Do you ever get the feeling that you are stuck in a rut? Routine can sneak up and take over your life without warning or apology. Thoughts of breaking out and escaping for a while become a distraction. Doing something fun and crazy begins to engulf your daydreams. Most of those thoughts are dismissed and cast aside as quickly as they arrived. But what if, just one time, you hold on to it? You step out of your comfort zone and go after that dream. It could turn out to be a failure or it could be legendary, but you’ll never know until you try.
Why Do All the Locals Think We’re Crazy? is the true story of three firemen from the Midwest who decided to break out of their mid-life routine and take their mischievous humor and their inability to back down from a challenge to new limits. Their kindred love for tropical locations, along with an insuppressible desire to be anywhere but Kansas, led them to extend their reach beyond the borders of the continental United States. They, with a combined total of zero boat building experience, constructed their own kayaks. Then they, with a combined total of zero sea kayaking experience, planned to spend a week paddling among the picturesque U.S. and British Virgin Islands. From day one twists, turns, setbacks, and obstacles hindered any romantic notions of a cinematic triumph over the confines of mundane suburbia and personal limitations. Yet, they took the trip, risked their reputations and lives, and managed to avoid becoming a pointless maritime tragedy. Through perseverance, humor, and rum they conquered the literal and metaphorical mountains they encountered: personal conflict, delays of every kind, kayak failure, separation, a night alone on an uninhabited island, and a rescue by a yacht chartered by drunken Dutch airline pilots.
Why Do All the Locals Think We’re Crazy? chronicles the entire journey from idea inception through their return to the mainland. It combines adventure and humor with sprinkled in dime store philosophy that will leave you captivated, laughing, and glad to be on dry land.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 “This book about a crazy adventure will have you staying up past your bedtime shaking your head at what the three men actually dare to do. Scott delivers a humorous recap that is well written. You feel like he is sitting next to you telling the story. I hope there are more ideas in the works, so I can read about them.” – Amazon review.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 “Wit, humor, drama and determination make up this book and you can’t put it down. Scott takes you right in the middle of it all as only he can. Great read and great writing…I highly recommend this book!” – Amazon review.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 “What makes this such a readable memoir is quite simple. The tale is told with exquisite humor and honesty – from the original idea to airplane issues, glue that maybe should have dried a tad longer, the kayaks they maybe should have tested out before the trip, the fine art of kayaking (entry, balance, rock avoidance, pumping out water while paddling, etc etc etc) they had yet to learn, sunken cell phones, drunken Dutch pilots, planning the trip before November when everything is actually open, basically all those pesky details are laid out with an it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time-duh! kind of honesty. Knowing they all somehow managed to avoid tragedy made it easy to smile, snicker, laugh out loud shaking my head and just enjoy the several hours I spent with these men on their journey.” – Goodreads review.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 “I picked this book up a few days ago and could not put it down until I was done. Once the story takes off and they move from dream to action it is quite entertaining. I tried reading this book while stuck at the DMV and was stuck doing the “silent shake” laugh that everyone has done when they aren’t supposed to laugh out loud.” – Amazon review.
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Scott Finazzo 