Chicken Steps

Why'd the chicken cross the road?

My wife and I want to sail around the world as a family.  (Well, it's really my idea and I’m just dragging her along.)  That said, sailing around the world is a fairly scary and daunting task. Contemplating the depth of the ocean while bobbing across the top of it, knowing that sharks and slimy things lurk beneath the surface, and not being able to see the “other side” while crossing an ocean, are just some of the scary parts.  That’s why we’ve decided to work towards it, not by taking baby steps, but by taking chicken steps. 

Here’s how we’re starting out:  our children need passports for this undertaking.  Getting passports is less scary than sharks.  So…getting passports is what we call a chicken step.  Next scary thing:  how in the world are we going to pay for such a ludicrous undertaking?  We don’t know exactly, but why should that stop us?  What we do know is that we have a lot of stuff around in our apartment that we don’t use or really need…certainly not on a boat.  (That's my wife's idea.  She's just dragging me along.)  What if we sold all that stuff and put it toward passports?  Small stuff, but it's a start.  That’s a chicken step.  Starting to get the idea?  

We need a boat.  Buying a boat is scary.  Chicken step:  look at boats online.  Get a sense of how much they cost, then make a plan to afford it.  

So what are we doing?  We’re selling some of our perfectly-good-but-cluttering-up-our-apartment kind of stuff on eBay and Craigslist.  Our two oldest kids have passports.  Only three more to go.  And after months of looking online, we’ve been to one boat show and visited with two brokers about boats we’re interested in.  We’re not there yet.  Not by a long shot.  And I don’t even know if we’ve taken any baby steps.  But we’ve taken lots of chicken steps.

So why'd the chicken cross the road?  I don't know.  But I know it started with a chicken step.

What are you scared of?

P.S. Emily recapped our day of boat shopping nicely here.