FAQ

Q: Shouldn’t you be bare-backing a Komodo Dragon in a volcano in Paraguay right now? [via Twitter by @bradgwalker]

A: Oksana and I will be kicking off our trip on, or around, July 1st, 2010.  Well, actually, we’re not even sure we’ll be leaving by then, but we’ll have a great incentive: We’re not paying rent past June.

We announced our plans a full year in advance, mostly to give our places of employment the chance to prepare for our departures.  That, coupled with the “practice” podcast episodes I’ve been creating from previous trips’ footage has probably created the impression that we’re already off gallivanting around the world.  Not quite yet!

Q: Where are you going?

A: Truth is, we really don’t know.  We don’t (and won’t) have an itinerary.  Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.

This question is second only to “When are you leaving?” from our friends and family, and I’m I little bit sorry for not having a great answer.   One of the big reasons for this trip is to free ourselves from constraints for a while, to get out of the groove for a bit, so we’re going to go where the road takes us.

That said, our general plan right now is to:

• Take my Jeep from Alaska to New York, seeing the sights and visiting friends and family on the way.
• Meet Oksana’s family (visiting from Russia) in New York and show them the East Coast.
• Possibly find a super-cheap last-minute fare on a cruise ship and just hop out in Belize or Mexico.
• Meander all the way through Central and South America until we hit the tip of Argentina around Dec 2010.
• From there we cross either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, bound for Africa or NZ/Australia/Southeast Asia.
• Either way we’ll then work our way through Russia and the old Soviet states.
• If there’s time and money left over (probably not), we’ll try to see Europe.

Q: How much is it going to cost?

A: $100 a day.

That’s our goal, anyway.  Reactions to our budget swing one of two ways: “Wow, that’s not very much!” to “Wow, that’s a lot!”  Personally, we see it both ways.  $100 a day for two people doesn’t go very far in places like the US, Europe, or Australia.  We’re really going to have to budget carefully.  On the other hand, $100 a day for 365 days is $36,500 — a healthy chunk of change that could otherwise be going towards, oh, you know, a house or something.

Our $100-a-day budget isn’t going to be a daily limit; it might be better to think of it as $700-a-week.  We expect to spend more than $100 on certain days for things like airline travel, more expensive tours, etc.  To balance things out, we’ll simply look for inexpensive places to chill out for awhile.

Q: Is your budget going to include airfare?

A: Yes, though we don’t expect to be flying very much.  Probably from Argentina to South Africa (and there’s really no other easy way to get to Australia/NZ!)  But then again, we’ve heard stories about hitching rides on oceanic freighters, too, so who knows?  Maybe we won’t need to fly at all!

Q: What are you bringing with you?

A: We’ll let you know when we figure that out!  We’re still making purchases and setting aside the important stuff and I’ll probably take you through the final packing list in a future blog entry or podcast episode.

But we’re going to be living out of a backpack for a year, that’s for sure.  Hopefully everything we bring is going to fit within our two big backpacks, but we’ll also have smaller packs for daily walk-around-town time.  Our biggest concern right now is how we’re going to accommodate the “studio-in-a-backpack” that will let us blog and podcast our way around the world.  The laptop, netbook, videocamera, DSLR, lenses, and audio recorder (not to mention all their accessories!) are going to take up a lot of room.

I suspect we’ll also find a way to use FedEx or DHL to send a few things back home.  Souvenirs, of course, but we also foresee a need for guidebooks and secure data backups (we can’t risk losing all our photos and video!)

Q: How can you afford to quit you jobs?  What about your careers?

A: A very good question.  I suppose the answer comes down to, “We have a savings account.”

We’ve had a solid plan for the last couple years; a velleity for much longer than that.  Oksana remembers me first bringing up the idea when we were in Costa Rica (2001), probably just a matter of days after I proposed to her.  All that is to say that we’ve put a lot of things on hold while we’ve been saving for this trip.

As for our careers, despite the situation with the economy, we don’t foresee ourselves having trouble finding employment upon our return.  But it probably won’t come to that because Oksana will have her position waiting for her when she returns, and though my own job’s future hasn’t been decided, I’m still holding out hope that they’ll keep my seat warm for me, too.  Even so, we decided long ago that this trip was more important to us than the certainty of having a job when we returned.  We’re going no matter what.

Q: What are you going to do with your stuff?

Sell or give away the big stuff.  Put the rest in storage.  (Yes, that scares one of us more than a little.)

Q: Have you ever done this sort of travel before?

A: We’ve done all sorts of travel before!  In fact, we’ve been doing a good job of getting out of the country at least once a year, on average.  I think our longest trip together was a month in Costa Rica and, come to think of it, would be a good parallel to the sort of travel we’re planning (we were backpacking, staying in hostels, and spent an average of right around $100 a day… which seemed expensive to us at the time!)

But we’ve also tried out other styles of travel, such as:

Exhausting: Two weeks weeks in Hawaii where we packed in as much as we possibly could into each day.
Expensive: Three weeks in Australia with big tours, Travelocity-booked hotels every night, and getting SCUBA certified on the Great Barrier Reef.
Family: As guests catered to by Oksana’s family in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

We’ve discovered, after much reflection, that we’ve had the best times on the trips where we simply Wing It. Take that Costa Rica trip, for instance.  The sum total of our planning up until the day we left was buying round-trip tickets to San Juan.

Q: Can I travel with you for awhile?

A: Sure, we’d love to explore some corner of the world with you for a week or two!  What are you thinking?  We should talk!