A while back, my lovely and eminently talented wife, Vicky Chan, came to me with a suggestion. She thought it a grand idea to pack up our life in L.A. and move to Europe for a year.
My first reaction.
I love to travel. I haven't done it much, but the brief tastes I've had caused me to salivate in new and embarrassing ways. I have wanted to travel much further, much longer. There is a rare feeling of happiness that is experienced and renewed every time I see a photo of myself somewhere new. The ability to say, "I've been there," is the only super power I have going for me. I love to travel. However, being a self-proclaimed realist, I always have to bring myself (and inevitably those around me) back to Earth.
"How will we pay for this?"
"What will we do for money?"
"Can we really afford to put our careers on hold?"
As usual, the correct answer to all those questions was,
"Shut up, Mike."
Vicky has been all over the world. Twice. She knows the globe and she knows how to trek it. Keeping that in mind, I was able to assuage all doubts and just follow her lead. Once we decided on a rough timetable for our departure, the pieces began to fall into place. Though we plan to experience everything this amazingly diverse planet has to offer, we decided it best to take our first steps into it together slowly. An entire year abroad is doable and probably preferable when trying to fully experience a vastly different land, but we decided a shorter, less comprehensive trip was in order for 2014.
What we want for this blog is to bring you all along on our journey. Through the peaks and pitfalls of traveling, the highs and lows of new experiences, the pains of learning by doing and the exuberance of discovering that perfect moment of speechlessness as you see something you've never seen before (and may never see again). We aren't the first to do something like this, but this is the first time something like this has happened to us. If these experiences help you or someone you know gather the courage to reach out and touch another way of life, then, well... That's pretty much exactly what we want.
Throughout the next 100 days, we will be experiencing, photographing and blogging (hopefully in that order) our journey on this leg of our lifelong goal to touch the world. So, with that in mind, I look at this upcoming trip with unbridled excitement and feverish anticipation as to what's to come.
Hello, World...
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