Sixintheworld.com

We spent a weekend at the St. Regis in Dana Point back in 2001 when we lived in Santa Monica. It had just opened and was the most glamorous resort in Orange County. Fortunately it was affiliated with Starwood, Tom’s preferred hotel chain for business travel, so we could use points to stay for free. We pulled up in our Land Rover to a valet lane filled with Bentleys, Rolls Royces and Ferraris. As the valets opened the doors, out tumbled three kids, a hodgepodge of duffle bags and backpacks, and an assortmentof snacks purchased at a nearby supermarket. In an atmosphere of elegance and wealth, we felt like Jed Clampett and his family rolling into Beverly Hills. Now any time we enter an upscale hotel, we think to ourselves, “Here Come the Clampetts.”

For this trip, we might look like something out of a high-tech Everest expedition rather than a 60’s sitcom. Every travel guru we read says take less, less, less. Even those RTW trekkers who think they’ve started with the bare minimum end up ditching half of it along the way. So we’re working on putting together a minimalist wardrobe of breathable, quick-dry fabrics, a compact all-purpose medical kit, and just enough electronic gadgets to keep us wired and cover the kids’ school needs. Everything we’re taking is going to fit in the four carefully fitted backpacks we bought at REI for me, Tom, Dax and McKane. Kieran and Asher, whom we collectively designate the “little bits,” will have small packs sufficient to carry a journal, some crayons, and maybe a Gameboy. We’re going to try to scan all our guidebooks into our laptops over the next few months, so even they can be left behind. We know we’ll have to buy things here and there along the way as the need arises, but the goal is to streamline our needs and possessions, so we’ll be light on our feet and ultra-portable, truly a family on the move.

Tom will be posting a list of his must-have gear and gadgets soon on the Gear page.

Kieran enjoys REI’s wide selection of backpacks! Dax gets fitted by the pros.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, Gear, Travel

I have a wise friend who got me thinking over the past year. She said, “We spend so much of our time servicing our possessions–cars, houses, appliances, computers. If we were to dedicate even a fraction of that time to improving ourselves or the world, think about how much better off we’d be.” Lest I doubt the truth of her words, in the past month my four-year-old refrigerator has decided to stop dispensing ice and water, the kids have broken one of the captain’s chairs in my big, honkin’ SUV (look for the spinners in the video Google made about Tom),

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and the upstairs air conditioning has given out just as the 95 degree heat and 90 percent humidity have descended upon Atlanta. No one will come to look at the fridge for less than $79, and that’s without performing any repairs. The car dealership claims it will take at least an hour and a half at $90/hour just to take the seat apart to figure out what’s wrong. No reputable A/C repair shop can get to us before June 9 (almost two weeks after the stinkin’ thing broke). So for the moment we open the fridge to get out ice, drink tap water (yuck), consider the captain’s chair a rocker, and sleep downstairs in the guest room and on couches. Eventually I’ll break down and schedule an appliance repairman and spend the better part of a day traveling to an auto dealer I actually trust, but in the meantime I’ll waste lots of time and energy begrudging things that break, explaining them in great detail to my friends, and wishing they would all magically restore themselves.

The Offending Devices

As I’ve tried to prepare for our adventure, I’ve found myself wondering, ” What will it be like to carry everything I need on my back and to have nothing to clean, fix, weed, or wash except a few changes of clothes? How will it be to have no mail to open, no phone calls to return, no lessons to race to, and no schedule to keep other than that which we impose?” The answer is simple: LIBERATING! I’ve got the mail slowed to a trickle, mostly junk that can be tossed on the walk from the mailbox to the house. I’ve cancelled or suspended all the subscriptions except a few of Tom’s work magazines and gone paperless on all the bills. No more mounds of paperwork to ponder, process, and file. I’ve take approximately 387 loads of clothing, household items, and junk we don’t know why we ever acquired to Goodwill. Another wise friend (it seems I’m surrounded by them) has helped me purge our lives of 15 years of physical and mental clutter. When I try to make excuses for why we need to hang onto some useless tchotchke, rag rug or waffle iron, she stares me in the eye and says, “Are you really going to want to look at this thing after you’ve come home from traveling the world for a year? How much will it matter to you then?” The other argument that really works is “If you decide to get back into that hobby or need a thing like this in five years, won’t it be easier just to buy a new one than to store, reorganize six times, and clean off this one? Isn’t there someone who could use this more than you right now?” To the last question, I just hang my head and mumble, “Yes.”

So I’m already looking at our possession-filled life with new eyes. Some days I want to get rid of absolutely everything–clothing (Tom has developed a bizarre midlife penchant for fancy shoes), dishes, office supplies–but then I calm down and realize to do so would be a little extreme and highly impractical. I know, however, that the way we see things when we get back will be markedly different than we do now, and I can’t wait for that new, more seasoned perspective.

Technorati Tags: Round the World

So how do you decide where to go when you’ve devoted an entire year to circling the globe? Whatever you do, you don’t leave it to the six- and three-year olds. A few months ago we gave Kieran and Asher a box of giant tacks and let them have their way with the world map I’ve posted on my bulletin board. Their only instruction was to stick a pin in each location they wanted to visit. The results were intriguing to say the least–Brazil, Mauritania, Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, Egypt, Poland, Kazakhstan, Siberia, China and Australia–a carefully crafted itinerary highlighting political instability and uncomfortable climates. The rest of us scoured books, magazines, and our imaginations for places that inspired us or held a particular appeal. For some reason, Dax has always wanted to visit Bhutan, the Himalayan kingdom only accessible by air. It sounded great until we realized the only way to enter the country is with a state-sponsored tour operator at a fixed daily rate. $1200/day for the six of us didn’t seem like an effective use of our finite funds, so we told him Bhutan would have to wait.

Ultimately, the final decisions came down to 3 criteria: 1) Can Delta get us there on our round the world frequent flier tickets? 2) Are there any Starwood hotels there (we have points with them)? and 3) Will it be cost effective for us to stay there for an extended period? While #1 and #2 open up a surprisingly large percentage of the civilized world for us, #3 is the most limiting factor. We’ll dabble in some more expensive first and second world countries, but spend most of our days in the developing world.
Delta gives us six stops which must be sequenced in a continuous east to west or west to east direction. After multiple attempts and many hours on the phone, we came up with the following route, which bounces back and forth between hemispheres in a noble attempt to avoid winter and the need for bulky clothing:

Leg #1 Salt Lake City to Auckland, New Zealand;

Leg #2: Sydney, Australia to Beijing, China
Leg #3: Mumbai, India to Capetown, South Africa

Leg #4: Capetown to Tunis, Tunisia

Leg #5 Tunis to Munich, Germany

Leg #6:Munich, Germany to Rio de Janiero, Brazil

Leg #7: San Jose, Costa Rica to Atlanta

Overland travel, which could involve buses, trains, boats and other non-Delta flights will take us through VietNam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Namibia, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria, Morocco, Argentina, Chile, and Peru. I’m really hoping to sneak in Easter Island, but we’ll have to see how much money is left by the time we hit South America.

Technorati Tags: Itinerary, Round the World

As I frantically try to prepare my house for my upcoming absence of 13 months, I start to think that maybe all the people who look at us like we’re insane are right. How can I possibly clear out all the closets, cancel all the subscriptions, prepay all the insurance, taxes, and every other conceivable recurring bill, withdraw four kids from school, plan and digitize their homeschool curriculum, and schedule a yearlong round the world itinerary in a mere few months? The thought lasts only a moment, however,as my gaze is drawn to the eight feet of bookshelf space I’ve purged of literary classics and filled with travel guides and writings. (Don’t worry, the Tolstoy and the Shakespeare have moved temporarily to another room.) They remind me that the world is calling. Now…not next year or five years from now…is our time to go.

Dax, our oldest, is heading for high school…still too young to protest too loudly. Asher, our youngest, is almost four…finally old enough to walk moderate distances without being carried and hold it until we can find a bathroom.

Certainly there are other ways we could teach these four to appreciate cultural and geographical diversity, ways that don’t involve taking malaria pills or walking away from financial security. Likewise there are alternatives for opening their eyes to social and economic disparity that don’t require extended absences from grandparents, Xbox, and a potable water supply, but we’re ready to break with convention. Our inner rebel is ready to bust out of our suburban comfort zone and seize an awareness that only firsthand experience can bring. So in 34 days we pack up the car and head to Utah for an extended vacation with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Tom will come back to Atlanta to work until August 15th and then rejoin us in Utah for our August 26th departure to New Zealand, the first leg in our RTW quest.

Technorati Tags: Homeschool, Round the World, Travel

Technorati Tags: Culture, Thailand

Always one to help out with a cause, Anne is busy removing alcohol from Asia, or at least Thailand, or at least Bangkok, or at least this park. Actually she is participating in Thai lent.

Many times the best experiences traveling are things you just fall into. We were wandering the neighborhoods of Bangkok and came across a parade and a party in a park. As the only non-Thai people in the area we worried a little bit about intruding, but we didn’t need to worry for long. We were quickly welcomed to participate and helped dump alcohol and crush cigarettes into a large vat.

Anne doesn’t spend much time dumping alcohol into a vat, or anywhere for that matter, but she does spend some time writing, which is what she will be doing on this site in the near future.