It's All About the People You Meet

~Along life's path...it truly is all about the people you meet along the way...and The "loop" is no exception to this. Since leaving from our homeport in Naples, we have met and made friendships to last a lifetime...

Speaking of lifetime friendships; when I lived in Galveston Texas, many many moons ago, I met Chino and Yvonne (click on photo). We became fast friends. I sang at their wedding! Over the years we never lost touch...we watched each other's children grow up in photographs sent in with Christmas cards and caught up in person when Yvonne came to Naples occasionally on business. We calculated that it had been nearly 30 years since I last saw Chino and over 19 years since Yvonne and I last saw each other. I don't think we have talked on the phone once in all those years. But, when they arrived here in Joe Wheeler State Park on Saturday (they live close-by near Huntsville) for a visit that we planned almost a year ago, it was like no time had gone by between us...The years melted away and we picked right up where we left off.

...and so, when we read other loopers' boat blogs, and talk to folks out on the docks...when we attend a rendezvous and run into cruisers we haven't seen since the Chesapeake in 2007, or get a call from the ones we maneuvered through the Georgian Bay with in 2008...when loopers reminisce about what was the best part of their journey and always start by saying, "it's all about the people you meet along the way", they couldn't be more right...