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Q Are you going to ________?

A The best way to find out whether we're going somewhere is to check our schedule. But for everything that's further out than the schedule, we have a few basic rules: No places that are immersed in war, political uprising, or revolution, excluding that of the cultural variety. No places where they kidnap or shoot tourists, particularly American tourists, for fun or for profit. No countries ending in "-stan". Finally, I typically ask myself, "Can I say I've seen the world, if I haven't seen ______?" If the answer is no, then it's a good bet we're going (or at least I am — Erin doesn't particularly like this rule). If there are places that you think we should go, we're always eager to hear your ideas!

Q What languages are you trying to learn?

A Erin knows some Chinese (after spending some time there in college), so she's in charge of that. I took French in high school, making that my job. Finally, Erin took Spanish in high school, but we're both spending so much time in Latin America, it'll be hard not to learn enough to get around. (We were going to try to spend a week in language school in Guatemala, until Keith got sick. Of course.) Next year, we both want to learn Italian, since we have other romance languages down. German, Polish, Czech, Russian, and all the others — with the possible exception of whatever it is they speak in New Zealand — are probably out of our league, though there were will certainly be a few phrases we try to learn (like "Where is the nearest shoe store?"). No, we will not be learning Esperanto.

Q Are you visiting Internet cafes along the way to update your web site?

A Given we'll be equipped with a laptop and more phone adapters than pairs of underwear, we weren't planning to rely on Internet cafes all that much. But we've found that Internet cafes are more useful where we hadn't expected them to be, and vice versa. In Latin American countries, throwing our updates onto a floppy disk and taking them to an Internet cafe has been very fruitful — especially when charges run as little as a dollar an hour. This is also helpful because most places we stay at don't have phones, and many of those that do can't be hooked up to a computer. In the more developed countries, however, Internet cafes are still plentiful, but they're much more expensive, and often use stripped-down shells and/or firewall proxies that prevent us from being able to access to our web server. We also have backup plans to visit Oracle offices around the world when big bandwidth is needed, especially when backing up our photos. The double-dog backup plan is to break into houses of people with cable modems.

Q Are you staying in hostels?

A Our levels of accommodation will vary widely — from hammocks on the beach to a timeshare resort in Hawaii. Mostly we will be staying in places that we consider to be "one step above hostels". Our goal is to go as cheaply as possible, and to have our own room, but not necessarily our own bathroom, or even hot water. Mosquito netting is strongly preferred. Then again, if Oracle stock shoots back up into the 50's, it may be five-star hotels all the way.

Q What's your budget for this trip?

A Our goal was to spend a total of somewhere between $1000 and $2000 per week, but that includes lodging and food as well as all forms of transportation. Since a big chunk of airfare was purchased ahead of time, it's hard to regulate this on a weekly basis, so we've decided our weekly budget is about $100 a day. Fortunately, most of the places we've visited are relatively inexpensive, but then places like French Polynesia tend to throw a wrench in our plans. But overall, we've done a fairly good job of sticking to it. We'll see what happens after Asia....

Q How can I contact you?

A The best way to contact us is to send an email. We will try to check our email once or twice a week, depending upon access in foreign lands, and whether or not I've got all the right hardware. If you're attempting to contact us in regard to money owed or some other debt, you can get the fastest possible response by sending email to billg@microsoft.com. We promise to get right back to you. (Tip: a subject line of "MAKE MONEY FAST" is guaranteed to get our attention right away!)

Q Can I meet up with you?

A We would love to have our friends and family join us! The best thing to do is send us a message as soon as you think you might be interested in doing this. Then keep an eye on our schedule. If the dates are already given there, aim to at least be on the same continent as us, and we'll see what we can do. If not, let us know where you'll be and when. The earlier we know, the easier it will be for us to work the dates and location into our schedule.

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