Farewells

The first leg of the epic journey started with a few tears (Stephanie's), hugs and farewells from our loved ones. Sometimes the love between family and friends is most acutely experienced at goodbyes. Parents, siblings and their husbands and Roger made us very honored as they bid us farewell on the start of our epic journey. How amazingly blessed are we to have such wonderful people so dedicated and committed to us and each other? We'll miss them and it's hard to believe we won't see them for the next 6 months! But with the onset of Skype, USB video and blogging, we'll hopefully be more in touch than if we were still in Melbourne!

Before this grand send off we also said farewell to a few friends at Pesano's at Knox O-Zone, over superhuge pizzas and alot of food of course. From this amount of community to just the two of us will be a stark contrast! We will have the opportunity to relate to one another and really get to know each other over the long haul journeys through the desserts of Northern China and the Talimakan in the NW, and look forward to when we can rejoin our community again.

It was good to see Roger just back from his Central Australian holiday with Nikon D300 and rented car relatively rested and using the momentum to plan his future escape and grand plan to finish his book. Let's hope we see the beginnings of it emerging from the wells of ideas in his mind soon!

Farewells are never easy. Life for our friends and family will be steeped in the familiar everyday, whereas ours will be different everyday. In 6 months we would have changed, they would have changed. I hope we'll be able to continue where we left off and not diverged too far that our memories fail us for time and distance and we become strangers. I have hope that the heart will remember. You know who you are, we love you guys and look forward to sharing our experiences with you and hearing about your 6 months in Melbourne as well!

The farewells have ended, now the journey begins.