From Chris: Thanks For the Fun!

For the past 12 days I have realized how lucky I am to have found this hobby. Flying over 23,000 miles, sampling 11 different flights from Qantas to Thai Airways, visiting 5 countries (four of them for under 24-hour each). It's really been an amazing experience that I will never forget and at 24 I never thought I would have.

At the end of the trip I arrived in my new home, Seattle. Saturday was a whirlwind 40-hour day that started with a red eye that arrived at Tokyo from Bangkok at 7:00 a.m. It ended much later after a 9-hour layover and a 9-hour ANA flight in Seattle, where it was 10:00 a.m. We got off the plane and headed straight for our new apartment to check out the digs. Then we had an amazing cook out with my parents, who have done so much for us during this move that I can't thank them enough, and crashed at 10:00 p.m. Yesterday was an all day moving affair and today was my first day at a brand new job. To say it was a blur and to now realize that I live across the country is still settling in...would be an understatement. Thus the reason for my radio silence over the past few weeks (thought the lack of internet the past few days hasn't helped either).

But with a new chapter...comes new circumstances. I am sad to say that with a new city and some new factors I am going to have to step away from the blogging chair and leave the site in JD's very capable hands.

As sad as it is, it's been an awesome year run. I remember signing up for our blogger account and starting our Twitter account with just one follower...me. I'm proud of what we've done over the past year and am so happy with all of the friends I have met, both online and in person in this hobby. Y'all are wonderful.

Thanks to JD as well for taking a chance on a crazy idea we had one night and had joked about....I would say we went far beyond just a joke about starting a blog. Thanks for everything.

But just because I am going off the blog doesn't mean I am going away. I'm still on Twitter (@chrisguizlo) and will be hanging around talking travel there. I hope you will come say hi. :)

Thanks for all of the fun and safe travels.