The Disaster Diary

This is not the article I promised to write on camping. Lea and I were going camping, but then the South got smacked by Hurricane Delta. Experienced hurricane trackers that we are, we checked the weather daily to see if Delta would veer further north or west and maybe, maybe, maybe wouldn’t rain on us too hard… But such was not to be. Our campsite in west-central Georgia was destined to get hosed by endless rain bands straight from the Gulf of Mexico. We called the park and delayed our reservation.

This was disappointing, but not altogether unexpected. After all, Lea and I are travel disaster magnets.

Pensacola Beach, Labor Day 2000.

On our very first trip together, Lea and I went camping at Fort Pickens National Seashore at Pensacola Beach on Labor Day weekend, 2000. That year had seen a typically hot summer, but we reasoned that by Labor Day it would have cooled enough to make camping tolerable.

Hah! Had we stayed home in Baton Rouge, we would have enjoyed a record high of 104°F according to Weather Underground’s historical data archive. On Pensacola Beach, the high was “merely” 94°F, with a nighttime low of burning up in a tiny tent without even a breeze to offer relief. At least the water was cool, but that summer had also seen a spike in shark attacks along the Gulf, so we weren’t too comfortable getting in.

A few years later, we again decided to camp in the Florida Panhandle, this time at Thanksgiving, 2003. Normally, late autumn in Florida is comparable to a cool summer in the northern states, but this year Florida rewarded us with nightly lows of 49°F, 41°F, and 32°F. Had we remained one more day, we would have woken to a balmy 26°F.

Florida, November 2003.

The second year we were together, Lea and I went to Tickfaw State Park, less than an hour’s drive from our house in Baton Rouge. We’d invested in a brand new waterproof tent that was larger and more accommodating for the two of us (well, for me) than the 6’x6’ tent we’d taken to Pensacola. That first night at Tickfaw, a whole bayou’s worth of water fell out of the sky and we discovered exactly how waterproof our tent wasn’t. The next morning we gave up on staying any longer, packed the whole mess into our car, and went home.

In 2005 we camped in Milton, Florida, to go canoeing on the Blackwater River. It rained that first night, but not enough to deter us – we were well-practiced now at keeping the elements at bay. The rain did, however, raise the level and the speed of the Blackwater so that our canoe trip the next morning was, shall we say, exciting. I remember having trouble simply getting our canoe in the water and pointing it downstream. At a bend in the river, we paddled right into a log that barely broke the surface, sending Lea and me flying into the drink. Somehow our gear remained in the canoe. At noon we pulled ourselves onto a bank to eat lunch and dry off, while a whole church group of teenagers calmly paddled past us in pressed khakis and unwrinkled shirts.

The typical view from our campsites.

In April 2006, we planned to spend a weekend at Dismal’s Canyon, a private campground in northwest Alabama that’s one of the few places in the world where glowworms can be found. Bad weather and tornadoes were forecast, so at the last minute we changed our reservation to Red Top Mountain State Park in Georgia to get out of the storm’s path. What happened? The worst of the storm skipped Dismal’s Canyon entirely and came straight at us. We woke after midnight to the sound of hail on our tent, ran to the car, and sheltered at the nearest Waffle House until the front went through.

The mother of all bad weather events to coincide with us trying to camp was undoubtedly the May 2010 “thousand year flood” of Tennessee’s Cumberland River. We’d met with some friends at Cedars of Lebanon State Park and planned to take a nature tour on Saturday, May 1. The rain was steady all morning, making us hunt down a covered pavilion to cook breakfast and reducing the nature tour to an indoor lecture. That afternoon we retreated to our tent to wait out the rain – until the water surrounding our campsite started to steadily rise. We didn’t even bother to fold our tent up – we just rolled it into the trunk of our car and high-tailed to our friend Melissa’s house (south of Nashville) through a zero-visibility downpour. Even when we got there, I was somewhat dismayed by the water approaching Melissa’s back patio, and even more so when watching a building float down the Cumberland on live TV.

Does correlation imply causation? Do Lea and I have especially bad travel karma? Do we actually cause these things to happen by deciding to travel somewhere? The data isn’t limited to camping trips.

We spent a week in Negril in May 2006 for a friend’s wedding. May is the start of the rainy season, but even so we weren’t expecting the monsoon that trapped us in our hotel room for three solid days while we watched the area outside our window turn into a decent-sized pond. Our trip to the Yucatan in April 2007 was greeted with unseasonable wind and cold – which didn’t stop the snorkeling companies from trying to convince us to go swimming in that year’s extremely cold and choppy coastal waters (we didn’t). In October 2013 (admittedly, again in the rainy season) our cruise stop in St. Lucia was met with a downpour excessive even for that time of year. We took an excursion to see a waterfall, but ended up standing in one.

In July 2012, we spent three weeks in East Africa, with a layover both ways in Rome. In Rome we enjoyed a heatwave with highs in excess of 100°F, and the discovery that many buildings in Rome don’t have air conditioning. (Neither were the subways, which were packed with disgruntled futbol hooligans unhappy that Italy had lost to Spain 4-0 in the 2012 Euro championship.)

We landed in Dar Es Salaam to find out there was a doctors’ strike underway. There were riots in Zanzibar before we arrived, and shortly after we left, one of the ferries to the island sank with over 800 people on board. Bombings in Mombasa kept Lea’s sister Lisa from traveling with us into Kenya, and security at our hotel there was extra-tight. We had to pass through metal detectors just to get in the door, and armed guards wouldn’t even let taxis approach unless they’d been specifically called by the concierge. (Now, that’s service!)

During our South American Odyssey, a part of Argentina we traveled through was getting over a surge of Hantavirus cases. A Yellow Fever outbreak was just getting underway in the Brazilian state of Bahia as we arrived in its capital, Salvador. To be clear, we were vaccinated against Yellow Fever, but there is no cure, vaccine, or treatment for Hantavirus, according to the CDC. It was hard enough keeping the bus schedules straight, much less the potential contagion vectors.

Don’t get me started on volcanos. Whatever the “average proximal volcanic eruption rate per traveling couple” is, Lea and I exceed it. A volcanic eruption in the Galapagos delayed our flight to Ecuador, and the leftover fumes prevented us from exploring the tunnels on Isabela Island. Earlier that year, another eruption shut down Guatemala City’s airport shortly after our stay there. Two days after we bought tickets to Iceland – two days, I tell you – the Bárðarbunga stratovolcano erupted under the Vatnajökull ice sheet. Though that ended up becoming the highlight of our trip, but when I first read the news about the eruption, I called Lea from work and said, “Seriously? Seriously?”

Whether or not you believe that Lea and I have a “natural disaster fairy” who follows us around, I’ll give you the same advice we give everyone – Before planning a trip somewhere, email us first and make sure we’re not going.

P.S. Things are afoot on my fiction writing blog: Check it out!

The Toll, or “What the #@%! Am I Doing Here?”

“To think it will soon be June!” grumbled Bilbo, as he splashed along behind the others in a very muddy track. It was after tea-time; it was pouring with rain, and had been all day; his hood was dripping into his eyes, his cloak was full of water; the pony was tired and stumbled on stones; the others were too grumpy to talk. “And I’m sure the rain has got into the dry clothes and into the food-bags,” thought Bilbo. “Bother burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!” It was not the last time that he wished that!

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Confession time again. Last week at Santuário do Caraça, I looked really hard at the possibility of calling the trip quits and coming home. Logistically, there was a window where I could have done it quickly and relatively cheaply. All it would have taken was a bus ride to São Paulo instead of Vitoria and a discount airline ticket to Orlando on the 20th with a connection to Atlanta the next morning. The “escape hatch” from South America was right there, and all I had to do was pull the rip cord.

Long term travel is difficult for me on the best of days. It’s a lifestyle not well suited to my personality. Staring at the option of returning home forced me to think hard about whether I wanted to continue. No more excuses. Did I want to see the trip through, or admit I wasn’t enjoying myself and pull the plug? I decided to keep going, but I did have to admit that if I was going to get any value from the miles that remain I’ll have to change my attitude toward travel and how I take care of myself.

If I’d written this blog yesterday, it might have been a different story. Yesterday I felt much like Bilbo Baggins in the passage quoted above.

Right now I’m in Porto Seguro, a mediocre tourist town on the Brazilian coast. I came here with the intention of unpacking all my luggage, walking on the beach, not thinking about long-haul bus trips, and enjoying cheap burgers and caipirinhas in the sun.

So of course it’s been raining like crazy. Twice, when the rain seemed to have passed, I went for a walk along the surf – and both times I returned shivering and drenched to the bone from a sudden storm. The rain was so heavy that yesterday I worried about parts of town flooding and stocked up at the grocery store in case I couldn’t leave my hotel. The forecast was grim: 100% chance of DOOM until my bus ride to Salvador on Wednesday.

But yesterday afternoon the rain stopped. This morning the sun came out and everyone in town poured out of their resorts onto the sand. I spent an hour drifting in the waves, finally, finally recharging my batteries. The forecast still calls for afternoon showers but Noah can put away his nails; Brazil will not be sinking into the Atlantic.

I keep saying “I” because at the moment Lea has gone ahead to the island community of Morro de São Paulo (no relation to the big São Paulo), accessible only by ferry from Salvador, where at this very moment she is snorkeling the reefs and hopefully taking some fantastic photographs that we’ll get to share later. In fact, all the pictures you’re enjoying this week are thanks to Lea’s eye for macro and underwater photography because frankly, I got nothin’.

Splitting and up and traveling apart was always part of the plan for this voyage, but aside from two days in Bolivia when I stayed behind to hike Isla del Sol, we haven’t done it. However, at this point in the journey I needed to simply stop for a while and Lea needed to keep on going. If she were here in Porto Seguro, I guarantee she’d be climbing the walls.

Like Bilbo Baggins, I’m a deeply introverted person. Introverts aren’t averse to going out and having new experiences, but afterward I need time to slow down and process, preferably in the comfort of a familiar environment that I’ve made into my own personal refuge. Long-term travel rarely, if ever, lets that happen. In my case, I feel that non-stop travel has exacted a heavy toll – one that I’ve ignored and haven’t truly dealt with until recently.

When we set out on this trip, I envisioned it as a “hard reboot” on our lives. I imagined that quitting our jobs (in my case, my career), stuffing our belongings in storage, and hitting the road for ten months would change us in many ways. I didn’t set any goals or expectations as to what those changes would be. I just dove in and hoped for the best, thinking that “travel broadens the mind” (the narrative that frequent travelers espouse) and that it’s good to get out of your comfort zone (the narrative that successful risk-takers sell).

Side note: Lea did set goals and expectations for personal development on this trip, and you really ought to read about them and her progress on LinkedIn.

Not setting personal development goals has turned out to be a mistake, because it feels like that “hard reboot” I expected hasn’t happened. Instead I’ve sunk into old patterns of withdrawal and not acknowledging my feelings until they bubble over. Going “out of my comfort zone” with no clue as to what I hoped to accomplish has simply made me crave that comfort zone even more as we’ve traveled. I joked to Lea once that my comfort zone has actually shrunk, and that as soon as we get back I’m going to dig myself a hole and burrow in like a tick.

“Knowing where the trap is – that’s the first step in evading it.”

– Frank Herbert, Dune

So here I am, alone in a town where no one speaks my language, trying to get my mojo back and wondering where I’m going from here. But what happens now, and what happens when all this is over? Has this journey changed me in any meaningful way?

Honestly, I’m not sure. This trip has taught me lessons, but many of those were things I already knew in theory. Now I just have personal experience to back it up. In that vein, let me impart some words of wisdom to any of my fellow lunatics as you consider chucking your current life and traveling the world for an extended time.

  1. DON’T.

Okay, scratch that. Unfair and too extreme. Let’s try again. Learn from what I didn’t do.

  1. Know thyself. Know what your limits are. Know what you enjoy and what you don’t. Know what you hope to gain by traveling the world. Know how you want to push yourself and why. And most of all, know how you’ll need to refuel yourself in order to keep going.
  2. Take breaks. Understand that you don’t have to do everything. It’s okay to say “no.” You don’t have to climb every mountain, visit every ruin, or hike to every waterfall. There are a million things to see in the world. You’ll never see all of them, but you’ll get to enjoy more if you acknowledge when you need to skip a few in order to take care of your needs.
  3. Adjust your focus. It’s very easy to ruminate on the negatives of travel, especially when it’s 3:00 a.m. on a bus ride on an unpaved road and your teeth are about to rattle out of your skull. Many times you’ll find yourself, like Mr. Baggins, slogging through the mud and wondering what the hell you were thinking. But not every moment is going to be like that. Many will be magical. Focus on those times. Relish them, and come back to them when you need to.
  4. Acknowledge that it’s going to be hard. Long-term travel is difficult, and even when you think you’ve figured it out it will get harder. I thought we had it mastered by the time we were coasting through Chile, and then we hit High Season for tourists in Patagonia. We escaped High Season only to hit the language barrier in Brazil. On top of that, we’ve just begun prepping for our return to the U.S. without guarantees and no fixed abode. The challenges change, but they never ease up. Be ready.

“No matter where you go, there you are.”

– Buckaroo Banzai, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

Several times on this trip, Lea has asked why I didn’t go home when it was clear that I was struggling and miserable. I had reasons for staying, but none of them had to do with my happiness or well-being. On one level I was concerned about the financial hit we would take if I came back early, unemployed and uninsured, but I also knew deep down that I would beat myself to a pulp for “quitting” and giving up, even though I had no real plan to give up on.

It was in Caraça that I finally overcame the thought of being ashamed if I turned around and came home. So why didn’t I?

Because while we were there, I sat in monastic silence as a wolf walked by within arm’s reach and loped away into the dark.

I don’t travel to have fun and party. I’m not that guy at home, and I’m even less that person abroad. I don’t travel to relax. While I enjoy all-inclusive resorts and I love a lazy cruise, that’s not travel. That’s staying in a hotel.

When I travel, I do it to experience Wonder. I felt wonder when I saw the northern lights in Iceland, even though it was an ungodly number of degrees below zero and I was wearing too many layers of clothes to count. I felt wonder on the Serengeti, and looking over the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. I felt wonder in the maze of alleys in Fez, and in the ruins of Beit She’An. I felt wonder in the decorated cemeteries of Oaxaca, and watching humpbacks leap into the air off the coast of Ecuador. I felt wonder seeing the southern sky from a mountaintop in Chile. I felt wonder in the bite of the wind from the Perito Moreno glacier while watching a giant slab of ice calve into the water below.

I don’t know what wonders await in the jungles west of Salvador or south of Bogotá. I don’t know what wonders await in the barrios of Medellin. I don’t know what it will feel like to reach the Caribbean coast and know that I’ve circled a continent. But I’m willing to stick around and find out.

I could easily say that I don’t enjoy travel. I don’t like spending ten or more hours on a bouncy night bus. I don’t like eating the same food over and over again because it’s all that’s available. I don’t like being stuck in a room for days because of excessive heat or rain. I despise having to fix every damn toilet because apparently South America has a shortage of plumbers. I hate feeing isolated from the world I understand and unsure if my plans to start over will bear fruit when we finally return home.

But that’s okay. That’s the toll you pay when you travel for as long as we have. The question I asked myself when faced with the choice of whether or not to quit was whether or not those fleeting moments of wonder are worth the hardships that make them possible.

Today, the answer’s still yes.

P.S. Next week’s entry – the last for Brazil – will be posted on Thursday, April 4. On Monday, Lea and I will be exploring Chapada Diamantina and who knows what the Internet signal will be like. Besides, if I post on April 1 no one will believe a word I say.

Last Known Photograph

And we’re off! Right now Lea and I are sitting in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport waiting on a jet plane, don’t know when we’ll be back again. Lots of our friends have been excited about our trip, have wished us luck, and even put us in touch with people we can meet along the way. Meanwhile, a small minority has responded to our plans with some variation of, “You guys are crazy! Backpacking for a year around South America? You guys are going to get killed down there!”

In honor of that sentiment, here follows a list of all the ways we plan to get killed while traveling around South America. Friends, this is for you.

 

“You know, every frame of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph.”

-Joel Hodgson, MST3K Experiment 524: “Manos, The Hands of Fate”

 

Ecuador: Explosive Decompression

Assuming we don’t burst into flames as soon as we leave the United States, we’ll be landing completely unprepared at the Mariscal Sucre International Airport outside Quito, Ecuador. Nestled in the Andes, the second highest mountain chain on earth, we’ll be disembarking at an elevation of 7,874 feet above sea level with an atmospheric pressure of a mere 10 PSI. Now I can’t speak for Lea, but as someone who grew up at sea level in the lowlands of Louisiana, I fully expect to explode like Arnold Schwarzenegger on the surface of Mars in Total Recall.

Jared & Lea, Avdat National Park, Negev Desert, Israel, 2017. While exploring the site, they accidentally came across the lost resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, opened the lid, and burst into flames.

Peru: Alien Abduction

One of the places I have to visit while we’re in Peru are the famous Nazca Lines which, as Erich Von Daniken’s classic text Chariots of the Gods informs us, are landing markers for alien spacecraft. Now if you get scooped up by a flying saucer while driving through the backroads of Alabama you can’t really be held accountable, but if you go to Nazca you’re practically begging for it.

Now this is kind of a cheat because I don’t expect the aliens to kill us. However, due to the effects of time dilation and the distance to the aliens’ home planet, I expect all of you to be long gone by the time we get back so it’s really all the same.

Jared & Lea on Dia de los Muertos, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2016, in disguise as zombies to blend in with the hordes of undead unexpectedly rising from their crypts in the midst of the celebration. Their attempt at camouflage failed, and their brains were eaten.

Bolivia: Death Road Bus Crash!

This one is almost too easy. It is a well established fact that no one has ever survived a bus ride over the Andes Mountains into or out of Bolivia. The only thing in question is whether or not someone will be there to film the event and how awesome it will look on television. Will our bus tumble sideways or do cartwheels as it plummets over a sheer cliff? Will we land with a thud or explode like every car that ever ran off a hillside in 70s and 80s television? Place your bets now, amigos!

Jared & Lea on a dune in the Sahara, Morocco, 2015. At sunset, they and their entire tour group were devoured by a giant sandworm.

Chile: Dehydration, Desiccation, Mummification

After having been killed crossing the border from Bolivia, we’ll enter Chile via the Atacama Desert, the driest place in the world. Of course, we will forget to bring water bottles and die of thirst while baking in the sun waiting for the next bus to come by. Here’s the cool thing about the Atacama: it’s so dry that if you die there and no one moves your body, you will be naturally mummified. According to Bernardo Arriaza’s Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile, the oldest naturally mummified body found in the Atacama has been dated to 7020 B.C.

Jared & Lea at LSU’s Greek Amphitheater (the place of their wedding in 2002), Baton Rouge, 2013. While on campus, Mike the Tiger escaped his compound and ate them both.

Patagonia: Consumed by an Elder God from Beyond the Shores of Eternal Darkness

In 1997, an ultra-low-frequency underwater sound referred to as “The Bloop” was detected at approximately 50⁰S 100⁰W, a remote location in the Pacific west of the southern tip of South America. The sound was loud enough to have been picked up by sensors up to 5,000 km away. It resembled the profile of a noise made by a living creature, but far more powerful than any ever measured on earth. Since then, scientists have “attributed” the noise to that of a large icequake. However…

What no one in the scientific field wants to admit out loud is that the location of the signal corresponds very closely to the suspected location of the lost sunken city of R’lyeh, prison of the dark entity known as Cthulhu. Lea and I plan to be at the southernmost tip of South America on the longest day of the year. What better time for a monster from before the dawn of time to rise from the deep and eat us all? If you gotta go, you gotta go.

Jared & Lea at Victoria Falls, 2012. While hiking the falls, they were both pushed into the Zambezi gorge by enraged baboons.

Argentina: Trampled by Drunken Cattle

From the research I’ve done on Argentina (which honestly boils down to watching food programs on the Travel Channel) I gather that all they do down there is slaughter cattle, eat red meat, and drink wine. It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to know that sooner or later the cows are going to turn the tables on their Argentinian gaucho oppressors. It’s just our luck that we’ll be passing through the country’s scenic ranchlands when the cattle finally snap, break into the wine barrels, get thoroughly boozed up, and go on a rage-fueled rampage killing everyone in sight.

Jared & Lea on Lake Michigan, 2011. While on the tour, a giant sinkhole drained the entire lake down through the earth’s crust and into the upper mantle.

Uruguay: Sand Blisters

Our plan for Uruguay is to spend a lot of it on the beach. We’ll be there in one of the hottest months of the year, so it stands to reason we’re going to scorch our feet. We’ll consider heading back to Montevideo for medical treatment, but it’s such a long walk to the bus station and that beachside tiki bar will look soooo inviting. We shrug our shoulders and instead of getting proper care we numb ourselves with mojitos and margaritas until we pass out. Our blisters get infected overnight, and we die.

Jared & Lea at the Wet Lizard, Belize City, 2007, on the afternoon that Cat-5 Hurricane Wilbur sank the entire region into the Caribbean.

Brazil: Eaten by Everything

Ah, the Amazon. I hear Brazil has been making great strides to chop it down and turn it into Wal-Marts, but I understand that a great deal of it remains. No doubt at some point Lea and I will find ourselves hiking through dense jungle and accidentally step into a nest of bullet ants. Since the sting from a single bullet ant is the most painful of any insect on the planet, and we’ll be covered in the little bastards, we’ll lose our minds and run screaming for the nearest body of water in an attempt to get them off.

On the way to the river, we’ll trip over a giant anaconda. This will piss the snake off enough to wrap around both of us at once and swallow us whole. It will be so sluggish while digesting us live that it will be easy prey for the hungry jaguar that pounces on it from the trees. The jaguar will get a few good bites, but in their struggle the jungle cat and the snake will both fall into the river where they, and us, will all be eaten by piranhas.

Jared & Lea at the Continental Divide, Rocky Mountain National Park, 2005, mere seconds before the magnitude 10 earthquake that split North America in half and ended human civilization.

Columbia: Old Age

The great thing about Columbia is that it’s the one country in the world where nothing bad has ever happened to anyone. Lea and I will love it so much that we’ll decide not to come back. She’ll teach English and I’ll set up a snow-cone stand. The climate is so excellent, the mountains are so beautiful, the seaside is so lovely, and the people are so friendly that we’ll spend the next five decades in blissful semi-retirement until finally uploading our brains into shiny new android bodies, the Matrix, or robots exploring the surface of Mars (whichever becomes viable first).

We lived happily ever after, and were never heard from again.

Jared & Lea at Capitol Lake, Baton Rouge, 2002. Shortly after this photo was taken, they were pecked to death by wild Canadian geese.

95%

Have you ever updated something on your computer, have it get stuck at 95% and just freeze? Yeah, that’s how Lea and I feel right now. Our flight leaves for Ecuador a week from Wednesday and while we’ve been pushing and pushing to get ready, it feels as if we’ve been stuck at 95% and can’t get all the way finished. So far the only thing we’ve completed is rehoming our cat. The rest is just… Argh!

Here’s a list,  because the Internet likes lists.

Boxing Up, Selling, and Otherwise Disposing

We’ve been asked several times if we’re keeping our home while we’re away. Since it’s just an apartment (one where the property owners recently decided to install outdoor speakers that blare pop music 24 hours a day), no we’re not staying. But that means that every item we’re not taking with us needs to be either boxed up and stored, sold off, or thrown away. We’ve been downsizing in stages for years now, but we’ve still just got stuff.

We’ve sold a bunch, including one of our cars (sale pending on the other). We’ve donated books, DVDs, and comics to the library. We’ve thrown many things in the dumpster (with more still to go), and we’ve put lots and lots of our belongings into boxes. Nevertheless, there’s still a lot left because we can’t stop living and need things like clothing and food, at least for a while. There was a rapid frenzy of boxing things several weeks ago, then everything has slowed to a crawl as we hit items that 1) we still might need, or 2) are large, awkward, and hard to fit anywhere.

Signing Our Lives Away

Not to mention the metric butt-ton of paperwork, contracts, and legal documents we’ve got to get in order. We’ve packed up and moved before without as much hassle – you don’t have to get your whole lives on paper just to change cities or change jobs. Leaving the country on your own nickel without benefit of an employer’s per diem or insurance coverage, well, that’s an Amazonian tree frog of a different color.

First, even though we don’t anticipate any terrible danger per se, it’s not a bad idea to get one’s wills and advance healthcare directives in order. And, since we’ll certainly need someone stateside to take care of financial matters (and check our P.O. Box from time to time) we’re hiring a personal assistant company and giving a family member our power of attorney. All of which requires lengthy forms to be filled out, signed, witnessed and/or notarized, filed with the courts, copied, and mailed to all necessary parties. We’ve checked off more than half of those boxes, but there are still some left to go and the clock is ticking.

And that’s the easy part. The hard part? Finding health coverage. We’re losing our employer-sponsored health care and going out on our own. Most U.S. plans are only good if you reside in the states, so we’re having to go with an expat policy. Which meant finding one with halfway decent reviews, filling out a lengthy application, then filling out even lengthier questionnaires about our medical history and current issues, every one of which pushes that premium up, up, and away. The one we chose (not going to mention who, because they’re not paying me to advertise) has an expat plan that also offers coverage in the U.S. but at twice the price. What’s even better, the U.S. coverage isn’t ACA compliant, so we’re still going to get stiffed with a tax penalty at the end of the year. The solution? Ditch the U.S. coverage and just make sure we get medical treatment anywhere except the United States if something happens to us.

Where are we in that process? Well, there’s one more form to sign, scan, and send back in. As with everything else, we’re still at 95%.

Wining and Dining

Understandably, before we start our grand adventure all of our friends and family want to see us off. This has led to traveling around to visit folks and a lot of meeting people for lunch and/or dinner in and around Atlanta. Which has been great – we love eating out and spending time with people – but it’s been chewing into our prep time and causing last-minute waistline expansion which we’ll have to make up for by switching to a ramen-only diet before we leave. Seeing all our friends one more time before we go is a welcome respite from the dreaded “doing stuff” and at the same time the nagging, responsible voices in the back of our heads keep telling us we ought to be at home printing another form or packing another box.

To try and take care of a lot of goodbyes in one fell swoop, we’re hosting a “Rum Sail Away” going away party for ourselves and two other friends who are also leaving town. (Hey Sonica! Hey Erin!) This will hopefully be a great time, let us see a bunch of folks all at once, and clean out my Caribbean rum collection which has been growing faster than I’ve been drinking.

Once we’ve scratched that off the to-do list, we’ve got a plan to push that 95% completion up to at least 99%. We will spend Monday driving around, signing and filing documents, returning overdue library books, picking up prescriptions, and generally putting the last nail in the paperwork’s coffin. On Tuesday we’re not going to leave the apartment or communicate with anyone (except via GrubHub) until the apartment is Packed. Caput. Finito.

Wednesday I pick up a moving truck. Thursday we move the Stuff into Storage. Friday will be for odds and ends, and sometime before we leave we’ll have to give the apartment a thorough scrub down. Even though we know the apartment complex is going to rip everything out and renovate the place as soon as we’re out the door, we still want our damn deposit back.

And then, just maybe, we’ll sit back and binge Narcos on Netflix until our plane takes off.

Stay tuned, compadres.

Leaving Miss Piggy

This is Miss Piggy. We think she’s about ten years old, but we’re not sure. She was already an adult when we found her in 2013, scrounging for scraps in the compost heap behind our house in Birmingham. Once we fed her and got her to trust us, it became clear that she’d been somebody’s house cat. She’d already been spayed, she was terrible at fending for herself in the wild, she ate every meal as if it might be her last, and our vet let us know that she was an actual breed (a Bombay). We posted signs in all the nearby neighborhoods, with all the local veterinarians, and on lost animal forums online, but were unable to locate her owners. Several houses had recently gone back on the market in our neighborhood shortly before Miss Piggy appeared. We believe someone moved away and abandoned her.

Now Lea and I are leaving the country for ten months and can’t take her with us. Leaving Piggy behind is the saddest part of the whole deal.

The good news is that we’ve found friends to take care of her, and we do want her back when we return. It’s hard, though, knowing that she’s going to be unhappy. She doesn’t understand what’s going on, and having been abandoned once before we hope she doesn’t feel like it’s happening all over again. It’s unclear how much animals actually remember of past trauma, but any pet owner will tell you that they do retain something.

We’ve left Piggy’s carers detailed instructions on all her little quirks (how  she likes her food, how she likes her litter, etc.). We hope she adjusts quickly to her new situation and doesn’t spend all her hours hiding from her new humans. Most of all, we hope she remembers us when we get back.

With this career break, I admit that a big motivating factor is to leave behind the non-stop, high pressure world of American working culture. There is so much emotional baggage wrapped up in surviving day to day, even for those of us in the “comfortable” middle class, that we desperately want to escape from, and we can’t wait to find out what it’s like to be free from the constant daily nightmare of alarm clocks, crushing commutes, hair-on-fire deadlines, and demanding, demanding, demanding customers. (I know: First World Problems. Send me a meme.)

However, there’s a lot in our lives that we love and it’s hard to let go. For weeks, it’s seemed as if every single day was the last day I was going to see at least one person. Some will be here when we return, but some won’t. We’ve made a lot of friends over the last two years in Atlanta, and we love the city itself.

I haven’t felt this way about every place that I’ve lived. There were some that I couldn’t wait to leave. Here, though, Lea and I feel that we’ve finally found our place. For me, there are people here I can hang with, game with, go to movies with, make music with. Here I can go to DragonCon every single year and not have to pay $300 per night for a hotel room! (Incidentally, we’re leaving before the Con and they’ve booked Peter Capaldi as a guest. AAARGH!) I know, more First World Problems. Sue me.

So, if Atlanta’s so great, why not just stay and find new jobs? Because now is the time. Because we’re not getting younger or healthier, and if we wait too long to live what we dream then it will only be a regret instead of an actuality.

Believe me, once we set all the gears moving to get us out of the country, we discovered that the pressure not to go is enormous, from society in general and our own inner expectations. We’re both overproductive people, so we feel like we’re the kid who makes all A’s who suddenly wants to drop out of school.

Funny story: I was that kid, and I did that too. In 1993 I dropped out grad school. I wasn’t prepared for the emotional fallout of ditching the path I was on and forging something new, but in retrospect it was one of the best decisions I ever made, and maybe the first real one I ever made for myself.

Here I am, twenty-five years later, about to do it again. This time I’ve got my game face on, I’ve got my partner in crime and love of my life with me, and we’ve got a battle plan for what comes next.

But we’re really going to miss Miss Piggy.

The Secret Untold Truth of The Escape Hatch – Now Revealed!

Buenos diás, compadres!

When I started this blog back in April, I talked about how my wife Lea and I are frequent world travelers and that I was going to use this space to chronicle our adventures and why hadn’t I been doing that all along. I also implied that along the way we might learn a little bit more about ourselves and the world and wouldn’t it be swell to share all that with the reading public, because who just wants to look at a bunch of pretty pictures of places someone else has vacationed, am I right?

Well… All of that is true, but it’s not the whole story. The whole story, which couldn’t be revealed publicly until now is… (drum roll, please)…

I done quit my job. As of July 14, I will no longer be your friendly, neighborhood librarian. Lea and I are taking a long-needed career break. On August 1, she and I will fly to South America and not come back for at least ten months.

The plan is thus: We land in Quito, then fly to the Galapagos for an actual “vacation” before our serious traveling commences. Once back on the mainland, we’re going to take two weeks of Spanish-immersion classes (Lea at Intermediate level, myself at “laughable beginner”). After that, we’re just going to head downhill in the general direction of Antarctica and see what happens.

Our itinerary is deliberately vague. We’ll travel by bus, stay in hostels, and couch-surf as much as we can. If we like a place, we’ll stay a while. If we don’t, we’ll move along. If we find we’re spending too much money, we’ll look for somewhere cheap and hole up. If we get fatigued and a little too dusty from all that backpacking, we may (on occasion) wimp out and book ourselves into a resort with trustworthy showers and air conditioning for a day or two.

We’re planning an average of about six weeks per country, going from Ecuador to Peru, a quick dash through Bolivia to see the salt flats, moseying down a good stretch of Chile, flying to Tierra del Fuego sometime around December, then back up through Argentina, Uruguay, maaaaybe Paraguay, Brazil, and finally flying across to Columbia before coming home. Or going somewhere else.

FAQ:

Are you both out of your goddamn minds?

Why, yes. Yes we are. If you’re a working American with a relentless, 40-60 hour a week job that barely lets you sleep at night, you probably are too.

The truth is, we’ve been planning something like this for a long time. Originally we were to have left two years ago, but life happened. Life always happens. Eventually you have to tell Life, “Back off. I’m doing what I want.” Life replies, “Oh yeah? Bet I can stop you.” To which the appropriate response is “Bring it, jerk.”

But seriously, you’re quitting work for a year?

That’s not all we’re quitting. We’re not going to have a fixed address. We’re not going to have a car. We’re not going to have a TV. We’re not going to have a cat. We’re not going to be around people who speak our own language.

We’re not going to have employers or customers making demands on our time and our energy. We’re not going to have a schedule to follow except what we impose on ourselves. We’re not going to have any choice but to immerse ourselves in another world. At the same time, we’re not going to have anyone to stop us from heading to that beach, or hiking into that jungle, or taking a gondola up that mountain whenever we damn well want.

(You’ll note that I didn’t say climb that mountain. We’re not completely crazy.)

Basically, the time has come for us to do a hard reset – a CTRL-ALT-DELETE if you will – on our lives. Whatever happens, we’re going to be different people at the end of this. With planning, luck, and determination, we hope to come back refreshed, in better shape, and with a whole new point of view on the world.

Assuming, of course, we decide to come back at all.

Stay tuned, dear readers.

The Travel Kit (or, What Are We Forgetting to Take?)

Here we go:

A-PAP in carry case, camera tripod, two Deuter hiking backpacks, one day-trip backpack, toiletry bag, two hats, sunglasses, chargers chargers chargers, one Sony tablet, two mosquito nets, one Dell two-in-one for blogging, one handy pocket-size Olympus waterproof camera, two inflatable travel pillows, headlamps, mosquito repellent, padlocks, pill box, ponchos (in a selection of four bright “Hey, we’re Americans!” colors), one Canon Rebel T3 DSLR camera, one telephoto lens and one ultrawide fisheye for said camera, dry bags, and toilet paper.

What’s missing? Clothes, I guess. I suppose we can squeeze them in somewhere.

The good news: the place we’re going uses U.S. standard 110 power outlets. No adapters necessary. *whew*

T minus 3 days to Guatemala!

Welcome to The Escape Hatch! (Or, Does the World Really Need Another Travel Blog?)

Roatan, Honduras, 2007

Why not ask, does the world need one more bowl of pho? One more piece of duty-free chocolate? One more plate of jerk chicken over peas and rice? Does the world really need any more scenic photos of pristine beaches, soaring mountains, and crystal clear lakes? Does the world need any more adventure stories of driving through a giant crater in the Negev Desert, crunching across Icelandic snow at midnight under the Aurora Borealis, or snorkeling over coral reefs off the shores of Zanzibar?

Well, yeah.

My name is Jared Millet. My wife Lea and I are habitual world travelers. We do our best to leave the United States at least twice a year, and we never go on one trip without already starting to plan the next. We’ve done our share of in-country travel too, straying away from the usual tourist attractions whenever possible and looking for holes-in-the-wall that many people have never heard of. Which doesn’t mean we’d turn our noses up at a chance to raft down the Grand Canyon. We’re definitely going to raft down the Grand Canyon. One of these days.

You learn a lot when you travel (and not just in the “self discovery” sense, though there is that too). You learn little things about how the world works, and how the world can work differently than it does in your home town. You learn that Israel has an unnatural number of roundabouts and not nearly enough gas stations. You learn that, seen from a distance, a black rhino moving at speed can easily be mistaken for an SUV. You learn that the Moroccans didn’t learn anything from the French when it comes to variety of food. And you learn that a person can go for weeks (or months) on three changes of clothes, as long as you have enough socks and underwear and don’t pack any more shoes than you absolutely have to.

Honestly, given everywhere that Lea and I have been, all the thousands of photos we’ve taken, and the sheer number of miles we’ve logged, I feel bad that I haven’t been blogging our adventures for years. It’s never too late to start, and Guatemala is right around the corner. Here goes…