I thought I would take a few minutes to update my blog which I haven't done in a few weeks. I will be using this blog to document our adventures during our around the world trip. I had previously not updated the blog since I hadn't yet communicated my intentions to resign my job and didn't want to let the cat our of the bag too soon :-) Over the last several weeks Alethea and I have continued to make progress on all the numerous things that one has to do to plan a trip of this magnitude. We've plotted & re-plotted our itinerary, purchased various items including airfare, & received all of our vaccinations for numerous diseases. Over the next few days we'll be wrapping up and saying our final good byes to friends and family.
I still haven't decided how often or how much detail I will go into for this blog. I want to document and communicate our experiences both good and bad but at the same time I would like to make it entertaining. Alethea is a much better blogger and photographer than me. Her blog can be found at (http://smartt-adventures.blogspot.com/). I do think it is interesting reading her blog because even though we have traveled together to the same places we often have different perspectives. At this time I plan on probably updating the blog after each city or country that we visit. It will depend somewhat on internet availability since we'll be way off the grid during some parts of our travel (China/Africa). We have some rest days and some long travel days that will make for some ideal time to write.
I'm really looking forward to our trip. It has been a lot of work over the last several months. Over the next couple days we both have a lot of relatively minor things to wrap up before departing. We have numerous checklist that we have been working off of for several weeks. Between now and Saturday I'll be working on reviewing documentation with my parents just in case something bad happens. I already had a will but will be completing my living will and health care proxy. I'll also be training my parents on how to receive VOIP phone calls and how to use Google Talk & Yahoo Messenger since we plan on using these services first to communicate with since they are free or nearly free. The last thing I want to do is use my personal cell phone which I will be taking with me as a backup. The bad thing is that it will cost anywhere from $2 to $5 a minute to use but will work or is at least supposed to work in every country that we plan on traveling to. I verified this on Sprint's website. I spent a little time this evening talking to my grandmother who is 84 years old. Unfortunately she was one of the last to find out about our trip. It wasn't intentional but she is a worrier. I had planned on calling her once things were finalized but my dad let it slip during a phone conversation with her. She wasn't happy to find out what everyone else knew starting in April when I told my parents what I planned on doing and that she didn't find out until July.
Anyway, a little about our trip or how it will start out..........
It looks like we'll be departing on Saturday versus Sunday. This is due to seat availability on the flights that we are taking. We are flying on a certain type of passes courtesy of Alethea's mom on Delta. We have to keep an eye on seat availability. Our first destination is Sydney, Australia but to get there we have to get to Los Angeles where our flight to Sydney departs. We plan on flying from Nashville to Atlanta to LA and depart to Sydney on Saturday. If we aren't able to get on all the flights that we need to we might have to spend the night somewhere (LA) and try it again the next night. We plan spending I believe a little over 3 weeks in Australia before traveling on to New Zealand before we get to Asia.
Well that is enough for this evening. I just wanted to get back into the habit of updating the blog. Please free to contact me with questions, comments or feedback in general. The purpose is to document our travels so later on I can look back and hopefully laugh all of our adventures.
