I rewatched the movie Captain Ron tonight (for the 10th time in the last 12 months), and I let my daughter Chelsea see it for the first time. I decided the story made up for the language and the slightly inappropriate shower scene. Partly because Chelsea is now 14 years old, and partly because the shower scene is just good comedy.

Captain Ron’s story is so incredible: The Harvey family from Chicago inherits an old sailboat and decides to throw caution to the wind and sail it from somewhere in the Caribbean to Miami, where it will be sold. Since they are not sailors, they hire “Captain Ron” to sail the ship and teach them how to do it along the way.

The film stars Martin Short as Mr. Harvey and Kurt Russell (in a Speedo) as Captain Ron. It’s a fun movie with a great moral: Get out of your rut and go DO something as a family!

When my family started this whole “living on the road” thing, I expected to be in a trailer for about a year and then graduate to a sailboat. Due to the slowdown in business, the sailboat piggy bank has not yet been filled, but I am still working on it.

I’m starting to feel more than a little pressure because my son Tom turned 16 last February and while I don’t know if he’s going to take off as soon as he turns 18, I want us to get on a boat for a while. before he is eligible to escape my clutches.

Why? Because I think people who have a “typical” upbringing are at a disadvantage in life. They see things in a very narrow way that limits their options. After all, how can you make a sharp left turn when everyone else is turning right if you don’t even know left is an option?

When we started this trip we didn’t have enough money saved. But if we had waited until things were “better”, we would never have hit the road and experienced new things…

Seating

We played on the beach in Santa Cruz.

I picked oranges outside our trailer in Bakersfield.

I walked along the rim of the Grand Canyon (and got some great photos).

He watched the moonrise over the Superstition Mountains (and talked about the Lost Dutchman gold mine hidden there).

I wandered the streets of Tombstone where the OK Corral shooting took place.

He cheered Tom on as he followed in his Uncle Nick’s footsteps and chased an armadillo (it was catch and release, folks).

I saw the Alamo where so many American heroes lost their lives.

I visited the UFO Museum in Roswell. (“UFOs aren’t real, Dad.” Five minutes later, “Are UFOs real, Dad?”)

I drove across London Bridge (brought brick by brick from London to Arizona).

People

And we put some wonderful people on the ride, including the Sauers family at Santa Nella. We ended up parked next to each other in an RV park and even though there was a pretty big age difference between his kids and ours, they were still all kids and got along pretty well. After we left, we continued to follow his travels through his blog.

And we met, and juggled with, both members of the Raspyni brothers. Barry invited us to spend the day at his house to meet his family and play, and Dan let us stop by his house for juggling and an impromptu piano concert. He had been a fan of the Raspyni Bros forever, so the chance to spend some time with them was great.

Plus many more people: the families in Bastrop, the gunslingers near Tombstone, the jugglers in Austin, etc.

When you live in a house, go to the same job every day and see the same people all the time, you don’t have adventures. You just skate through life. And at 47 years old I realize that life is too short for that kind of skating: I regret the time I didn’t spend seeing new things and meeting new people.

So if we had the opportunity to get on a sailboat tomorrow, I would, even if none of us know how to sail. We’d be stuck (mostly) until we could figure out how the thing works, but at least we’d be on our way.

I see no reason to “settle down” at the moment: there are too many things to see, places to visit and people to meet. How could you trade those things for a house nailed to the ground?