Highs/Lows

Injuries so far:
Rebecca: minor scrapes to leg and arm received during the second of two minor motorcycle accidents on first day of learning how to drive a bike (western Thailand); nasty shin scrape from a beach incident (Portugal); cut finger while giving Don a haircut (beach in eastern Indonesia ); all kinds of cuts and bruises from boat life; blood loss to leeches in Nepal; all kinds of cuts and bruises.

Don: injured shoulder rotator cuff from lifting water in jerry jugs from the dinghy onto Pioneer’s deck (Florida Keys); 2nd degree burns on both arms from a heat gun while scraping varnish on the boat (North Carolina); serious foot wound from stumbling on a tree stump near the beach (southern Thailand); serious gash on the head with considerable blood loss caused by hitting low window awning (Arizona); cracked bone in back and smashed disk, possibly worsened by violent storm at sea 800 miles north of the British Virgin Islands.

Food we just couldn't eat:
Thailand's "good eatin' bugs." See Thailand Photo Gallery One.

Most painful experience:
Physically: Kidney stones (Don, in Indonesia) one day before the far more painful terrorist attacks on America; back pain from broken bone in back. Financially and emotionally: our “endless” 147 day sailboat refitting at Deaton Yacht Service in Oriental, North Carolina.

Items stolen:
A sneaky Monument Valley Navajo dog ran off with one of Becky's Teva sandals (which she misses a lot, having already worn them on three continents as her only shoes). In St. Augustine, Florida, someone stole Don's mountain bike from the rack at the city marina.

Number of motorcycle accidents:
Two minor crashes in Thailand on the same day (Becky); One minor crash in far eastern Indonesia (Don and Becky). No serious injuries but some damage to the motorcycle.

Longest period without wearing shoes of any kind:
Twelve days while sailing from Hampton, VA to Tortola, BVI in the Caribbean.

Items lost overboard while living aboard sailboat PIONEER:
Empty diesel fuel can ripped off the deck by a wave during return from the Dry Tortugas, sunglasses (six pair); reading glasses (four pair); paint can lid; container of gold paint; small paint brush; several rolls of paper towels (retrieved); numerous beer cans (surprisingly, all retrieved); a new boat hook; deck scrub brush; cereal bowl; screwdriver; nut; boat hook; baseball caps (three); a large cooler and its lid.

Best Times of the Expedition so far:
• Buying a new home on the golf course in Red Lodge, MT (2006)
• When American Express came to the rescue after our digital camera broke in rural Thailand (see also "Worst Days so far")
• Helping Thai hill tribe villagers celebrate their first Christmas
• Hiking to the Castelo de Mouros castle in Portugal
• Landing a plane on Ruth Glacier in Mt. McKinley Park, Alaska
• Crossing the Arctic Circle in Canada's Yukon
• Finally selling our Virginia/DC condo, even at a huge loss
• Moving aboard our beautiful sailboat s/v PIONEER in Florida
• Sailing nonstop from the Bahamas to North Carolina
• Sailing nonstop 1,532 nautical miles from Hampton, VA to the BVI
• Our two day trip up the Mekong River in Laos
• Exploration of Angkor Wat in Cambodia
• Celebration of our 10th wedding anniversary in the Bahamas

Worst Times so far:
• The death of Don’s Father, June 14, 2005
• September 11, 2001, the day without sense
• Two emergency trips home from Asia for family medical emergencies
• Every day spent at Deaton's Yacht Service while our bank accounts were milked
• Chartering a fishing boat to take Don to an emergency room in Krabi, Thailand after he slashed his foot open on New Year's Day 2001
• Broken Kodak DC 280 digital camera, in rural Thailand
• In Portugal, when the knuckleheads at AOL suspended our accounts with no way to restore them. They thought we were sending unsolicited bulk mail because we sent e-mails to all our friends at once. We had to take a train to Lisbon to check E-mail and couldn’t address our cancelation until we returned to America, where we told apologetic AOL to shove it.
• Enduring a Force 10 gale at sea when sailing from the Chesapeake Bay to Tortola, BVI

Worst company with which we have dealt:
We didn’t think any company on the planet could be worse than AOL, but QWEST is even more miserable, incompetent and predatory. If they didn’t have a monopoly lock on phone and DSL Internet service, they’d be out of business. It is astounding how many wrong answers, unfulfilled promises, and how much conflicting information can be given by QWEST employees. We received provably wrong information from nine of eleven representatives while coming to understand the stupidity of their Internet service in Red Lodge. Even though some of the QWEST people are pleasant, they are invariably clueless. We found that paying for service four times faster produced speeds less than half as fast, and it took QWEST employees a month to figure that out. QWEST DSL “service” is seriously pathetic, worse than a bad joke.

What we miss about America while we're overseas:
Our families; high speed Internet; brushing teeth with water right out of the tap; listening to Maynard Ferguson and his Big Bop Neuvo at Blues Alley Jazz Club in Georgetown; going days, weeks, even months without seeing or hearing an insect or lizard; leaving home without a roll of toilet paper in our handbag; spending evenings sipping great wine with old friends; clean and operable restrooms with plenty of toilet paper, liquid soap and hand towels (notice how TP comes up twice?); driving our Corvette convertible on beautiful autumn days on wide, safe roads; having Internet access at home; having a home; seeing a price tag without having to convert the amount to dollars; flying our Cessna over the Chesapeake; and last but certainly not least, our families.

What we don't miss while traveling full time:
Getting up and going to work; alarm clocks ringing; cold weather; heavy clothing; traffic in Washington, DC; paying a fortune for groceries at Giant; obscenely biased and irresponsibly competitive American news media and network reporters' self-aggrandizing pomposity, especially cable news; road rage; Congressional egomaniacs; partisan politics, rap music blaring from cars; people, including one of Don’s brothers, who never leave their home towns and yet want to lecture us about travel in foreign countries.

Best values:
Everything in rural Thailand (except wine), especially a haircut & shave (Don) and pedicure (Becky) all for $1.40; first class bus from Kanchanaburi to Bangkok (2 hrs/$1.90); motorcycle rentals ($2.85 per day); the P Guesthouse in Sangklaburi ($3.41 per room with a balcony and great lake view, bathroom separate); Thai Internet access (slow, but 34 cents per hour). Wine in Portugal (good bottle $2, very good bottle $3 in 2001), gasoline in Texas (94.9 cents/gal 2/02). Almost everything in Nepal.

Worst values:
Internet access at the Slick Rock cafe in Moab, Utah: $5 for TWO friggin' minutes in 2002. If we wanted to be THAT offended we'd go to Paris or read the New York Times; milk in Virgin Gorda, BVI and Bahamas: $8.00/gallon in 2005.

Best named product anywhere:
Thai toilet paper: “Sit and Smile.” (See Thailand photo gallery number one).

Oddest named business to be located in the Virgin Islands: “Joe’s Casa de Tornillos.” Translation: Joe’s House of Screws. (Perhaps this is a specialty in a country with “virgin” in its name).

People who drive us totally crazy:
• Those who criticize our efforts to help disadvantaged people we encounter, such as orphans, blind students and lepers: (“It’s wrong to help people...they need to find a way to survive -- or, it’s just too bad when they die.”) Two Canadian sailors actually said this. AAAGH!
• Sailors who, spotting Becky working on the boat, assume because of her gender that she needs to be lectured about whatever she’s doing.
• The inexperienced volunteer crew member who came aboard our sailboat/home and started demanding that WE live up to HER standards. It was a LONG 12 days, especially after we caught her smoking aboard 500 miles from land.
• People who, knowing we’re oversees on extremely slow Internet connections, forward all kinds of huge attachments and endless moronic dribble they apparently consider hilarious -- and others who just can’t resist including us on chain-letter messages, which results in viruses, unwanted attachments and more inane stupidity from complete strangers who seem to have rocks for brains.

Most socially irresponsible gasoline station sign anywhere:
Near Beulah, Wyoming a sign along Interstate 90 that read: “Free Draft Beer With Fill Up.” THAT ought to promote sober driving! See Wyoming Photo Gallery.

Fastest Mail Service:
Our letter from Sintra, Portugal half way around the world to Bangkok, Thailand -- 4 days!

Slowest/Worst Mail Service:
One package mailed from Belle Fourche, SD to La Penita, Mexico in March 2000 is STILL missing in 2008 -- even after we did personal favors for the postal worker there. We want our stamp albums back, Andreus!; We waited a month in Nepal for a letter that never came from the USA. Update: after leaving Nepal we learned the letter arrived after seven weeks. Before its delivery it had been ripped open and a financial document removed.

What we look forward to:
Each new day's funny situations; seeing old friends; meeting new friends; coming closer to figuring out what's going on around us; creeping maturity; sunrises, sunsets and full moons while at anchor or under sail -- and the “Green Flash,” which we finally saw while anchored at a remote unpopulated island in the Bahamas in 2005.

What makes full time travel difficult:
Terrorism; not getting information when we need it; isolation from friends and family; not knowing where to find things we need; jet lag; bug bites; no Internet access; incorrect advice from American Express (a mistake which cost us unending difficulties in Bangkok and for which American Express ended up giving us $800 in compensation); communicating in many languages; endless planning, provisioning and storing our stuff with friends, relatives, in stored vehicles and commercial facilities; ever varying exchange rates; investment "advisors" who get paid even when they lose our money (sorry, John Marshall at Merrill Lynch); cracked bones in Don’s back, and the three major spinal surgeries that followed.

Things that make full time travel easier:
Good health, making our own schedules; the time to explore a destination thoroughly; kindness and generosity of strangers; the support of relatives; living more like 'locals' than tourists; the Internet.

What we love most about traveling full time:
Freedom and flexibility; learning how to do things less expensively; learning local customs, traditions and history; that we're doing it before we can't; being with each other as much as we want-- and still wanting to even after being together 24 hours a day for many years!