Logtheplanet.com Family Travel Log

Prepare to Log the Planet....

How it all began - The Decision
Sometime in January 2001 (Abridged version)
Color code: Bryan Danna
Scene One

Danna, I want to live in Canada for a year.
I'm not just going to live in Canada, Bryan. If there's a good reason, we'll go there - if you'll do your PhD., have an important job, but not just to go.

What if we travel?
Okay.
Let's leave now.
Can't. Got work.
Alright, then we'll do it next year.
That's fine.
We'll rent an RV for a few months, and travel up to Alaska and the Canadian rockies. Then we'll settle in Vancouver.
Maybe Greece first.
Or we can stop in Spain on the way.
Okay. When are we leaving?
How about March, next year after I finish teaching?
Okay.
I can't wait a year!

That's how it all came down... more or less. However, for a decision like this to formulate, several elements must first come together, like the perfect alignment of the planets. The only difference is that here you have an amazingly great amount of control over it.

The Dream
Firstly, you have to want to do something as wacky as this. Danna and I both had a long history of dreaming about traveling the Far East. That helped us come to the conclusion that this is worth pursuing. We knew where we wanted to go, for approximately how long and the nature of the trip (although this changed dramatically as the planning process went on). In addition, your dream has to include breaking routine.

Coming of Age
The children must be old enough for a trip like this. I know that hundreds of families travel with infants, however, to make the cut, remove children from their lives, make the trip worthwhile and just a bit more tolerable, age is a factor. You have to slip in there between their coming of age and passing of age. Children can just as easily be too old as too young. Even though our oldest was only in grade 6, he already was asking us to postpone the trip to allow him to finish the school year. In a year or so later, he wouldn't want to leave at all. We refused. It's always easy for the children to be used as an excuse to stay put. One's always entering something new - kindergarten, 1st grade, Jr. High. It's endless. You just have to decide that now's the best time and then find all the right reasons to believe it.

Mid-life Job Crisis
You have to be ready to quit your job, put aside all career plans and just step out of your regular life. Becoming fed up with professional progress helps. Once you feel that it's time to change pace, leave your current place of employment and move on, that's the time to go. Of course this has to happen simultaneously to both parents.

Savings Mistakes
Okay, so I messed up. About seven years before our trip I transferred a savings account only to discover that what I had actually done was double it. We lived with the mistake for almost a year before I realized what was happening, and by then I also found that we were doing okay. So I left both accounts, and seven years later we had enough money for this trip. Of course, if we don't work on the way, we'll have nothing upon returning.

Those are the planets, and they all lined up in 2001. Together with the push from "the situation", we were ready to fly.

Next Step: Telling the Kids

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