Ghost Train RadioAdios Orinda – Part 1: The Shack
A very surprising feeling overtook me today. Its that feeling when, while you are very excited about leaving a place, you then get blind sided with a pang of heart dropping sadness.
Orinda has to be one of the best places to live in the SF Bay Area. My ex wife and I moved from San Francisco to Lafayette in 1994. Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda were not so well known. They have some of the best schools in the Bay Area, and at the time, the house I sold in Miraloma Park bought a much nicer house in Lafayette. Orinda and Lafayette are on the BART line and close to open space so you can’t find this kind of living in any other place at this price. The Peninsula and Marin have awful commutes and only Marin has this kind of open space – but Sir Francis Drake is just about the worst commute. Both are way more expensive, so the value proposition stinks.
My ex wife and I divorced in 2005 – 2006, and I left the Lafayette house and purchased this Orinda house. Its a cute 50’s rancher on a great property with a creek. Its very homey and comfy.
I met Kat and she and I are much more compatible and its been the best 17 years of my life.
When I first moved in, a year before Kat, I built this “shack” in the garage. Its only 7 x 10 feet. It started out as a Ham Radio shack but for the last 3 years its been my music studio.
Its a classic “Man Cave” and when I had the heating and cooling system replaced, I had them add a vent. Its OK, but it gets pretty cold in the Winter and hot in the Summer. A space heater has been great, and if we have a heat wave, I use it early in the day.
I’ve had a ton of fun in this little shack. My wife did a fantastic job remodeling the bathrooms and kitchen so my two favorite rooms in the house are the kitchen and my shack.
There isn’t a bad room in the house and I know it will sell in one day as others recently have that are on our street and comparable as far as they also being the original mid century rancher floor plan.
To avoid melancholia, I will start moving my home recording studio into the middle bedroom – since no one has used that in years. Then I will have to take down the shack and return that space to be what it was intended for – the second car of a two car garage.
Ghost Train Radio 
I’ve always felt that sense of loss when I have moved. A few times I have even cried. But the funny thing is, I’ve never regretted a single move in the long run. It’s always been onward and upward. After all, I’ve always moved for a reason. I’m old enough, and perhaps experienced enough now, to remind myself that a change like this is an unparalleled chance for growth, renovation, and rejuvenation. When we stop moving and changing, we die. 73 to your shack.
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I had two moves that weren’t great – Rochester, NY and moving from a really nice house in Lafayette to that god awful McMansion.
But even then, the learning and experience was good and I always had fun regardless.
I am super excited to be moving this time and have been very busy cleaning up the place and getting rid of old junk – mostly on next door, so it was kinda weird writing today’s song.
I’m going to move my stuff into the house tomorrow
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