Coffee Date

One of the most important aspects to planning an epic trip like this is to make sure that Rick and I are on the same page.  This affects both our lives, our collective short-term future, and our joint finances.  It would be disastrous if our hearts and intentions weren’t aligned. 

Our day-to-day lives are so busy, filled with constantly clamoring responsibilities, it’s hard to find any time to discuss our plans except in snatches of conversation interspersed within our usual daily catching-up.  Most of the planning falls to me for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that I love research, bringing together mountains of semi-relevant information until, somehow, everything falls perfectly together into a coherent picture.  Rick’s research skills are top-notch, but he’s more into the scientific method of let’s-see-if-this-works, and if not, let’s try something else until it does work, not an optimum strategy for wedding planning or for not ending up stranded in the middle of the Israeli desert.  Plus, I can easily, happily, spend hours figuring out public transportation routes.  Rick, not so much.  Therefore, he leaves me in peace as I bury myself under my pages and pages of collected data like a dragon frolicking in the midst of its hoarded treasure, and then patiently listens as I babble incessantly, or dutifully fulfills the list of to-dos I hand him.  It’s really a smooth working relationship.  But, this relationship works best when we agree on the details, since I know I’m not wasting energy on irrelevant information, Rick understands the reasons behind his numerous tasks, and we’re both excited about the end-goal

To this end, we decided to have a date-night.  Go out for coffee and just talk about whatever was in our minds regarding this trip.  It was a very successful three hours. 

We pared our list of countries down to Taiwan (dependent on certain circumstances), Vietnam, Mongolia, Turkey, Israel, Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Germany.  As you can see, there have been a number of changes for various reasons, but this list is as close to finalized as possible. 

We discussed some of what we’ll need to pack for the year.  It’s a fine line between bringing everything we think we’ll need and still being able to carry everything from place to place.  As I’m not the strongest girl, the line is fine indeed.  We’ve agreed we can, at most, bring two carry-on-sized rolling luggage and two backpacks worth of things, but we’re still undecided on the exact contents. 

Then, we brainstormed what tasks lay ahead of us.  Passports need to be renewed (his is close to expiring, mine is still under my maiden name ), phone options explored, cars dealt with, mail forwarded to the right place, apartment packed up and stored, travel insurance analyzed, so on and so forth.  So much to do and time dwindling down. 

Rick expressed his worry about finances, along the lines of my worries, so I brought him up-to-date on what we have saved, what money’s definitely coming in, what could be added.  The key to our trip is flexibility, so we figured out how much money per month was absolutely necessary, concluding that by the time we leave, we’ll divide however much we’ve saved by the amount we’ll need, and that’s how many months we’ll actually go for.  Also, Rick was reassured we wouldn’t be completely broke when we did finally arrive home. 

Finally, we just talked about what we expected out of the trip, so important because we don’t want to jump blindly into this situation, and ensure our travels are intentional and purpose-filled. 

All in all, it was a really satisfying talk.  I hope, time permitting, we can do something similar at least monthly. 

**Photo taken with my cell phone