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How else will we stay in touch?
Posted by daveb on June 26th, 2007
As you’re reading this, we don’t have to tell you that the Internet has opened a new world of possibilities for communication. Both Squiffy & I are on e-mail, Facebook, Instant-Messaging and Skype — although it’s quite unlikely that we’ll be on the latter two for any length of time as we’ll likely be on the road. (I won’t publish our contact details here for fear of being spammed to death.)
Offline, we have UK mobile phones which work in most countries and texting is our preferred when out of the UK. Please do call us while we’re still in the UK, it would be great to hear from some familiar voices and learn about what you’re up to! We’ll send the odd postcard too to people who appreciate snail-mail.
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How often will we post to this blog?
Posted by daveb on June 26th, 2007
We really hope to post between 3-5 entries a week. There’s little worse than a blog that starts-off with a thousand entries in the first fortnight and then just one post a month after that. Rather, we’ll be pacing our postings throughout the week.
Having said all of this, I want to ask you ahead of time, to bear with us if we miss a post every now and again. Whilst some areas may be perfectly kitted-out with cheap Internet cafes, other places may have nothing or, worse, charge exorbitant fees. In the latter situation, we may well choose to delay our post by a day or two to find somewhere more reasonable. We hope that this is OK with you?
Squiffy & I will take it rough turns to write posts (the authorship will be clearly marked within each entry) and will try not to write War and Peace-length articles — we understand that you have a life and probably don’t have an hour a day to read about somebody elses!
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Who is the audience for this blog?
Posted by daveb on June 24th, 2007
You are!
Family, friends and people who don’t yet know us. You’re all very welcome. We’re mindful that we need to write for an audience in which some folks have known us for many years and others have only just surfed-in by chance and don’t know us at all. As such, we’ll try to limit the amount of assumptions we make about your knowledge of our history in our posts.
When I read blogs, I like to have a flavour of who the authors are — it helps me to frame a picture around the experiences and opinions that I’m reading. To this end, Squiffy & I wrote some About pages to help you do the same:
We’re really keen to find out more about you, our readers, too. Why not leave a comment introducing yourself, where you are located and anything else that comes to mind?
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How are we funding it?
Posted by daveb on June 23rd, 2007
I’ve a man of simple tastes and have worked really hard over the last 8 years for this opportunity. Rather than spraying the walls of nightclubs with Cristal, I’ve been steadily squirrelling away what little scraps of cash I can, here and there, into my aptly named Foxtrot Oscar fund.
Squiffy is a top-flight TEFL* English Teacher to foreign language students and so is planning to supplement our travel fund by standing at the front of a class of eager learners.
When all else fails, I’ll get off my bottom and do some work too — whatever it takes.
* Not to be confused with Teflon, which is something altogether different and often attributed to some business folk who have mastered the art of avoiding responsibility in any given situation. You know who you are. :-)
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Have we travelled before?
Posted by daveb on June 22nd, 2007
daveb says:
Not massively, no; although in 2004 I drove an anti-clockwise loop around the US in a 36-foot motorhome with my great friend Martian and my [now ex-]girlfriend Tina. Somewhat curiously, I came home without a girlfriend and Martian came home with a wife! We were hardcore backpackers right up to about day four, at which point we unpacked our bags into the wardrobes in the bedrooms of the motorhome and spent three months “camping” American-style!
Oh yeah, and I also did a nine-day tour of north-east Spain with my buddy Doogan. We did the hostel thing for about three nights and then I remember pulling out the Barclaycard and then insisting on a minimum of four-star hotels from thereon.
My, how things are going to be different this time! (We shall see.)
Squiffy says:
In 2000, I toured the world for twelve months through Africa, Asia, Australasia, North America and Canada. It was backpacking all the way, although now I’m a little bit older I wonder whether the foreign toilets will be even less appealing today than then were seven years ago?
I’ve also been lucky to have many exotic holidays with my family throughout my childhood.
This time around, I’m looking forward to adding passport stamps for South America and more of Asia.
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Why travel? Why now?
Posted by daveb on June 21st, 2007
Squiffy says:
Travel is fun, exciting and scary; you never know what’s around the corner! Why now? When Dave and I met we said we’d travel the world in two year’s time. And here we are, two years and two months later, ready to go.
daveb says:
We just wanted to wait until we both had great jobs, a great home and a great life <sarcasm>so that we could toss it all in the air!</sarcasm>
It is a really difficult decision to leave what we have now: We are just about to finish renovating our first home together. We’ve only been living here for about 16 months and will not even be spending a whole month it in once the work has been completed. Plus, SQ really enjoyed her job teaching English locally; a walk-to-work job no-less — how many other Londoners can claim this? I recently finished my last day at work and it is the best client that I’ve ever worked with: the people, the things we created.
Having said all of the above, there’s seldom a better time to do something than right now. Travel is something that a lot of people postpone forever… and then regret it. As Henry David Thoreau, in his book Walden, puts it
“[One ends up] spending the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.”
Wish us luck!
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How long are we going for?
Posted by daveb on June 20th, 2007
Short answer: Two years.
Longer answer: We’re really not sure about this just yet. We’re viewing this as more of a life-change than a time-limited holiday; rather we’ll travel a bit, work a bit, travel a bit, work a bit and so forth. We say two years to people who push for a more specific answer as it helps them (us?) to cope with the unknown; it certainly creates a different reaction than saying “one yearâ€, which conjures-up images of returning to the same job/locale/life as before.
Truth is, we’re not sure how long it will take. When Martian & I toured the US a few years ago in Edna, we only had a ninety-day visa waiver and this was not long enough. We didn’t stop anywhere longer than three nights. We spent just four hours at the Grand Canyon. We had a wail-of-a-time on tour and it really opened my eyes to places that I’d like to go back to stay for a while. This time around, armed with this learning, we hope to take our time to move deliberately through the world and really get under the skin of some of our locations.
“If there’s one key concept to remember amid the excitement of your first few days on the road, it’s this: Slow down.
Just to underscore the importance of this concept, I’ll state it again:
SLOW … DOWN.”Rolf Potts, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, Villard Books.
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Where are we going?
Posted by daveb on June 19th, 2007
daveb says:
We’re going global.
Rather than making concrete plans now, we will be planning just a little bit ahead as we go. There’s a Maps & Itinerary button on the left of this screen, in which you’ll be able to see our desired itinerary, planned route and actual route. It’s a big jump for us not to plan things; it’s a big change from how our society mostly operates. It’s a pretty scary place, not knowing what’s going to happen next and yet it’s quite calming at the same time.
“If you don’t have a plan, you can’t fail it.”
Apologies to those of you who want to see the final route laid-out here and now; we just don’t know ourselves yet!
Squiffy says:
I know that many of you who know me well will find it a little difficult to comprehend that I haven’t fully planned our entire route down to the last chocolate stop, but honestly, we really don’t have any planned destinations. We are not buying a round-the-world ticket because we want to take everything as it comes to make the most of spontaneous opportunities. What I can tell you though is that we are starting our travels by touring the UK, heading south from London first. And my most desired destinations to visit at some point along the way are: Namibia to drive across the sand dunes, Italy, the Galapagos Islands to see the marine iguanas, New Zealand, the trans-Siberian railway and UAE. I also want to partake in lots of sailing, surfing, white water rafting and English teaching in the appropriate locations. :o) Please feel free to recommend places we really should see!
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When are we leaving?
Posted by daveb on June 19th, 2007
We’ve penciled in the 14th July 2007, but definitely by the 20th as we won’t have a home after that!
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Opening questions
Posted by daveb on June 18th, 2007
Here we share with you some of the questions that we’ve been asked so far:
- When are you leaving?
- Where are you going?
- How long are you going for?
- Why travel? Why now?
- Have you travelled before?
- How are you funding it? What happens when you run out of money?
- Who is the audience for this blog?
- How often will you post to the blog?
- How else will you stay in touch?
- What are you doing with your flat?
- What are you doing with all of your stuff?
- What will you do when you come back?
- The site looks great, did you do it all by yourself?
- How can the site be improved?
- Why all the adverts on the site?
- What’s your long-term aim for the site?
- How else can we read your blog?
- I want to Escape the City! What advice do you have?
- As a reader, what can I do to get involved?
Rather than write the longest blog post in the world, we’ll be covering these off in mini-batches over the next couple of weeks or so.
- I’ve got a question for you right now!
That’s great news — post it in the comments section on this post below and we’ll answer it as soon as we can.
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