See ya Kwajalein… It’s been interesting.

We have been here a year now.

It has been a year of mixed emotions.

I know I have not posted much in here about the island, but the times I have posted have been about how much fun we have been having.

But, like everything else in life, it hasn’t always been tropical beaches, sunsets, perfect waves, and warm clear water.

There were other things…

We really wanted to stay for another year, but it was proving more and more difficult to maintain the idea of living in paradise when our days off were becoming permeated by the “situation” that we were experiencing with work.

Don’t get me wrong. It was the easiest nursing job we have ever worked (punctuated by some very difficult cases and nail-biting waits to medevac sick patients to higher level of care hospitals), but it has become an example of why business and medicine should never have become such intimate bedfellows.

And then take that relationship and plop it in the middle of a US military installation and you have a recipe for unrelenting frustration, courtesy of the federal government’s predilection for bureaucracy.

Kwajalein Island: Making everything more difficult than it needs to be.

It is like trying to take care of sick hitchhikers at a government hospital in the Vogon Empire (again… if you know, you know).

In any case, we needed to go, so we called it quits at the end of our contracts, sold almost everything, packed up the little bit remaining and said goodbye.

There is so much I can’t say about work stuff here.

But I can talk about the fun stuff.

The good stuff.

Let’s start with the people:

The island is populated by a bunch of rocket scientist nerds, and we loved hanging out with all of them (you thought nurses were weird…). No matter how weird we may have thought them, we have met more of the sweetest people here than we ever thought possible, and it seems like each and every one of them has this fun genius sense of humor. I loved hanging out with them. We kiteboarded, we surfed, we played inner tube water polo, we went sailing, we chatted in the middle of the roads on our bikes.

There was always a wave hello from a friend.

We found great partners for kiteboarding, snorkeling, SUP’ing, BBQ’ing, game-nighting, ship building, trailer repairing (and trailer destroying), adventure boating, fishing, nerding out, and throwing pottery while we were here.

We also found a bunch of really fun nerds to hang out and surf with. We surfed a ton of pretty mediocre little waves together, but we always had a good time of it. We even surfed a handful of really amazing waves together at times (even more fun). One of the nerds and I were almost swept out to sea by the crazy currents at one of the reef passes, then, because we just don’t learn, we almost ended up adrift in the Pacific again at the same spot. There are some really strong currents at some of the surf spots here.

One day we almost lost the boat while surfing, but it all ended up okay. Patches McGee just wanted to do some surfing himself.

We really did enjoy the company of all the people that we have shared time with over the last year.

We ate a lot of really bad prison-quality DFAC food, and we had some delicious home-cooked meals with friends occasionally (when we were really lucky). We ate a lot of poke and sashimi when we were lucky enough to catch fish, and a friend smoked up some marlin that was one of the best things I have ever eaten.

We have always described Kwajalein as Pleasantville meets Leave It To Beaver meets Lost.

Its a weird little place.

We met great people and had great adventures (I hope to post a few more things in here about it all), but, sadly, it was all overridden by the other stuff. I can only say (for the thousandth time) what a shame it is, because it could be so great out here.

So I leave here focusing on the good, the relationships and the laughter, the adventure and the fond memories with a light heart. I leave here knowing that we are going to be free again from the causes of our frustration, free to explore and adventure the world again on our own terms.

I can only hope that some of these nerds come visit us somewhere in the world.