Friends in All Places

All too often, we are reminded of how short human lives are.  And we are forced to accept that the best people don’t always get an adequate amount of time.  But rather than dwell on how much that sucks or how that meets our human concept of unfair, we try to adjust.  Instead, we set our focus on how amazing it is that our little lifelines intersected and how grateful we are for that.  

This vagabond lifestyle allows us the opportunity to intersect with many different people from many different backgrounds.  We sometimes make new friends, who seem like old friends: the type who welcome you into their home (or boat) the first time you meet, or effortlessly join your adventure for the day (or week, or months), or go running with you despite the intense humidity, or make the same jokes, or talk the same way to their uncooperative boat projects, or help with your uncooperative boat projects even though they have plenty of their own, or trust you to pet-sit without hesitation, or remember some obscure fact you shared months ago, or openly share concerns and hopes for their future that match your own.  There is a sense that we should have known them from our past and a sense that we will definitely continue to know them into our future.  

We cherish those fast bonds (which have to be fast when you are constantly moving), because enjoying the places we visit is better with friends.  Sometimes we come back to the people we have met, sometimes we travel with them, and sometimes we are pleasantly surprised to bump into them again in another far-off place.  

We are presently raising a very large glass to Danito, a friend we had the luck of meeting before we bought Mapache.  He is one of the people who inspired our current way of life and who kept us on it when we needed help.  He will continue to play an important role in how we live our lives on and off the water.  

Cheers to Dan and to all the people who make our lives better!