The Journey| The Plan | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
What makes two people, perfectly tired of their jobs and on the run from the law, decide to pack up their belongings and travel the world?
A better question might be what wouldn't inspire us to go?
Actually, it doesn't matter how you phrase the question, because truthfully, neither one of us can give you a straight answer as to how we first got the idea. Each of us claims it was the other that planted the seed in our collective minds about a year ago.
Thinking back, it probably happened because we couldn't make up our minds where to go for a big vacation. The one-week and two-week breaks we were squeezing in every few months just weren't enough to calm us down from the stresses of our jobs and daily life. So we would talk about taking a three-week break, maybe a month, but where? Erin wanted to go back to China, while I wanted to go back to Australia. But we both wanted to see Eastern Europe, do an African Safari, and lounge on the beaches at Fiji or Moorea. Eventually, I think one of us just got frustrated and said, "Why don't we just take a year off and travel the whole world?"
What started as a joking matter became a very serious one over the next few months. We went to the bookstore, and bought a giant world map, then mounted it on our wall and started sticking in pins: one color for places we would try to see if we could, one color for places we felt we had to see, and one color for places where we knew someone, giving us little excuse to miss it. We began to trace out a few possible routes, and saw a definite plan forming.
