It’s been a minute since we’ve actually been able to enjoy the North Carolina Area again. Since arriving in early February, both Austin and I have been on the go! If I look at the calendar, it’s been a whole 13 days that I’ve slept in my own bed. Austin sometimes gets weekends but it’s not many more days than that.

So where to we start? How about the coincidence that we found side by side parking spots for our first trip out of Asheville Airport even though we arrived at different times/different days! That was fun. With AVL being our current home base – we’ve got the option of whatever American flights work at the airport 15 minutes away, or the option of driving to CLT (1.5 hours away) which we’ve also done a few times.

We do love the location of the RV Park though – it’s small, quiet, and has all the amenities we could need. Including a separate mailing address for all our Amazon packages… yeah – that hasn’t stopped.

After our Disney Trip in weirdly cold Florida, I was off to Phoenix for the next installment of the Travel & Adventure Shows on Feb. 11th and what would be my longest stint of the year of nonstop work. 33 days to be exact. It was a doozy, with Austin traveling Monday-Friday, and me jetting Wednesday-Monday we wouldn’t get to see each other in person until March 13th.

We had one of our Aqua Center Managers in town for the Phoenix show – so we got to take him on the road with us for sales calls, hosted hikes, and everything that falls under what a BDM does all day. One of those experiences happened to be ICE arriving to the parking lot just after we pulled in to visit a Dive Shop. You see these things happening on TV and I honestly didn’t expect to see it in Arizona – but that’s my privilege speaking, I know that. We hustled into the dive shop as the agents were kind of trying to get us to clear the area (rifles pointed at a guy in his car, who was already stopped and had his hands out the window). Lucky for us, the shop’s indoor pool area has a window screen image on the outside so we were able to bear witness to the event unfolding, and the location of the stop was not lost on us [Purified Ice Machine]…. It probably didn’t help that the guy driving was potentially antagonizing the agents with “F*ck ICE” spraypainted onto the hood of his car… We couldn’t hear what exactly was happening and we didn’t see them take the driver off but they must have, as eventually everyone left and only the car remained…

So after multiple sales calls we then made Ale (the St. Lucia Dive Center Supervisor/Manager) work the booth with us all weekend. Talk about major peopling.

I selfishly also talked him into doing the Wave Cave hike with me before the show on Sunday morning and man was it an excursion! A totally worthwhile one though!

A quick redeye flight back to NC gave me just Tuesday to follow up on my emails, do laundry and toss all those same clothes back into the suitcase before I was off on Wednesday for Chicago, I now understand how Austin feels every week living out of the same clothes and same suitcase. I did have to add a winter coat to the packing list (it’s a wonder how I didn’t get sick) as the weather was calling for snow. Our Aqua Center Manager Mikhael from Sandals Grande Antigua was joining me for the Chicago show and when I told him to “pack your parka and gloves!” he reminded me that he did not own those… so I packed him mine.

Another whirlwind weekend with sales calls, our BDM’s time and hosted evening events before the Travel & Adventure Show. It was great to have the resort team presence in town to see what we actually do on the road – how we drum up business, and how much effort actually goes into getting the client down to the resort. That’s where they pick up the workload and create the whole Sandals Experience.

Mikhael had been requesting chocolate lava cake to see if it was as good as Mario’s Restaurant on resort and we finally found it on our last night, at Fogo de Chao, which was another first experience for him. All in all, our happy [native] Jamaican experienced his first snowfall, his first McCormick & Schmicks dinner, his first sales calls, his first Travel & Adventure Show, and his first Brazilian Steakhouse.

Chicago to Asheville flights were a little more abundant, and I was able to get home for a day and a half this time. Wash, rinse, repack and Wednesday I was off to Miami.

I had to fly into Miami for a night to pick up a branded Sandals wrapped car from HQ, and then make our way up to Fort Lauderdale area. Jody-Ann from the Director of Watersports office joined me for this leg and it was another full week of running. Travel Advisor Meetings, evening hosted dinners, local evening events (I got to present again!), and then all day at the shows. I did get the sweetest surprise as we checked into the hotel late Thursday night – Austin had sent flowers to the front desk for me so I got a sweet reminder each morning as I woke up. The girls in line behind me did that little *gasp* “that’s so sweet!” and one on the phone made the meme joke:

To which I turned around, flower vase in hand and said “nah, get you a robotics engineer” which got a few laughs and a “that’s SO true”. 🙂

I was able to fit in a little family time on the next turnaround, now that we have made it to the first weekend of March! That meant I was cross-country hoofing it to LAX where Abby, Greg, Mom & Dad were all having a merry week or so full of tennis, wine tasting, and San Francisco fun. I managed to meet up with them in the evenings since this final batch of Travel & Adventure shows didn’t have aqua center attendees with me.

It has become a bit of an obsession with the Disney Pins, and I thought “well I’m already HEEEERE” so I talked them into hitting up Downtown Disney and collected more trading pins (that let’s be honest, most likely will not get traded).

I had the time without having to worry about the BDM or the Aqua Center Manager, to actually hit the road again and visit some more dive shops in the area that I hadn’t made it to in previous years. This year I was able to drop a flyer that included a promo code to the weekend’s show!

There just so happened to be a Duck’s game as well! We were all properly outfitted and the game ended in an overtime shootout for a Ducks WIN!

The show went off without too many hitches, besides the unfortunate event of a gentleman losing his balance and toppling into one of our banners – which in turn snapped the screws out of the bottom of it. We pivoted and propped it up for the next day, but good thing there were 3 BDMs in California at one point! There were plenty of replacement pieces for the next shows.

Instead of having my first weekend “off” from shows back at the camper, Austin and I decided there was no better time to be looking for our second home than the present… Weirdly enough my connecting flight out of PHL was actually a BUS, apparently that’s a thing. I was not prepared for that, had I known better – I would have just waited for Austin to arrive to PHL later in the day and hopped into the rental car with him. Live & learn!

And by second home I mean…. a liveaboard boat/yacht/motor vessel – whatever you want to call it. So we met up in Bear, DE to take our first steps on board a potential home.

First up! A Navigator 46′. We’ve been looking at it’s listing for a while and needed to get a feel of the amount of space onboard. We’ve also been following a family of 4 who are on a similar boat (a 48′) and vlogging their experiences sailing down the east coast.

A great first boat to look at, as we thought we might be willing/able to take on some of the projects noted in the listing. When we walked through it, it just seemed to be a little more than we wanted to chew on our first bite. So we took it as experience and will keep looking.

We had to skedaddle back to Charlotte for the weekend as Austin was the canvas for his tattoo artist at the Villain Arts Show! The were taking care of that large bicep’s empty space and making major work of it. Saturday I dropped him off around 10am before the doors officially opened and took myself over to walk my old stomping grounds in SouthPark Charlotte. When I arrived back (using my free radio station winner tickets) I got to see where their work was getting to and wander around all the booths. I found myself a bunch of stickers and a new lotus flower silver ring!

His artist, Phil, truly is incredible and this was drawn entirely freehanded. If you’re in the Charlotte Area and feel like making the trip up to Mooresville – definitely give Overkill Tattoo a call.

I had also booked myself one of those new head spa appointments nearby, and was super excited about it. It sadly didn’t live up to the expectations in my head so I don’t know that I’ll need to do another

We returned to the show on Sunday as requested so Austin’s arm could be entered into the final awards round. Surprise Surprise….! He won 1st place in Medium black & grey!!

So proud. So excited. Can’t you tell?!

We were both out again on Monday, Austin early in the morning, my flight wasn’t until later… getting me back into the swing of Travel & Adventure Show season. I was headed back down to Miami to give a new proposal to my boss before checking out another boat with Uncle Dave & Aunt Judy (it was a no from us), and cross-country jet setting again, but this time to San Jose!

I had less time in San Jose than on previous trips thanks to a delayed arrival in Miami. Remember that weird week/Monday where all the cold front weather came through dumping weird snow, rain, etc. on the East Coast and shutting down airports?! yeah – I was caught in that too. My flight was delayed at 4:27am, it originally was supposed to depart 12 hours later and ended up being fully cancelled by the end of the day. Luckily I was able to hop a different flight but that meant overnighting on my own dime in Charlotte, and then taking ANOTHER connecting flight to Raleigh before I could get to Miami. We’re flexible here, and I’ll take all the loyalty points thankyouverymuch.

We were alerted earlier in the week that we’d have a double booth for this show – so I finally got to break out my Amazon putting green and make a game out of our appearance! A lot of attendees liked the interaction, with the [thankfully] counted few that argued with us about wanting a golf ball…. seriously, they’re $2.50 at WalMart, that’s where I got these. Go get your own – cheap-o’s.

We’ve finally made it to the last week of March with the Dallas Travel & Adventure show looming ahead! I was on a flight through DFW from San Jose, CA Monday morning, and coincidentally enough Austin was arriving in Dallas for work that week! I decided it was silly to take my flight back to AVL just to turn back around and be back in Dallas on Wednesday so I headed down to baggage claim to request my bags and waited about 30 minutes for them to appear at a different gate. Then I cancelled my ticket and pulled out my book to wait for Austin to pick me up so we could spend a couple days in the same place! I was also able to get work to swap my rental car pickup to the following day so I hopped a ride back the next evening and planned a road trip to Houston dive shops.

We HAD to find all the Buc-ees!

We did some shopping in the area at Cavender’s, and of course Academy. Our go-to when we were in the house for something to do/somewhere to go. And then we had probably our best experience at Medieval Times ever! Dinner date for the Green Knight Win!

Because there were 3 shows happening that weekend in Dallas, I was running all over the Fort Worth and Denton areas for sales call meetings, dive shop visits, and to pick up banners for the show setup on Friday. I headed in to the convention center to be surprised that we were given a double booth with no notice! Good thing I had my full setup from the San Jose show and didn’t go home! I wasn’t planning to bring my big show bag with me for this one!

While these shows get thousands of attendees, I actually started tagging how many people stopped in the booths to chat, starting with Phoenix. After the Dallas show I can confidently say we’ve spoken to 1,119 consumers and 258 Travel Advisors in the last 2 months.

I was finally able to get a shortened week at home with the Easter holiday quicky approaching. So it was the perfect time to run the ‘ol Young animals to the vet for updates, visit with Papaw a bit, and watch the classic Brendan Frasier’s George of the Jungle.

Everyone got a clean bill of health outside the fact that Charlie has put on a little weight… Vet says “it was a hard winter” and our next year of flea/tick/heartworm medications. What else would you do with Good Friday off but…. yup, hop a flight to Jacksonville, FL to look at 3 more boats! [can’t stop, won’t stop!]

Austin found a flight that connected into mine from Charlotte to Jacksonville AND he gave me his first class upgrade #spoiled. We had 3 appointments booked and naturally they’d all be in different Floridian cities…

First up: a 1985 Gulfstar 49′

While beautifully updated, it just wasn’t the right fit for us yet. We hopped into our rental and set off for a stuipdly unplanned Orlando Disney Springs stop so I could feed my pins addiction. Seriously, what were we thinking – it’s SPRING BREAK. IN ORLANDO.

SO. MANY. PEOPLE. I almost wished for the cold Orlando we’d just had in January again! BUT I got my pins, and we made out with a few chasers! Our next boat appointment was the following morning in Tampa.

Boat 2: the Kha Shing 53′ Tarquin Trader. [our front runner so far]

She’s definitely a big boat, but so far she’s checking all our “want” boxes! She’s got that “Big Deck Energy” about her and an engine room Austin can comfortably access with his wide shoulders.

We treated ourselves to some Chicken & Waffles, a Jameson Breakfast, and a Bloody Mary at the marina’s Dockside grill (we love a good Dockside!) before jumping in the car for a 3 hour drive back across the state to Stuart, FL for our 3rd boat showing.

Boat 3: 1990 Yachtfisher 48′

There are some insanely beautiful elements to this one. I especially love the bar there in front of the kitchen and the wide bedroom space. Our challenges here were that she was taaaallll, so you felt the sway and the listing more so than other boats. The access points onto each space would also pose challenges; they were more ladder style than steps and that would not be fun to navigate on a windy/rough seas day, or when bringing groceries onboard. Also – the idea of walking through the owners cabin/stateroom from the swim deck wasn’t my favorite.

Because we were able to get to the 3rd showing about 2 hours early, the broker got to make cocktail hour with his family and that put us in the perfect timing to catch the 8pm flight out of Orlando to Charlotte so we could get home more conveniently. We had originally planned to drive it (9+ hours) so we could be at Papaw’s for Easter lunch. We also recognize how cool a life we live to be able to just hop on a plan when we feel like it. Hooray Points!

Austin again gave me his first class upgrade and I celebrated with a sparkling wine for a weekend well done.

Our Easter Sunday consisted of seeing Austin’s family + Papaw and the dogs. We got up early and prepared the last few elements of lunch; Brown Sugar Glazed Ham, scratch mashed potatoes, brown sugar roasted butternut squash, fruit salad, deviled eggs, etc. I was also forcefully [not really] shoved [asked nicely to help] into the side by side to drive Austin up and down a trail by the house while he chainsaw-ed overgrown limbs from the banks… It started off well enough, it ended with me overstimulated and crying from exhaustion as the previous weeks finally came crashing down.

This week I’m trying to find the balance back in my work as I lead up to the final Travel & Adventure show of the year, Denver. This will be the shortest time I’m spending in a place because travel doesn’t slow down just because these shows end and I’d like a moment to breathe.

I’ll FINALLY get on island for the first time this year at the end of the month for a Sales Meeting, and I’m making my masquerade mask into my tiara to match my gown. Full outfit to be revealed later!

We’ve got 4 weekends left before the camper gets picked up to head to Alexandria Bay. We still have to do some cleaning at the Tennessee Property, finagle how we’re getting the bins left over at Mom & Dad’s here in NC, coordinating cars for our drive up, and attempting to get to some Nibling’s spring games… all before May 15th.

Wish us luck!