SAILING ISLAND ZEPHYR

This is Jesse writing. 

So, why create a blog and share this with others? Well, to start with I’ve always found it interesting to read about other peoples adventures and the challenges that they have gone through for better or worse. A long time ago, I created or helped create a few web sites and blogs. When I was younger, I managed to go on some adventures worth sharing such as riding RAGBRAI (bike ride across Iowa) a few times (including once riding most of the way across Iowa on a unicycle), semesters abroad in Australia and Mexico, a bicycle ride across the USA, and then I started a small business doing juggling shows with a friend and did that as a side gig for a few years. After college, Corrie and I settled in to family life and careers. Then our daughter Maddie came along. We traveled a lot as a family to various parts of the US, but we also took Maddie with us to Ireland and Iceland as well. Our vacations are some of our fondest memories. 

Then Maddie got DIPG, an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2015 – diagnosed in January 2015 and died in December. Our world went upside down in less than a year. It was absolutely devastating. As a parent, you can’t imagine that until it happens to you because it’s too painful to consider what that would be like. We documented Madelyn’s journey on Caringbridge. It was an efficient way to share what was happening and I found it cathartic to write. I also had read through so many other Caringbridge blogs to understand what other families had gone through with pediatric cancer, and I thought others might benefit from reading what we went through. 

I love to read and research so I’ve plowed through a lot of blogs, books, and youtube videos. However, we haven’t been big posters on social media in the past. When sailing came along, it reignited an adventurous streak that had been dormant for awhile. I started documenting our sailing adventures by posting some recaps of trips in a PDF form shared on Google Drive. However, the natural next step was to shift over to a blog and social media to be able to efficiently share this with friends. Maybe others might find some of this helpful too. If nothing else, we can look back on this, as I often do with our photos from family trips with Maddie. I’ve found it helpful to document as we go.

Some people might say that we’re going a bit overboard and that it might be logical to wait until retirement to get a big boat and go on adventures. Well, we know all too well that tomorrow is not guaranteed, and there’s no certainty in how long we have our health. We’ve certainly never regretted going on adventures. So we’re choosing to make the most out of right now.