Trying because I can!

Last Saturday I packed my boat up in Budapest, Hungry transporting myself to Thessaloniki, Greece. Spending Easter in Budapest was not my idea of fun. When exiting the river into a big city I feel overwhelmed. Usually takes a couple days of just hanging out to get back into the mood. Other issues with my trip and life also put a damper on my time in Budapest ,oh and also the rain. My train trip was nice though. I love riding the train. 22 hours on the train watching the countryside go by visiting with some really nice people is not a bad time. Thessaloniki is a nice city. Pretty big but not bad. A good time for watching people and enjoying the wonderful weather. I was even on live TV Thursday. Some type of morning show it was pretty funny. Now though it is time to go. I leave on a boat tonight for Athens. This evening waiting for this boat I have many thoughts of the past weeks and the overall trip.

Feelings of defeat always come with compromising. Compromising to meet the needs of myself and fulfillment of justifying my outlandish idea. My idea of the trip going and going pleased me on paper. From the last post I said I was mentally deprived and yes I was. Mentally with the freeway type travel on the Danube just another bend in the river and another. If you have not done a considerably long endurance activities into the weeks or months realm alone, you have to have a understanding that you can not understand what this evolves. No matter how well of a writer or speaker you will never know. Some may dream of doing such things, but most of us should keep these dreams dreams. I say this through my trying of this experience, I did not succeed I failed. Failing I do know that I experienced a level of experience only done with action. I am not also saying I will never try something like this again. When on the river I talked with many people, many who thought how cool that must be to paddle everyday and live on the water. You can see in the eyes of the old and young the sense of adventure they have. This brings me motivation, motivation in the fact I tried, tried because I could. I look at the whole experience as learning. Learning not about kayaking so much as it really is not that hard once you put in a couple days in, but learning that you can try anything. Anything you may want, this does not mean that you will succeed but trying is your right and with your ambitions action can follow. Putting a positive spin on it for me, I am glad that it was not something too easy and I was able to learn. The best part though is I am not done, I have sea to cross now!

Aegean Sea- Athens will be the starting point (yes the ending point ha aha.) The reason for Athens is my crossing with be at a south east angle. Through rescearch I have found that the winds come from the North to north east in the month of April. So starting in Athens I should be able to use the wind to my advantage. Yes sailing, I was not able to sail much on the river but did get a little in towards the end. The sea is full of life, life to entertain me. Just like the river I will have long days there is no doubt. My look at it is though I will have a chain of goals. Island to island connecting the chain with crossings ranging from less than a mile up to almost 20 miles. Yes this scares me scares me as I am in a small boat and big water. We will see, I will try. My new thought on my endeavor is I will try anything, anything at all and as long as I learn and make it out alive I'll give it a shot.

Two hours until my boat leaves. I am taking the slow boat to Athens. Around 30 hours crossing the sea almost to Turkey and then back to Athens. I will put my GPS in tracking mode as it should be interesting so see the roundabout way. I want this option because I want to see the sea, see it up close getting a feel for what a distance of what being offshore so far is like. This will take a lot of imagination, which I know I am up for because I will be on a big boat not a 15 footer. I do have some stratagees for this idea and believe I am up for it, but again we will see