Although we love living in the San Francisco Bay area and the weekend trips we take, it seemed most of our limited vacation time was spent traveling to New Orleans to visit family and friends. Without digressing into a discussion about the SAINTS WINNING THE SUPERBOWL, in February 2010, we spent 11 days in New Orleans over Superbowl and Mardi Gras weekends. That pretty much exhausted all of Gina's vacation time for the year. Thereafter, we began to discuss how we loved living in Northern California, but our lives were still trapped in the mundane cycle of the traditional life. To make matters worse, our commutes had gone from 10 minutes in NoLa to 2 hours in Cali daily and we were spending a fortune buying gas ($500/month). After 2 years, we had traveled to all destinations close enough to be accomplished in a weekend and weren't able to take any big trips. We knew something had to change and began to contemplate our options.
We began to question our willingness to live a conventional life and to explore ways to do otherwise. Always intending to travel the world upon retirement, we began to discuss traveling the world now. The economy is in the tank, neither of us feels any fulfillment in our job, and we have the money set aside already, so let's go now.
Of course, the decision did not come easily. We had many sleepless nights trying to wrap our brains around the logistics and we vacillated between confidence in the decision and questioning its sanity. We discussed the idea with friends and instead of trying to talk us out of it, all thought it was a great idea. Buoyed by this confidence, we made a final decision to do it. Then we had to figure out how to do it. Where would we go? How much would it cost? What would we do with our stuff? Did we need to get shots? What about visas? The research began, and continues.......
