Greetings LCTer's! We're Don and Michele from Southern Calif. and love to travel but are new to cruising. We first found B&K three years ago and booked a cruise on the PG with Linda. We ended up buying a vacation place instead and had to put the PG trip on hold for another time......NOW, we're ready to start cruising! It's great to see that B&K has this wonderful place to meet now. Terrific idea and such a nice group of people!

As for us, Don is a retired banker from a large bank, having spent many years dealing with the entertainment industry. His last assignment was portfolio manager for the gaming industry. I spent my banking years holding the hands of utility companies, certainly not as exciting, that's for sure. Don's 59, and I'm, ahem, mid fifties. We love animals - currently have one 13 yr. old precious male dachshund (who we rescued) and a 15 yr.old parrot (rescued this old guy too). Duncan, the dachshund, has a girlfriend (another dachshund) who comes over every day to play. We are now reduced to dogsitting but love every minute. (I have caught up on the story of Maggie, the precious dog, and am so happy to read that she's doing so well now. I've a lot of catching up to do!!)

Other than dogsitting, we spend several months a year in our favorite locale, the Bahamas. We've been going there for over 20 years (we were married there also!), so we finally have a comfortable place now to return to having no time constraints being retired. The only problem with it is that internet charges are $$$$; so, not able to enjoy LCT unless we're back here in So.Cal. In the Bahamas, we enjoy our time snorkeling, swimming, beach walking, fishing, chatting to the locals, enjoying the fresh fish caught during the day, and a good wine which somehow arrived in our overstuffed luggage!

As you can tell, we're much into our retirement and have slowed down to almost a snail's pace! Believe me, I'm just happy to have lived through 30 years of the rat race as I know you all have or are experiencing.

Thanks for listening(reading). We are eager to join you fine people on the high seas. We're starting with a crossing - oh dear - hope we haven't bitten off more than we can ....well, I welcome any comments or suggestions on this one! Voyager, Monte Carlo to Ft. Lauderdale 11/6/05.)
Hope to meet you all in the "cruising" years to come. Michele and Don