December 24th 2004 at about 11PM, Lee and I sat in front of our fireplace discussing plans for the next year and we decided to go for it. We decided to leave for a year-long trip around the world. The name of our travel blog and our trip would be The World is Not Flat or TWINF (coincidentally this was before Friedman’s book The World is Flat was published.)
The next week we huddled over a wall map of the continents and mapped out a general itinerary figuring out at what times of year we wanted to be in certain parts of the world. Then we set our departure date: December 11th, 2005, and our first international stop: New Zealand.
Sure, there were so many questions to answer - what about the funds it will take, where will our sweet old dog Amos go, what would we do with our house?
We had until December 11th to figure out the answers and prepare for our departure. It felt so great, so new! A mix of giddiness like kids in a candy store and the sobriety of a great weight of planning to be done. Setting the date cemented it for us; it was the first step to making it happen. Everything we did from that day until we left in December was preparation for the trip.
More to come…
