On Our Way!

After 6 months of planning (dreaming), a week of last minute preparations, and 9.5 years of inadvertently saving annual leave - our time had come. Well, more specifically, 9.55am on 28 April 2012 had come and brought with it Qantas Flight 704. Our voyage had begun.

As we pulled up at the airport, it still didn't feel real. I was reminded of our wedding day when it wasn't until I was in the car on the way to the church that it dawned on me that it was actually happening. Hopefully, we'll feel that same sense of excitement and wonder at what lies before us by the time we land in San Francisco!

Standing in line at the airport, I was also processing a couple of lessons learnt in the last few days. One - it doesn't matter how much time you leave for 'last minute things' it still won't be enough. Two - the 'jeans vs cargo pants' dilemma actually isn't a dilemma; it's just a mild and unnecessarily stressful bout of indecision. Three - planes don't always run on time. We hadn't even left Australia and had already been delayed a few hours while 'engineers' looked at the plane (there's a confidence builder)... But I digress. The lesson was to make the most of 'down time' and to live in the current moment, not the moments we hope for.





Oh, one more lesson I learnt in sydney airport - be careful who you trust in an airport. Some background, I had waited patiently for Amanda's bag to be put aside for hand checking and rescanning at customs, only for my bag to be picked for an explosives check closer to the boarding gate. I looked up and saw Amanda walking past with a cheeky grin. Later, I discovered she was thinking of calling out and suggesting some sort of 'full cavity search'... choose your traveling companions wisely my friends, choose them wisely...

Logistically, we'll embark on about 22 flights, 7 interstate train rides, 2 cruises, a number of buses, and who knows how many subway and taxi rides. But we're hoping for more.

We're hoping our journey will be one of discovery and delight - about the world, some of its people, and ourselves. We'll share our thoughts and experiences as we go so anyone who wants to can, in one sense, share this journey with us. As evidence that the bureaucrat in me still doesn't realise we're on holidays, I will finish with a caveat: some things we share in the next 175 days will probably make you smile, cringe, and think - hopefully all at the same time! At times our wit will be tired, our prose jet lagged, and our punctuation 'turbulent'. If you join us on this journey we ask just one thing - just go with it. Besides, it's our blog and we're gonna do it our way.

J.

Amanda:

Filled with inspiration from my friend's super organized kitchen, we packed all our clothes in 30 by 30cm bags. This had the handy benefit of making things very easy to rearrange as we lifted and searched the bags for constant re-checks of what we needed to cull.

How do you pack for hot and cold, formal and casual and knowing that, at one stage, the same people will be seeing you for 3+ weeks straight... and fit it all in one medium sized suitcase? Mission impossible!

It struck me as we were packing that I was not necessarily excited about the trip, which was too much to fully comprehend at that late stage of the night, but about the fact that I was going to be able to catch up on a lot of movies on the plane! (yes, in saving for this trip we haven't been out for a long time...!)

The good people of Qantas didn't disappoint and I caught up on plenty of movies while drinking loads of water (with my newly purchased therapeutic grade peppermint oil added for drinkability) to keep myself hydrated. I'm sure the people around me were quietly grateful for the frequent wafts of nice peppermint coming from my bottle...