wrapping up our time in charlotte

We moved to Charlotte in September of last year to take a contract job and squirrel away some cash for the next journey. Well... spring is here and so is that journey. My last day of work was yesterday. With a surprising amount of reluctance, I said goodbye to my Charlotte co-workers. Tonight will be a last gathering with the friends we've made here in Charlotte. Tomorrow - I hop on the motorcycle we had shipped out here to ride back to Seattle. Christy will work an extra week (someone has to pay for all this!) and then fly out to Albuquerque to meet me on the bike and ride with me through the last few western states.


Our last week in Charlotte, the weather finally turned nice. We spent an evening with Nate and Neville sitting on the grass watching live music at the U.S. National Whitewater Center.

Two of my favorite people.

Our last Food Truck Friday. We waited in line for an hour for a grilled cheese sandwich. Best damn grilled cheese sandwich evar.

We really loved our time in Charlotte. Our jobs introduced us to some incredible people that we're going to really miss.

Now? The fun starts.

35.22547°N 80.83668°W

It could have gone the other way

We spent the weekend in Savannah a while back. Another gorgeous town. In fact, we couldn't decide which we like better: Charleston or Savannah. Both beautiful and historic, both on the water.



Savannah has a very planned feel (because it was very planned, as it turned out) - but the most gorgeous overhanging trees and parks throughout town.





And we saw the greatest cop car...





And there was a really cool (modern) tall ship that we could tour - for free!



Granted, it was run by a conservative, bible thumping commune, but they were super nice.



It turns out that Jason almost went to school in Savannah instead of Oregon.



He was chatting with his mom about this and I overheard this:

"Imagine Mom, if I had gone to SCAD, I probably would have turned out Republican"

Go Ducks!!

Charleston

When we moved here, I didn't really know the difference between Charleston and Charlotte...nor did most of our friends. Oh, I suppose I knew there were two different towns, in two different states, but I had no idea which was on the water and which wasn't. Turns out we landed at the land bound town. So we had to go check out Charleston while we were here. We needed a water fix!

Charleston was absolutely gorgeous. And so, so different than Charlotte. Charlotte is a banking town. The only old buildings are random churches dotted throughout downtown (excuse me, UPtown is the proper name). It's mostly giant high rise buildings. Charleston, however, has kept that historic appeal and we had a grand time wandering around



I got Jason to take a carriage ride there (and that will never happen again, so I have to enjoy it while I can). That said, it was a great tour of the historic district.





For our water fix, we took a ride on the ferry to Fort Sumter, the spot on which the civil war started (oh yes, I've been learning lots more about the civil war than I ever thought I would while living down here - it's been fun though!)





Overall, Charleston gets a thumbs up. Maybe some day we'll come back here on a boat. I think we could take Fort Sumter...

Happy anniversary to our biggest fans!

Happy 65th anniversary to my grandparents!!



Most of you don't know this, but my 88 year old grandfather is our most faithful reader. He needs no RSS feed, he just reloads our webpage every day (how else do you think we pad our page view hits??). This means I also get reminded regularly when we haven't updated the blog in a while :)



Happy anniversary Naunie and Poppops!

Kidnapped in Kansas

I land in some fairly random places for work once in a while. Like Kansas for example.

A client had me out there for 4 of the past 6 weeks. At first, it was just Kansas - I wasn't getting out a lot and it seemed pretty flat. Sometime through my 3rd week there, someone mentioned something about the boat show coming to town. "Ha! Who sails in Kansas??" I thought to myself. And then it occurred to me...I know people that sail here!!



Know might be a fairly strong word for Tom and Sabrina since we'd never actually met. But you know that never stops me. And as it turns out, it wouldn't ever stop these two either. My first time at their house for dinner, I was there for 5 hours, just chatting boats and cruising. SO FUN. Turns out I miss boating people.

Tom and Sabrina also own a Caliber 40, s/v Honey Ryder . We've been following each others blogs and emailing about the finer points of Caliber ownership for years.

We got together for my last week and they invited a few other sailors in town - and yes, I was asked for an autograph. I'm quite famous. Jason is equally famous, but unable to sign autographs since he didn't want to come to Kansas with me. Too bad for him.

Almost the entire crew (Pat, Joan, Michael, Kimberly and Tom) and of course, Larry the cat.


My groupies