Home at Last!

My new friend. Photo courtesy Bill Bennett ASC

I am finally home from the crazy week of media last week.It feels like I've been gone for more like month than just a week, we covered sooo much in such a short period of time! But it's not over yet! Back home, yes, but also just as busy as before.

Both my little kitties are sitting in my lap all cuddled up and dozing off,

cutest little things ever, and seeing as there is no way I could get up right

now without waking them up, I've got a bit of time to write another blog.

Forgot where I left off in the last blog, but ill just start back with leaving New York.

I've got a bit of ground to cover in this blog here. After four days of whirlwind

media and little sleep, we were all looking forward to having one relatively

uneventful day. We packed our bags and headed over to the ABC Studio,

where we spent three hours doing 17 radio interviews! Pretty impressive, aye?

It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be, although by the last few I was having

trouble keeping track of what I had said in each interview and half way

through telling a story I would start to wonder if I had already talked

about it or if that was one of the other interviews...

Well, we got through all that and headed back to the hotel to get our bags and

head over to the airport. We flew out of NYC in a little puddle jumper plane, with a very talkative bunch of people on board, but managed to doze off for a bit. Woke up with a bit of a sore neck, but Virginia was gorgeous! It was warm and sunny out and we got picked up and driven over to a hotel right by the 700 Club.

Virginia Beach is probably one of the nicest places I have ever seen. Anyways, we spent the day swimming in the indoor pool and wandering around, then slept all night long. Next day we went over to the 700 Club studio. It was incredibly nice, much bigger than I had expected it to be. Everything there went well, and then we

were off to the airport again. We said good bye to Jason from Thomas Nelson there and headed to our separate flights.

We had such a great time working with Jason for the few days we were together.

It's a little weird to think that until I write another book, we'll probably not see him again.

After about an hour or two flight into Phoenix, I said good bye to Lisa Gizara. Lisa was heading home to LAX and I was going on to Houston. Lisa was great to travel with, looking forward to the next trip I get to go on with her!

On the plane heading to Houston, I shut my eyes for a second, and next thing I knew we were landing! Gotta love when flights go like that. Got to the hotel there in the marina pretty late, wandered around looking at the boats for a bit, then headed back to get some sleep. Next morning I headed over to the South West International Boat Show tomeet the people from Texas Coast Yachts who had sponsored me to come out there.

It was a lot of fun, met some great people, and got to see a little bit of Texas.

After about four hours of signing books and meeting people, I was off to the airport again. On to the Stricly Sail Pacific Boat Show in Oakland, California.

Hanging out with my brother Zac! Photo courtesy Bill Bennett ASC.

That was a lot of fun, I was a little dazed from meeting so many people by the end, but it was great to see my brother and a bunch of the guys from my team who had come up to check out some of the gear.

Jeff and his wife Gail are working on getting their boat ready to sail around the world again, so they were up there walking all around and even came to see me speak which was great! I had forgotten that I was going to be speaking there until the night before, so kinda ended up just winging it, but it went better then I thought it would! In fact, it went really well! Funny thing, I do better the less I prepare for these talks, and I even have more fun giving them if I prepare less!

Well, we decided it would be too late to fly home that night, since we were going to fly home in my friend's little plane. So we spent another night there and headed back home the next morning. It was a good flight home, though a bit of a blur. We landed in Burbank and headed off to meet up with my parents and friend who was visiting from Cape Town, South Africa.

From there I was finally headed home. It was a long but fun week. Good times and memories aren't so much created by what you do or where you go, but who you do it with. I'm lucky to have some of the best people ever around me, both helping and watching out for me.

Well, gotta run, going to my prom tonight! Bit of a shocking toss back into life as a teenage girl... but I suppose this is just one of those things that you have to do as a senior in high school.

Talk to you all soon!
Abby