June 18, 2026

Bear with me here as I recap the past couple of years in the run-up to where we are today. I think it will be worth it…

It’s been two years since I added a new post to this blog. And if I’m being honest, two years since we loaded the T7 down and departed from wherever in the world we had last stored the bike short-term. In fact, when I last shipped our 2022 T7 back to Texas from Germany in the fall of 2023, we didn’t have any plans for where or what was next. Diana had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and our focus was on her getting well.

Diana had surgery, all went extremely well, and we spent the next summer touring the Pacific Northwest, BC and Alberta in a car, which almost seemed like a luxury, as we were able to carry camping gear that was normally prohibitively large on the bike: a two-burner gas stove (with a griddle!), a real skillet, real bed pillows, our larger and favorite sleeping bags. Yes, we were still camping most of the time. We actually really enjoy our MSR Hubba Hubba 2-person tent. However, we weren’t above taking an occasional house-sit, and we did three amazing sits that summer in Colorado, Montana, and Vancouver Island, BC.

On our way to the PNW, just leaving home. Rarely do I find a small town in Texas so good at making fun of itself. This “Post” is from Coleman, Texas. Love it!

Home Sweet Home for much of the past several years: our MSR Hubba Hubba tent. Utah.

Spoiled by a large cookstove that we can’t carry on the bike.

The view out the kitchen window of our house-sit in Montana with three awesome cats.

The same view, a few days later.

In the fall of 2024, a year after shipping the Tenere home from Europe, I decided to replace it with a 2024 model. This was our third XT700, and after well over 100,000 miles we’ve figured out how to pack it with everything we want/need, so stepping into the ’24 was easy; same panniers, same skid plate/tool box, same SeatConcepts seat. It was easy to get it ready to go. Which I did.

Then it sat. I don’t really have an explanation for why it sat. We could have left again. We talked about heading south again; Diana had not been through Central and South America when I did the first trip in 2015-16. Maybe I was experiencing a bit of burn-out. Diana was ready to go. I wasn’t sure if I was.

We spent Thanksgiving 2024 with friends that we had met in Valdez, Alaska in 2021. They were from Tahoe, but were now living in Spain. While we were there, we started talking about what it might be like to live in Spain, or Europe in general. We spent a month driving around Spain and Portugal, trying to “feel” what it might be like to live in one of the many regions. Did it feel comfortable? Did it feel like home? Could it feel like home, in time?

We had last seen Jens and Kelly in early September 2021 in Alaska. A year or so later, Jens contacted me and asked how I shipped my bike to Europe, so I passed on the info. Now here we were, in Spain.

Don’t get me wrong, Spain can be beautiful. This is Nerja. This is also a bit misleading, because this is not Nerja at the height of tourist season, when the town swells from its’ normal 22,000 (25% of whom are ex-pats) to four or five times as many. Nerja is beautiful. But it’s a beach town, and it’s crowded, and it’s already full of ex-pats. All things we weren’t looking for.

Cudillero, Spain. Gorgeous. Tiny. Touristy. But nice.

Chef Diana, during a Paella cooking class. Yum.

Final product.

Souvenirs. Carcasas. Carcasses of souvenirs? Is this where souvenirs go to die?

It wasn’t all fun and games. Just as 2023 ended up in surgery for Diana, I had prostate surgery in December of 2024, which gave us yet another reason to stay home for a little while.

We returned Stateside from our month on the Iberian Peninsula and stayed home for a change. I built a greenhouse and a garden. Bought an electric mountain bike. Did some offroad riding with friends. (Okay, I did spend several days riding the Colorado BDR on a CRF250L). We had definitely slowed down, but I wasn’t bored. I was comfortable (well, after the prostate surgery, not so much. But that eventually went away). The 2024 Tenere was sitting in the garage, and it wasn’t calling my name. Perhaps “Amazing” had become “The Norm” so much that I wasn’t getting excited about jumping on the bike and traveling. We continued to talk about the idea of living abroad, but Portugal and Spain didn’t light a fire under us. Both were nice, but something felt like it was missing.

Southern Italy

In the summer of 2025 we started talking about Italy. Neither of us have any Italian relatives or ancestors. Neither of us spoke Italian. We had heard about the “One Euro” scheme, where you could buy a home for one euro. These were mostly in the south, especially in Sicily. Of course there were catches: they weren’t ready-to-move-in, obviously. They required a tremendous amount of work, and a commitment to finish them in an agreed-upon amount of time, while maintaining the historical integrity that adhered to local standards (at least for the outside). Cool idea. Big undertaking. Probably more than we were prepared for.

Then we ran across other properties in Southern Italy, and other “schemes” to attract new residents to small towns that were drying up and dying off (“depopulating” is the more correct term). We watched a lot of real estate YouTube videos, mostly just for entertainment. Something was starting to feel different about Italy. We hadn’t yet been to southern Italy, except to catch the ferry from Bari to Albania in 2023. Yet it had a certain “feel”. Or at least we thought it might. We couldn’t really know without being there. People were buying homes sight-unseen based on a YouTube video. Although prices were reasonable, that’s not something we were prepared to do. Besides, it wasn’t just about a cheap home; it was about the area, the community, the people, the climate, and so much more. There was only one way to find out.

We booked flights to Italy for late October 2025. As non-EU residents, we knew we could only stay 90 days in Italy before we would be required to leave the Schengen countries (most of the EU). Our plan was to spend one month each in three southern regions: Abruzzo, Puglia, and Sicily. That should be enough time to see if any of these areas felt like home. After that, if we had narrowed it down to a region, we would return in the summer of 2026 (about now, actually) and spend more time in those specific areas, hopefully narrowing it down to a handful of specific towns. And if that actually happened, then maybe we would start looking at real estate in the towns we liked in the spring of 2027.

Our general plan was to spend November in Abruzzo, a region along the Adriatic coast due east of Rome, with some short trips into Molise, just to the south. We would then move to Puglia — the “heel of the boot” for December, and then spend January in Sicily. This would give us enough time in each place to interact with the locals, experience the food cultures, and get a good look at the countryside.

Countryside is important to us. We’re not beach people. All three of these regions are well-known for their coastlines, and Puglia and Sicily attract huge tourist populations in the summer, especially in August. We had spent several years riding around the world, deliberately avoiding large cities and tourist destinations, focusing instead on small villages and the local people. It’s just who we are. We often joke that there are very few people who have spent as much time in France as we have and not gone to Paris, or who have spent months in Colombia, and avoided Bogotà, Medellin, and Cali. We know there are interesting places in these cities, but experiencing the real life of small towns is more important to us than trying to gain Instagram followers with the same photo that everyone else has taken, just with us in it instead.

Abruzzo, and….done.

So we packed our backpacks and flew to Abruzzo in late October. Getting off the plane, I noticed that it was 21C (70 degrees F), and everyone was wearing puffy jackets. Everyone except me. I was wearing a t-shirt. And sweating (I do that. A lot.) It turns out there seems to be a national requirement that the puffy coats come out October 1, no matter what.

We spent the first two days rapidly touring Abruzzo. We had watched numerous YouTube videos of Abruzzo on Dave Benton’s “A Home in Italy” channel, and Dave was showing us both sides of the Maiella mountain, including Popoli, Raiano, Prezza, Pratola Peligna, Sulmona, and Introdacqua on the west side, and Fara San Martino and Palombaro on the east side. All beautiful towns, each with its’ own character.

Having run through most of Dave’s videos, we had come across two homes that had sold within the past year, and they ticked all of our boxes:

1. In or near a town of less than 20,000 people (this has to do with the “7% Tax Scheme”).
2. A view, and a terrace to enjoy the view.
3. A garage or storage area for the motorcycle.
4. A larger kitchen, or the space to build one. Most Italian homes have a small galley-style kitchen on one floor, and sometimes an additional “dirty” kitchen in the taverna or cantina area below the home, typically used for preparing meats, sauces, canning, etc.
5. Some land. We’re from Texas. We’re not really city people. We prefer the rural lifestyle, and a bit of space between our neighbors. I also was hoping for some trees or vines, or the space to plant them, as a hobby.
6. A place with “good bones”. We were okay with a place that needed renovation as long as part of it was livable immediately. We were also okay with a place that was fully finished, if the price was still within our budget, which kept changing as we factored in all of the costs of renovation.
7. (Optional): If it had a pool, that would be a bonus.

The two homes we found were both on the “A Home in Italy” YouTube channel, and both had been renovated by British ex-pats. Both had also recently sold, but they gave us a reference point for what could be.

Ultimately, after watching many different YouTubers’ property videos in southern Italy, we realized that we were really looking for a “villa”. That is, a stand-alone home or farmhouse on a piece of land. The trade-off would be that we couldn’t walk to the cafe or the grocery store; we would have to have a car (or at least the bike).

We rented an apartment in Guardiagrele for a month and used it as our base for exploring. And two days later, we bought a house.

Yep. Sometimes fate steps in and slaps you up side the head and says “Remember that ‘If not now, when?’ stuff you’re always jabbering about? Well, not just now, but right now. Here it is. Don’t miss your chance.”

Remember those two houses I just talked about? The two that were now our reference points, and ticked all the boxes? It turns out that one of those houses had sold last year to an American, who had recently had a family emergency and could no longer stay in Italy. So the house was about to come back on the market. And we were the first to see it.

Our first view of the house, as we rounded the driveway headed there.

The house has a sala del vino, or wine room. We haven’t started cleaning it yet.

On the wall in the wine room was a framed quote. Translation: “The guest is like a fish. After three days, he stinks.” My mother used to say this all the time, and I thought she had made it up. When I saw it on the wall in the house, in Italian, I knew this was the right place.

We had now bought a house in Italy, and had eleven weeks remaining of what was to be our tour of three regions. We could have flown home and started preparing for the move, but we also had eleven weeks left on our agreement with a lovely couple who were house-sitting for us in Texas and taking care of our cats. So we decided to dive into Italian life and learn as much as we could. We rented an apartment in Raiano for two months, and moved there from Guardiagrele when our first month was up. We got our Codice Fiscale (the equivalent of a Social Security number in the States) and I began taking Italian lessons.

We also took a week and drove to Puglia, visiting all of the towns that were originally on our list of possible places to live. Puglia is different from Abruzzo, just like one state in the US is different from another. It is flatter than Abruzzo. The climate is a bit warmer. The culture and traditions are a bit different. I’m not saying it’s better or worse. It’s just different. Abruzzo was already feeling like home to us, in a way that Puglia didn’t.

Eventually January came, and we flew back to Texas. Within days our “forever home” in the Texas Hill Country was listed for sale, and most of our belongings were being sorted into “Sell”, “Give to the Kids”, “Give Away”, “Ship to Italy”, and “Maybe Keep for a Little Longer Before Deciding” piles. I sold a dozen or so motorcycles, all of my shop equipment, most of my tools. Diana sold kitchen equipment, glassware, furniture. We made multiple runs to the local thrift shop to donate stuff. It was definitely getting real.

We applied for and received our Italian visas. That was a major hurdle. Fun fact: we couldn’t apply for the visa unless we owned a house in Italy, or had a government-approved long-term lease. So you have to commit a large chunk of money before you even find out whether or not they will let you live there.

I kept thinking that at some point I would wake up regretting this. That “What have we done?” moment never came. We loaded two shipping pallets with boxes and shipped them, along with the Tenere, to Italy.

Our home in Texas sold in late March and the new owners agreed to lease it back to us for another three weeks.

On May 6th, we loaded our three cats and eight suitcases onto a plane, and left the United States, with no return date.

On May 7th, we arrived at our new home, and within two hours the Tenere and our two pallets met us there.

So here we are. Migrants. Seeking a better life. We don’t speak the language (but we are committed to learning, and can already hold a basic conversation. It’s important to us to be good neighbors and speak the local language). We have twice the house at half the price and with stunning views. Soon we will have a year’s health insurance at the cost of one month in the US. Does it feel like home? Absolutely. Do we still plan to travel on the bike? We’re already taking rides, and definitely will be traveling again before long. We have a bit of a restriction on leaving Italy until our residency is granted but we absolutely plan to continue our travels. And we plan to continue to host other ADV and RTW travelers on their way through Italy, just as we’ve done for years in Texas. We already have a number of European friends from our previous travels. It’s time to make more, and learn more. Because, as always, if not now, when? Or in our new language: Se non adesso, quando?