Learning to give myself a break....

...Or: 12 days is different than 12 months

So our passports have been burning a hole in our pocket pretty much since 6 months after our return from our RTW trip. But we've had a lot of things to take care of first:
- Selling a house in Minnesota
- Moving cross-country
- Finding a place to live in Portland
- Finding jobs in Portland
- Getting half-way through an MBA program
- Etc.

But once we had gotten somewhat settled we realized that we really, really needed another taste of travel before that might involve carting along a diaper bag.

Turkey was one of the countries on our original RTW trip list that got squeezed out when we decided to slow down and spend more time in fewer places and it remained near the top of our want-to-see list. Plus it seems like everyone we spoke with either had just returned from there or knew someone that had and couldn't say enough good things. So the decisions was made in December: come Brian's next semester break we'd be cashing in the last of our NW frequent flier miles (before they mysteriously 'disappear' in the Delta merger) and be Istanbul-bound.

One of the hardest things to get used to though has been the difference in planning this trip versus dealing with seeing new countries on the RTW trip. The very first thing that slapped us in the face was the reality of having to fit a visit into a two-week vacation instead of being able to take as many weeks as we thought we needed to see what we wanted to see. (And we were only able to do 2 weeks because Brian negotiated that as part of accepting his new job in February..otherwise we wouldn't be able to be away nearly that long).

So I was reading guide books and making lists of places to see and kept crying out "what do you MEAN we can't just take a month plus to explore???? How can ANYBODY be expected to go to a new place for only 12 days??? It's almost not even worth going!" Yes, I do realize how ridiculous that sounds; it has helped reinforce how unique an experience we had before and how fortunate we were to have done it. Eventually I narrowed down our destinations to 4 cities/villages in relative close geographic proximity that would allow us both to explore/experience a little bit of Turkey but also have a chance for some sorely needed rest and recovery in between grad school semesters.

Figuring out logistics was the next hurdle. Again, on the RTW trip we would have taken mostly local buses or trains and would have viewed circuitous routes, uncertain timetables or long stop-overs as part of the charm. But with only 12 days (there it is again) it didn't make sense to spend an entire one of them trying to travel 35 miles via tortuous connections. Thus all of sudden we found ourselves planning on an internal flight to get from Istanbul to the west coast and back and renting a car to navigate between west coast cities.

The same sort of rethinking happened with hotels. During the trip we found the best policy (outside of high season in europe/chinese new year in Siem Reap, etc.) was to wait until we arrived in city to choose a place to stay. That usually led to cheaper lodgings and also meant we wouldn't have pre-paid for a place that didn't live up to its advertising. In this case, we are traveling during shoulder season or at the very very beginning of high season. Normally that would be even more reason to use our old strategy. But in some of the small villages we're going to it was unclear how many places would be open yet, and we discovered that our return to Istanbul coincided with a Formula 1 race. And we didn't feel like spending a chunk of our sightseeing/exploring time doing the hostel/hotel shuffle. However when we looked into reserving ahead of time we found that most of the hotels wanted us to transfer money to a bank account to reserve a room (vs just being able to give them a cc number).

Before I knew it, I found myself contacting an Istanbul-based travel agency that had come very highly recommended by a good friend (and by Rick Steves). I presented them with the itinerary I had come up with, asked them to suggest changes if the logistics wouldn't work, and had them make the flight and rental car and hotel (not hostel) reservations and arrange all the payments.

Doing that made me feel guilty and wimpy; basically it felt like a total cop-out. It was like our experience on the RTW trip had brainwashed us into thinking that the only valid method of traveling was on a shoe-string budget with logistics that you manage entirely on your own and with the flexibility to not have set plans. And that certainly is a great way to travel and one that I hope we get to do again in the future. But what gets lost in the haze of nostalgia is how much energy it takes to travel that way, and how tiring it can be to always be planning, and paying attention, and figuring things out and dealing with uncertainty.

After a couple of weeks of flogging myself, I think I've finally convinced myself that it's just as valid to go on a trip where things are planned ahead of time (and yes, even where someone else has done a lot of that work planning for you - travel agents need to earn a living too), so that you can be relaxed and just enjoy and be able to focus all your attention on what you are seeing and experiencing around you instead of having half a brain working on where you'll sleep that night.

So repeat after me: 12 days is different than 12 months. Both are good.

Becca

(and yes, I am fully aware of the irony of my formerly psycho type A+ personality self actually struggling with planning more instead of planning less. Who says traveling around the world for a year doesn't change you? )

We're out of here! (almost)

We're ready to go!,
originally uploaded by beccabrian.

That photo says it all (check it out)....Unbelievable that we got everything organized and together and into those bags!!!

Tuesday is the big day; we leave Portland on an 8:30am flight arriving into Brussels at 8:45am local time on Wednesday.

Monday was absolute mayhem; we saw Becca’s aunt Sue off early and then proceeded to spend all day running last minute errands, dropping off the Subaru at our friend’s Cair and Luigi's horse farm (congrats again on a successful horse trial this weekend!) and basically running around in a panic all day.

The biggest disappointment of the day was the fact that we didn't get much of a chance to spend time and relax with Becca's mom. Luckily she was in the car with us as we did our best imitation of an anally organized chicken with its head cut off, so we could at least chat in between hopping in and out of the car. Our true "quality time" with her was limited to a 15 minute dinner at the local Chinese place while rushing to catch the shuttle back up to Portland. Still, Becca and she were able to take a moment to talk about how much Becca's Dad would LOVE this trip.

Brian's parents picked us up in Portland and we got to spend a little time familiarizing them with our blog before hitting the sack.

We’re both exhausted at this point; all the travel preparations have taken quite a bit out of us and led to some sleepless nights (hopefully the flight over the pond will help). That being said, we’re both excited and nervous to have the overseas portion of our adventure starting. The unknown is ahead; what it brings us we do not know but we’re ready to embrace it head on.

Brian

PS Best of luck to these guys in Omaha over the weekend.
PPS Here's another look at how not-big our packs are. This should be interesting....

What in the World…?

Mystery Picture!,
originally uploaded by beccabrian.

First in a to-be continuing series of quasi-educational posts for the kids reading our blog:

Any guess what these are?
Hint #1: They’re usually in the water, not on land
Hint #2: You don't want to be messing with them

If you guessed this you're spot on...

Evidently this happens fairly regularly with this species. It was a first for us personally in Waldport, OR. Now we're not experts on marine biology by any means, but we can tell you that hundreds of thousands of these dead and rotting on a beach make a powerful stink. Peeee-ew

Peace at the Beach

Davis Family,

I’m writing this after just getting back from a relaxing weekend with the Davis clan at the Bloomfield beach house in Waldport, OR. In between getting heckled by my parents about what we were carrying and getting sound packing advice from my brother Kevin, we were able to enjoy a glorious weekend with relaxing views, beach walks, a good old-fashioned wine sister-in-law show-down, and lots of family moments, both original and blended. All in all, just what you would want to try and recharge the batteries.

Now in Corvallis to visit Becca’s Aunt Sue, Becca’s mom and finish last minute details before heading to Portland Monday night!

Brian

Since we last wrote…

We spent two great days catching up with Becca’s brother Jon and his wife Lori during the evening while hitting glorious places such as Kinko’s and US Bank. Unfortunately we didn’t have any time to hit here. Much sushi was consumed, talk of their to-be remodeled house was had and we now know where to pick up sweet Apricot Liqueur in the Czech Republic. Thanks to both of them again for extending their usual 8pm bedtime so they could spend a little more time socializing with us :-)

We then headed out to Gresham where we got a great chance to spend an afternoon with my Grandmother Wendy, hear her globetrotting stories and admire here glorious backyard garden before heading to Casa Davis for a proper Midwestern meal and seeing Lincoln (another groomsmen and an unhealthy supporter of these guys) and his two kids.

Off to the beach for the weekend!

Brian

What made the cut…

Here’s a list of what’s in our packs for the trip. With everything in them (only excluding our sandals); Brian’s weighed in at 26 lbs; Becca’s 24 lbs. We tried our best to follow the travel credo “pack half of what you need and bring twice as much money”. I’d say we got about half the way there so I wouldn’t be surprised if this list dwindled in a few weeks.


Clothes For Each

1 Mtn Hardware Windstopper Jacket
1 Rain Shell (Mtn Hrdwre- Br, REI – Be)
1 pair hiking/walking shoes w/ Vibram soles (North Face – Br, Vasque - Be
1 pair sandals (Keen- Br, Chaco’s – Be)
5 prs socks (Ultimax/Coolmax/Smart Wool)
5 prs underwear (Ex Officio Travel)
1 long sleeve dryfit shirt
1 short sleeve dryfit shirt
1 long sleeve button up shirt (nicer travel clothes - Brian)
1 short sleeve button up shirt (nicer travel clothes - Brian)
2 knit sleeveless tops (nicer travel clothes – Becca)
1 skirt (Becca)
1 Chico’s packable top (Becca)
1 swimsuit (Becca)
1 pair shorts
1 pair pants
1 pair convertible shorts/pants (shorts double as swimsuit Brian)
1 baseball cap
1 pair running shorts/dryfit shirt to do workouts
1 pair sunglasses
1 bandana


Other Stuff for Each
1 Platypus collapsible water bottle
1 Pack towel
1 Pack washcloth (Becca)
1 Silk sleep sack
1 Ipod shuffle
1 Pack Rain cover
1 money belt
1 Passport
1 Scanrail pass
1 Eurorail pass
Credit Card
ATM Card
Passport copy

Joint Stuff
1 Digital camera (elph)
1 Journal
1 mini-notebook
Adapters for electronics
Recharger for camera battery
Recharger for IPOD
Card reader for uploading dig pics
1 mini flashlight
1 headlamp
1 leatherman tool (knife, scissors, corkscrew(!)
First Aid kit
Pills
1 Elastic Band w/ handles (for workouts)
1 document folder

Packs
2 Kelty Redwing packs (2500 W, 2650 M)
2 REI flashpack/stuff sacks (for daypacks)

Brian

Finally in Oregon!

Quite an adventurous day while traveling from SF to Corvallis. A few observations from the 9 1/2 hours on the road.

- Leaving SF after rush hour was the way to go; we took advantage of Mark and Jessica's wonderful hospitality in the morning and as a result didn't have to add to many hours in the car.

- Which is good because trouble will always come your way when you're going past a town named Weed. In our case, we got stuck behind a 12 car pileup (and an ugly one at that) which had us parked on I-5 for an hour. Not good times.

- We highly recommend eating lunch or dinner while driving the 570 miles. We obviously should have stopped here when we passed through Cottonwood and gotten our food from a good Minnesota boy (he's from Robbinsdale eerily enough). Instead we staggered into Corvallis underfed and tired.

Up to Portland tomorrow with a few days of serious work on the horizon before heading over to Walport for the weekend.

One more leg to go...

Too many hills....,
originally uploaded by beccabrian.

Spent a great weekend in San Francisco with Mark and Jessica, including prepping our taste buds for the southeast asian part of our trip at the Tao Cafe, a fantastic little neighborhood restaurant near Noe Valley (it's just one of those great authentic neighborhood joints, and yummy), and practicing for our trip by walking up and down and up and down the hills.

Tomorrow morning we head north to Oregon. We'll spend a week there visiting our brothers and sisters-in-law and moms and dad and grandmother and childhood friends. We've got about 2.5 more pages of to-dos to finish before we get on the plane and head to Brussels.

At that point these entries will become much more interesting and exotic. :-)

Wish us luck...

Welcome to the Blog, Version 2.0

Mark the Magnificant,
originally uploaded by beccabrian.

You may have noticed that we have a new, improved look around here (including pictures, woo-hoo!!). This is all thanks to our friend Mark Foltz, PhD in Artificial Intelligence from MIT and currently one of the programming geniuses at Google. Mark was one of Brian's roommates at WashU and a groomsman at our wedding.

Of course, blog-fixing is hard work......

Feel free to post comments about the change or other suggestions for improvement. We might be able to find some goodies along the road to bribe him with...

West Coast, baby....

Three world travellers,
originally uploaded by beccabrian.

So we finally made it to the West Coast.

The drive to Reno from Salt Lake was long and empty. Totally put the cruise control on 80, lock the steering wheel, and take a nap. Contrary to the suggestions made in the comments section of our last post, Brian did not spend all of our travelling money at the blackjack tables (though not necessarily for lack of trying ). Becca decided Reno had all of the parts of Vegas she hates and none of the parts that are nice, so she can safely cross that city off of our 'need to return to' list.

After Reno we made it across the Sierra Nevadas and landed in Sacramento to visit Lisa and Jesse. Lisa and Brian are friends from way back and we had the opportunity to help them break in their new house (congrats again!) while enjoying good food and company.

Thursday brought us to the Bay Area and Becca's extended family. It was wonderful to see Ken and Ellyn, Richard and Laura, Joanna (thanks for coming down from the city!), Susan and Craig, and family friends David and Laura (and new baby Ari...Congrats again!). The most special part of the visit though, was the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Nana, Becca's grandmother, who is a world traveller in her own right. We felt lucky to have the chance to hear her stories and hang out.

On to S.F.....

Where's the next stop?

Just got back from dinner and Return of the Sith here in beautiful downtown Salt Lake. Some of the highlights from ten hours on the road between North Platte and SLC.

-heavy rains in Nebraska and Wyoming made driving a little dicey in places.

-Becca navigating through a dense fog in Wyoming which combined with the rain and construction made driving guesswork at best.

-The 30 degree temp swing during the day with a stop in Wyoming bottoming out at 35. Not good for a pair of drivers in shorts :-)

-Lots of open land. Not a whole lot of civilization in the 20+miles between exits.

-Beautiful landscape once we got into Utah and headed towards Salt Lake.

(the great lake itself)

-sprinting about 400m after the movie when we suddenly realized our car could quite possibly be in a tow zone. Thankfully the car was still there.

Sleep time now. We head to Reno tomorrow. Hopefully there will be enough time to play a little blackjack...

Brian

Fines Double in Construction Zones

Day 1 and three states (MN, IA, NE) down.

Surprisingly, Nebraska turns out not to be that bad to drive through. After four hours we have yet to see a single cornstalk. What's up with that???

The worst part has been the constant construction zones (made even more maddening by the fact that of course no construction is being done on a holiday weekend Sunday) and the rain.

The front runners for favorite bill boards for day one of the trip are "The Spam Museum. Either you get it or you don't" from Austin, MN and "Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Pork." from the Pork Council ("the other white meat"). The culinary priorities of the
Midwest just keep shining through….

We're spending the night in the hometown of William "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Yee-haw! (Thanks, Robert :-)). On to Salt Lake City tomorrow.

B&B

It's finally real!

After a last brutal stretch (11.5 hours of frantic packing and cleaning) we are officially out of the house and on the road. Unbelievable.

It was sad leaving the house…we really love it and our neighborhood and it's still nerve-wracking not having renters for the place. (We REALLY hope that issue gets resolved before we're too far into the trip. Otherwise you'll be reading about a lot of ways to travel the
world on a shoe-string budget) However we're excited and elated that this dream is about to become real.

Despite the fact that we're going to be traveling the world with two small packs and two small daypacks, we still haven't managed to translate this whole packing-light thing into the rest of our lives (as the picture of our Subaru above shows).

We spend the next few days driving across the central Midwest to San Francisco. Then after a few days visiting friends and family there we'll drive up to Portland, Oregon to be with our immediate families before flying to Brussels on June 14th.

Off we go!

B & B

The real travel planning...

Ideally, my goal when this site went up was to be updating a little bit more frequently while we were still in the States. Sort of our adventures in travel preparation if you will. Instead what started out as a four page list of to-do's the day we quit work (and what Becca accurately described as a hydra) has just taken over our lives, especially in the last two weeks. Here's a little example of what our days have been like leading up to our departure; this was yesterday:

6:00 Get up
6:30-9 Pack House
9-10 Take cars in for tune-ups
10-11:30 Meet with insurance agent
11:45-1 Meet with property management company to finalize details
1-2:30 workout
2:30-7 Pack House
7-7:30 eat
7:30-12 Pack House

Not exactly exciting stuff but all things that have to get done. The most amazing part about this process is how little planning we've done regarding the actual locations we're visiting. I'd say 90% of our time has been used to get everything done on the Minneapolis end. My advice for anyone thinking of doing this? Do it while you don't have a whole lot of obligations :-)

The house is about packed up and the cleaning process will start tomorrow. Hopefully we get it done early and then we're off a little early to go to Northfield to visit our friends Chris and Katie and then the drive to the Bay Area begins. Anyone who knows of any hot spots along Hwy 80, send them our way. Perhaps we'll post some pictures of corn or something of the like.

Until next time!

Six days and counting...

Until we leave Minnesota that is ;-). For those of you who made it to our Bon Voyage Party, thanks for coming and making it such a great time; it was great to see so many people who have made our Minnesota experience up to this point such a great one.

This final week in Minnesota consists of finishing the last bit of packing and finalizing a number of mind-numbing financial/logistical details before getting in the car Sunday to hit the road to the Bay Area. Anybody who has any suggestions as to how to pass time during
the 32 hour car ride, we're all ears.

Also, any suggestions/input into how to make our blog look a little nicer are always appreciated. We're not HTML wizards by any means but we have been known to learn quickly.

Cheers and we'll try to post a little more frequently with the trip just around the corner!

Brian

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines...

It's official....we're leaving!

Yeah, yeah. I know that was the whole point of this thing, but we were missing a couple of very important details: like plane tickets across the ocean. As of yesterday we finally have those tickets so we know that at least the first leg of our trip is a go. (And getting 2 tickets to Europe for $60 works for me. Gotta love those frequent flier miles (I knew I traveled so much for work for a reason!))

We'll leave Minnesota by the end of May and drive west, spending time visiting friends and family and then start the adventure June 14th!

T minus 1 month and counting....

b&b

and now if we could just find someone to rent out house....

Practice makes perfect...

Here we are, hard at work training. After all, we gotta get used to this whole 'travel to beautiful, exotic places and relax' thing.

Actually, this is in Tulum, Mexico in 2002, during the only break we've had from the madness of work and illness since we moved to Minnesota in 2001.

b&b

and yes, this is still part of the "working on making sure we can post things the way we want before we get to the good stuff on the trip" phase. (p.s. if anybody can figure out how to do captions or imbed the pictures in the text, PLEASE let us know.)

This is dedicated to the ones we love...

(aka: experimenting with posting pictures)

This is Becca's Dad, who died shortly after our wedding last year and is the inspiration for this life-affirming adventure on which we're about to embark.

b&b

The genesis of the trip...

(a.k.a: expirimenting with different ways of posting)

So...how did we happen to be start on this journey in the first place? Becca grew up travelling and living in other countries and has never been able to get the itch out of her system. Brian hasn't done as much travelling and has a mile-long list of places he wants to see and experience. Since meeting 5 years ago, we have both been running the rat race non-stop. Between intense work and an unbelievable run of family crises, we haven't really had an opportunity to do any of the other things that we love: playing ultimate frisbee, volunteering, hiking, travelling, spending time with friends, hanging out with our families on the Oregon coast, etc.

So we decided to call 'Time Out' and to take a year to just experience life and other cultures and countries.

More background to follow....

b&b

The Countdown Begins

With the advent of May we've realized that this trip is about to actually happen. (And that means we'll actually start posting to and updating this site regularly. We know, it's about gosh-darn time.)

We have a many-paged, single-spaced list to get through before we leave and we're just trying to cross off a couple of things each day. The current plan is to leave Minnesota by the end of May, drive to the West Coast and make a last swing through to see friends and family and then be headed across the pond by mid-June at the latest. (Of course, one of the things left on that many-paged list is buying the aforementioned plane ticket to Europe, so you never know....)

Keep your fingers crossed that we can get there...

B&B

And if anybody is a blogger guru, give us a holler. There are number of technical questions we have about ways of making this cooler and adding pictures, etc.