January 8, 2008 - Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean

We didn't really have an 8th of January this year. When we took off from CLE and LAX, it was still January 7th. When we land in Auckland in the morning it will be the 9th. This lost day seems like a good time to express our sadness about leaving our friends and family again. One of the biggest surprises about this cruising lifestyle has been how much closer we've grown to the people in our lives, in spite of the vast distances between us. Throughout this year we have had so much more time for personal correspondence and phone calls than we did while we were working. These past 6 weeks we've spent more time with many of our friends and family than we ever did in a year of working. Unfortunately, over the past 50 days, each time we said "hello", "goodbye" was just hours or, at most, days away. It has really been wonderful to have had the opportunity to visit with so many people who are so important to us. But the intensity of the time spent with our loved ones has made leaving again really hard. So when we said "come visit" we weren't being polite, or facetious. We really do want to see you all in your flip flops, bikinis and board shorts. Let us know when you can take time off, and we'll make it work.