Itinerary

As promised, this post is all about travel...

Our official itinerary has finally arrived. Here are the dates and locations through next year. This list is brief, but it does cover all of our major destinations and arrival/departure dates.

December 5, we fly from Seattle to Auckland, NZ.
January 10, we fly from Christchurch, NZ to Brisbane, Aus.
Feb 12, we fly from Sydney to Singapore, Malaysia.
we have to get from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur on our own.
March 1, we fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China.
April 1, we fly from Beijing to Bangkok, Thailand.
May 16, we fly from Bangkok to Mumbai (Bombay), India.
May 31, we fly from Mumbai to Delhi.
Jun 21, we fly from Delhi, India to Istanbul, Turkey.
we will have to get from Istanbul to London on our own.
October 10, we fly from London, England to Seattle, USA.

After all of the snow that we are getting in Seattle now, we are both looking forward to sitting on a beach. I can't believe that we are so far along in the departure countdown!

Joey

Home Work

We decided to finish some home projects prior to leaving for our trip. The logic behind this seemed simple enough; we have time off from work and we would like to return from our trip to a home that's nicer than we left it. As it turns out, this decision was illogical (if I may quote Mr Spock).

I think our time would have been more wisely used by researching more, or going on other "workshop" trips. Instead, we have a leaky shower - with no hot water - and a sidewalk that is essentially a mud path leading up to the steps.

So, here are a couple of photos of our work:
First, we removed the sidewalk next to our house, and the concrete truck is scheduled to be here soon.
Considering all of the rain we have had in Seattle recently, I'm surprised that my frame is not filled with water yet.

Clearly, this was taken on a nice day right after the frame was built. A more recent photo would show some of the mud and water which now fills this trench.


Next, we deconstructed the downstairs bathroom and are renovating it from the ground up. The plastic wrap has only been there since last night, and a plumber should be here first thing in the morning. Hopefully, we can take a shower before everyone in the house gets too funky.
Maybe this is the REAL workshop before the trip - sleeping in the basement, no running water, and sharing facilities. I need to break the habit of expecting hot water anyway.
I'll post another photo once it is all complete to show off Erin's work. Really, she is the crew cheif and I just haul lumber.



Next post is going to be all about travel. I'm looking forward to it.

J

Pre-Travel Travel

We just took a short trip to visit our families, which was an excellent time to do a "workshop" in preparation for the big trip. We stayed in a new place nearly every night, and it was interesting to get the feel for packing and re-packing. It becomes an art, even after just a few short days. I'm sure that we will outgrow the novelty of living out of a backpack soon enough.


Per the norm, when we visited Louisiana there was a natural disaster. This time it was flooding. We took some photos, but they do not show the extent of the damage. Yes, that is a stop sign in the middle of the picture above. We drove around the following day to see the rivers and bayous to find snakes, but to no avail.

We then went to Denver, where it had snowed the previous day. This, despite the fact that the weather report had predicted 60 degree weather - it was closer to upper 30s. The lesson from this part of the trip is: being prepared little scouts keeps the discomfort to a minimum.



We spent Halloween in Denver, which was also fun. Erica won prize money for her "post-apocolyptic rainbow brite" costume. Next year, call her for advice.