The roof(s) over our heads

In 2007 Karl and I went on our first, and thus far only "just the two of us" holiday.

Wait. That's not really what happened.

In 2007 Karl left me so that he could spend 4 months traveling throughout South America.

About 2 months into his trip he called, we realized how much we missed each other and I ended up flying down to Ecuador where we spent ten glorious days in a little surf town called Montanita. We would surf in the mornings, paraglide in the afternoons, and plan the rest of our lives (and more travel together) in the evenings. But I digress.

When I arrived in Montanita, Karl was already settled into his home away from home.

Un(fortunately), this is the only picture of those "accommodations" that I could find.

It may or may not be obvious, but this was on the 3rd floor of the building where we were staying. Notice any railings? Neither did I. Also, look closely at the bottom right hand corner of this photo - yup, that's a two person tent. It had an air mattress and some sheets inside.

Four dollars a night.

For the life of me I can not remember where it was that we kept our backpacks, during the night, or day for that matter, but I am sure people thought that since we were staying here we probably did not have anything worth stealing anyways, so I am guessing this was not much of a concern.

About halfway through my stay on the air mattress in the two person tent on the concrete floor of an unfinished building, we experience a bit of local culture.

Around 3AM we were awakened by horrible shrieks and squeals. There may have been a gunshot, or maybe I am just imagining it now. In either case, neither of us were about to stick our heads out of the tent to find out what all the commotion was about. Day broke, and a quick peak "out the front window" revealed a small fire burning more or less in the middle of the (dirt) road in front of our hostel. A kettle hung over the fire, an elderly man stirred its content with great care.

Traveling with a small child is a whole lot different.

Hudson's first trip abroad (he was 9 months and we did a 3 week long roadtrip through to Europe) we would not stay in a place that did not have an ensuite bathroom with a tub. We made one exception, and stayed for one night in a bed and breakfast that only had a toilet, sink and a stand up shower.

 e managed.

This time around, we will be trying to strike a bit more of a balance. We will be staying with friends and family, doing a bit of camping (although not necessarily on top of a half constructed building), a bit of hosteling, a bit of hotel-ing, even a bit of resort-ing.

For the first time ever though, we have booked a good chunk of our accommodations through Airbnb and plan to link up with some families through couchsurfing.org. The idea behind both of these services is that you get to have a more authentic experience, enjoy each others company and maybe even save a bit of money. Our first stay with "locals" is in a week from today. I can't wait to share our experience with everyone.

Anyone have any experience with either? I would love to hear your stories.

Cheers,

M

Growing Old is Mandatory...Growing Up is Optional

Thus far the responses to our idea has been polar opposites. One camp saying “You're crazy, this is the stupidest thing I have ever heard” and the other saying “That is so fantastic, I would love to do that and that will be such a great experience for all of you, especially Hudson”.

The naysayers have helped us to ensure we consider and make plans accordingly to minimize our exposure to any irreversible negative outcomes (yes I realize that I am a recovering accountant, step one is admitting you have a problem). The yaysayers have provided that extra inspiration to put ourselves out there and really commit to the idea.

Oddly enough my favourite response has come from someone who took the middle ground. “I personally would not choose to do this, however consider why you want to do this, and if you still decide to go ahead with it, I wish you well.” Everyone likes to hear that what they are doing is great, and will try to defend themselves when they are told they are wrong, but the middle ground is more powerful. It demands respect and forces you to re-evaluate your motives.

So … what do I hope to get out of this adventure? Why do I want to do this? The problem is that this is a pretty broad question. Right up there with what do you want in life and what makes you happy? So after much thought, I think I have been able to come up with my why.

1) Time - To make my family, specifically quality time with my family my first priority in life. Every parent says, “they grow up too quickly” or “it seems like just yesterday…”, and it is all to easy to take the ones you love most for granted. Well, we only get one chance in this life and I plan to make the most of it.

2) Excitement – All to often as we get older we are told we should be “realistic” and “stop dreaming”. The more we listen, the more we stop taking chances and look for security through guarantees in life. We start living as society says we “should” and not according to that little voice inside of us. The problem that arises from when we stop taking chances and look for the guarantees in life, is that we become bored. We loose that excitement and drive that has been fostered all throughout our childhood. I hope to teach my son as well as relearn for myself, that calculated risks are wonderful and powerful. That once your define your fears, they are rarely as bad as you first imagined and once you have prepared for the worst case scenarios, taking a calculated risk will bring excitement and happiness to your life in a way that security and being “realistic” never can. That growing old in mandatory but growing up is optional.

3) Refresh and reset - These days we often lead very unbalanced lifestyles, and I have been no exception. Ultimately I seek balance. I have no illusions that this adventure will be a day at the beach; I do not anticipate this being a Corona commercial. Far from it. Traveling with a small child will test our limits, but I hope it will also bring balance back to our lives.

That’s it. If one year from now I can look back and have achieved these three things, there will be no doubt in my mind that this adventure will have been well worth it. None of us know what the future will bring, but I am sure were going to have a lot of fun finding out.

~K~

Itinerary

You asked..... and we took forever to get back to you! Sorry.

After lots of uhm-ing and ahm-ing and many, many changes we finally have a rough itinerary for our RTW trip! Yay! High fives to us! The flights have been booked - the on the ground stuff is being worked out. True to our nature, we will make up much of the trip as we go along. As it stands, we have a pretty good idea of what we are doing for the remainder of 2011. 2012 .... is a bit patchy. We figure by the new year we will have established "our groove" and we will start firming things up as we go along.

Aaaand to be perfectly honest....

I think we may have mentioned we are not independently wealthy. Instead, we are using the equity in our home to finance this trip and although our home has sold, the actual closing is yet to come. Do you know where I am going with this? We are about $30,000 in the hole and we have not left the ground yet. Sheeesh. Does this keeps me up at night? You better believe it!

But, enough with the serious stuff. Our itinerary looks a bit like this...


December 6-23

December 24 - January 7

January 7 - February 23

February 23 - April-ish

April - mid June

Or really, Southeast Asia. Right now flights are booked into Singapore to go visit Karl's brother, and into Bangkok because we plan to spend at least some time in Thailand. So if you have a villa in Vietnam you need us to house sit for you - please fee free to get in touch. Just saying. We are responsible - ish.

mid June - September 

But really I should say Europe. Whatever Hudson, time and budget will allow. As many of you probably know, I am originally from Slovakia and a couple of years back I gave Karl a taste of what our mountains look like. He now wants to go back for more. And who am I to object :).

I am pretty exciiiitttteed!

: )
Mira

P.S. Is that your photo in my post? I tried to find you to give you credit, I really did. Seriously, if I stole your work, please let me know and I will either give you credit or take it down. But what can I say, you take great photos.

This Time Next Month

This time next month we will be out of this house and on the road to Ottawa to say goodbye to and spend some time with my parents. If I was not as excited about this trip as I am, I would be having panic attacks.

Who am I kidding? I have been having those since probably August. Ok, so maybe not panic attacks, but moments of serious doubt. And bouts of uncontrollable crying.

The crying is usually be triggered by pulling into the driveway. Or in the mornings, when the sun is coming up from just behind the large maple in our front yard. Or pretty much anytime I walk into Hudson's room just before I head to bed and see him sound asleep in his crib. Which is now a toddler bed. Which he has pretty much grown out of.

Or dismantling the patio furniture, which is what I just finished doing.

The patio furniture was technically the very first piece of furniture we had in our home. When we bought the house, the previous owner had pulled up all the rugs to show that there was hardwood flooring underneath, but it looked exactly like hardwood that for 50 years had been covered up by all kinds carpeting. My parents and my brother Mike spent the weekend with us, sanding and scrapping. It was no fun. No fun at all. My family would spend the nights in the apartment we were renting, Karl and I slept in a in a tent in OUR backyard. (So yes, we have ALWAYS been a little odd.)

We had a backyard! And patio furniture!

Our first "dinner party". On our then brand new patio set (August 2008)

My dad and I scrapping the floor of what is now our master bedroom (August 2008)

The patio set is going to my parents new home near Ottawa. They just build a ginormous new deck, and I think it will look nice there. I am happy that it will get some use while we are gone, but for some reason taking it out of here has me all choked up.

What else is being moved this weekend? All our art. The canoe painting my mom did for us (based on a picture Karl took at High Falls in Algonquin when I first took him up to meet my parents) Hudson's art, all our photos.... all the things that make this house a home....

Hudson is at daycare right now. I almost dread the moment he notices all our stuff is off the walls.

"Guuuys. What's going on here guys?"

(That's one of his favourite phrases at the moment, and I can almost hear him say that)

There is a price. Planning this trip has not been easy. But in my gut, it still feels like the right thing to do.

:)
Mira

You Can Take My Husband Out of the Office...

but you will have to pry the spreadsheets ....

Seriously.

Our trip now has it's very own spreadsheet! In Excel. The Windows version. On our Mac. Which now also has VMWare. For the sole purpose of being able to run Excel. In Windows. Because it's just so much more powerful - don't you know?!?!

So yes, as of Friday night we now have a "powerful" tool which we can use to "easily" determine the following;

Where we will be staying on any given day.Weather the reservations has been confirmed. Have we put down a deposit? Paid in full? Did we rent a car? Do we need one? Are there additional flights/train/bus/ferry rides we need to confirm? Put down a deposit for? Pay in full? How much do we anticipate on spending on food? Activities? Miscellaneous? Which would all be fine except for ours is completely broken down. Day by day by day. For all 274 (or something like that) of them. There are also fields for "budget" vs "actual". For every single category. On every single day. In a Windows based version of Excel. On our Mac. I am just saying....

After looking it over, I suggested we add columns for our estimated vs actual utility per dollar. For every single day.

The sarcasm in my tone was entirely lost on my husband, who immediately began looking for the appropriate space where he might insert such a columns.

But all kidding aside, trip planning is starting to get pretty nutty.
It has become a part time job for me. (Not to mention the packing and selling/storing of a house full of stuff). So really, a spreadsheet was definitely in order. The charts that automatically update themselves as we continue to add to our ever expanding mess of "data"... perhaps not so much.

I have just asked Karl to review this post, just to make sure I was not missing a category.

"You are making it sound much more complicated then it actually is"

I raised my left eyebrow.

"The only reason I put in all those dates and categories is so that I can run "Sum if " statements and we can tell how much we are spending each month or in each location ....."

I rest my case.

:) Mira