Every Journey Begins with a Single Step
It was Lao Tzu who said that a 100klm journey begins with a single
step. We found that the first step in our road trip back to Easy Tiger and our
sailing Adventures was indeed the hardest thing of all, saying goodbye again to
our family and friends.
Having been back among our family and friends for nearly ten months we
felt reconnected. For example Leanne had spent time shopping and having coffee’s
with her mum and I had several “bro- days” with my brother. Even though we
didn’t do as much of these sort of activities as we would have liked due to being
into our “normal routine” of work, eat sleep, repeat, we cherished the time we
had.
This “routine” could have carried on for as long as we wanted, all
the while thinking that when we had enough money we would head back to the
boat, but my job was only four days a week and Leanne’s a few hours each day,
we found were really only treading water financially.
When we arrived back in WA, we didn’t know how long we would be staying,
so we didn’t want to break the lease on our house. The tenants have been very
good and would be hard to replace. So Leanne hit on the idea of house sitting
for people who are going away and want their property cared for.
After registering on the House Sitters Australia web site, we found
a House-sitting job for three months at Bob and Judy Dunbar’s place. From the
first meeting we soon worked out that these house sit jobs are really dog
sits. As the homeowners left each time,
without fail they would say, “Don’t worry too much about the house just take
good care of the dog”.
The best part about the house sitting was that we saved money on
rent and it felt quite nice to be helping people out.
In between house sit jobs we were very very fortunate to be offered
a place to stay with our beautiful friends Stacey and Ian Bateman. We were
quite concerned that we would outstay our welcome, as these two are very busy
running How Shique, (the best Hair dressing studio in the world) and Maxwell
& Lee (fabulous homewares on line) plus Ian has full time work at the
Westpac bank.
In testament to the great people and wonderful friends they are, we
all made it work OK. We really were grateful for the enormous help they were.
I did feel quite guilty leaving my family again. I still hadn’t got
to the couple of jobs that said I would do for my mum, I would of liked to help
my sister find good employment, then, the week before we left, my brother was
made redundant which was a real shock.
Leanne’s family had really enjoyed having her around too. None of us
are getting any younger so we are not sure what the future holds. Fair to say
though that currently our family’s good health and a lack of grandchildren,
presents an ideal time for us to take off on our sailing adventures. Should our
families need us we are only a plane ride away.
It’s pretty hared to say goodbye to our true friends. We have
invited them to come and spend time on the boat with us, but of course short
periods of annual leave etc where they have their own family to visit etc makes
it difficult to see happening.
Sadly we will miss our friend April’s 50th birthday
celebration. Our sailor’s budget just won’t stretch to travelling to Bali or
Singapore with them. That’s hard to swallow but we have and adventure to
pursue. No doubt there will be many other experiences that our friends will
have without us and obviously vice versa, but I am sure that when we do see
them all again, we will be very interested to here their stories as they will
ours.
I every journey begins with a step, ours was deciding on a departure
date. That sort of fell on us in a way, as our last house sit/dog sit job was
to end on the 21st January. We were dreading having to find yet another address
to hang our hat in, to move our gear to and another house to find our way
around in, so we decided enough was enough and set 21st January as
our departure date.
The second step in our journey was even harder. It was saying
goodbye to everyone, not sure when we would see them again.
We know that we have a wonderful opportunity and many great
experiences to enjoy in the near future. It doesn’t make the first step of
saying goodbye any easier though.
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| At our send off dinner with wonderful friends |
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| not to be outdone, the fellas. |
