Thursday, December 6, 2012

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I wish I could say all our bags were packed and we're ready to go, a la John Denver, but so much remains to be done in SF before we take off in just twelve days. My lovely subletter is moving in four days from now, and the my second  bedroom needs to change from its current state as a throw-everything-you-might-possibly-bring-on-this-trip-into-this-room-explosion to a clean, Zen, and most importantly empty room between now and then.

Other major to-dos have been taken care of: giving our jobs notice, buying tons of tickets with airline miles, finding/purchasing the one pair of pants each of us is bringing (mine and his), selecting the elusive perfect subletter, taking care of that speeding ticket I got in October (d'oh), putting my Running Times subscription on hold, figuring out how to get Verizon to save our phone numbers for us for when we return in July, applying for credit cards that don't have huge international fees, spending large sums of money on vaccinations, donating mountains of things to Goodwill to clear out space in my apartment, planning our going-away party...and the list goes on. No matter how many things we accomplish, however, it seems like there's always more to do. For example, figuring out precisely how to pack for a trip that includes Christmas in Massachusetts, a Muslim wedding in a country where the highs routinely reach the mid-nineties, February in Istanbul (not Constantinople), and 98% humidity jungle hiking. (For any of you attempting to plan a similar trip, fear not: I've gotten enough questions about this that I'm planning a separate posting entirely about our gear list as soon as we've figured it all out ourselves.)

As a details person, it's easy for me to get sucked into the nitty-gritty of leaving without spend a ton of time thinking about everything happening on the other side of that December 18 line in the sand. It's hard to wrap your mind around a trip that amounts to something like 16 consecutive vacations that need planning. However, we just sent out an email to almost everyone we know asking for advice/secret tips on the places we're going, and that definitely served to make things a bit more real. We're lucky to have an incredibly well-traveled and well-connected set of friends, and we got a few dozen replies on destinations from Idaho to Borneo. It's always great when you get corroborating evidence on how cool a place is from multiple people: two people wrote us back about diving in Sipadan, seeing the orangutans in Sabah, and climbing Mt. Kinabalu within five minutes of each other.

Anyway, we're delighted that lots of people seem to be interested in what we're going to be doing. I, for one, know that having a posse to report to will keep me honest about documenting everything that goes down. More to come later!

Signing off,
S & M


2 comments:

  1. It's going to be out-of-control AMAZING. Jealous.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UM SMASH ADVENTURES IS MY NEW FAVORITE BLOG. Move aside, http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com/

    I'm so so excited for you guys. Keep us updated!

    ReplyDelete