And on our way we are….

And what’s more, the countdown has decreased by 2 days for a new departure date of 13^th June. This was brought about by discovering that by leaving 2 days earlier and stopping over a night in Los Angeles, we lopped $1000 off the airfare….go figure!! I always prefer to stay in LA on the way through to somewhere else, otherwise it makes for a lot of continuous travel - 20 hours in total to Chicago. The 12 hours across the Pacific to LA is normally enough for me, particularly since all the fights from NZ to the US leave in the evening, you’ve already been awake a whole day before you even get on the plane. It also means we can get a flight from LA  to Chicago the next day that arrives at a realistic hour (4.54pm in our case), instead of the 10.45pm that the flights straight through from New Zealand would have had us arriving at.

Coming home in January, we will be going out of Fort Lauderdale (still the cheapest airport from which to leave Florida) via Houston and spending another night in LA before flying home. According to Indiantown Marina, there is a local guy who runs an “on-call” shuttle service to Ft Lauderdale airport, so that will be handy to get us there after the boat is lifted out at Indiantown.

Yesterday I caught up with Warren and Monica, the couple from Red beach who are planning to do the Loop next year. We had a great chat and compared notes, then they were kind enough to shout lunch at my Marina (thanks guys) which is just down the road. Undoubtedly we will catch up again before our departure (I shall make a point of it!) We also have now our first confirmed booking of visitors. Charlie and Pauline have booked their flights and will arrive in Chicago 3 weeks after us – hopefully we will be prepared for them! I am considering buying a vehicle to trot around in when we get there, as we will need transport for at least a month to provision, pick up guests etc and a rental will cost more than USD1000 – so I’m picking it might be cheaper to buy an old dunger that only has to last a month. Any suggestions or advice on the sense of this will be gratefully received. We also have to find a slip in Milwaukee that allows DIY stuff, so that I can get the boat ready for the Loop. Again anyone reading this that has insight into affordable slip rentals in Milwaukee – please let me know.

120 days to go (Jeez that’s only 4 months!!!)

Byee


PS I cheated on the pic of Loopy Kiwi at the top of the blog. It is a pic I took of Urban Legend while she was berthed at Kenosha, and I have massaged it with Microsoft Paint to add the name Loopy Kiwi and NZ rego number. I am getting a quote to have the name "Loopy Kiwi" painted on her while she is in storage, but regrettably, the pic on the blog is not the real thing. My apologies to anyone who was fooled by it (but if you were, I feel good about that too!)