With just three weeks to go, nothing can be postponed.  Every day we make arrangements for the trip or for being away from home.  Yesterday we figured out how to access our utility bills and today we are taking a load to the boat and repairing a window latch.  In a way, it feels kind of like college - you take your exams, turn in your papers, and you are finished.  Then you leave for several months.

While we may or may not have epiphanies on the trip, we do have expectations.  One is that I will think a lot about what I want to do next, in the second half of my life, and come up with plans.  I imagine that Brian will be doing that too.  There’s a lot of time for thinking on a boat that travels at 8 knots, covering about 30 miles a day of a 6,000 mile trip.  

The things I am looking forward to the most are:  the Northern Lights, the Great Lakes, the famous rivers, Chicago and Key West.  Brian is looking forward to the night crossing at Carrabelle.  That’s almost everything :)  While on the boat I’m planning to crochet, write, draw and read.  Off the boat, we plan to explore new places either walking or on our tandem bike.  Brian rides very fast and I ride very slow, so this is a good compromise.  

I will miss our house, our garden and our cat, Charlie.  He is going to NYC to stay with Brianna while we’re gone, but Sofia is coming with us.  We would take Charlie, too, except that the two cats don’t get along and the boat is too small to put up with that.