April 20, 2010 Pre-Trip Post 2

The excitement is finally kicking in. I have almost all of my gear sans a pair of ear plugs, locks, etc. Nothing that is crucial to the experience. I’m currently reading Vagabonding by Rolf Potts and it’s already starting to change my mind set.

Particularly this quote has stuck with me over the last few days:
[We spend] the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.
- Henry David Thoreau

And it’s true. We work and work and work until retirement because culturally that’s what we do. We accumulate things; lots and lots of things that tie us like prisoners to a piece of land. What if instead we did like the Australians and took a 1-2 year vacation during our college youth. How would our perspective as a culture change? I didn't realize this, but to travel for approximately 8 months in China would be around $6-11K. Living on a beach in Thailand for 6 months is about 3-5 grand. That’s the cost of a new couch. So for a couch you can stay at the place above for 6 months. I mean that’s ridiculous. That’s our option, but instead we buy the new car, the house, and it goes on. I mean $20,000 which is the low low end for a new car could buy you 2 years in Central and South America and leave you with some change.

Now I’m not knocking the choice of consumerism, but if you are like me I didn’t even realize the option of trekking the world was there. I can’t imagine living and not having seen the world. It is too great to limit ones self to a couple weeks a lifetime. I did it for so long and now I’m not sure that I can do it anymore.

April 15, 2010 Pre-Trip Post 1

It’s now seven days from my trip. I have most of my gear sans a few random items that I plan to pick up this weekend. It’s odd sense that I have now. I know that I stand on the cusp of something fantastic, and I want to know what the end product will be of my experience. How will I be different upon my return. How will I have bettered myself.

And so I spend a lot of time contemplating this as if I can capture that mind set now. Or I think that perhaps I will be the same person and I knew who I was all along. It will be interesting to be ripped from your world and permanently displaced to a lifestyle and location that is unnatural and new. A month is a perfect amount of time because it’s not a new course, but it’s long enough to indent your life in a way that your course could change upon your return.

I’m not sure and that’s where the excitement is. As much as possible we have lent this trip to being unplanned and instead be whisked through our journey by happenstance and indiscretion. I’m hoping that the freedom will make the experience more organic. I’ve also maybe somewhat selfishly put David in charge o f the details and I don’t know much more than our general path. Everything will be new and adventurous to me.

I plan on documenting my travels in pen and hopefully daily. Subsequently upon my return I will type them out and post them on this website. I’m standing on the edge of clip ready to jump and I don’t know what’s below me or how tall the cliff is; and thus how I will come out the other side.