BLOW ME AWAY   LIVING THE DREAM
	A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.                   Chinese proverb
	So are you curious as to how our dream began? Well, sit right back and I'll tell you a tale of how we met first.
	In February of 1988, we were both working at a restaurant in Kansas City Missouri.  I was the day manager and Aaron a waiter/bartender.  I remember the first day he walked thru Costello's Restaurants door, his first day of work, and at first look I turned to my hostess, and said to her, "He's mine".  Two weeks later we had our first date and we both knew that we had something special between us.  We've been together since, and married now almost 17 years. We decided to become truckdrivers that fall, found a company that would train us for free and by August we were driving across the country. It worked out well for us and we continued driving for the next 17 years. Aaron first began sailing on a windsurfer back in the 1970's. He owned one of the first boards ever produced and taught himself.  When I met him, he owned a 21ft Victory sailboat and the first time we went sailing out on Lake Jacomo,MO, I was hooked.  We then purchased a 28.5 Hunter three years later,and sailed Lake Perry in Kansas.  Our dream first started to take hold in September of 1995 when we went on vacation to Sausalito, CA and stayed with our friend George Backhus on his 62' Deerfoot.  We had met George earlier in the year at Jazzfest in New Orleans along with Captain Wayne who was helping George at the time, and Marc from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Meeting these guys was a turning point in our lives as our dream began to expand.  After enjoying sailing out on San Francisco Bay, we decided upon our return home that we needed a bigger boat and even bigger waters, so we started reading and researching.  In July of 1996, we sold our house and practically everything in it, bought a 28ft. RV, and in December, we quit our job of driving a truck, and set out for Ft. Lauderdale, FL, the boating capitol of the eastern coast.  We met Jeff Erdmann of Bollman Yachts, who had sold George his boat, and within three weeks we had found the boat we were looking for, a Gulfstar 50, ketch rig..  On Christmas Eve, we called Marc and he invited us to his home, ended up parking the RV in his driveway, and as we cleaned up our new home everyday for the next two weeks, Marc took care of us having dinner ready upon our return home each day.  We nicknamed him Dad.  Captain Wayne and his friend Diana flew in from San Francisco to teach us how to navigate, since on Kansas lakes navigation is not difficult.  We spent two weeks then sailing around to St. Petersburg, FL where we had decided to keep the boat at The Harborage Marina.  We spent the next ten years fixing her up, learning all about boat ownership which is still an ongoing course, learning something new each day.  During this time, we spent the winter months sailing to the Bahamas, cruising to the Turks and Caicos and Cuba, which was way more fun than driving a truck thru the snow and ice.  The next decision then was to work continously for 2 1/2 years to pay off the boat, save as much money as we could, so that we could sail around the world.  So that's what we did.  We quit our job in December 2005, and prepared the boat as well as ourselves for our extended cruise.  On April 15 2006, we dropped the docklines for good and sailed out into the Gulf of Mexico.  Thus, our dream had finally come true..