GlobalHopper Travels

Cancer changes everything...

For us life changed on Feb 8'th 2002 with Mikiko being diagnosed with breast cancer. The next year was now filled with meeting oncology doctors, surgeons, family flying in, surgery , back and forth form the hospital, chemotherapy, emergency rooms, more chemotherapy, more emergency rooms, back and forth form the hospital and more surgery.

At some point during the full days of chemotherapy, while sitting looking at travel magazines and talking about making plans for the future. I made a promise to Mikiko that I would sail her to those isolated sandy beach islands and we would have the adventures along the way. We talked about how cancer has effected our lives with both of our mom's surviving breast cancer and my dad fighting with Lymphoma for 12 years before loosing.

While setting the goals of what to do after cancer were mainly to take us away from the dealing with what was happening, it set in motion a bit of insanity.

~Keath

Posted by mkn at 1:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had worked hard on creating a plan that would take over two years to transition away from the safety and comfort of stability.

In May of 2001 we started actively looking for a boat that would allow us to travel while learning the skills needed to make a sustainable life at sea. In late July we found a 52 foot cross trimaran that started life as one man's lifelong retirement dream project to sail the world. The man passed and his wife sold the mostly finished boat to two brothers that hired a really big crane to lift the boat from the backyard shed over the house and on to a trailer, and down the streets of Santa Barbra to the ocean. The brothers turned her in to the majestic trimaran Surrender, sailing her to Mexico, Hawaii and though the Pacific.

Mikiko and I fell in love with Surrender, it seemed to be the perfect boat matching our plans. We did the inspection and sea trial. We started all the loan papers and everything was going perfectly. Things were going well all around, we had new projects coming in at work. Then in the morning we got approved for the boat loan and the papers were faxed from the east coast sitting in the office waiting to be signed.

Then everything came to a sudden end, that morning was September 11'th 2001. The loan papers were faxed from one of the towers at the World Trade Center that did not fall, but everything was lost. The new projects at work were all put on indefinite hold, everything stopped, the whole world stopped.

~Keath

Posted by mkn at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some point along the line Mikiko and I got on to a path that we had not planned, and was the exact opposite of our original intentions.

At the end of 2000 the Internet was in sad shape, our website hosting and software development company started to really feel the hurt. In early 2001 as our solid foundation of clients were all being effected by the sudden loss of clients, the effect of the dot bombs rippled to every company around us.

This was the first wake up call for us to put together a plan to transition to living a life that we felt matched our goals.

~Keath

Posted by mkn at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a while since I was able to publish to the blog. There are a lot of entries that were started, but never polished. As we are coming to the end of our RV life and trading in the wheels for keels, I'll be getting the queue cleared and explain a bit about what has been going on and why.

~Keath

Posted by mkn at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)