In Pursuit of Robe Life
- Scott Linwell
- 23 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
How could we have known, almost 25 years ago, the adventure we were about to embark on? When Joey and I found each other on April 20th, 2003, we knew immediately we were meant to be together. Instant certainty and instant attraction. We’ve hardly been apart since that day.
Our friends would probably say it was a little obnoxious (or very obnoxious) that we celebrated our one-day anniversary the very next day. And we made sure they heard about the two-day anniversary, three-day, one-week, one-month… and yes, we’re still counting. Because when you know, you know, and every day feels worth celebrating, especially when you’re already dreaming about where the next adventure will lead you.
We’ve filled those days, weeks, months, and now years, with as much travel, food, experiences, and joy as we possibly could. Saying yes to each other meant saying yes to the exciting unknown, to laughter, to packed bags, and to stories we’d be creating & telling for the rest of our lives.
Our very first trip together set the tone for everything that followed. We boarded a flight to Costa Rica armed with nothing more than backpacks, a guidebook, a map, and a reservation for an SUV we planned to tour the country in. The reservation didn’t come through (long story, for another time) so instead we found ourselves driving a beat-up purple Isuzu Amigo from a used car lot.
It wasn’t what we planned, but it was exactly right. That little purple car became the perfect symbol of us: adaptable, a little ridiculous, and absolutely ready for wherever the road might lead.
We knew we’d end the trip near the northwest coast in the Guanacaste province for the Fiestas Cívicas de Liberia, an annual “county fair” celebrating Costa Rica’s cowboy, or Tico, culture. We filled the week between landing and the event wandering tiny coastal villages and camping at the base of a volcano, lying awake at night watching sparks rise from the crater into the sky, already realizing that travel wasn’t just something we did, it was how we loved and it would be how we great to knew each other and the world.
A few months later, we married each other in Central Park. We stumbled into a large non-denominational ceremony we hadn’t planned to attend at all. It was 2004, the fight for marriage equality was in full swing, and George W. Bush was campaigning against the Freedom to Marry. What we thought was coincidence turned out to be a demonstration, and our wedding became an act of love and quiet protest.
It would be the first of our two marriages.
Not long after that first wedding, we took another trip that would quietly shape our future, Amsterdam. We spent days wandering through the streets, soaking in the history, the style, the architecture. We daydreamed about living aboard the woonboots, or houseboats, moored along the canals, ducked into coffee shops, enjoyed the local cannabis culture, and ate food from every corner of the world.
We stayed in an historic hotel built in 1890, the Park Plaza Victoria Amsterdam, in a room on the second floor just above the entrance. Through French doors, we looked out over intersecting canals, across a grand plaza from the Centraal Station, where watched trains arrive and depart, and boats, bicycles, and people flowing endlessly below.
On one of our days, we decided to do absolutely nothing at all. We visited local shops and came back with Dutch cheese: Gouda, Edam, Maasdam, plus sausages, pickles, vegetables, wine, and weed. We opened the French doors wide, slipped into the plush robes hanging in the closet, and spent the entire day grazing, lounging, listening, and watching the city breathe.
That day quietly changed everything. It gave our way of living a name. A purpose. A direction.
Robe Life.
Robe Life is hard to define, but you know it when you’re living it. It’s the feeling of being perfectly placed—in the world, in the moment, and with each other. Sometimes it looks like luxury and open windows in a beautiful city. Other times, it’s sleeping under the stars on a mountaintop. Different destinations. Same feeling.
Years later, in 2014, we married again, this time standing in front of the Mecklenburg County Courthouse on the first day it was legal in North Carolina. That day felt less like a beginning and more like a long-awaited exhale and relief after years of fighting for something that mattered so deeply to us.
Since then, our travels, and our lives, have been guided by that same pursuit. We ventured throughout the Caribbean and Central America and eventually bought a home in Roatán, Honduras. We jogged through redwood forests, ate directly from fishing boats along the Oregon Coast, and once wrecked our boat in Roatán on the reef across the bay from our home, at night, and had to be rescued, because adventure, like love, doesn’t always follow the plan.
We’ve eaten in tiny back-alley, hole-in-the-wall cafés and sat down to unforgettable white-tablecloth meals. We’ve wandered London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Madrid. We sipped piña coladas in the Puerto Rican restaurant where they were invented and roasted fresh cashews over an open fire five feet from the ocean, from our own tree.
One of our most influential trips was to St. Lucia. We spent a week in a cliffside bungalow an hour from the nearest town, letting the ocean set the pace of our days. We paddled kayaks to deserted, uninhabited beaches, wandered the open-air markets of Castries eating from food stalls, and tasted cacao straight from the pod, right off the tree. That week reshaped how we thought about travel, home, and what it really means to feel rich. It wasn’t about convenience or luxury, rather about presence, simplicity, and choosing each other again and again. It was unmistakably Robe Life.
Our homes have reflected the same philosophy. Century-old bungalows. An off-grid, boat-access-only Caribbean paradise. An uptown penthouse. A cabin on 100 acres. And now, a mid-century modern split-level we’re renovating—each place a pause, never an ending.
We’ve swum with sharks, octopus, eels, and barracuda. We’ve lived where crocodiles waited just around the corner and we’ve chased bears off our farm. Through every place and every version of our life, we’ve kept choosing the same thing: curiosity over comfort, movement over fear, and each other at the heart of every adventure.
Fast forward to 2025. The mountain home we’d just moved into in 2024 was devastated by Hurricane Helene that September. What followed was a long season of rebuilding, through the last months of 2024 and into the winter and spring of 2025. Long days of physical labor. Financial strain. Emotional exhaustion. Days on end with almost no one else in sight.
But Robe Life didn’t disappear. It deepened. It became resilience, teamwork, and choosing hope while imagining what comes next. It took form in long cold nights with a warm wood stove, tending to sore muscles, talking through the days progress and planning for the next. And it prepared us for the biggest surprise yet.
We were invited to compete as a team on Netflix’s new game show, What’s in the Box! By then, months of solving real problems together, physical, financial, emotional, had tuned us into each other as deeply as two people can be. We trusted instincts, read signals without speaking, and stayed grounded under pressure. We believe that’s what made us win.
And the win couldn’t have been more perfect for us. As if it had been curated just for us.
Trips. Incredible, once-in-a-lifetime trips. Bonnaroo and Coachella plus $25,000 to fill the year with other concerts, plays, shows—anything we want to experience. NFL season tickets to cheer on our favorite team, the Carolina Panthers. Finland to see the northern lights and to travel by reindeer and by dog sled. A weekend shopping spree in Paris. A luxury yacht cruise up the coast of South America.
A year. We’ll stretch these over the course of year, a year of a lifetime. One that feels like an open map, perfectly aligned with how we love and how we live. The final portion of our prizes, enough funds to ease back on work and lean fully into experience.
After everything, the storms, the rebuilding, the quiet endurance, it feels like the universe leaning in with a smile. A reminder that Robe Life isn’t just about comfort or adventure. It’s about momentum. About believing the best chapters are still ahead.
In case you were wondering… we’re still counting, and today is our Eight Thousand Two Hundred and Seventy Second Day anniversary, see you tomorrow for our 8,273rd
the pursuit of robe life