Hotel California

In this episode of Tempor Footnotes, I’d like to introduce one of my best friends and guardian angel, Julie Miller. She was a friend when I was a young kid leaving my nest in Texas for Boston back in 2004. She invited me to her parents’ house during my first holiday season away from home. When I got out of grad school, she got me a job as a security guard at the First Church of Christ Scientist World Headquarters. We worked there together for a little more than a year. We have kept in contact, and since 2017 she has been sailing boats across oceans.

In November 2019, Julie Miller and Ken Johnson, left in a 40-foot catamaran named Painkiller from Mystic, Connecticut, with a plan to sail westward and arrive in New Zealand in time for the 2021 America’s Cup. They narrowly left Panama before the COVID-19 global shutdown. Currently, they reside in the makeshift sailing community, The Hotel California, docked along the shore of Pape’ete, Tahiti, along with the roughly 10,000 boats stranded around the world. Their story is beautifully cataloged on the website, http://www.sailingpainkiller.com. Please join me in welcoming Julie Miller to the podcast, I hope you enjoy this episode.

ABOUT TEMPOR FOOTNOTES: Tempor Footnotes Podcast is a production of Studio WAC and Tempor Magazine. Our producer is Scott Cartwright, and Jenny Lynn Weitz is our art director. Simon Mathewson of Nul Tiel Records composed the music for this episode. You can follow us on Instagram @tempormag and Twitter @tempormag. If you’d like to support the show, you can make an online donation at https://secure.squarespace.com/checkout/donate?donatePageId=5acc23ca8a922dc7730476c9.