Yesterday was the first day of our future, our retirement, the rest of our lives -- the beginning of our journey. What a glorious day it was too! It began when I woke up at 10:00 AM, it was the first time in over a year that I slept in past 7:00 AM.

We choose to begin our journey in Puerto Rico. What a beautiful place, it is called the Island of Enchantment. I certainly thought I was looking upon an enchanted scene today, when I looked out the window of our condo and saw four horses swimming in the ocean below. They were each with a rider (trainer ???) and appeared to be having a great time. When the horses were tired they came to shore to munch on grass while their riders continued to swim.

While watching the horses swim I saw something else in the water. At first I was not sure what I had seen, but as I continued to watch I became convinced I was looking at a manatee. But here? In Puerto Rico? Wanting an explanation, I got on the internet and looked up manatees. There is in fact, a species of manatee in the Caribbean, it is the Antillean Manatee. I am looking forward to seeing these gentle creatures more closely while snorkeling.

To paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton saying . . . for every adventure there is an equal and opposite misadventure. Today's misadventure was when Barry decided that the wifi in the condo, which was not secured, needed to be. I do not really know all of the details, but he got on the laptop and started messing around. The motivation for this was because the wifi was pretty slow, so the assumption is a lot of people are using it, and when we booked a flight to Tortola it told us other people might be able to see our info. Well, he was able to secure the wifi and set a password. The misadventure begins when he tries to log into the wifi and it does not accept the password he thought he set! The misadventure will continue tomorrow when we either 1) call Miguel and tell him what we have done, or, 2) go to Radio Shack and see if they can help us put back the default settings, or 3) buy a new router and start from scratch.

The crew is adjusting well given all of the upheaval in their lives over the last few months. Watching all of the changes at home and having to go to the office every time someone wanted to see the house was a lot harder on Chloe than Lilly. Lilly has just rolled with all of the changes right up to all of the furniture being moved out of the house. Lilly never really spent much time upstairs in our bedroom until the furniture started moving out, then she parked herself on top of a pile of my clothes on the air mattress we were sleeping on -- a subtle hint.

The drive to Cheyenne was long, but the cats were relieved when they realized they were coming with. They both loved Aunt Sherri's house, it was definitely very cat friendly -- even if Linus was there! Both were excited to go through security at the airport, even though Barry and I were dreading it. When we got them out of their carriers to go through the metal detectors we were told to take their leashes off, we did not think this was such a good idea but did as we were told. As it turns out, all went well, even though Chloe and I had to be personally patted down because we could not get through the metal detector without it going off. I thought at the time it was because of Chloe's tags on her harness, they wanted me to take it off but that seemed really risky to me and I said no. As it turns out, Barry and Lilly made it through the metal detector just fine, so I think the problem was the necklace I was wearing. At this point, Chloe was more than happy to get back into her carrier.

Barry wants me to mention how stupid this was, he was not amused and was pretty irate that they had to pat down the cat for explosives. He is still really worked up about this and wishes he had taken a video of Chloe being frisked so he could post it to YouTube! For the next 8-1/2 hours, neither made a peep. What great travelers Lilly and Chloe turned out to be!

I think God is trying to wean us off of TV, this has made Mr. Grumpy Pants return! Apparently the power is not as stable here as it is in the US. Every time there is a power bump/brown-out, the cable has to reset. Tonight it has reset, on average, every 10-15 minutes -- Barry wants to buy a UPS tomorrow!