Tiffany and Greg Around the World
Between exploring amazing churches
Our adventures with street performers
Avoiding the katana-umbrella mafia
Tasting the all important local sushi and waffles:
And F-1 racing. Did we mention the F-1 racing?
(Seriously, lots goes on here)
We almost forgot to mention our favourite part of Melbourne…
And Melbourne, well as you can see with like most anything else you can think of, video games they got.
French Ridge hut
Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ
Notices posted on the kitchen wall of French Ridge hut:
Seriously, we freaking love these people.
By now we’ve mentioned it enough that you’re probably asking “Hey guys? What are these huts and wardens and whatnot you keep talking about?”
Continue reading “A Hut Warden’s Life”
Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ
Another aspect of friendship is the joint lexicon a group develops over time. Shared experiences become stories, stories become jokes, jokes become catchphrases and so on until it gets to the point where simply mentioning the last name of a high school teacher will bring smirks, smiles or groans of anguish from the right circle of people while making absolutely no sense to anyone else.
The longer one stays with a given group, the more detailed this secret language becomes. By extrapolation, one can easily concede that in 11+ years of exclusive relationship (8+ of actual marriage) quite an expansive vocabulary would develop. We bring this up, dear friends, to issue you fair warning:
If either of us ever describe an activity you are about to join us on as “Kiwi moderate” run away quickly.
The sailing life leads to odd relationships. Not odd in the quality but more in the means employed in establishing and growing those interpersonal connections: the happenstance, randomness and good fortune involved in who we even have the opportunity to connect with.
Some fellow sailors are friends for a meal or a few days in one port, remembered fondly but as fate and diverging cruising plans would have it, never to be rendezvoused with again.
Other people are friends for a longer time. Perhaps an overlapping prolonged stay in a Mexican port or a shared long-term rally provide ample opportunity to get to know each other over a longer period of time. The cruiser’s net, dinners aboard and joint shore excursions are the fabric with which we begin to weave our social tapestry. Radio comms and emails (yeah, you can get those via satellite uplink or over a HAM radio now…) allow us to fill in the gaps when we are mutually underway while Facebook and blogs can keep us connected while we’re in different ports.
In our case, there are those people who ask us onboard their vessels for anywhere from a few days to a few months. For that time we become roommates in a home that none of us can leave. Typically we share meals, time, adventures and our lives for however long we’re onboard. We, to a varying degree, become family. These people are, for the time we’re connected to them, a huge part of our world. Often we leave as good friends.
The downside to our situation is that, unlike most cruisers, we are unable to extend our time in places to form a relationship if our captain decides that they wish to depart. Friendships are created and maintained by a mixture of fortunate run-ins and dedicated effort placed into correspondence.
What we’re saying here is that interpersonal proximity is a variable, sometimes an obstacle and always a consideration in the formation and maintenance of friendships at sea.
Then there’s the case of Rod & Elisabeth.
We have found in life there are people who have learned to be good at something and possess “skill” (feel free to add the “z” as necessary) and people who have innate ability, which we’ll call “talent.” While talent does provide an edge to those with the good fortune to posses it, skill ultimately trumps it in the long run, which is why even the natural talents still need to practice. Sometimes though, an undeveloped latent talent doesn’t fade, or is discovered later in life and it provides us with potential insight into ourselves and our choices. “What if,” this talent, imbedded in our very beings, asks, “what if instead of taking the road you took, you had developed me instead?”
We bring this up because Greg is convinced he married a repressed sheep-whisperer…
Helensville, NZ
In case you hadn’t noticed yet, we LOVE Bacon!!
We know, you probably never would have guessed that we were vegetarians for 4 years because we talk about bacon so much. But bacon is just one of those things that you must make an exception for (ok, and sushi…and BACON SUSHI! Crispy, salty, greasy yumminess – that’s what it’s all about! All Americans understand what bacon is, even though we tend to have some differences in our personal preferences. Most people like the straight up, traditional bacon – thinly sliced strips of smoked pig with a roughly 50/50 ratio of fat to meat. Some people like it extra crispy, some like it almost raw. Now, there are some variations on this theme – apple wood smoked, thick sliced, turkey bacon, vegetarian bacon – you name it, we’ve got It. Or so we thought.
Continue reading “Only one thing smells like bacon and that’s BACON!!!”
Tiffany:
So it’s that time again for Greg to take the mic for his birthday message:
Greg:
2 years ago today I wrote you from a remote island in the middle of French Polynesia in between diving lessons.
Last year my birthday found us still in the Pacific, but at least now having sailed on to a different island and learning to surf.
Even now both Tiffany and I find ourselves looking at maps of the world attempting to wrap our minds around some of the things we’ve done. Did we really sail to Tahiti? Did I actually have a role in sci-fi movie? Have we really created almost 200 integrated video blog posts? Seriously, we managed to find wine made from bananas? We can play Jingle Bells on the ukulele? And did it took us 20 minutes of bashing a coconut before we realized the machete was dull?
Did I actually convince my wife that creating from scratch and wearing a genuine coconut bikini was:
1) Something worth doing and
2) Important to document videographically?
This picture encapsulates awesome.
Odd as it sounds, even to us now, the answer to those questions and so many other amazing adventures is “Yes.”
As we’ve told a few of you the good news is that we are now and at this very moment on our way home.
On the Road, NZ
We sometimes think that travel does, in fact, broaden one’s horizons. Gives perspective, understanding if you will, of persons individually and peoples as a whole.
For example, we now understand that, as a people, Kiwis are pretty dang witty.
Billboard ad in Auckland – dude, true that.
As we wander down the length of this great country we should take a moment, if only a moment, to admire the brilliance of the Kiwi advertising agencies…
Auckland, NZ
With Greg’s mom on the way we realized we had a problem we had managed to completely avoid on our journeys until now: how do we get around?
It sounds odd but for the past several years and about 1/3 of the way around the world our method of day to day travel simply was not a concern. When working on sailing yachts our office also happens to encompass our primary means of locomotion and accommodation. As we sailed wherever our captain wanted and stayed as long as they wanted to, we didn’t put a lot of thought into where we would be going or how we would get there. We just took the ship safely wherever we were told when we were told to do it. Being land bound now we had to face such difficult questions like, “Where will we go?” and “Where will we sleep when we get there?” and the most urgent of these, “How will we get there?”
Continue reading “Boatless Transportation”
San Jose, CA, USA
When in San Jose Greg likes to party. He likes to party a lot.
But perhaps we should take a moment to define this word, as its meaning could be somewhat…skewed depending on your perspective and life experiences. To many people, this would involve nightclubs, expensive bottles of vodka, private tables, next day hangovers, loud music and expensive, if somewhat revealing and usually uncomfortable, clothing.
Greg’s mother loved Greg’s high school partying habits. He had no curfew, none. This conversation happened regularly in his home as a child:
“Mom, I’m going to a party, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“OK, just be sure to call at 10.”
Usually he forgot. But that was ok and not because Greg had a cell phone. Greg’s mom just knew where he was.
