Category — Pre-Trip

For most of 2007 U.S. citizens faced frustrating delays getting new passports or simply renewing old passports that were about to expire. Apparently the U.S. State Department wasn’t prepared to handle the record number of applications that resulted from a change in travel rules requiring Americans to have passports for to travel to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.

Imagine my surprise when we were able to renew our children’s passports in just seven days. It may have been my most painless, efficient interaction with the U.S. government ever.

I was so impressed by the State Department’s handling of the passport renewal I thought I would spend some time on their web site familiarizing myself with the travel information and services they provide.

First I checked out their travel alerts and warnings. I read their ominously labeled “Worldwide Caution.” Just to be fully briefed, I read their “Avian Flu Update” and the memo on “International Travel Scams.”

Then I delved into a few of their “country-specific” reports. This quote is fairly typical:

“…Crime, including violent crime, has increased over the last few years… Incidents include pickpocketing; mugging; “snatch and grab” thefts of mobile phones, watches and jewelry; and theft of unattended bags, especially at airports and from cars parked at restaurants, hotels and resorts…

“Pickpockets target tourists, especially at historic sites, restaurants, on buses, and trains… Walking in isolated areas, including public parks, especially after dark, should also be avoided, as these provide advantageous venues for muggers and thieves….

“Travelers should not leave drinks unattended in bars and nightclubs. There have been some instances of drinks being spiked with illegal substances, leading to incidents of robbery and rape.”

That’s the report on London.

After spending time on the State Department web site, it’s a wonder any American would leave their house, let alone the country.

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Now it gets serious. We’ve got 196 days (more or less) until our planned departure. While that may sound far away, I know it will come fast. April is going to be here in a flash – and June won’t be far behind.

Throughout the fall as we talked and planned and talked more, it felt like we had plenty of time to prepare. The trip was “next year.” Well, next year’s here – and the time for talk is over.

It’s overwhelming to think of the things we have to do before we can leave for a year. Vaccinations. Renting our house. Renewing our passports. Gathering and organizing roadschool materials. Putting a plan in place to manage our finances. Committing to an itinerary. And the point of no return: Buying airline tickets.

I think I can speak for my family when I say that we all find the idea of this trip very exciting – and the reality just a bit frightening. We’ll be stepping into the unknown and venturing a bit outside our comfort zones. More than a bit, actually.

John Higham, who journeyed with his family on a trip around the world, sent me a supportive email a few months ago. In it he said, “The hardest thing you will do is to get on that first plane.”I have no doubt that he is right.

This week I feel as though we are taking the first step down a long jetway leading to the first plane.

There is a priceless moment near the beginning of the documentary film A Map For Saturday when writer-director Brook Silva-Braga tells his co-workers at HBO’s Inside the NFL that he is leaving his job to travel around the world by himself.

One colleague asks incredulously, “You’re doing this alone?”

Another is less charitable: “There’s the idiot. There’s the idiot. He’s the one who had it all. He’s the one who’s giving it up.”

For the next ninety minutes Silva-Braga explores the world of long-term solo travel. One reviewer called it, “the single best cinematic response to ‘why we travel.’”

On the Saturday before Christmas, Dani, Caroline, Conor and I sat down to watch the documentary. I thought it would be a good idea if we watched together and got a small sense of the reality of being on the road for a year. Let me tell you, Silva-Braga delivers in spades.

He has produced a remarkable documentary that communicates the arc of emotions that are part of long-term travel. His early days of loneliness and second-guessing give way to moments of incredible discovery and friendship, and ultimately to the emotional recognition that it is time to go home.

One of the things I’m interested in experiencing on our trip is the emotional journey that parallels the physical journey. What happens when you thoroughly disengage from your settled life? What impact will it have on us as a family?

David Elliot Cohen and his family took a year-long trip around the world, which he chronicled in the book, “One Year Off.” Apparently, at some point after their return, Cohen and his wife separated. I know nothing about their situation or if the trip played any role in the couple’s eventual parting. I do know that Cohen had this to say in the last chapter of his book:

“Neither Devi [Cohen’s wife] nor I would have made this journey if we weren’t getting along, and even then, there were tense moments – especially at the outset… If anything, we learned that a trip like this accentuates problems rather than solves them.”

I’ve always felt that our nuclear family was very tight, that we are a good team and always try to be respectful and supportive of each other. It will be interesting to put our relationships to the test. I’d like to believe that we will take something strong and make it stronger. We’ll see.

Thanks to A Map For Saturday, we’ll be going into this journey with a better sense of what to expect. At least now we can all visualize examples of the highs and lows of long-term travel. For anyone interested in a journey like this, I highly recommend this documentary.

For the record, the film presented no “deal-breakers” to any of us, though bedbugs and some Asian toilets may present a real challenge. 😉

Check out the trailer for the movie.

Nearly everyone has felt the powerful doubts that come on a sleepless night. A friend said: “It’s like a cold hand in the dark.”

Last week I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t quiet my mind.

At first my thoughts were innocent, as I tried to work out details about the trip. “Should we travel east-to-west or west-to-east? Can we follow the good weather? Are there places we should settle in for a while?” I spent a good thirty minutes shifting pieces of this puzzle in my mind.

Then I felt that cold hand: “Do you really think this trip a good idea? Think about all the things that could go wrong. Think about the risk you’ll be taking.”

It grabbed hold: “What if someone gets hurt or sick? Will we be able to find medical care? What if we get mugged? What if we get separated from one of the kids in a strange city?”

It tightened its grip: “Tsunami. Earthquake. Pandemic. Plane crash. Recession. War.” The future can look pretty grim in the middle of a sleepless night.

Out the window the sky was brightening. It was time to get up, to get the kids off to school. But I couldn’t shake the feeling. Was this trip going to be a terrible mistake?

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I didn’t know what to say as a fellow parent pressed her point.

“You’ll be putting your kids at a great disadvantage, you know, pulling them out of school for a year. What’s it going to do to your daughter’s transcript when she applies to college?”

Well. I had to admit I hadn’t thought about that. School was an issue we needed to figure out.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, there is a well-worn path to success that leads through demanding private schools or public school magnet programs, SAT prep classes and extensive college application engineering.

There’s little time for just being a kid, not when there’s another advanced placement class, enrichment activity or volunteer opportunity to add to the resume.

Given its reputation as having one of the best public school systems in the country, I was surprised and pleased to find Montgomery County was rather broad-minded about homeschooling.

Aside from the hole in our daughter’s transcript, Dani and I felt we could figure out a way to make homeschooling roadschooling work and ultimately our kids would be able to graduate high school with their peers.

As we began to investigate how to do it, we were amazed at the educational resources available on the Internet. From Indian tutors online to free college lectures, there was no shortage of educational materials that would allow us to focus on the places we planned to visit.

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There was no longer any doubt, my body had begun to break down.

Chronic back pain. Weight gain. Shortness of breath climbing stairs. No one approaching fifty could consider these “positive indicators.” Soon I began to understand the main culprit behind my decline. My desk. Or more accurately, the eight hours or so I spent hunched over a keyboard, staring at a monitor each working day.

My body could no longer do the things I imagined, like delivering a burst of speed in a touch football game or tracking down a fly ball playing softball. I was beginning to walk stooped over; I had lost all flexibility; I felt unsteady and brittle.

I thought of the story told about travel writer Bruce Chatwin. Chatwin had been a highly regarded expert on Impressionist art when his eyesight began to suffer. A doctor determined a latent squint was impairing his vision; the close analysis of artwork demanded by his job caused it.

Chatwin’s doctor recommended a sabbatical – preferably one that involved looking at distant horizons. So Chatwin went to Sudan, and later, famously, to Patagonia.

One day I stumbled on a video, written and produced by Erik Trinidad, in which he poses a simple question. If you’ve ever questioned the idea of living your life chained to a desk, take a look at Erik’s video “Would You?”

When I was in college, if a student wanted to work on a computer, he or she would gather their punch cards and head off to the math building. (Not that I actually went to the math building, mind you, but I was told that’s where computer science classes were held.)

A few years later, I was living in Washington, D. C., and desperate for a job. I went to work for a company that ran an online news and information service for the energy industry. Nothing particularly interesting about this, except it was 1985, before the launch of Windows, AOL, and a little thing I like to call “the World Wide Web.”

If my bosses at Information, Inc., were ahead of their time, they certainly didn’t know how to capitalize on it, and the business soon disappeared. Nonetheless, it was a formative experience for me, and I developed what has been a life-long interest in communications technologies.

When we began preparing for this trip, we knew we wanted to document our travels and make the production of a web site central to our children’s year of “roadschooling.” I had work experience with web-based projects, but always from the content side. Technology was something others did.

As I thought about a blog to document our trip, I wasn’t sure I could build the kind of web site I pictured in my mind’s eye.

Then I found WordPress.

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Matt Harding has become an Internet phenomenon for dancing badly in amazing places. And no wonder – the videos he produced documenting his travels (and dancing) are oddly compelling. In what undoubtedly began as a lark, Matt captured something special about the joy of travel.

So, once you’ve decided to take your family on a trip around the world, what’s your next move? It’s great when you think the universe is talking to you – but it’s not like you’re getting specific instructions from a travel planner.

In a situation like this, there’s only one place to turn.

Google.

Surely we weren’t the first family to think of this. Not by a long shot, as it turns out.

Google “Family RTW” or “Family Trip Around the World.” It’s amazing how many families have done it, are doing it, are planning it.

First we found the Canadian Carlsons, David Carlson, Sarah James and their three kids aged 13, 10 and 8. They left on their trip on August 11, 2001. They kept a web-based account of their trip long before blogging was ubiquitous.

More searching led us to Grooms Globe Trek, Carlton and Deborah Grooms’ trip around the world with their two kids. The Grooms are professional photographers, and as a result of their trip, they are producing a book, Portraits of our World. The Grooms have pledged to use the profits from their book to support children’s causes worldwide.

The more we looked, the more families we found.

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The fortune cookie was the final sign.

Months earlier I had casually raised the subject with my wife over lunch at a local Latin American restaurant. “Would you think I was crazy if I said we should take a year off, pull the kids out of school, and travel around the world?”

I couldn’t tell if Dani was humoring me or if she really meant it when she said: “Sounds interesting. Could we really do it?”

Once I voiced what I had been thinking, the signs began to appear.

It started with my son. One day, out of the blue, he said to me, “Dad, I know what I want to do when I grow up.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to travel around the world, talk to people, listen to their stories, then use what they tell me to make up new stories.”

Conor was ten.

Weeks later, I brought up the possibility of a trip around the world at dinner. I was sure my daughter, Caroline, would object. She has never enjoyed change. Years earlier, when we were thinking about moving to a new house in the same community, she’d objected so strongly I thought she would have a meltdown at the mere thought of moving less than a mile away.

But she didn’t object. She wanted to hear more. What exactly was I talking about?

Weeks passed and we continued to talk about it in pairs, threesomes, and when we all gathered for dinner.

It began to feel like it was all we talked about. It was our family secret – we were sworn to talk about it only to each other. The idea seemed so crazy, we didn’t dare tell anyone else.

One night we got Chinese take-out. Over dinner I asked Caroline how she felt about the idea of the trip now. She would be heading into high school, and it would probably impact her more than any one else.

She said: “Dad, I’ve thought a lot about this. And the way I feel right now, I’m scared to go. But I also know I’ll be really disappointed if we don’t go.”

Then Caroline broke open her fortune cookie. It said: “You will step on the soil of many countries.”

And that, for me, was the final sign.

After my son had, at age ten, expressed my childhood dream in a more direct, articulate way than I could have. After my daughter pinpointed the emotions I felt, and put her finger on the fear of the unknown that had stopped me in the past.

After my wife had said to me, in so many words, I’m up for an adventure with you.

We passed the fortune around the table. I called for a family vote: “All in favor of taking a year off to travel around the world, raise your hand.”

Four hands shot up.