I think I have mentioned before that Greg and Deb on the Web was the first blog I ever read. I stumbled across it via a review site and it quickly became a regular part of my day. Eventually I realized that Deb had her own site too, and so Toast Ambassador became part of my regular blog round.
For a long time Greg and Deb had a mysterious aura for me. I remember peering at Greg’s tiny Flickr icon, squinting my eyes and trying to make out what he looked like. They held the status of celebrity in my consciousness. When I eventually made my own blog, the fact that they read it used to keep me going when otherwise I may have petered out in apathy.
Soon Greg and I started to exchange a few emails, and then we exchanged some food parcels. Pretty soon we had a go at web chatting and before I knew it Greg and Deb’s status had switched from minor celebrities to major friends.
So last November we bit the bullet and invited ourselves round to stay. It was a pretty big risk, it’s one thing to be able to maintain a conversation for an hour on a webcam, but another to sit in someone’s house for three days. Nearly everyone I spoke with about the trip invariably asked if I was worried that they might murder us while we slept; or even that they might propose deviant sexual acts, but we weren’t at all. The main thing we were worried about was awkward silences big enough to drive ten ton trucks through.
But there weren’t any. In fact within the first hour of being with them I knew that we hadn’t made a mistake coming, and the rest of the weekend only confirmed that. We talked, laughed, ate and played. We saw the worlds weirdest tourist attraction, had a go at driving on the wrong side of the road, and had a tour of the capital of Wisconsin. We asked several bazillion questions, received several bazillion gracious answers, and bored them both silly with sentences that began “That’s a bit different, In England we…”.
Allie and Julia, their kids, were an absolute delight to be around and put up with being dragged around all over the place. We know that Amy would have just loved their company and would have had a whale of a time if we had been brave enough to have attempted the 9 hour plane journey with her and her brother.
The only negative thing about the trip was that we had to leave knowing that once more there would be three and a half thousand miles between us and them. They need to move to Huddersfield so we can invite them to dinner every week. I’ll even cook toad-in-the-hole.
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I was looking at the picture of the two of you. Dan you and Greg look as if you could be related. So glad you all enjoyed each others company. I had no doubt that the four of you would hit it off. You both have a great sense of humor.
The next time you all together. You might ask him to do his rendition of the Hamburger Man! A family thing!
Glad you made it home in one piece and had a good time. It can be scary to go on an adventure and taking such a big step was the best way to go.
And coming to America can always be an adventure. Now, you just need to make it all the way out to Los Angeles!
I had planned to make up a bunch of nasty crap about you and your wife. There was a solid week’s worth of material that you just ruined by writing something so incredibly nice.
Have some consideration for other people and their blogs, Dan.
Sure. Sure. We feel exactly the same way, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to broadcast this fact all over the Internet.
And where are the Pop-Tarts, Dan? At what point did you hear us say, “Please, take our S’more flavored Pop-Tarts 3,000 miles away so there’s absolutely no chance of us ever retreiving them.” I don’t remember that from any of our conversations.
I’m sorry. . .
I know this abuse is just a coping mechanism.
I’m looking up airfares now. I found something on Air Kyrgyzstan that’s pretty cheap. You’ll have a 14 hour layover in Guam but at least you guys could be here for Easter.
You said we could take the pop tarts!!
I suppose you’re going to ask for all that underwear we stole back as well.
Greg, get over it. There’s one pop tart left that they missed; it’s on top of the microwave. Eat it now before the little vultures that live in our house see it.
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