Overview
Postcard Valet is the travel blog and video podcast by Arlo & Oksana Midgett. We’re backpacking around the world (or at least as far as we can get on $100 a day!)
Last July, we quit our day jobs, sold off a bunch of stuff, put the rest in storage, and ditched our apartment in Juneau, Alaska for a year of travel.
This has been a long time coming. We’ve been married over eight years and have been planning a trip like this since even before I proposed. I never expected such a long delay, but you now how it goes: First Oksana had to get her bachelor’s degree, so we waited. Then we had to save enough money, so we waited. Then Oksana got a job and then decided that it would be “resume suicide” to quit before getting a few years of experience under her belt, so we waited. Then we realized that if Oksana was going to get a master’s degree, she should do it while my benefits through my university job gave us free tuition, so we waited. Finally, in early 2009, we set a date: July 2010 would be the start of our big adventure! We informed our respective bosses a full year in advance… and waited one last time.
Our original plan (FAQ) was to drive south from Alaska, tour the States, then leave our Jeep behind as we bused our way through Central and South America. Unfortunately, a couple family emergencies delayed us for three months in North Carolina and we ended up having to skip Central America. In our minds, our real trip began on November 10th, when we flew down to Quito, Ecuador, to meet up with five of our friends for a Galapagos cruise. They went home afterwards, but we plan to keep going until November 2011… or until the money runs out!
Notes about the website
Postcard Valet actually has the same posts as A Midgett Blog, my personal blog. The only difference is that Postcard Valet only displays entries that are travel-related. If you know me personally, you may instead wish to subscribe to A Midgett Blog in order to see everything I post.
Since we feel that the travel videos we post are the best part of Postcard Valet, I’ve tried to make them as easy to view as possible. Still, you might run into problems if you don’t have the correct software installed. If you’re experiencing any difficulties, try the following (free) solutions, in order:
Free Adobe Flash Player
To play the videos on the site itself, you may need to install (or upgrade) the Adobe Flash Player.
Free Apple Quicktime Player
Our videos are encoded as MPEG-4 clips, using the H.264 codec. If your Flash Player is working correctly and you still can’t play the videos, you might want to download and install Apple’s Quicktime Player. The Quicktime Player will also allow you to play any videos you choose to download from our site on your own computer.
Free Apple iTunes
When downloading the free Quicktime Player, you might want to grab Apple’s iTunes, too. iTunes allows you to add almost any media file on your computer into a digital library. Most people use it to organize their music collection, but it’s also the easiest way to subscribe to our podcast and the quickest way to have all of our videos delivered directly to you! Once iTunes is installed, simply click the “
Podcast” button (at the top-right of every Postcard Valet page) and follow the directions until you can click on the “subscribe” button within the iTunes application.
Youtube
If none of the above works, search around in our Youtube channel. We try to upload the majority of our videos there, as well.
