Takeoffs and Landings

Day Zero
For some reason I set my alarm incorrectly and was up a bit later than I would have liked. I only had about an hour to do my last minute packing.

Too quickly I had said goodbye to my Mom, hugging and telling her over and over that I will be safe and that I love her. My Dad drove me to the airport and we had our goodbyes. My parents were the hardest people to leave. In just a few minutes my Dad had left and I was on my own.

As luck would have it my flight was delayed for over an hour. It didn't really matter, I was never in any danger of missing my flight to London. When I had gotten to JFK I was just killing time reading a book when a pigeon walked by. I'm not kidding. I tried to take a picture but couldn't get my camera out before it had walked away.

Reality still hasn't quite sunk in. This can't possibly be my life!

I didn't want to count this as day 1 as I'm spending the whole day in an airport. Day 1 begins when I get through immigration at Gatwick.

T Minus 24 Hours

The two weeks I had left in New York after returning from Chicago flew by. In between packing up my apartment and winding up my to do list at work I managed to have a going away party. It was a blast! It was so nice to see so many of my friends and to say goodbye for one last time

.

On March first Al and Noel helped me move everything out of my apartment. I took one last look at my empty room and shut the door. I think that it would have been a lot more sad if I wasn't so exhausted from carrying everything down 4 flights of stairs. Al then drove the truck to my parents house in Maryland with me and helped to unload everything.

I've spent the last week with my parents and finishing up all the last minute details. I've booked hostels, researched destinations and bought the last few things on my packing list. I'm so happy that I've been able to spend so much time with my parents. I'm going to miss them.

I think that I might be about ready to go. I think I have everything on my list, its just a matter of making it all fit in my pack. It's just so hard to believe that this time tomorrow I will be in JFK waiting for my flight to London. Holy crap, I'm going backpacking around the world, who would have ever thought that I would be able to get my act together enough to do a trip like this? I'm just as shocked as everyone else! I guess all that is left is Bon voyage I'll update you in a day or two!

The First Leap

I haven't written because I've been waiting for today. Today was the official point of no return and I wanted to cross that before I moved on. Today I quit my job. This was huge and the first step in making my trip real.

I was nervous, nervous to the point that I was having dreams about it. I would wake up with my heart pounding and unable to fall back to sleep.

I went to visit my boss, first to go over all of the current projects, secondly to give my notice. Just like in my dreams my heart was pounding as I spit out the words “I'm going backpacking round the world, for twenty months.”

She did a double take, but instead of being angry or disappointed, she congratulated me. I would not leave this job for any other reason, and she understood that. After talking to her it was time to give the news to the other person I report to. He too was shocked, but understood my need to take this trip.

That was it, my secret was out and felt wonderful. There would be no more silence about it and no more fear that I would slip up. Now I seem to have entered a surreal world. I can't believe that my trip is just five weeks away. I wonder when the surreal will dissipate and the real will set in.

Roses for the Blog

I missed my anniversary. Usually a missed anniversary would require roses and an extra special dinner out. However, I think my trip will understand why I missed this one. Work has been crazy. All I've been doing is running from job A to job B and then back to job A. I missed my anniversary while working saving the actual event.

I have actually done some interesting things over the few weeks. I don't know if you've heard of Matt Harding or not. He danced his way around the world and made a couple of fun You Tube videos out of it. Now he is being sponsored by Stride Gum. I'm actually not a huge fan of his. I don't consider spending just enough time to dance badly in a country travel. However I do like the idea and the message. The videos are great. So I decided to join him in his new video where he dances with groups of people. There were about 30 or so of us there. After we danced badly as a group my new friend Jenn and I danced badly with Matt. Please consider this clip the “before” video and ignore all the bouncing ripples of fat.

That same weekend was a BootsnAll weekend. Several of the bootie regulars flew into the city to hang out and sample New York's finest beer. It was a lot of fun, as you can tell from the pictures! I, of course, missed most of one of the nights because I had an early morning store that I had to make it to.

Recently I've been having really conflicting feelings about the trip. Don't worry, it hasn't been those “this might not have been such a hot idea after all” feelings. It's more excitement and nerves. Sometimes the trip seems eons away. During those moments 03.11.08 can't come soon enough. Other times I think that I have so little time and so much to do. It's overwhelming. On occasion I have wave of nausea pass over me. This is mostly related to the increasing fear of quiting my job. For the most part I like my job, and I'm good at it. I enjoy the people I work with and feel that my work is appreciated. I don't plan on staying in the same position forever (this company doesn't promote), however, leaving a nice comfortable job is going to tough. I'm glad that it will be difficult, it confirms that this trip is the right choice.

I used to hate my job. Getting up and going to work in the morning was horrible, enough to make me cry. Leaving a job, and a life really, that I wasn't happy with would make my rtw an escape from life and not an addition. It's much easier to run away than it is to stay. The difficulty of leaving the full time job and my full time life (including my wonderful boyfriend) and my willingness to do so reconfirms to me that leaving is not only the right decision but also a positive addition to my current life, and not an escape as some might think. No matter how hard leaving this life will be I know that it's the right choice for me.

As I mentioned in the September update, I will be traveling to Marrakesh, Morocco for a meeting with the full time job. I leave next Friday (yay, only 9 days away). I'm going to have a nice amount of time to site see and plan to blog it, just as I intend to do on my rtw. In fact, lets call this the test run of the blog. I'm going to call this “test” how the other half travels.

And to be consistent, I have 146 days to go!

A Milestone

This is my 6 month anniversary. It's hard to say how excited I have become. I dream of my first flight to London, of landing back on the European continent, and of what it will feel like to be in China.

Despite how much time I spend daydreaming not much is actually going on in the planning department. I feel like I'm a bit stuck now. The 2008 guidebooks aren't out yet, its too early to book hostels and the few group tours that I want in Ireland. I could start buying things that I want to pack, however, I know its better to ask for those things for Christmas. So that's it, I'm stuck with nowhere to go.

I do have options, I suppose. I could plan a bit more, I could watch movies and read books pertaining to where I think I will end up. I want to do that, it's just that I feel like I have already been doing that for the past 2 and a half years. I don't want to any more, I just want to go. It's like I've mentally begun the trip six months before I physically will begin it.

The one saving grace that I have is Morocco. One of the funds that I work on is an African-based fund. This means that once a year (as long as I work here) I get one descent 5 star trip to a nice destination. Last year I went to The Netherlands, this year Marrakesh, Morocco.

My company is kind enough to pick up the tab of a few extra nights so that I can see the sites. I guess could concentrate on planning for the trip in 6 weeks, rather than the one in 6 months.

I should stop whining. I'm so busy these days that I feel like I wrote the August entry yesterday. I'm sure that it will feel that its time for the October update any day now.

The How and Why

I now have 212 days left to go. The last month has flown by.

January and July are the busiest months for RGIS and this was no exception. I spent two weeks not knowing if I was coming or going. It required a full weekend of sleep when it was all over. Unlike other times when I would complain about the hours, now I was happy. I feel like each hour gets me closer to my ultimate goal.

I also have some projects that I've been working on who's deadlines are March 11, 2008. This whole digital camera thing wasn't so popular during my first few trips. While I plan on having a digital camera for my rtw, I didn't have one in the beginning. Therefore I have been scanning and labeling all of my old photos so that they may be archived online. It's incredibly tedious and I don't like doing it, but I know that it is the best way to ensure that they are preserved.

There is just so much more to buy and to plan for. Well, mostly to buy. I want to make sure I get just the right things, but I don't quite know where to start.

I've had a few people recently tell me how amazing they feel it is for someone to be able to save the money and actually do a rtw. I wonder how many people start to save and give up, or how many never even bother to start but still find the idea appealing. I really don't think that this thing I'm doing is such a huge deal. Well, it is to to me. I can't stop talking about it. But to someone else, especially a stranger? I always feel like it sounds like I'm either mentally instable or came up with an idea they wished they had had before children and a mortgage caught up with them.

However, it's not hard to do if you want it. I think that the last part is key. Yes, you might not be in the same financial position I am in and that makes it harder. But then again, I might not be in the same position as you and that might make it harder for me. You have to want it. It has to be worth the new clothes you won't own, the sleep you don't get because of that second job, and the millions of pounds of rammen noodles cooked at home instead of eating out. For me it is. Plus, I've been saving now for, oh, 23 months, and I've had the idea for over 2.5 years, if i gave up now that would be quiting, and my parents didn't raise a quitter.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that I can boil this whole idea down to being my parents fault. I remember my mom once telling me that I might want to diversify my favorite discussion topics. At the time all I could talk about was Gone With the Wind and soccer. I never quite accomplished that diversifying goal. By college I had grown out of GWTW and soccer, but my friends complained that I spent too much time talking about work and WWII. Once I came back from living in Germany all I could talk about was travel. I don't think that has changed. But that's ok. I don't always think that its about changing the topic, but maybe more about changing the audience. This obsessive part of my personality has definitely helped me to stay focused and to save.

To get back on topic, my desire to go on a round the world trip is my parents fault. They taught me to follow my dreams and supported me in them. They gave me a strong work ethic that allows me to work two jobs and still excel. This went along with the importance of saving money and earning the things that I want. On top of these habit-type traits, my dad gave me wanderlust and my mom gave me the ability to overcome challenges. These are all the things needed to plan and earn for extended travel. All I brought to the table was the idea.

So thanks, Mom and Dad, for giving everything that I need to accomplish my dreams and your support in them, I couldn't do this without you.

Clock Watching

My goal for starting this blog early was to write about what I'm doing to prepare and save money for this trip. I think that I covered the saving up bit last time. I'm now 245 days out (or 8 months, 1 day) and I am a mediocre trip planner in some regards.

Every morning I open up a very large budget spreadsheet that I started almost 2 years ago. I like to keep track at how I am doing savings-wise. The sheet has gone through dozens of redesigns and I've reworked the itinerary section a million times. In the end the itinerary will mostly be a suggestion. The area I visit most is the budget section. I just want to see what's left and how far I have come.

I know that the first month will be planned very tightly. I'll be in the UK and Ireland and it's just a lot cheaper to plan ahead. I know that I will be in Western Europe for a while, and that once I hit Italy I will begin using my Eurail Pass. I have points in each country in Europe that I want to make sure I get to. Besides that, it's going to be a bit of a free-for-all. After Europe, I have countries that I want to get to, but not a whole lot of points.

I haven't had the opportunity to travel much like that. I always had a job to go back to, too much luggage, too little time, or a travel companion who's input counted as well. I know that I will love being in the UK and Ireland. I picked the cities in both countries that I wanted to see the most. Weighed them carefully against each other to maximize enjoyment. However I can't wait until that plane touches down in Portugal and I don't even have a hotel booked or an idea of what city I will be in by the end of the night, or the night after that and so on. It's going to be a thrill like I have never felt before.

Just sitting here typing this is making it harder for me to stay in my seat. I don't want to wish away my time, but I can't help myself. I'm ready to be done with work for a while. I'm ready to pack up. Well, sorta ready, I still have a list a mile long of stuff that I need to buy. I guess I'm more mentally prepared than physically prepared.

Still, I'm 34 days closer now than I was when I last wrote. So time is passing and sooner than I will know it, I will hug my parents good-bye and board that plane to London.

The Long Road to Travel

So here I am, 279 days from the kick off of my round the world trip. Maybe I’m starting this blog too soon, but maybe not. I’ve been saving money now for twenty months. I feel like I’ve been doing it forever.

Perhaps it is important to start writing early, even if not much is happening. A huge part of taking a rtw is the saving and the planning. But the most important part is to have desire and the idea.

My first job in New York City was at a crappy event planning company. The events weren’t crappy, the company was. I was paid poorly, over worked, and treated terribly. In the end I was fired/laid off. I say both because I don’t really know what it was. They had complaints, but I had also learned from other employees that they found a way to fire whoever was in my position every spring. They did this because there was no work to be done and the position was no longer needed in the summer months.

Towards the end I had very little to do. I spent my days surfing the Internet and reading travel blogs. I was lucky to have been able to travel quite a bit during college. I worked in Dresden, Germany at the Deutches Hygiene Museum for three months between my junior and senior years, and then after graduation I moved to London for six months to work for a student organization. Reading others blogs brought me back to when I didn’t have a crappy job and worry about paying my rent every month. That’s when I found them, the round the world blogs. The idea intrigued me, but I knew that I would never have the money, I was lucky if I even got my rent paid each month. That was without having credit card debt and with my parents helping out with student loans as well.

They let me go around three in the afternoon on a Friday. I went home and cried. That weekend I went to visit my parents and licked my wounds. But, I also felt some how free. I had no money and needed to find a job pronto, but without the hell that was EGR I felt like a whole new person.

Just a few weeks later I was offered a job at Smithfield Foods. They paid me a lot more and I rewarded myself with a nice shopping spree. Soon I found out that more money didn’t really mean a better job. I didn’t have much to do there. I would spend entire days with no actual work to do. I spent the first month typing up my journals from Europe and making blogs out of them. I also read more about travel and rtw’s.

I played with the numbers and realized that at my current salary rate with the help of working for my dad on weekends I could save a nice sum of money every month. I could make it happen. I could be a rtw traveler.

Over the past 20 months I’ve saved and saved. I have done a damn good job of it too. I already have more money for this trip than I ever thought I would, and I still have 9 months left to save. Here are a few steps/tips I have for saving money:

1. For two weeks write down everything you spend money on, then go through the list and figure out what was needed and what wasn’t. You’d be surprised at how quickly dinners out and Starbucks can add up.

2. Take your list and cut out all the unnecessary items. For me these included take-out for lunch and dinner, new clothes, HBO, loads of nights out, and weekly mani/pedi’s.

3. Figure out a budget. How much do you have to spend every month? What is left? 90% of what is left should go into your designated travel fund. I suggest opening a separate savings account for this. I like to use ING. I open a new CD every few months with whatever is in the savings account so that I can get a little extra interest and make the money less accessible to myself.

4. Give yourself a weekly allowance. It’s really hard to do this at first, but if you stick with something for four weeks it becomes habit. I could have take-out, but then if I was out of money and my friends wanted to hit the bars I was S.O.L. If I have money left over at the end of the week I put it in a jar in my room. This is used for special events, a friend’s birthday, the day I just have to treat myself, etc. When the amount reaches over $100 I tend to deposit it in my savings account and start over.

5. Look at some of your other expenses. If you have credit card debt, pay it off first. Do you really need that many minutes on your cell phone? Is the gym membership a necessity, will do you workouts at home? Do you have to go out 7 nights a week? How about limit it to 2 or 3. Do you really need a car? Can you walk to work? Before buying anything I figure out what that money would get me in France, or Russia, or Thailand. Do I want what I can have there more than I want this thing? I often use a country where the dollar goes really far.

6. Step four leaves you with a good amount of extra time. I started filling it up by going through everything in my bedroom. I got rid of a lot of stuff that I just didn’t need. I also listed loads of clothing, cd’s and books on Ebay and Half.com. This made me about $1000 dollars. It doesn’t seem like much but every little bit you put away helps. I also began to plan. I enjoy planning and it allowed me to focus on the trip during most of my free time. I also began filling out online surveys. Overall I’ve made about $60 doing that. It’s not a lot of money at all, but it is a day in Western Europe, or two days in South East Asia. It’s always important to remember that every single penny helps.

7. Get a better paying job. After a year at Smithfield I was bored to tears and ready to move on. I got a much better job at an investment firm. This job holds my interest and offers a challenge that Smithfield never could have. Plus, they pay more and give decent bonuses which go right into the savings account.

8. Get a second job. I started out working part time for my dad taking inventory. I had been doing this job since I was just out of high school and it had become lucrative. I would visit my parents on weekends and put in 15 or so hours every couple of weeks. When my parents moved too far away for me to visit most weekends I transferred to a local district. Once I did this I was able to work week nights as well as pick up the one store on a weekend that I wouldn’t have bothered coming home for. This also takes up a lot of time where you might be tempted to spend money.

9. Watch your money grow. I often set goals for myself and then have a reward when I hit them. When I hit 5k I bought a decent bottle of wine to enjoy. At first I thought I would allow myself to buy something nice guilt free, but I ended up just sticking that money into savings too. So now, about every 5k I hit I feel a few moments of pride, and then desire to hit the next goal even quicker.

Aside from raising the money one of the most difficult parts of planning for a rtw is staying motivated. This is especially hard when you are saving for years. I try to do something that is travel related every day. I have a desk calendar that has pictures from all over the world. I also keep up with several blogs written by people currently traveling. Bootsnall is a great place to read about travel and really helps keep me on track.

It also helps to travel while you wait for the big trip. Yes, this costs money that you could be sticking in your savings account, but I look at it as a way to save my sanity. I could never just not travel. When lack of funds forced me to stay put for two years I was miserable. These trips also help you to figure out what type of traveler you are. Maybe you will find that hostels make you miserable, or that you love Italy and want to spend four months visiting every town on the map. You can save and prepare according to what you learn. You will also pick up skills that will help you to avoid danger and save money down the road.

There is not much going on right now in my travel world so I won’t really be updating much. I mostly want to keep this because planning and saving can take much longer than the trip itself takes. You really can’t have one without the other.