We Begin…Again

IMG_0428This used to say that we now have a site up and running so that we can start chronicling the steps towards achieving our ultimate goal to cut the dock lines and adopt a cruising lifestyle in retirement.

Well, this is our second attempt in reality.

Last week we registered and hosted the domain name for this site with GoDaddy.com, and we are using WordPress to edit the site. WordPress is one of the more popular applications to maintain a site such as this, and it is included with our GoDaddy hosting plan.

Within a matter of minutes I was up and running with an actual website and was busy trying to add lots of Gucci plugins and effects. Somehow I managed to upload something that corrupted my site to the point that it has taken near a week hair pulling, and help from tech support to get back to this point. The poor tech support girl said she nor her supervisor had ever seen what I somehow had managed to do. So in order to save time, we hit the metaphorical reset button and started fresh. So, we begin…again.

Now, why a blog?

When we first moved to Italy, we were of course traveling around a fair bit, seeing the sites, and acting as typical tourist happy to be living in Europe. We wanted to keep a record of the places we’ve visited and the experiences we’ve had and soon realized that there were a large number of resources available right in the palm of our hands through our iPhones. They give us useful information and also act as a log for our less than stellar memory.

For example, we use Delectable for the wines we drink, Yelp for the restaurants and attractions that we try, and TripAdvisor for things associated with travel. We plan to use this blog for the same repository of activities, but specific to those items that take us one step closer to living aboard.

We were not blog people, and did not follow any of them really before now, but as we started to educate ourselves with what was available online for the cruising lifestyle, a great deal of it, if not the majority of it, was from blog-based sites. The ones we follow are listed on our Links Page you can find on the menu above.

I think WordPress and other similar blog generating software has so templated the process, and made it intuitive enough, that folks who otherwise wouldn’t be in the website business have been able to easily provide an enduring venue for information seeking people like us, to gain from their experience and lessons learned.

Anyone that has worked with John in his real job will know his fixation with these lessons learned, whether formal or otherwise. Groucho Marx is credited with saying, “Learn from the mistakes of others.  You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.”

No doubt we will be making more than our share of mistakes as we head down this path towards the unknown and our ultimate goal, so we’ll capture our experiences here, warts and all, as our little pay it forward contribution within the growing community of those who, like us, would like to eventually cut the dock lines for good.

 

Officially Allowed to Operate a Boat

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