Sure, that's an option. It doesn't really change my overall point though that anything beyond galactic colonization is unrealistic on any time scale. Our next nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, is over 2.5 MILLION light years away, over 10 times farther than my "crossing the milky way" example, with nothing in-between to make a pit stop if needed, you have to cross the true void of space to get there.
And that's just to get the next nearest galaxy. Current estimates suggest the observable universe contains 2 TRILLION galaxies.