Robert Frost once wrote a poem entitled Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Over the years I have looked to a line in this poem for encouragement especially when a long journey is ahead. The line I love most goes like this, “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.” Now of course, being that Team South East is, well, spending our time in the South East region of the U.S. we will almost never encounter a snowy evening, especially not one spent in the woods. Regardless, For Liz, Sloan and myself Frost’s words directly apply to our lives. We have “promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep.” Vagabonding is very serious business, and sleeping is often the last thing we worry about on our to-do list. I mean lets be honest, its hard work meeting new fabulous people every day, hanging out in quaint Florida beach towns, and of course spending time with old friends and new campus reps. Life has been rough but fear not, because of our love of sharing the One for One mission, we’re trudging through.

Take last week for example, we had to re-route our tour a bit to make room for Southeastern University. We knew that Blake was coming to speak on Southeastern’s campus and that it was pretty important that the SE Vagabonds be in attendance. What we didn’t realize was that hanging out at Southeastern would feel more like a day at Disney than going to school. The lawns were perfectly manicured, smiles were plastered on every one’s faces and music was always in the air. We not only loved hanging out with Blake and his compadre Mike Hammer but were really proud when Blake received a an award for being a world leader ( quite an accomplishment for him personally, and a huge milestone for TOMS Shoes). The kids at Southeastern were TOMS fanatics, they had decked out their gymnasium with TOMS memorabilia, and even created an over sized replica of a TINY TOM that had wheels on it! Hopefully the footage of us pushing Blake around in the shoe will make our Youtube video, you’ve gotta see the madness…it was awesome!

Following our time at Southeastern we headed to Cocoa beach Florida to hang out with Chris Youngblood, a.k.a. “The Easter bunny” (no really, we don’t know how it happened but one morning at Chris’ house we woke to stuffed bunnies, chocolate rabbits, and yummy Easter candies for us to indulge. Chris had to have been the culprit, however, this has yet to be confirmed). Sloan knew Chris, I mean, “Bunny” from her time spent working at TWLOHA (Chris is a TWLOHA staff member). Chris and Sloan set up an awesome event for us during TWLOHA’s annual conference (it was outside at a park, and yes, tree climbing and sliding down slides did happen). Besides our fabulous park event adventures, Liz and myself decided that missing out the Florida sunshine would be a travesty so we made our way to the Cocoa Beach pier. We were only laid out for a few short hours but Liz has been paying for our sun-baked excursion ever since.

Today we’re in Orlando, we were lucky enough to meet up with Josh Owen (season one Vagabond) who graciously opened his home to us and made sure to give us tons of Vagabond advice as well as share some hilarious stories from his time on the road. Josh is basically a grade-A human, we love him and are so glad to call him a friend.

Alright guys, well this entry is far too long, and its time for us to make our way to Sloan’s parents house! (I personally can’t wait, as I love motor sports and we’ve been promised a ride on the Crawford family 4-wheeler). We are learning so much, meeting so many great people and getting to know each other really well. Until next time-

CARMIN.LIZ.SLOAN.

PS- A HUGE THANKS to David from UCF We basically love you, and thought your artsy event was awesome…Sorry we missed our chance to partake in breakfast with you…regardless, we will be sure to call you the next time we’re in town! Please keep in touch!

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Tags:   Cocoa Beach · Robert Frost · Southeastern University · tiny TOMS · TWLOHA · UCF
Categories: Vagabond Tour Spring 20091 Comment