Judges Leave the Nest

We are unemployed. We are homeless. You might think that since our lives have been dramatically simplified, we'd be relaxing, sleeping in, watching movies, and generally vegging out. And yet, we haven't. We've been surprisingly busy the last few weeks. What have we been up to? We moved out of our condo, and got the new tenants moved in. We moved 90% of our stuff to the hangar where our plane lives, and the other 10% to Jadyn (sister) and Ryan's house in Murrieta, CA. We've been doing projects around their house to try to earn our keep. We've been rubbing Jadyn's belly and talking to our in-utero nephew, Blake. We've been babysitting (well, teenage-sitting) for family in San Diego. Bill's been doing some kitesurfing at Tourmaline (check the link for some awesome drone footage of him kitesurfing). And we've been working through the details of getting my trachea resection surgery scheduled at Massachusetts General in Boston. 

I (Kenzi) have a troublesome trachea. The condition is called Idiopathic Subglottal Stenosis. It's very rare, occurs mostly in women, and the experts don't really know what causes it. Basically, my trachea likes to narrow which causes me breathing difficulties. At its worst, in 2010 when I was diagnosed, my trachea was narrowed down to 5mm wide.  A normal woman's trachea is 12-14mm wide. I'm definitely one of those people who would be dead if I lived a hundred or more years ago. For the last six years, I have regularly gone to UCSD in Hillcrest for balloon dilations of my trachea. When my doc heard about our round the world trip, she decided we need to get this fixed once and for all by the best of the best doctors in Boston. This news was a bit of a bummer at first because we'll lose at least two months of travel time for surgery recovery. But we are thinking that it will work out in the long run. We're hoping to do a lot of hiking (some at high altitude) on our trip, and hopefully this surgery will mean we can do so without any worrying about breathing trouble. 

Finally, yesterday, with the news that my surgery has been scheduled the first week of May, we were able to book our travel plans. And today we woke up at 2:45a.m. to fly from San Diego to Minneapolis, and then on to Amsterdam. Our world travels have FINALLY started. This is us at 5:00a.m. this morning. 

We'll be in Europe for 2.5 weeks before we head to Boston. The tulips are blooming in Holland so it seemed like a good place to start. We have the first week loosely planned, but after that, we'll be traveling on the fly. So stick with us and we'll show you some world travels through the Judges' eyes. 

Final note: I just feel I need some props for packing so lightly for several weeks abroad. This is good practice because we'll likely be backpacking later this year. Please get used to seeing us wear the same clothes every day.