became dangerous and our priorities changed. We like a lot of things about Europe. Also, the healthcare situation in the US became just nuts. I was doing contract programming at IBM and getting a fair wage but I found that about 1/3 of my take home was going for medical expenses. Then the orange one was elected and my wife asked me to get her the hell out of Dodge. We did our homework, creating a list of the things we were looking for in a new home and then comparing that against the options. We visited some of the best candidates and took a look around. But what set us on to the Valencia region is when we ran into an expat American at a music festival who had lived here for 20 years. What she told us convinced us to take a closer look and things just worked out. Found a nice house at a reasonable price in La Drova which is about 15 minutes from Gandia. All in all it's been great. We've done some exploring of Europe including a couple weeks in Russia and even Chernobyl. I'm working on the language a little bit every day but it's going to take time. At age 66 one's neurons don't rewire as fast as they do when one is younger. But right now I figure it's important to just stay safe and wait until the lock down opens up and hopefully there's a vaccine.

Hi, A friend sent me a link to this site. I've been riding on and off since 1973. For most of that time it was sports bikes. I've done some racing too, mostly drag racing. In 2017 I moved from the US to Spain. When I left the US most of my time and money was going into my light aircraft but with a retiree's budget flying isn't likely to be a thing for me here, though I do want to see about flying a sailplane. So after a while the urge for another motorcycle set in. Spanish law does not provide a mechanism for me to exchange my US driver's license so I had to go through the whole process again, starting from scratch. Once I had my automobile license I started looking at getting a bike license. Turns out that I am limited to 47 horsepower for the first two years, though I can restrict a bike with up to twice that amount. There's enough dirt roads here that I thought it would be good to get a bike that I can ride on them. My wife never wanted to ride on my sports bikes so I decided to try to buy something that is comfortable two up on the highways. Also, one thing that I'd become sick of doing is cleaning and lubing chains every 600 miles. So after doing some research I decided to get an old BMW R1150 GS. It's affordable, has a good reputation and can be restricted. So that's what I did. Oh, yeah. Getting an A2 motorcycle license here was expensive and it was a pain. Everything is in Spanish, which is a language that I don't speak well. But I had the money, I had the time and I had the determination. So I've got the A2 license and in less than a year I can exchange it for an A license. The GS is kind of a strange beast compared to what I'm used to. However after putting some kilometers on it and tweaking it to my satisfaction (basic mechanical work, premium shocks, premium seats, GPS) it's not a bad bike for just riding. It handles better than it has a right to on the road. My biggest complaint is that it sits high and it's a little tough to touch the ground at stops. But I've found that the bike grows on one after a while. But of course she's been sitting in the garage with a battery maintainer attached for about a month and a half now. Funny thing is that we've had crap weather for about the same amount of time. I wonder if the fact that there's a lot less road traffic has had some sort of effect on the weather. Anyhow, here's a pic of my Beemer. I generally leave the panniers off when I'm just out riding.