Archive for the 'Planning' Category

Darned Socks

Published
by
elizabeth
on June 30, 2008
in Packing, Planning and Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

dscf1745I have a confession to make: yesterday, we spent $77.21 on six pairs of socks. The most expensive pair? $17.05 (on sale). I can safely say this is the most I have ever spent on socks in my entire life. If you think this is absurd, it is. But these are no normal socks: these are merino wool socks. And if you think wearing wool socks in a warm tropical climate sounds perfectly awful, I share the same thought. However, in the upside-down world of RTW travel, nothing is as it seems. Our research tells us that wool is the best fiber for regulating heat; it keeps you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Wool does an excellent job of wicking away moisture, and keeps nasty odors at bay.

In the world of shopping, socks rank right up there with the easiest possible purchase. There are no sizes to worry about; you just pop into the store, pick up a few pairs, and you’re on your way. But, again, in the world of RTW trip planning, socks became one of the most difficult items to make a decision on.  It took three trips to the store to get it right. While socks sound incidental they are a wardrobe essential, given the amount of terrain we will undoubtedly be covering by foot over the next eight months. Never in my life have I spent so much time evaluating the relative merits of a strip of fabric that covers my feet. One must consider the bulk, the color, the length, the support. I am now accustomed to walking into a store, scanning the premises for trip-appropriate clothing, and immediately clutching a fist of fabric, quickly calculating how much weight this might add to my pack and how fast this garment might dry after washing it in the sink.

Kitchen and Other Nightmares

Published
by
elizabeth
on June 27, 2008
in Goals/Dreams, Planning and Stress
. 0 Comments

A few evenings ago I saw a preview for Kitchen Nightmares, starring that fiery British chef Gordon Ramsey, which is one of my guilty summer pleasures.  When the announcer boomed, “Coming in August,” through my television, I leapt off the couch to grab my calendar.  Before I had a chance to open it, I realized that I would be somewhere in Turkey by then.  August sounds so close, but I’m already going to be three countries into my itinerary by that point. 

It’s moments like these that stop me cold in my tracks:  I am afraid.  Not of traveling around the world, but of leaving to travel around the world.  Over the months, I’ve tried to prepare myself for what these last two weeks before the trip would feel like.  I imagined that I’d feel exhausted and utterly overwhelmed, racing around trying to do a million things at once.  All of this is true, but despite my best efforts to ready myself, the whole experience seems to have left me reeling.  I suppose there is a difference in the mental rehearsal versus the actual emotional performance.  For months I was able to pacify myself by pushing those thoughts to the dark corners of my mind.  “I’ll worry about it when I get there,” I told myself.  But now there is here. 

I am usually a heavy sleeper, nodding off in minutes and weighed down by delicious rest.  Now I spend nearly an hour tossing and turning before finally drifting off, only to wake an hour later when I hear the neighbor’s cat scuttle through the backyard.  I am wracked with nightmares, most of which revolve around being woefully unprepared for the trip ahead.  Last night I dreamt that I forgot our passports at home; the night before I dreamt that I simply ran out of time.  I awake from these dreams heart pounding and beset by panic.  The feeling is so intense that it takes me full minutes to shake off the idea that those things haven’t really happened.    

The nature of my dreams stem from knowing how I operate in these situations: when I am tired and overwrought I am likely to get mired down in minutiae, forgetting the important details.  This leads to second guessing myself:  if I’ve forgotten something as fundamental as the passports, then what else have I forgotten?  The Absent-Minded Professor act is foreign to me.  I am also a planner who is accustomed to finishing tasks well in advance, something that is nearly impossible to do when tackling a goal of this magnitude.  In other words, I am out of my comfort zone.   

I am reading Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome:  On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World.  While it’s essentially a memoir of his family’s year of living in Rome, there’s a great deal of his emotional world that I can relate to.  He is a man who is always out of his comfort zone, be it navigating language barriers at his local grocery or trying to figure out how to be a father to six-month-old twins in a new city.  He says, “We need habit to get through the day, to get to work, to feed our children.”  I realize that, as much as I enjoy change, I, like most people, am also a creature of habit.  In fact, when I talk to people about this trip, one of the comments I hear most frequently is, “It would be fun to travel for eight months, but I’m not sure what I’d do without my routine.”  I’d be lying if I said the thought of not having one for eight months doesn’t freak me out a little. 

But here’s the other side of routine that Doerr discusses:  while we need structure and order, we can become so complacent in our everyday lives that we forget to see things afresh.  This fear I am grappling with comes, I think, from being shaken from my patterns.  In this sense, the trip has already started for me:  there is nothing normal or routine about my life anymore.  But if I can push through this fear, the lack of routine will soon become familiar.  Doeer encourages us to,

Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar.  Only then can routine experience - buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello - become new all over again.

This is the flip side to my fear and one of the things I enjoy most about travel.  It’s a chance for the pedestrian to transform into a novel experience.  Getting out of our routines is vital to our growth as humans and reaching our next stage of development.  If we’re not a little uncomfortable, then we’re probably not pushing ourselves enough.  So if these next two weeks don’t kill me, they’ll make me stronger. 

Times is On Our Side

Published
by
elizabeth
on June 25, 2008
in Goals/Dreams and Planning
. 0 Comments

Before planning a round-the-world trip took possession of our lives, we used to spend most Sundays reading the New York Times.  I hate to reinforce gender stereotypes, but I gravitated towards the Style and Arts & Entertainment sections, whereas Maikael snatched up the Business and Real Estate pages.  The one section we shared equal interest in was Travel.  Maikael and I would pour over tales of Iceland and India, Bali and Bulgaria, ooing and ahing at the gorgeous photography.  “We’ve got to go there someday!” we exclaimed, reading an article by Edward Albee on Easter Island.  Then, our emotional balloon deflated.  We’d brandish our scissors, snip the article, and slip it, with a sigh, into a plain, manila folder labeled, “Trips to Take.” 

 Over the years that folder bulged, eventually forcing me to organize it into regions of the world.  It was discouraging to see the file growing; we didn’t seem to be crossing many locations off the list.  Seeing our ambitious travel goals in black and white helped us solidify our dream of traveling for an extended period, and when we began putting together an itinerary for this trip our first steps was to revisit our New York Times file. 

Needing more time to plan our trip, we reluctantly cancelled our weekly subscription early last fall.  Last Sunday, Maikael picked up a copy of the Sunday Times for a coworker and brought the remains home. I immediately flipped to Travel; it felt like visiting an old friend.  I was delighted to see an article about viewing Goya’s art in Madrid, a city I would be visiting in just under three weeks!  For once I was able to clip the article and, rather than stuff it into the folder, tuck it into my travel guide for Spain. 

Editor’s note:  Even if you don’t subscribe to the New York Times, you can access their fantastic archive of travel-related stories and guides via their website at www.nytimes.com  (click on “Travel”), allowing you to search by region or country.  We have consistently found their recommendations to be spot-on, and the writers always seem to have a fresh perspective and unique take on whatever location they’re highlighting. 

Reading Rainbow

Published
by
elizabeth
on June 22, 2008
in Australia, India, Indonesia, Planning and Portugal
. 1 Comment

As July 13 quickly approaches, I find that The Trip has taken full residence in my brain. For months it was safely confined to the guest house, making occasional visits inside, but with The Trip so near I can’t seem to think about anything else these days, which has manifested itself in a variety of ways. On my recent trip to Seattle I made it a point to see a play, as I always do when I’m in town, decent theatre being the thing I miss most about not living there anymore. The only one that caught my eye was Namaste Man, a terrific one-man show about a guy who spent his childhood overseas as a State Department kid.

Try as I might, I find I have very little energy for engaging myself in anything that doesn’t pertain to overseas travel. This has become particularly true for reading preferences. For months, the only thing I’ve read is travel-related literature, including memoirs, novels, and guidebooks. Here is a list of a few books we’ve read recently that we’ve really enjoyed:

Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend by Patrick Symmes. This memoir follows one man’s journey by motorcycle through South America, retracing Che Guevara’s famous, epic journey over the same terrain. I bought this book for Maikael for Christmas and he loved it. He would often read me passages out loud, my favorite being Symmes’ experience at a Bolivian border crossing (he and a border patrolman have an entire conversation that goes like this: “Cuzco?” “Cuzco.”).  Highly recommended for anyone planning a trip to South America, or interested in learning more about this region of the world.

A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson. I am embarrassed to say I knew very little about Portugal, and wanted to learn more before we went. I had a hard time finding a travel memoir for Portugal, so, at the recommendation of Lonely Planet’s Portugal guidebook, I opted for a work of fiction set in the country. Billed as a crime novel (it won the UK’s prestigious Gold Dagger award in 1999), it reads more as historical fiction, providing a fascinating look into Portugal’s history from World War II to present day. An intriguing read with a complex narrative, whether you’re planning a trip to Portugal or not.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book needs little introduction, given its placement on the New York Times Bestsellers List week after week, but I can’t speak highly enough of this travel memoir. Gilbert recounts her travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia, and I was particularly intrigued by her experiences in Bali. In fact, our inclusion of this country on our itinerary is due solely to reading this book.

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. One of the best travel writers out there, Bryson writes poignantly about his experiences traversing Australia, from large coastal cities to obscure outback hamlets. I walked away with a greater understanding of what this wonderful country is all about, which really got me in the mood to visit and learn more.

Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr. I picked up this book on a lark at the University of Washington Bookstore, and am just a few chapters in, but I’m already hankering for delicate pillows of pumpkin ravioli.

One goal I’ve set for the trip is to read at least one book that pertains to each country we’re visiting. What recommendations do you have for books for us to read? Send us your ideas!

Bits and Bytes

Published
by
elizabeth
on June 20, 2008
in Electronics, Packing and Planning
. 0 Comments

dscf1731I clearly remember my family’s first computer.  We purchased it in 1993, and it was a behemoth.  It took a full day to set-up the machine and we were afraid to touch anything, lest the computer self-destruct.  For some reason I can’t recall we backed up the entire Windows system on floppy disks.  When I opened the box to our new Asus EEE PC, I couldn’t help but remember that first computer.  “How things have changed,” I thought.  The computer we will use for our trip weighs just a little over two pounds and can be held in the palm of one’s hand, like Vanna White demonstrating some super fabulous product. 

dscf1729We’ve spent a few days trying it out and, despite its size, are pretty impressed with its capabilities.  We held out for the newer model that was released at the beginning of June, which provides a larger screen and longer battery life than its predecessor, and I’m glad we did.  We’re having some troubles getting the iPod and computer to “talk” to one another, but hope to have it ironed out soon.  The keys are pretty small, too, but we’re praising the gene pool that we both were blessed with small hands:  we may not have a future in piano playing, but we’re turning out to be the perfect EEE users. 

dscf1726Sort of like how kids enjoy the box a gift comes in more than the gift itself, my very favorite feature of the EEE is its small, plush carrying case, which looks like a cute clutch.  If it wasn’t such an aberrant idea for keeping ones goods secure while traveling, I’d carry it in the crook of my arm everywhere I went.  Just because I could. 

Just Be Yourself

Published
by
elizabeth
on June 13, 2008
in Planning
. 1 Comment

Until recently, one of my favorite ways to spend my lunch break was surfing the Internet for round-the-world travel blogs. Usually I would start with one that I had recently heard about, and by the time I finished my sandwich I had read eight others, linking from one site to the next to the next. RTW travel blogs are like snowflakes: at first glance each one looks the same, but upon closer inspection no two are alike. When we first began planning our trip, the blogs were a fertile source of inspiration and ideas. Maikael and I are both people who are all excited by potential and possibility: just reading a blog post or viewing a photo gallery would instantly transport me to a place I’d never considered, and suddenly I wanted to add it to our developing itinerary. It was a fun way to research and imagine, as we counselors say, our many “possible selves.”

During one of my recent lunch breaks, as I was reading a blog from a Canadian couple, I found myself feeling drained and irritable. I suddenly realized that, as we have honed our plans, reading the blogs has become a way of seeking confirmation of our choices. Or, more accurately, it’s served as a mechanism for second-guessing our choices. Now, reading the blogs wasn’t so much inspirational as anxiety-producing.

It’s taken me awhile to understand that there is no one way to travel around the world. Just like the clothes we wear, so, too, do we possess a unique travel style, a way of moving about the world that is some reflection of our personality. I was born in the Year of the Horse. An astrologer once told me that, like a horse, I love roaming free in fenced in spaces. I don’t necessarily need to see the fence or hop the fence to know it’s there; as long as I have a sense of movement and freedom, I am content. This sums up my travel preference. I like having some structure to my travel planning, but at some point I just want to cast aside the rules and do it my way. This is the point I’m at today.

I’ve stopped reading other travel blogs for the time being. I feel like I need to reconnect to my own purpose and vision for this trip and stop relying on others’ way of doing things. I have absorbed all that I can, and with the trip nearly four weeks off, what’s the point in questioning the choices we’ve already made? I’m ready to stop talking and start doing, and I have to trust that the way we’ve planned this trip is the right way for us.