You Don't Have To Go That Far

Mount Hood from the train

.I'm already having trouble finding time to blog.  I find that it's pretty easy to find more interesting things to do, especially when I'm in Portland.  I had a wonderful 10 day visit with the 3/4th of my kids that live in Portland.  I took the Amtrak Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland and it was a new experience for me.  One of the things I was looking most forward to was the trip the train takes through Glacier National Park.  I have never been there and I expected the train's route through the park to be amazing, which it may well be.  I can't report on that because we went through the park in the middle of the night.  It seems a bit strange to me that Amtrak doesn't schedule the trip to go through the park in daylight.  I did get to meet and visit with several fellow passengers and that ended up being the highlight of the train trip.

We didn't do anything touristy in Portland, just visited and ate...a lot.  The weather was outstanding for most of my visit, highs in the 90s and lots of sunshine.  Last week it got more cloudy and rainy for a few days but it was sunny and beautiful again before I left.  One thing that is a great comfort to me, every time I visit, is all of the kids have great friends in Portland. I have had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with many of their friends and they are a really great bunch of people.  It was probably good practice for me to spend some time with a bunch of cool young adults, as that demographic will make up a large portion of my fellow sailing trainees.  I did learn that, including me, there will be 26 people joining the ship in Denpasar, Bali and that we are currently scheduled to leave Bali on October 20th.  They also informed us that, while the ship is in Bali, there will be a file crew aboard to film a pilot for a series about the Picton Castle.  Things just keep getting more and more interesting.

For the record, this post is coming to you from Taipei, Taiwan, where they are beginning the boarding process for the flight to Bali at this moment.  It's 7:00 PM on 9/27 there but it's 10:00 AM on 9/25 here...strange concept for me.  I fill in more details about that part of the trip in my next post.

(Yes, I'm very excited!)

I've Passed My First Test

I've been planning for what to pack on this little trip for quite some time now and the plan has been revised many times.  Most of what I'm taking is required and then I get to fill in the excess room with cloths.  I still worry that I'm taking too much but I've pared it down as much as I can.  Here are the results:

Before

I am packing many of the smaller things, like spare batteries and shampoo in Ziploc bags, mostly to make them more pack-able, than to protect them from the elements.  The picture is not quite complete, it doesn't include any electronics and their respective chargers, like my laptop and Kindle.









After

Two big duffel bags and a backpack. That is the sum of my worldly possessions for the next 9 months.















I will be departing Chicago this Saturday, 9/13/14, for the first leg of my journey.  I'm taking the Amtrak Empire Builder route to Portland to spend some time with 3 of my kids.  I've spent the last couple of weeks saying good-bye to people and, of course, the trip to Portland will be the last set of good-byes before I leave.  As excited as I am about the trip, it has still been sad saying good-bye to everyone especially my grand kids, since they will change so much while I'm away.
The next update will be from the train, if I can get wireless somewhere, or from Portland!

What a Day!

I had the good fortune to be the recipient of a tremendous outpouring of love and support from all my friends at USG.  Everyone was so nice and they really gave me a great last day.  I even scored some home made baked goods, which happen to be awesome.  I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

We Always Have Options

Somewhere along the line I lost track of the idea that we always have options.  It's something that I've read many times in self help books and inspirational blog posts.  Most of my life I've thought, those words don't really apply to me.  Maybe there were times when I didn't really have any viable options.  Maybe I'll never know.  Over the last eight or nine months, I have been thinking a lot more about the idea that I have options; and now I find myself taking my first step down a brand new path. 

The option I have chosen is to change my life so that I can work doing something I feel passionate about, sailing.  Specifically, I will be sailing on the bark Picton Castle, from Bali, Indonesia west around the Cape of Good Hope and North to Savannah, GA.  That's just about half the way around the world; hence the name of my blog, Halfway Scott.

Tomorrow, August 28, 2014 is my last day at work, after 28 years with the same company.  I'm much too young to retire but I have decided that if I wait any longer I might not by young enough to learn to sail a tall ship.  I'll admit it's pretty scary, walking away from a relatively secure job and income to try something so completely different, but it's scary in an exciting way.  I will try to share my experiences, with words and pictures, here on these pages, updating the blog when we make landfall and I can find an Internet Café. 

Come and join me on my trip halfway around the world, it's sure to be an adventure!