FOCUS - OCTOBER 2018 5 Wilma Wotten your Regional Councillor Candidate Experience • Commitment • Leadership ote WILMA WOTTEN 4 Regional Councillor Working for a greater Scugog. wilma@xplornet.ca ï 905-986-4602 Wilma Wotten for Regional Councillor Experience • Commitment • Leadership Thank you to all Ward Candidates and residents who attended my “Meet & Greets”. Working for issues; Housing, Tourism, Economic Development, Agriculture and Transit. YOUR VOICE MATTERS! Be sure to Vote. Mike echoes Andrea’s mixture of feelings. “I feel excitement for a new adven- ture as well as the trepidation you feel in any totally-unfamiliar situation.” Andrea follows up: “Adventures don’t begin at re- tirement. You have to be willing to follow new paths, and move outside the box.” The next year could prove to be a one-off family adventure, or the first in a series of voyages. Even before setting sail in October, “phase two” is fermenting. “We’ve talked about doing ‘The Great Loop,’” Mike says. “Up the U.S. east coast, through intercoastal wa- terway to the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi to Mobile, Alabama. But that’s for future development.” At the moment, the present com- mands all the couple’s attention. Wind and weather, they agree, will determine their exact path over the next year, but they’ll never be too far from land. “Most sails will only be a day or two,” Mike reports. “The sailing may not always be ‘fun,’ but when you reach a destination, that’s when you reap the rewards.” He’ll preceed the rest of the fam- ily to Grenada by a week, to do final checks of the catamaran, christened “Moose on the Loose.” “From the moment Mike leaves, I’ll be mentally preparing both myself and the kids,” Andrea says, her an- ticipation rising close to the surface. Mike speaks for them all when he reinforces the spirit that drives the family’s engine. “I’ve always believed that life contains many chapters of interesting stories, and you have to experience them all or you’ll be bored.” “Bored” certainly doesn’t sound like an option, given the magnitude of the family’s upcoming adventure. And there’s little doubt that this com- ing year’s worth of new experiences will prove “interesting” for Andrea, Mike, Arya, and Ilsa. The stories they’ll accumulate will, no doubt, linger a lifetime in the retelling. So let that next chapter begin. And for the Bayer family, it definitely won’t be the last. by Scott Mercer, Focus on Scugog Mike, Andrea and the girls at Daytona Beach while on a visit to a Miami Boat Show, The catamaran was christened the fun name, “Moose on the Loose”. The catamaran was