In the beginning, there was skepticism.

According to the experts at the new company with which we are dealing, I should not be writing this blog. What we are doing is too complicated for a lot of people to understand without a formal presentation, and I have to admit there is something to this line of thinking. It's easy to describe in a soundbite, but not to describe accurately. There's a lot to it. But I'm writing the blog anyway, as that's what I do: I write. And when I write, I call it like I see it. No snow jobs, no BS, just what I perceive as the truth.

Having said all that, are you ready to rock?

Around the end of July Kathy called and said she was meeting with Thomas about a new business venture. Oh great, I said. Just what we need, something else to spend our time on. What was it this time?

As things turned out it was a business venture centered on travel. It took us a little while to clear enough time to really start looking into this, and that time for me started last Thursday when I finally found time to see the presentation. Then I followed that up with a meeting later that night. It was all very interesting and I was becoming convinced. The worst part was that if this did not turn out to be a bad idea, or a scam, then I would have to admit Kathy was right. After 33 years of marriage, that's not always easy.

But this was just the start of things. This blog is the next step. See, I'm a natural skeptic, some might even say cynic, but certainly a skeptic. I was up until midnight just last night trying to shoot holes in this new business of ours, trying to find legitimate criticisms on the net; I found criticisms, but very few of them sounded legitimate. Being a skeptic is a two-way street, and a lot of these sounded like competitors trying to run down the competition. You see this on Amazon.com all the time, where the author may ghost-write a favorable review of his book, but a rival may ghost-write a negative one. So, if I'm going to be skeptical of the company, I'm also going to be skeptical of the critics. I have seen this before, you see, people bashing something they don't like, and without a lot of merit. While researching an online school for a Master's Degree I read posts that were virtually identical to those I saw last night, making me wonder if there is a professional class of bashers out there who earn their living trashing new ideas and companies.

But I digress.

I found some critics, but I found a lot more accolades. So then I searched for price comparisons with the usual travel sites: Orbitz, hotels.com, expedia, etc. And I was surprised again. Sometimes they were cheaper, but sometimes we were cheaper. So now I'm ready to move on and find out whether this whole thing was the best idea we've had in decades, or the worst. Stay tuned.

Bill

PS: We're still designing the blog so if anyone has any comments about the layout, or the colors, like the color the text being easy or hard to read, please let us know. Thanks!