The Oregon move

The last two posts have been move-related, and it seems I am now going to post another one! Anyway, it is now eleven years to the date that my family and I moved from Patterson, California to Medford, Oregon. I can remember us being excited about getting to see a new state (at that point, my brother and I had only lived in California and visited Nevada), although we were also saddened about leaving California, a place that had been our home for close to five years.

It was sunny and clear along the stretch of the I-5 from the Modesto area all the way up to the Rogue Valley. We had set off early, before 9:00am, and made it to Medford probably about around 5:00 in the evening, as I remember it being close to sunset when we arrived. We encountered few if any delays on our way up, and we did not rush the journey at all. It was exciting to see the "Welcome to Oregon" sign, and it was at that point that we knew the drive up was almost over: within a day we had gone from living in a valley and having mountain ranges on either side of us to actually living in the mountains...I will not forget the first time we saw our house.

To think how long ago that all happened: we did not expect that ten years on from that day we would then be getting used to living in a new country again (well, technically the old country, but the sheer amount of time we lived in the United States, plus the fact my brother and I grew up there, makes the United Kingdom seem like a totally different country). No, I am not complaining here...merely reflecting on the past and thinking about what has changed and what is still the same from back then.

Coincidentally, we met an American today, though she was not from Oregon (Tennessee, in fact). We have actually met several Americans since being back in the United Kingdom, but I did find it interesting to meet one on the anniversary of our Oregon move.

The swimming pool

Our first home in the United States was located in Patterson, a town near Modesto in the Central Valley of California. That house came with a large in-ground swimming pool, containing a "shallow end" and a "deep end". The pool was brilliant because 1. the house's AC was faulty, 2. that part of the Central Valley gets 100+ degree Fahrenheit weather pretty much every day during the summer, and 3. swimming is fun in itself. Before we swam in the pool, Dad had to clean it, as it was clear the pool had not been cleaned for several months prior to us moving in.

During one of the early cleaning sessions of the pool, while Dad was walking around it doing the cleaning, I was following him and talking, and if I recall correctly, Dad stopped suddenly, and I kept going, avoided him, but then fell in at the deep end! Fortunately, Dad had got most of the dirt out of the pool at the time I had fallen in, and he was quick to get me out of the pool. My brother and I soon learned how to swim after this incident.

We swam on most sunny days during our time in that house; a few times we used the pool for our parties and occasionally for those of friends: being in the pool and then eating barbecued food was a wonderful thing to do (though we never ate then swam, of course). While we have not swam on a regular basis since we left that house in 1999 nor swam in a pool at all since 2003, swimming is still something that I am fond of, recommend to others, and would like to do again.