Half way there...

As a couple that is. One of the most exciting, and at the same time, heart-wrenching things I ever did, was to drop Leslie off at the airport yesterday, bound for St. John.

Backing up just a bit, Wednesday had been quite a surreal day. In a lot of ways just a typical weekday, but I couldn't shake the awareness that things were going to be very different very soon. Leslie completed the last of her scheduled therapy visits/farewells of the week, and came home with home made remembrances from some of her little patients. Despite the number of things that still had to be done, we decided to go out to dinner at our favorite local restaurant since it would be our (gulp!) last chance to have dinner together for some time.

Unbeknownst to Leslie our youngest son Jason had finished his classes for the day, attended a meeting of one of his on campus organizations, then borrowed a car and drove the two and a half hours home so that he could see her off in person! When he got off of the highway he sent her a text asking her if she was excited and nervous, and if she needed a cyber hug. Shortly after she replied that she did indeed, he walked through the front door and said "would in person be better?" There was a long, tearful hug that followed, then a great deal of conversation. All of that probably didn't help the checklist get any shorter, but it was a wonderful and richly appreciated gesture from the fine ( if I may say so ) young man.

Thursday morning arrived much too quickly...Champ was in his usual suitcase induced funk, but there was an easy cure for that - "want to go for a ride?"

We got to the airport without incident, secured a porter for Leslie, and said an all too short goodbye before watching her disappear into the terminal and driving away.

Now I felt it:

Excitement - for reaching this milestone in our plan.

Worry - while Leslie isn't exactly a novice traveler she has a lot on her plate - two suitcases filled right to the weight limit as well as a carry on soft sided cooler and a backpack. She's never driven on St. Thomas before, never backed onto the car barge. And she's never visited St. John without me...

OK - that last one stirred up a little bit of envy as well...

But the day was mostly given to worry and anticipation. I got a text when her plane landed in Atlanta (yeah, I know - crazy route) and she sent me this when that plane was in the air:

The smile says it all!

Then, in order, the following;

Wheels down on St. Thomas!

No sign of the rental car people.

Got the car - following Hank - can't text

Hank is a guy we met on our last visit. He and his wife moved to St. Thomas six months or so ago. We spent a few hours hanging out with them after the 8 Tuff Miles race and they have offered, over and over, to help us out in any way that they can during our move. So he was escorting Leslie to Red Hook so that she wouldn't take any inadvertent wrong turns and delay her arrival!

Guess where I am? (On the car barge)

Then she posted the following on Facebook "The Car Barge is My Bitch!" (Hank told her that the barge people would put the car on for her if she needed, but she decided that she needed to learn some time, so she may as well start now).

 Now the worry was being replaced with relief and pride! Once she got to St. John I knew she'd be OK.

She was unable to find our rental digs using the directions given to her, so she decided to take a friend up on her offer to spend the night with her in her condo "in town". Dinner, some rum drinks, and a fun evening with some of our on island and frequent island visiting friends ensued, topped off by enjoying the performance of our favorite St. John reggae band, Inner Visions! Yeah, envy was kind of ruling the roost at this point!

PS - Leslie had a fun first night on island. She and the friend she stayed with stayed up late talking, and she woke up this morning to the sight and sounds of this:

She found the house, has her stuff moved in, and is headed into town to take care of a couple of relocation business items, then (as I told her to do - not that I had to twist her arm or anything) she's heading to get wet in that wonderful Caribbean water.

Half. Way. There.

Leaving the life (part 1)

While this blog is really all about the adventure of embracing and enduring our new life on St. John, right now, in addition to the logistics involved in doing so, there's a huge element of leaving behind our current life.

Of course with her due to leave tomorrow(!) this is much more acute for Leslie. Not only has she been going over actual and imaginary checklists dealing with what to/not to bring, worrying just a little about being on her own for a while, and a host of other concerns, she's feeling an extra tug on her heart and she deals with seeing most of her patients and their families for the last time - at least the way she does now.

For those of you that may not know, Leslie is a pediatric physical therapist. She struck out on her own some twenty two years or so ago, and has been helping kids and their families deal with a wide range of medical problems, from the mild and correctable to the severe and chronic. Because she loves kids young and old, she puts more than her therapist skills into her work, and over the years I've seen, countless times, the respect and love that these families have for her when we've run into them while out and about.

Here's a note Leslie jotted down that gives an example of how some of these final sessions go;

Saying goodbye to special needs kids who are old enough to get it  - here's the typical conversation:

Leslie: "Do you know where Ms Leslie likes to go on vacation?"
 
Cute as hell kid: "Yeah, the place with fish"
 
Leslie: "Well there are kids there like you who don't get any therapy. And you have had lots. What do you think about that?"
 
Kid with big eyes: "It makes me sad"
 
Leslie: "Me too. Do think we should do something about it .... like you could share me with those kids?"
 
Kid (whose  big eyes are now either avoiding eye contact , tearing up, or has gone into 30-45 second pause mode) "I guess so"
 
Leslie: "Well then I guess that makes you a hero because you are giving me permission to help those kids! How do you feel?"

Kid ( some crying) : "I feel happy but I will miss you. "
 
Leslie: "I will miss you more than you know."

Kid (that then breaks my heart):  "Those vacation kids are lucky."

Therapy days can be long after three or four of these conversations in a row!  But then we take steps or jump or stand on one foot for the first time! And I remember what it's really about and I smile... until I see the  parent "leaking" too.

I have to say that reading that makes the task ahead of me, to dispose of most of our "stuff", much easier when it's put in its proper perspective.

T minus a week and counting...

Unbelievable! Leslie gets on the plane five days from today!

There's been a whirlwind of activity, and a mountain of tasks yet to tackle as we prepare for this move - but more on that later. Let's back up just a little and see how it is that we came to this point where we're leaving our home, family, friends, and worldly possessions behind to move to a nine mile long rock far, far away...

Like so many other folks, our first encounter with St. John happened while we were on a cruise that had neighboring St. Thomas as a port call. The first time there, we walked off of the ship, then followed the hordes downtown where shopping ruled. The streets and downtown area were interesting, but we really like a little more activity than that offered, so the next time we booked a scuba diving excursion through the cruise ship. That allowed us to see more of the island, but for a number of reasons wasn't a great experience for us.

The next time we were headed there we met a couple on the ship that suggested we take a taxi to the east end of the island and catch a ferry to neighboring St. John. So we followed a different horde, to Red Hook, on the ferry to St. John, then on a taxi to Trunk Bay. The views of the water and beaches that we saw during that taxi ride were phenomenal!

We hung out, snorkeled, swam, all of the usual stuff. We had beaches at home, but there was something about the sand and the water here that was...different.

We took a taxi back to Cruz Bay and just missed a departing ferry, so we had an hour to walk around and soak in the ambiance. That hour changed us! We didn't do anything exceptional, although it must be said that sipping mango daiquiris while gazing out at the water didn't suck too much!  But this place just had a "vibe" that we liked, and long after we were back on our ship, sailing off towards the next port, we still felt it, and wanted more of it...

Once we got home I went online to see what I could find about staying on St. John. The internet didn't have nearly the presence then as it did now, and the few options I was able to track down were well out of our comfortable vacation budget range, so the flame flickered a little.

As scuba divers we had always preferred the western Caribbean cruise itineraries over the eastern, mainly due to port calls in Cozumel and Grand Cayman, both top dive destinations. But for some reason we found our reluctance to take the eastern routes had diminished, and we managed several more day trips to St. John. Once we even had a few members from our group rent jeeps and take them over on the car barge for the day, which allowed us to go beyond the Cruz Bay to Trunk Bay route that had defined all of our previous visits.

I was hanging out with my buddies in Cap's Place, having a beer while waiting for the car barge to arrive to the National Park Dock area, as they did back then, while some of the ladies hit the nearby shops. That old feeling was returning. I could see glimmers of it in the faces of my friends - we weren't crazy! Yet a trip here still wasn't in the cards - not yet anyway.

In late fall of 2006 we took what would be our last cruise to the eastern Caribbean (and with the exception of a last minute Thanksgiving week cruise with our boys to the western, our last cruise to date). Maybe we didn't want to tease ourselves with another all too short visit to St. John, but we decided to do something we hadn't done before. We booked a daysail out of American Yacht Harbor in Red Hook. We motored/sailed to Christmas Cove to snorkel, cruised around Pillsbury Sound, and had a really fun day. As we made our way back into port I commented on a beautiful house perched high atop a hill overlooking the water, wondering aloud who might live there.

Our captain told me that no one did - at least not full time. He went on to explain that a lot of these houses, which they call "villas" down here, are short term rental properties, and that they were ubiquitous on St. Thomas...AND on St. John!  I guess my interest level and excitement were hard to conceal - he also gave me the name of his ex, who he said worked for a company that managed some of those rentals...

It turns out that this particular company only managed really upscale villas, so going to their web site didn't leave me any more encouraged than I had been years earlier when I explored accommodation options on STJ.

But there was more. As we left the dinghy that day I told the captain that I would give his operation a hearty thumbs up on a cruise travel forum that I frequented (he had actually been referred to us by someone from our first choice that was booked that day). He thanked me, then asked if I might also/instead put that on a VI specific travel forum. I dutifully did so, and perusing that forum I saw references to a different forum, one that seemed to be very STJ-centric.

Then it was just a matter of time....

We found a bunch of friendly folks offering all kinds of helpful advice. We found a place we could afford, and FINALLY booked our first visit to the place that had been tugging on our hearts for years. It was, in a lot of ways, a very different vacation than any we'd had before. You had to take your own garbage to a dumpster every day, there was no daily maid service. There were signs in the bathrooms reminding you not to flush every time and to take "navy showers". Many of the beaches we drove to were unmarked and uninhabited, roosters crowed randomly, and we even found a scorpion on the floor next to the bed one morning.

After a week...we were head over heels in love with the place and already plotting our return!

The next year we went for 10 days, stayed on a different part of the island, and met some of those people from the travel forum. We cried on the car barge when we left.

Soon we were going twice a year. We took one, then both of our sons with us. We shared rentals with people we'd only briefly met, and convinced friends we'd known for years to come and stay with us. We stayed for as long as two weeks - the time still flew by and we still teared up upon our departure.

This was getting out of control. It was said, almost as a joke at first.

"We should just move here"

Every visit we made it a point to talk to the people that do live there. What do they like? What do they miss most? What are the biggest challenges?

We had (relatively) somber discussions about what we didn't know about island life. One of the things that came up was that we'd never been during high season, so we didn't know if the crowds would change how we felt about the place.

Spring break trip with one of our sons. Bam!

But...we stayed in Coral Bay, kept away from the crowds...did that really count?

So....February, 2013. Our 10th visit to St. John. Ostensibly this was all about checking 8 Tuff Miles off of the bucket list. Also a trip in the highest of seasons, staying in Cruz Bay...

Leslie had sent an application to the USVI School Board for a physical therapist position she saw advertised on craigslist. They had received all of her info, but no one had even been interviewed for the position despite the fact that it had been posted for months. Before we left home Leslie called them, told them that we would be on island, and that she would take the time and trouble to go to St. Thomas for an interview. She was told "give us your number - maybe we'll call you while you're down here"

So she decided to reach out to someone on St. John who, as far as we could tell, is the only practicing PT on island. Just to let her know about Leslie's background, and to see if she'd mind getting together for an information gathering chat. Almost an immediate reply - "you arrive on Thursday? Can we meet for an hour Friday afternoon?"

So...I'm sitting at one of tables outside of Sam & Jack's Deli upstairs at The Marketplace while Leslie is having her meeting in one of the adjacent office suites. The appointed hour comes and goes, then ten more minutes, ten more, ten more - you get the picture. Not that I'm complaining - there are a whole lot of other places that I could be less pleasant than where I'm sitting right now, and I'm people watching, daydreaming...

The door opens and Leslie comes out and as she makes her way over to where I'm waiting I see that she has a look on her face that's part ten million miles away, part unbridled excitement, and some other stuff that I can't even fathom.

Then she spoke the words that would change our lives:

"So, do you want to move to St. John?"

The Big Announcement! - April 8, 2013:

The cat's out of the bag! When I got up this morning my Facebook feed was blowing up, and I had texts on my phone congratulating me - I guess Leslie couldn't keep the news to herself any longer!

And why should she? She now has a one way ticket to St. Thomas for later this month, and a signed lease on a rental property on St. John!

After years of dreaming and scheming, months of questioning and checking, and weeks of debating (if you can call two people arguing for the same outcome debating) we have made the decision, and taken the plunge. Damn the torpedoes!

The catalyst was the job offer tendered to her on our most recent visit, and the window of opportunity pushed the timeline past the procrastination point.

Are we ready? In a million ways, no.

Are we nervous? Same.

Are we excited? Beyond belief!

She'll be there in just over two weeks! I'm not sure when I'll have things buttoned up here to the point that I can join her, but every day we're one step closer to what we've wished for for a long time.

Why the blog? For a number of reasons - people have said, upon learning of the news, that we should write one. We've been inspired, informed, and entertained by the blogs others have published on like or similar subject matter. And I suppose one day we can look back at it as sort of a journal of the whole experience.

I hope that others may glean a useful tidbit or two, the way we have from reading the other ones.

Stay tuned for more boring details...