Back in the States :-(

Hmm.  Two full months since our last blog post.  That’s not good.  Not good at all.  Let’s see, what happened in the last 60 or so days that took up all our time and kept us from our precious blog?  We went from Melbourne back to NZ where we rented a car and toured the South Island. We spent 4+ days in Queenstown with our friends Allan and Rina from Follow You Follow Me hurling ourselves off cliffs, platforms, and out of planes. We visited Milford Sound and the thoroughly unexciting town of Dunedin before driving back to Christchurch where we flew off to Hong Kong via Singapore. Four days later we were shopping the Champs Elysees in Paris after lunching in Beijing. Four days after that we grabbed some fish and chips in Dublin before landing in Raleigh to see my family. Four days after that we were knee deep in caulk and paint at our current location…Greensboro, Georgia. And after all that; four years of traveling and sailing, one full revolution of the earth, countless long-haul flights, twenty-five countries, weeks at sea, and tens of thousands of nautical miles I can conclude just one thing: Not living on a boat in the South Pacific islands sucks ass.

Seriously.  Who came up with this “real life” crap?  I went from sitting on a sandbar drinking Hinanos to sitting in the drive-thru at Wendy’s waiting on my Bacon-ator.  The transition has been hard.  We’ve moved onto much larger, much more stressful projects.  Within the next couple of weeks, Marge and I will have ownership in three separate businesses between the two of us.  One of those businesses I’m starting with my entire life savings and therefore committing myself for quite some time to this very small town.  We could take that same money and settle on a beach in the islands somewhere; open up a dive shop, sell rum drinks to tourists.  It’d be interesting to reach the point where “going to bed” means the limbo pole gets so low you fall over backwards and pass out.  Why, you ask, are we not doing that?  Simple.  We want to go back out there again. And to do it the way we want to do it takes a lot of hard work here in the real world.  No, it won’t be any time soon but we’re already talking about it.  We talk about where we want to go (Marge-Caribbean, Drew-Med), how big a boat we’d like (Marge-big catamaran, Drew– huge catamaran), and how we’ll achieve that goal (Marge-win the lottery, Drew-build the exit strategy before you build the business).  We’ll make it out there again.  I’m sure of it.

Until then we have our memories and our photos, our travel buddies, and blog to keep us in the spirit.  Currently I’m unable to read any travel/sailing blogs due to an unresolved anger-jealously issue but whenever I reach that point we’ll have all the experiences of others to live through as well.  If you’re traveling through Georgia between Augusta and Atlanta anytime soon, stop in and see us.  Maybe by then I’ll have the billboard up.  She doesn’t believe me, but keep an eye out for a twelve foot tall Marge on the side of I-20 advertising one of our businesses.  It’s coming.  It really is.