Sue Robuck: I've Had Itchy Feet Since Age 2

For Sue Robuck, her adventures started at age 2 when she ventured out and was located 6 blocks from her home.  After a successful career in bank in California, she longed for adventure. She went to New Zealand to sail with a man, her love for sailing lasted. The relationship didn't.  The U.S. Virgin Islands would be home for a decade. She got her captain's license and ran a charter boat company. Her home now is Cancun, Mexico but other adventures are calling her.

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Transcript

Commercial: [00:00:02] Welcome. You are listening to the overseas life redesign podcast where you'll hear fine, relaxed, and inspirational interviews with people who are really living the dream. I'm Dawn Flemming an attorney turned alchemist and your host for the show coming to you from the tropical island paradise of East level net us Mexico. Listen to conversations with courageous souls who step out of their comfort zone and designed a new way of life. They'll share their experiences, wisdom and offer practical steps you can take to redesign your life overseas. Listen, and you'll believe if you can dream it, you can achieve it.

Dawn Flemming: [00:00:43] Ok, I am here today with Sue Robock, and we met through the Cancun Expats Facebook group and I am excited to interview her about her overseas life redesign, which actually, as an American, she said, lived in the Virgin Islands for a while, which is sort of the United States, but it's just a territory. So I'll have you talk about that a little bit. But thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. Sue, I really appreciate it. Great. Awesome. So what I like to just kind of start with a little bit of background about you and kind of how that first adventure took place, how that all came about.

Sue Robock: [00:01:24] The first adventure, I guess it was when I was two years old and they couldn't find me and I was about six blocks away from the house. So I've had itchy feet since I was little and yet felt like I should do the school and grow up and get a good job, etc. But every time I had a chance, I. I quit my job as a federal regulatory savings and loan examiner back in the eighties and took off and went to New Zealand for seven months and lived down there and was able to sail with somebody and get to see most of both sides. It was an amazing time and stayed with some friends in wrote an RHOA that was just lovely. Worked on a sheep station in the South Island for over a month before I had to leave because I finally worn out my visa and headed back to the states, worked for about three or four months. I guess it was in the Bay Area where I had been living for about ten years and got itchy feet again, ended up going back down to the Virgin Islands to sail with someone that didn't work out. And I stayed and ended up living there. So a lot of what's happened for me is just falling into the right situation and. The Virgin Islands being a territory is in some ways very different from being in the US, and yet it's got a little bit of US flavor as well. A lot of great people, a lot of wonderful culturally as is most of the Caribbean. It's got a lot of the sugar cane growing culture of. Of the slavery times and that kind of thing. And it was wonderful, it was a lot more expensive than living in Mexico, that's for sure.

Dawn Flemming: [00:03:43] I've heard that. How long did you live there?

Sue Robock: [00:03:47] I was almost 10 years I went and did this sailing with someone, and that didn't work out. So I started working in the marina initially and met someone and we took over a bunch of boats and started our own sailboat charter company, which was called Latitude 18 charters. And after a couple of years, I got tired of sitting in the office while everybody else got to go sailing. So I had my captain's license for the Caribbean and I did some captain and some cooking on various boats. And it was a wonderful trip being from the US all the way through the finish and kind of out in the West End or the east. So I sold my interest in the charter company and started captaining and cooking on various charter boats. And I worked at Coral World, which was a marine aquarium there in St. Thomas. And then I moved over to St. John and worked at bay after going to massage school, which was a Rockefeller resort initially. So I sort of reinvent myself and I kid around about being on a 10-year plan, but that's what I've done. I pretty much it's been 10, 12 years. I keep changing what I'm doing. And I ended up going back to New Mexico and. Living in Santa Fe for it was close to 30 years, I guess. Twenty-five, thirty years altogether and it's a beautiful place. And in some levels, it's like being outside of a lot of what America is like because it's got such a history steeped in the the Mexican-American experience and. I guess how I ended up here in Mexico about two years ago, I met my partner and he said he'd been living down here for about ten years. I came down for Christmas last year and then I came down. We traveled through Canada, where he's from last summer for about two months. And then I came down in November. And now we're in COVID. And I'm living here with very little clothing, which I don't need much else because we're not wearing much at all. And I guess. If you have any questions, I know that sounds great.

Sue Robock:[00:06:36] So a couple of things I wanted to ask you about is your experience in the Virgin Islands. You started talking about how it's similar to the US but different. Can you talk a little bit more about that in case there's somebody that says, gosh, I'd like to move out of the continental United States? I'm not sure if I'm ready to live overseas. Maybe that's a good interim step, although you did say it's kind of expensive. So you want to just talk about that a little bit? I think part of it is because West Indian culture is different than in terms of what a lot of North Americans see as black culture, maybe, and it is their islands. And so Carnival will go on all night long and you don't say, shut up, you're making too much noise. In some ways, they're much more lascivious than in the way they move in general. And yet they're very put your clothes on kind of thing. It's just kind of interesting how they don't like it when tourists say get off the cruise ships with just a bathing suit on and wander around the street.

Dawn Flemming: [00:07:58] Now, I think I get that. So my first husband was a doctor and he did a rotation during medical school in Black River, Jamaica. And I was I spent a fair amount of time down there, too. And what we noticed was there was this interesting confluence between Catholicism, which had come in, and sort of the missionary effect with sort of a traditional native culture that was very, very spiritual. But like, for example, they would never be caught out in the rain without an umbrella. It was bad luck to have rainfall on their head. So there was a lot of superstition involved in and we found that as well. There was the clinic that he was at. There were a lot of venereal diseases, but yet there was this sense of prim and proper. So I don't know if that's similar to what I found out

Sue Robock: [00:09:14] You would walk in and say, good morning, Miss June. How are you not hey, what's up? And you would always say good morning to people in passing or and going into a shop where I find Americans don't do that. I found that in France, Belgium. Then you speak to the person you're that's helping you in that shop. And the same thing with the West Indian culture there. And it's different on different islands. I found going to Nevius or some of the other islands, we'll have slightly different right now.

Dawn Flemming: [00:09:58] In the case of Jamaica, obviously, that was British settled by the Brits. So you had that sort of prim and proper British culture in the US.

Sue Robock: [00:10:08] the Virgin Islands were originally Danish, but we bought them from Denmark. And then, of course, you got the British Virgin Islands, which are basically three miles away. And a couple of places,

Dawn Flemming: [00:10:21] If you can, You travel back and forth easily, or is there you have to clear customs.

Sue Robock: [00:10:28] And that's the way that the BBC has made a lot of their money is by customs, by you go into the customs office, you pay a certain amount to take your boat. If you say if you rent a boat in the US Vergence, you have to pay the customs fees for going into the BVI and then are being hit because tourism is a really big part of what they do.

Dawn Flemming: [00:10:58] Sure, yeah. When we chartered when we got married, we chartered we rented a boat in BVI and just stayed in Dubai. So I wasn't sure. So is it the reverse as well? If you charter in the BVI, can you go to the US easily or the customs? The same thing there.

Sue Robock: [00:11:17] Like if I left Redhook and went in the BVI, we would clear it Westend in Tortola or we would clear customs at Josslyn and go for our week. Or I worked on Pirates Kennywood. Was a day sale or it was a powerboat, actually, that we would go all the way up to Virgin Gorda and which is on the Far East End, and we would take them around in the baths and various places there. Go back to Cooper Island, have lunch, and then turn around and come back. And then we'd have clear in St. John when we came back into the US. So it's just a matter of doing that now. They're pretty much closed down if you're not a bit longer, what they call a bit longer in the BVI. Nobody's going there. I've been seeing various things lately and nobody's traveling. So, I miss a lot about that culture. And yet I'm I've been here mostly since November and with one trip out and back into February. And I'm learning a lot about the culture here and the differences in the neighborhood we live in have a lot of Cubans coming and going here. They can't get the product in Cuba, so they come here and they'll spend a few days here. And all this area, it's around like Chillun and Schmoll. They have little Cuban stores that cater to them and linens and hair, eye and clothing and tennis shoes, and things like that that they can't get in Cuba. They'll come over and they'll just huge bags of things and then they go back. So it's like a different culture here as well.

Dawn Flemming: [00:13:11] Interesting, so have you haven't been to Cuba, have you know?

Sue Robock: [00:13:18] Yeah, yeah, it looks like we're getting too far. We have all these plans. I have a friend who is a weaver in Telander via a Hakka, and she used to stay with me when she would come to leave the Zapotec rug's in Santa Fe. And I've not seen or been in touch with her for years. And I was I want to go there. We can't go anywhere right now. So. 

Dawn Flemming: [00:13:47] I talk about itchy feet. I get on with, of course, are on a rock here that's five miles long. So we're coming to Cancun tomorrow. So that'll be exciting.

Sue Robock: [00:13:59] It is interesting for me to think in terms of the finances here and what I might deem expensive and what I might deem inexpensive and the things I would love to get because New Mexico is so unusual. It's got its own food. You know, green chili, red chili is very different from what we get here for Mexican food. Some of the things that I used to cook with pot wise in that kind of thing that I can't find or spices that I'm still learning where to find certain things and revising how I live my life. And I pleasant. Just staying pleasant with people.

Dawn Flemming: [00:14:52] Yes. It goes a long way. Yeah. It's funny you mention that because one of the things I like to make my own jerk, I have a Cajun jerk shrimp recipe that I like and I'm out of allspice and I couldn't find it on my island. I've got to see if I can find it in Cancun. But I thought, well, for heaven sakes, I don't even know if that's what they call it. So I was at the grocery store and it's actually called Papito de Jamaica, is what they call it. Wow. So I don't know. Well, I'll have to see if I can find it in one of the stores in Cancun. But anyway, so so let's go back a little bit farther. So I didn't really make a mistake. And before we started that, I thought you were Canadian because our Canadian, and you said, no, you're actually from L.A.,

Sue Robock: [00:15:41] Right? I was born in Seattle and grew up in East L.A. and lived there until my twenties and then transferred from my job up to the Bay Area and lived in the Bay Area until I got tired of sitting in an office and went on the trip to New Zealand. OK, I went down there to go sailing with somebody and as I say, I fell in love with sailing and out of love with him.

Dawn Flemming: [00:16:18] That happens. So and you said you were involved in the banking industry?

Sue Robock: [00:16:23] I was a federal savings and loan examiner for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which was the regulatory agency for savings and loans. So it did include some traveling around by car. Mostly I'd leave and go. I'll go off to say, Reno for a week and work. Examining the bank for Regulatory Compliance or the Savings and Loan and then come back on Friday and we had Arizona as well. What else? And then I got involved in the training programs for new examiners, and so I was working with the training office out of D.C. and I would go back there once in a while or I would help set up. So it was like setting up a conference for a month. And it was that was pretty amazing. That kind of got me because we were in Florida once in a while. We were in Southern California. We did two or three. Interestingly, back in the late 70s, Aspen Snowmass wasn't as popular or I mean, there were fancy, but they weren't as fancy as they are now. So in the off season, which would be August, they would have these really low rental rates and they were sort of central to the country. So people from the West Coast could fly into Denver and then fly on to Aspen. And so we took over a couple of condo areas in Snowmass at the time and did the conferences there, which was an amazing experience.

Dawn Flemming: [00:18:22] I there in the summertime. It's really a really pretty, pretty part of the country.

Sue Robock: [00:18:27] And now it's very, very popular. At the time, the only things that were happening that didn't seem to draw that many people were the Aspen Valley had their training programs for kids in the summer and then Aspen Institute, which was kind of a think tank, had programs there as well. So that was kind of neat. We go to Florida in October. So it was kind of that time between the really hot summer and the winter group. And then somebody in D.C. decided that if they heard that we were going to these resort areas, people would get upset. What was interesting is that for people in those areas we were paying at the time, twenty-five dollars per person per day, and you could put three people in a condo, three-bedroom condo. They could cook their meals right out once in a while. If we went to D.C., they were paying something like fifty to seventy-five dollars per person per day. Plus they had to have food expenses because it's so expensive. So they were we were ended up paying so much more to try and be in D.C.

Dawn Flemming: [00:19:54] Not funny. We'll be back in a moment.

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Commercial: [00:21:31] Welcome back to the Overseas Life Redesign podcast, thank you so much for being here, and we invite you to subscribe, if you like, what you hear.

Dawn Flemming: [00:21:40] Well, so what I want to ask you about is I don't know you real well, but we've had conversations quite frequently on the Kancoona ex-pats are virtual happy hour. And you seem like a really outgoing, fun type of person. And if I had to pick what your professional background was, that would probably be like the last thing that I would consider picking for you. Not because you're not smart, but I just have a hard time seeing you satisfied in that role. And obviously, you went on to do other things. So tell me a little bit about how that career choice ended up.

Sue Robock: [00:22:27] Happening,

Dawn Flemming: [00:22:28] Yeah,

Sue Robock: [00:22:29] Well. Let's see, I didn't want to go to college out of high school, and I ended up going to the beauty school of all things, OK, so I was a hairdresser for a period of time. And then life got in the way. And I lived in Bakersfield, California, for about three months and realized that was not going to work. And so. I came back to L.A. and went looking for a job, and interestingly, the two places that were the first day wanted to hire me. One was a stockbroker and the other one was the federal home loan bank board and the stockbroker. I thought, well, that sounds really interesting. I have no clue what that's about. But the guy was doing a couple of things with the employment agency that was shady. And I decided if he's doing that to them, what would he do me to employ? So I didn't go that route. Smart went with the bank board as an office worker initially, and over the period of time I was there, I went to college, got my accounting background and became the examiner, and started doing these other things. I was looking for my boss. I was booking all of their flights. So I really have a background. My friends tend to come to me if they need to look up how to get a flight. So that was that piece of my life. And then I, like I said, about the 10-year plan. So when I came back from New Zealand because I quit that job to go to New Zealand on this trip back after the nine months I was looking for jobs and I knew I didn't want to go back into corporate America, I absolutely knew it, not knowing why at the time. But interestingly, a friend owned the Jack in the Box restaurant and he said, all my kids have gone back to school. Well, so I go in and cook breakfast in the morning, and then another friend needed somebody in her mortgage office. So I cook breakfast at Jack in the Box in the morning and then at noon I would go and change into my suit and go to the mortgage office. But it was kind of interesting how then I. If that happened, then it went sailing to Mexico from San Francisco, I sailed to Mexico and got as far as Puerto Vallarta. He got off the boat, went back east where he lived, and I stayed on the boat. And then when he came to shut the boat down, a hurricane had hit. And so I left the boat, came north, worked on another boat on the East Coast. And then a friend said he was going to the Virgin Islands to sail and he needed somebody to go with him. So I ended up down there. So it's kind of things that just happened in my life. And people have said, well, have you had any kids? I knew there was something I forgot.

Dawn Flemming: [00:26:09] What's interesting I find interesting about that is you just seem to find opportunities, right? I mean, you like that totally explains the bank thing, because I. I couldn't see you seeking that out, but it was what was available at the time. And then you took advantage of that entry-level position and ended up having a pretty amazing career that you obviously could have gone much further with had you wanted to. But obviously, that wasn't your choice. So, yeah, I think that's that that's kind of where I want to go with this. Next is there's a lot of people right now with COVID that are really like they're either deer in the headlights like I can't believe this is happening or they're maybe they're kind of secretly relieved, like, oh, I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. But now what? I mean, there's probably a huge gamut of different reactions that are happening. But I think the common denominator is changed is going to happen whether or not. And so I've always said we can't control what happens to us. All we can do is control our reaction to it. So let's run with that a little bit. Give me your kind of your thoughts on that.

Sue Robock: [00:27:28] That topic is interesting because one of the last things I did last year before we went to Canada as I was managing a house, a gorgeous house in Santa Fe for a man who had been in PR work with Apple a lot and is a Zen priest. And so being there and being in the moment is part of the whole practice. And I think that that's part of for me, what COVID is has helped with is just taking getting up in the day. Do I need to just sit here this morning and got out of bed? We went for a little half-hour walk around the neighborhood. It's taking each day at a time instead of saying I have to do something because we don't know. I mean, he and I had planned to go to Louisiana for a bicycle. It's called Cycle Zydeco, and that was canceled and brought to October 1st weekend. And now we don't even know if it's going. They say it is. But Louisiana has one of the highest rates of infection right now. The other piece for me was finding for myself what more I'm good at. I am not I'm not a visual learner. I'm a kinaesthetic learner. There's about five percent of people that are a kinaesthetic learner in our American culture. And it makes it very different how I perceive different kinds of work. So I ended up for the last twenty-five, thirty years, being a bodyworker, looking into holistic health, working in that area. Arnie and I met at a Feldenkrais conference because we're both movement educators in that modality as well as some of the things he does. And so I can't do that down here. I don't have a residency at this point. And interestingly, make sure you know where you need to go because I went to the consulate in Albuquerque and I said, what do I need to do to start the process? He says all you have to do that in Mexico. That's what I was told. So I needed to have more information before I even walked in that door. So right now, I'm just taking each day working with my health, I'm seventy-three years old, so I feel a lot younger in some areas. On other days I get up and it's like I don't want to go anywhere. So taking care of my health is a big one right now. Does that help answer what you're talking about?

Dawn Flemming: [00:30:29] Oh, no, it does. What you're really saying is you need to know yourself. Right. And what resonates with your preferences, your way of learning, your way of dealing with change. And, you know, a lot of people haven't slowed down long enough, right. Prior to COVID that they really had to think about these things. And it can be daunting. Right. I've said in my programs, the hardest labor we can engage in is thinking sometimes. Right. 

Sue Robock: [00:31:06] And I think that's where there's a lot of frustration in some of these things that unfortunately we see on Facebook is that people don't know how to just take it inside and be gentle with themselves, let alone be gentle with others. If we can't be gentle and know where we are, how can we do that with others?

Dawn Flemming: [00:31:32] Yeah, I would say so and also just this, the facade or the fallacy that we are in control when we are not right, there are only certain things that we can control, but none of us can.

Sue Robock: [00:31:47] And our perception is a big one because my view is always been I've tried to explain this to some people. There's a six-sided box and you're looking at one side and you say it's a black box. And I'm saying, no, it's actually yellow. And the guy over here is saying, no, it's actually white. And so we're looking at different sides of the box. And if we can look at that box and I think it was smashed in, Fox said, we're all on the same journey up the path. Can we not just share our lunches? Something like that? Yeah, and that's my hope.

Dawn Flemming: [00:32:26] Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So so I know we don't know how any of this is going to last but have you kind of given some thought to your next adventure and things you might like to try on.

Sue Robock: [00:32:45] Well, I know I have I need to go back to New Mexico, everything that I own is in storage in Santa Fe. And so it's getting rid of what I don't need, seeing what I can bring here without a lot of expense, that it's like, why bring a bunch of stuff that I can buy for half the price? Right. So and I'm sure you've probably talked about that kind of costs of bringing, let alone, as opposed to leave it all and just buy it.

Dawn Flemming: [00:33:19] Yeah,

Sue Robock: [00:33:21] We had a couple of trips. We had talked about maybe going to Japan. We had talked about just the trip over to Hakka or back down. We have friends that have land outside of Gilead, which you might find interesting to talk to them at some point and they can't get there from here. So so we haven't really set up a specific. Now, I think that we've decided that even if Cycle Zydeco were to go on in New Orleans or it's Lafayette, Louisiana, that we probably won't go because of our age range. And the fact that people are just packed in these facilities may just be too risky. Yeah,

Dawn Flemming: [00:34:12] Yeah.

Sue Robock: [00:34:13] So a specific adventure. No, but I'm sure we both have a list of this. Got a thing on the side of just things. We haven't gone to restaurants here in town. He says, oh, let's go here. We're two blocks from Habichuela. I've never been there. We're around the corner from Laperriere. So learning more Spanish would be on my list. I'm learning a little at a time. I get wonderful emails and WhatsApp from the Philharmonic and from the university here with lots of different things available. And so I'll try and translate it to see if I can read it, and then I'll put it in the translator and see what it says. That way I'm learning more of the language that I'm living in.

Dawn Flemming: [00:35:07] That's a great idea to be able to do that. Yeah. So really, you just came to Cancun in November and then this happened in March, so you hardly even got a chance to really explore the area too much before we all got locked down, huh?

Sue Robock: [00:35:25] Well, it was actually. Before, I guess, January and February were a little iffy, too. Mm-hmm. And then I went back. I had to go to Santa Fe on the 20th of February. And I am still employed by Four Seasons resorts but have I had one shift there while I was there in February and I was going to try and take a couple of other ships and they said, we're closing down, we have to close down. And it was like, OK, I'm calling and getting my flight back to Mexico and closing down. So they are partially opened, but not where I can go back. And that's, I guess, one of my things. Am I going to continue being on their call list or am I going to just let that go as well? Decisions.

Dawn Flemming: [00:36:36] Yeah. Decisions that are very difficult to make under the current circumstances as well.

Sue Robock: [00:36:42] I think some people, try and structure everything that they're going to do. And I think what I'm seeing you do is helping people to see what do you need to think about. And then there's that piece that I look at, sit back for a while and let it all come together and see where it goes.

Dawn Flemming: [00:37:09] Yeah, just sit for a while. Right. So it was interesting. I had a call coaching call earlier today and one of the participants said, oh, I had I have everything planned out and I had my plan. And she's in the tourism industry. And this was supposed to launch in April. And, you know, and of course, everything changed. And so that's part of it is just being able to say, hey, this is not in your control and that's OK. Like, OK, that was your plan. And now you have a different one. You have one. And being able to kind of let go of the anger, frustration, the emotional attachment that we have to this plan that kind of went poof. And that's probably the hardest part, is just stepping into the uncertainty and embracing the unknown. And yet there are certain things like that on the other side. She said, you know, I was I had this website that I was going to create. And It just says under construction. And now I'm thinking I need to work on this. And it's like, yeah, there are things now that are within your control. Right. So I think that that plan that you couldn't execute and you go, well, what else is there? You know, and that's what really allowed me to move forward with this project that I have now with the free workshops and the Dream Life Academy because this is something that I have had a desire to do for a couple of years. But, you know, we had the vacation villa and the property management company and I was doing the podcast every week up until the end of the year. And I just flat out didn't have the time. And so that's part of what I've my message has been, hey, look at this as a gift right at this time, as a gift, like you say, the Zen piece of it and just say, OK, just listen to to the inner knowing. And that's OK. You don't have to have it all figured out.

Sue Robock: [00:39:19] Some people that I've known for about years, twenty-five years now that I studied neurolinguistics programming with have worked also with a wonderful teacher who talks about percept, languaging, and it's staying in the eye. And one of the things they talk about is those little micro minutes of listening to the birds or. Listen to the leaves, the wind going through the leaves, or in your case, maybe all of a sudden you hear an extra-large wave hit the beach or something. And there's that moment that I can stop myself and just be with that moment instead of worrying about what's going on in the next five years or being distracted by something completely out of your presence and unrelated.

Dawn Flemming: [00:40:22] Well, beautiful. That's a great, great thought to close with. Just one last question. Is there anything I didn't ask you that that you want to share? Are we pretty much covered at all?

Sue Robock: [00:40:38] Other than that, I'm missing the beach and I did get to go swim, swim with the whale sharks last week, which was amazing.

Dawn Flemming: [00:40:44] That's right. You did say that. Yeah. And a little plug for the whale sharks, man. That is the experience of a lifetime. Isn't that what you want to talk about? That experience for a moment?

Sue Robock: [00:40:55] Well, it's a small boat. There were 10 of us. And luckily, it's all people that are kind of in our little group that spends time together. And at the same time, we all wore masks out and got in the water and they took us to the guide, took two people at a time, and we swam right along with them. You're not supposed to touch them. A couple of people treated. But you swam until it took off somewhere else and they're just people said, oh, I would never swim with sharks, but these guys are vegetarians. They say, well, they're not vegetarian, but they eat these micro mini little creatures. And there were manta rays out there as well. So we saw the manta rays and got to go in twice and there was a chance to go in the third time. And I was tired by that time because they're moving they're about 10 feet, 14 feet long or something like that. But to be that close to this beautiful creature, that's so different, looking at how people looked at the whale sharks. Look them up on the Internet.

Dawn Flemming: [00:42:10] Absolutely. Yeah. We went two years ago. I made a little funny little like a movie trailer movie with the footage. So I'm sure it's going to come up on my Facebook profile here as an anniversary item. So I'll share that silly little movie.

Sue Robock: [00:42:26] But it's also interesting to pull back in and anchor so we could have our lunch out there by North Beach and not one person on the beach because I'm not allowed to be on the beaches of Mexico right now.

Dawn Flemming: [00:42:40] Right. I know, actually, I told my husband this weekend we need to fire up the inflatable and make a putt over to the North Beach swim line and just jump in the water cooler. You can't go on the beach, but you can go swimming offshore.

Sue Robock: [00:42:59] The interesting thing the Virgin Islands did that they closed all their beaches and they had quite an uproar. I mean, you have to think of a mountainous island as opposed to this flat, large city. And what they did was after a month or two, they reopened the beaches to walking and swimming. You cannot take any gear and sit on a beach. You can go and you can walk on the beach or you can go and swim and leave. And I think that would make such a difference here if they would allow that kind of thing. But now it would be fine to go out with the whale sharks and then we get to get in the water.

Dawn Flemming: [00:43:47] Absolutely. Well, that is definitely an experience of a lifetime. We always tell our guests to that that you have the opportunity to do that. Definitely so. Well, awesome. Well, this has been a fabulous conversation with you. So thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. And yeah, hopefully, we'll get to meet in person one day real soon,

Sue Robock: [00:44:06] Yeah, But let us know if you're around our area,

Dawn Flemming: [00:44:10] OK

Sue Robock: [00:44:11] We'll do a walkout and wave from the six-foot length.

Dawn Flemming: [00:44:16] Correct.

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