from the Berkeley Hills to the Blue Ridge Parkway

view from the Blue Ridge Parkway (c) 2020 by David Ourisman, all rights reserved

Both an exciting and a sad announcement, I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 28 years. I moved here in 1992 to pursue a Ph.D. at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, earning my doctorate in 1997. After devoting more than a decade to academia, I decided to pursue another one of my passions. In 2006, literally on my 55th birthday, I began a new adventure, a travel business. Here in Berkeley I built my business, and Team Ourisman has expanded over the years to (currently) a team of four, each of us working remotely from our own home offices in Maryland, Arkansas, and California.

And now Claire and I are moving to North Carolina. The Bay Area has grown more crowded in the decades that I've lived here. Traffic is getting worse. And the climate ... well, it's become perceptibly warmer and drier. I used to wear sweatshirts all year round; I've worn short sleeves every day this summer. It used to rain a LOT in the winter, packing the Sierras with snow, but we're living with droughts. Climate change is most assuredly real, and California has been impacted severely by firestorms. Starting earlier and lasting longer, they have burned more acres each and every year. Our air during firestorms becomes so unhealthy that we can't go for our daily walks in our beloved Tilden Park. So we've decided to move ... and it will happen sometime around the end of November.

Asheville, NC will become our new home and the new home office of Ourisman Travel. Absolutely nothing will change for our clients ... the same email and phone numbers will work as before. Because we have been working remotely with a virtual Team Office for a decade now, it's second nature for us to work as a team while socially distanced. So besides the fact that I'll be packing, moving, and unpacking, it will still be business as usual. My Team will cover for me when I need the help!

What will change are the views. Instead of the Berkeley Hills and their beautiful vistas of San Francisco Bay, we will now delight in beautiful views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The forests surrounding the Parkway are administered by the National Park Service, and they literally begin in our new back yard. It will be just a half mile hike up the hill to the parkway itself, and I'm looking forward to some sunrise photography once I learn the best spots.

It's so very sad to leave so many wonderful friends behind, especially Epworth United Methodist Church that has been my family and spiritual community for 28 years. But we'll all be able to stay connected through Travel Horizons and Facebook. Send me a friend request to follow along in all our new adventures.

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copyright (c) 2020 by Ourisman Travel LLC.  All rights reserved. We provide Virtuoso and other Preferred Partner amenities as an affiliate of Brownell, a Virtuoso® Member.