Welcome to the official website of the wandering, homeless, jobless pilgrim!

Hello to all, one last time from the United States of America!

Once again, we have just returned home to Aspen, CO from our latest travel adventure. We have just completed our Northeast trip - a six week tour of the American northeast and Ontario, Canada - and it was simply fantastic.

On Wednesday August 21, we packed up our trusty 4Runner and drove off with the afternoon sun at our backs, headed east. After stopping briefly in Denver to stock up on beverages (read: wine), we spent the next three days driving east across the States en route to our first destination, Washington, DC. After 28 hours and 2000 miles of driving, we arrived at our friend Pam's place on Friday night. (Pam is actually Vic's step-aunt, but it's just so much easier to call her our friend :) Pam is an avid sailor and on Saturday morning we boarded a 27-foot Pearson yacht and headed off for an exquisite weekend of sailing in the Chesapeake Bay. We headed north (primarily upwind) for six hours - running the spinnaker for an hour or two - and arrived at a small harbor town called St. Michaels. We dined on the local specialty, Maryland soft-shell blue crabs, and spent a peaceful night sleeping on the boat under the stars, listening to the faint clanking of buoys off in the distance - it was superb.

The next day we headed back running the spinnaker for a good 3-4 hours. With four people on board, Pam was the only one who had experience running a spinnaker, so raising it and lowering it proved to be a comedy of errors with the other three of us. But Pam was a masterful skipper and managed to keep everything under control even as we dragged the sail in the water trying to raise it and nearly launched the sail into the stratosphere trying to reign it in. It was a fun-filled adventure to be sure, but I'm not convinced Pam will want to sail with us again! What an incredible beginning to the Northeast trip.

The following week was spent touring the sites and museums of Washington, DC. For the second half of that week we stayed with our good friends Barbara and Tim. (Barbara was Perk's flatmate when he lived in Germany several years ago.) Barbara and Tim were superb hosts and on Saturday the 31st of August, the four of us traveled together from Washington, DC, through Annapolis, Maryland (the sailing capital of America), through Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where our comedic search for a cheesesteak for lunch ended in failure) and into New York City. Thanks to Barbara's connections (she works for Octogon, the sports marketing company that represents Anna Kournikova, Martina Hingis, Lleyton Hewitt, and others), we were all headed to the US Open Tennis tournament in New York that evening. We watched three excellent matches including Martina Hingis, Jennifer Capriati, and Anna Kournikova - Vic was so excited to be there she was practically bursting at the seams. Barbara had also managed to score us tickets for the following Tuesday, so we spent a further 10 hours that day living and breathing tennis. The matches included Venus Williams, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, Anna Kournikova, and Andy Roddick. Needless to say, it was one of the major highlights of the trip - especially for Vic.

The remainder of our time in New York was spent visiting Vic's family in Yonkers, Queens, and Long Island. Everyone was  so hospitable, and as you can imagine, we were fed VERY well. It was so great to see everyone, and as you would expect, at every stop Perk left a trail of gushing fans in his wake. He was definitely the star of the trip.

On Thursday the 5th of September we left New York and spent a night with good friends Mark and Chris Sheraden at their home in Connecticut. Once again, Perk was the superstar as the Sheraden's young girls Alyssa (7) and Meghan (5), fell head over heels for him. "He knows so much about New Zealand!" a beaming Alyssa praised. They were adorable.

On Friday the 6th, we drove off to Cape Cod, Massachusetts where Martin and Anne Perkinson had donated a time share for us to use for the week. Cape Cod was just splendid. The weather was sunny, warm and clear, and the resort was luxurious. For seven days we strolled along the beaches, played tennis or went running under the turning leaves, and visited some of the oldest towns in the country (we're talking 1634 and the like). Cape Cod offered us a glorious respite from the constant visitation and travel that dominated the rest of the trip. It was perfect.

On Friday the 13th we departed Cape Cod and made our way up to Boston, Massachusetts where we stayed with our friends Lance and Noula Thibault. Lance and Noula were wonderful because they graciously took us in for 3 nights and entertained us even though they had their hands full with their newborn child, 10-day old Lydia. We spent a quiet few days with the Thibaults, getting to know Lydia and reminiscing about New Zealand by watching Lance's 3 hour video of his 2 years down under. It was a very enjoyable visit.

Our next destination was Bar Harbor, Maine, where a friend of Vic's mom, Marge, opened her home to us for four days. Marge was a delightful host, cooking up a huge lobster feast for us the first night we arrived! Marge also introduced us to her son Ben who introduced us to all his friends and took us out one night on his newly remodeled 30-ft wooden sailboat. We cooked up another lobster feast that night (right on the boat) and went for a moonlight cruise around the bay. Does it get any better than that? During our days in Bar Harbor we biked the carraige roads of Acadia National Park, strolled the charming town, and hiked across the sand bar to Bar Island (only accessible at low tide). Bar Harbor turned out to be one of our favorite places on this trip because it was a delightful mixture of classic New England charm, stunning sea views, and cool, wooded forest.

When we left Bar Harbor on Friday, September 20th, we spent the day driving through the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Green Mountains in Vermont. And what is a trip to Vermont without a visit to the Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory? Yum. We drove through Vermont and into New York state and spent the night somewhere just West of Albany. On Saturday morning, we drove to Cornell University where Vic spent a formidable 3 1/2 years of her life. We spent several hours touring the campus and perusing some of Vic's memories and ate at one of her favorite restaurants as a student, The Greek House. The next morning before leaving, we felt compelled to relive some of Vic's volleyball training days, so we ran a set of stadiums - up and down each column of stairs in the 20,000 seat, crescent-shaped stadium. (Each column has progressively more stairs than the previous one until you get to the middle when you begin working your way back down again.) It's a heart busting workout that only takes about 15 minutes to complete but destroys you for the rest of the day. Ah, just like old times.

From Cornell we headed north along Cayuga Lake where we paid a visit to the Women's Rights National Historical Monument in Seneca Falls, NY. From there we drove up to Toronto where we reunited with one of our best friends, Anneke Feberwee, and her family. We spent a lovely evening with the Feberwee's at their home thoroughly enjoying their typical splendid hospitality and free-flowing wine. The next day, Anneke escorted us to a cottage on a lake near Parry Sound, Ontario. Some friends of the Feberwee's graciously donated the cottage for our use, so the three of us spent the next few days swimming in the lake, walking in the woods, playing games by the fire, and painting Perk's toenails. (don't ask)

Our time in Toronto came to an end too quickly, and on Thursday the 26th we said goodbye to the Feberwee's and headed west towards Erie, Pennsylvania to spend the day with Vic's Uncle Bob and Aunt Moosie. Once again, we had a terrific time and were fed extremely well with Aunt Moosie's lasagne. Mmmmmmmm. Our time was running short, however, so we were only able to stay in Erie one night. We headed off to Chicago on Friday morning and spent the weekend there with Vic's best friend from Cornell, Blythe. Blythe and her boyfriend Sebastian took us out for sushi the first night we arrived and made us feel right at home. The following day Blythe showed us around Chicago a bit and the three of us took an audio tour of Oak Park, the area of Chicago where Frank Lloyd Wright (the famous architect) studied and worked. That night we joined up with Sebastian, his friend Dan, and Vic's cousin Bryan and his wife Chris in downtown Chicago for some Chicago-style pizza! It was a fun and boisterous evening. We had a blast.

On Sunday morning the 29th, we left Chicago and headed west towards Colorado. We drove as far as Nebraska and were fortunate enough to have been offered a comfortable place to stay just west of Lincoln. Adrian and Naomi Harris (parents of our friend Barbara from DC) kindly took us in, fed us delicious home-cooked meals, and gave us a tour of their gorgeous little town in the few short hours that we were able to spend with them en route to Denver. They were such gracious hosts and we look forward to spending some more time with them in the future.

On Monday, the last day of September, we pulled into Denver, CO and said hello to our final hosts of the trip. George and Mary Jo Touchard (Vic's mom's cousin) offered their home to us for two nights while we shopped our brains out in Denver. This was the shopping trip to end them all, because it would be the last time we could do any significant shopping before we left for New Zealand. By Wednesday afternoon, when we left Denver, we had purchased 8 pairs of shoes, several pairs of pants, several shirts, 5 gowns (mostly Vic's :), and X-mas presents galore. And that was just the beginning. We were utterly exhuasted.

We arrived home in Aspen on Wednesday, October 2nd, just in time for dinner, and exactly six weeks after we had last left.
This time, however, we only have two short weeks here before we leave for good (well, this time at least...). On Saturday, October 19th we will head off to San Francisco where we will catch up with friends there and combine all of our "stuff" into one giant shipment headed for New Zealand. On Sunday, October 27th, we bid farewell to the United States of America and to our year of travels here, and on October 29th, we arrive in New Zealand and will begin the next phase of our lives.

It has been an unbelievable year for us. We have seen and experienced so much in North America, and we have reconnected with so many people in our lives. All of our hosts, Vic's parents especially, have been gracious and simply wonderful. We have had such a special time with everyone.

This will be our last update from the States, and it will be the final official update of our travels. We will continue to use the website and our mailing lists as way to stay in touch with all of you, our dearest friends and family, but our posts will be more infrequent than they have been and our updates will probably be shorter in the future (...a huge sigh of relief resonates round the world) After all, starting in just 4 months, we will have to get real jobs!!! Oy vey!

So, thank you all for reading these long-winded tomes, and a special thanks to those of you that have sent personal replies. We really do love hearing from you, and we hope that we continue to hear from you.

Anneke and Vic about to take a swim in Canada