Children were nestled all snug in their beds

While visions of warm weather danced in their heads!

Here we are in Chicagoland on our road trip and suffice it to say that we thought for sure that we would be in lower latitudes by now. But as they say, temporary inconvenience, permanent improvement.

Boat work continues as we are visiting with family in the tundra. This week the deck got compounded and waxed, the canvas was being finalized and the last electronic issues were being resolved. With any luck, we will be able to finally throw off the dock lines next week.

I've been building my almanacs and trip logs so that we can plan our daily events and begin to build our maintenance schedules. There is so much to do to be prepared for the conditions and ensure that our equipment is ready to do what we want when we want to do it.

It's hard to believe how much we've accomplished in such a short time. Many people take months and years to do what we've done in a few weeks. We are by no means ready to leave when we do but we will. This weekend when we get back we need to finish cleaning up our old boat and getting it ready for winter and next season. Once that is done we should be ready to go. Our adventure is not an event, it is a process and one that will be continuing to evolve. I don't think we will ever be in a state of readiness as we will always be continuing to improve our position. That is a fundamental characteristic I acquired early in my army days. No position, no plan is ever truly ready. One of the corollaries to Murphy's Laws is that no plan survives contact intact. Everything is a process of adapting, improvising and overcoming. Ce'st la vie.

When ready we will depart knowing that we have a boat that if competently crewed can handle any circumstance, the crew is determined to overcome every challenge and whatever happens we will get through it becoming better for the experience.

This evolution began with getting ready to move by cleaning out our possessions, preparing the house for sale and anticipating outcomes of many unknown events. We are almost there.