PODS.

Part of the romance of sailing away on your sailboat could include getting rid of every material possession or perhaps storing everything at your friends' homes.  In our case, we have done a bit of each, as well as contributed to the healthy business model of the national PODs business.  Three years ago, one of the final steps before our departure was having two empty PODs delivered to our driveway. With the help of some local packing resources we picked up in a nearby parking lot, we carefully packed each POD to capacity with our "treasures". And off the PODs went to some undisclosed location.  Out of sight, out of mind!

August 2012: Goodbye Precious Things 

Fast forward three summers later. Now we felt compelled to check in on the PODs.  We didn't even know where the storage area was. I had always described a PODS storage facility as similar to one of those non descript data centers, larger than several football fields, with semi-truck size containers inside, each housing hundreds of racks of computers.  You know, where all of our secure data is housed in the Cloud.  I have actually toured one of Microsoft's big ones in Chicago; it was an impressive field trip.  

With one phone call, Rob arranged for us to look at our Pods.  And we also brought more things to store, just in case there was room.

Not exactly Google Maps, but we felt confident we were nearing our destination...

A peek inside the Storage Facility - it was dark and scary

Our friendly warehouse and forklift operator.  We are getting to know him this summer.  He is a pretty cool laid back guy. 

And behind Door #1...Rob opens the POD with great anticipation

POD #1   
Things have shifted a bit. Miraculously nothing appears broken.  

Note the custom made wooden box on the right; that stores one of our Christmas wreaths.

POD #2
And More!

We spent a lot of time reorganizing each entrance of the POD so that they would be packed better, and have room for more treasures.  

Rob, don't fall in!

One more carload of things from the Attic go into the PODs

Ship Shape Organization!

Nancy finds a treasure in the PODS

We've had more time this summer getting things re-organized, downsizing a bit more and preparing for our return to Shindig.

The PODs business is continuing to work for us. Someday within the next year we hope to be unloading all these treasures, and giving up our space in the warehouse.