Why the heck not?

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Okay, okay, joking…that is not a full post obviously!  When He and I were first dating, we talked about travel…A LOT.   And then we did travel…A LOT.   So we made a list on Google Drive and shared it.  It was separated by continent and we added in countries we wanted to visit.  Then we drilled down from there and listed places and things in each country we wanted to see or do.  And then we just started checking them off.

African Safari and hiking on Mount Kilimanjaro?  Incredible.

A cross country train journey from Chicago to Napa?  Just your typical spring break, right?

Camping with the (really loud and smelly) penguins on Antarctica?  Our engaged Christmas.

Then more places we went, the longer the list grew because of who we met.  Each new friend had been somewhere else and told us such magical stories that we had to include it in our own lives.   Suddenly this little one page list was turning into a full college style outline with website links and bullet points.   How were we ever going to be able to get everywhere?  We work 9 to 5’s, we get 2 to 3 weeks vacation a year and generally it is balked at to take more than a week at a time (darn the American work ethic…). We would be exhausted and poor trying to go to each place for a week at a time and come home again.   There had to be a better plan.

My sister was the one who first mentioned the Delta Skymiles Around the World ticket to us.   I’m not sure she was aware at the time how much of a goal she planted in our brains, but quickly we ordered new credit cards to earn miles, took the day flights to DC on milage runs to hit the next bonus level, and updated the spreadsheet (and we’ll pause here for my family to laugh and mock because there’s nothing I love more than a spreadsheet or 7 to plan my life…my wedding…my Christmas gift list) of tracking our miles down to the very last one…and then one day, while neck deep in wedding planning and not watching the miles quite as closely as we had been, we realized we did it.   We managed to save 560,000 miles and were ready to start planning our ticket.

While we focused on the weddings, the honeymoon, the upcoming holidays, Delta threw us for a loop: they announced the program was ending in 2 months and if the ticket wasn’t purchased with all dates and stops selected by that date, it would never be available again.  So we went back to our spreadsheets and figure out how to start our trip a year early…kicking our lives into hyper planning and saving mode for months to make this dream come true.

Because, why the heck not.

When I say everywhere, I’m not joking.   We are touching 4 continents, 12+ countries, and an adventurous spirit.  So the Where is hard to define.  And in part I don’t want to define it.   I want you to keep coming back to see where we are next!

But in order to peak your interest…or keep those worriers (hi Mom!) from locking us to a chair and hiding our passport in fear, here are the main stops, determined by the Delta International Flights.  The timeline is approximate as I’m not in the mood to pull up the tickets to actually verify the dates, but you can leave it up to your imagination how much trouble we can manage to get into in each place for that amount of time!

Morocco: 6 days

Europe: 28 days

Egypt: 8 days

Thailand: 10 days

China: 15 days

Australia: 21 days

To all my fellow Mathletes, I didn’t add those up…so if it’s more than 88, oops, and if it’s less than 88 then perhaps I’m omitting a stop or two just to keep things interesting!

If you ask Him when our wedding day is, he’ll tell you “Labor Day!”  with such confidence and enthusiasm you almost accept it as fact…until your brain remembers that Labor Day in fact changes every single year and is on a Monday in September.   Considering we got married on a beautiful August Saturday, the facts don’t line up.  But, it did happen to be Labor Day weekend, on a year where it fell at the very start of September, so fittingly we wanted to begin our grand adventure on that same weekend…until we talked to Delta.

Our primary flights are booked 100% using Delta Skymiles, and because of that we recognized we had to allow a lot of flexibility in our travel dates and locations.  This meant that the last long weekend of the summer was not chockfull of award ticket seats.  Thankfully, due to the funny way the calendar worked out, leaving the week before Labor Day actually allowed us to leave right after our real anniversary!  I call it fate.  He calls it confusing and will celebrate our anniversary accordingly the following Monday as I’m sure he plans to do for the rest of our life.  (And I have no problem with this because I know that means a guaranteed anniversary trip EVERY year…plus flowers when he remembers he has the date wrong. Win-Win.)

Our return flight was also decided based on Delta’s whims…but in another twist of fate, we are returning to the grand US of A on Thanksgiving Day.   We’ll stagger off our 14 hour flight from Asia straight to my parents’ house for normal food, American football, and lots and lots of free time to sleep off the jet lag.  What more could we ask for here?

88 days.   It’s just a hair longer than the novel, although with the cheat of using primarily air travel, not quite the accomplishment.   Luckily, we aren’t in a race, instead we’re on a voyage.   A long planned and dreamed quest to go everywhere, all at once.   We hoarded Delta Skymiles and packed our little brown bag lunches for years to have the means to make this happen and now we are finally able to take the time to do it right.

We’re leaving the South and traveling continuously Eastward around the globe, touching down in 4 continents, more than a dozen countries, and ending our journey by finally setting foot on my 7th continent!  We’re packing up our lives into 80L backpacks (and causing me severe anxiety when I realized I wouldn’t be able fit even one pair of cute heels in that pretty purple bag unless I wanted to forgo several other basic human needs…) and seeing how many places and experiences we can tackle before real life occurs once more!

Who are we?  Well, for the sake of the internet and the unknown of what will happen over the next several months, we’re going to be Him and Her…He and She…Mr. and Mrs, really what ever I deem to call us when my jet lagged brain gets a chance to type up the adventures!  I understand most people reading these posts (at least the early ones-hi Mom…) know us, but on the slim chance we become popular or funny or a bad influence on some other crazy, young couple who gives in to the need to see everywhere, we’re keeping things pseudo-anonymous on the big, bad internet.  After all, at the end of this mad adventure we have to put back on our suits and sensible shoes and be productive members of the business community…and we might not want some of our future misadventures to be completely traceable in those pesky background checks!

I’m the Her in this dynamic duo…the Him will probably never write (although you better believe he will take it upon himself to attempt to edit the heck out of every one of my run on sentences…in vain as seen above!) but he will definitely be a huge part of our post.  His birthday present was a GoPro which he is ready to clamp, strap, or tape to every moving surface we encounter (animal, vegetable, or mineral!).  I also full expect (ie secretly hope for) some “hold my beer and watch this” stories that his family and frat brothers have come to know so well.  And as my family and friends know well, he will inevitably become my 2nd set of hands when I’m too covered in Barbie bandaids to type as fast as I talk…

On the day we start our adventure, we will both be 30, residents of a great Southern city, and have been married exactly 1 year and 1 day.   They say the first anniversary is traditionally paper, so we are honoring that with plane tickets, maps, itineraries, and those strange yellow vaccine cards.  This isn’t our first big trip, but it is definitely our longest, both in length and in planning…but more on that when we get to “The Why!”

The question my husband and I are asked more than anything else…honestly, maybe even more than “how are you?” and other generalities…has been the same for 5 years…

“Where are you going next?”

We are a couple who started traveling together before we actually started dating, so our newlywed year has (thankfully)  not been overwhelmed by questions of “when are you having a baby” like most of our friends.   In hindsight, it might have been easier to handle that question…my stock answer is always “I have too many places to visit,” yet l didn’t know how to divert the trip question.   For the past 5 years, we have been cooking up the ultimate trip…a 3 month voyage around the world!

So finally, the truth is out!  Our next trip is planned and the first day of our 2nd year of marriage will be spent where we are happiest, on a plane, with a new adventure in sight.  Where are we going next, you ask?

Everywhere!