All the things she did for luck
While Stephanie and I were in Thailand last year preparing to go to India, my sister Katie was preparing to quit her job and travel across Europe for 3 months by herself. Though it would have been very cool if our paths had crossed—we arrived in France a few days before she flew out of London—in some ways I’m glad we didn’t because it made her journey wholly hers.
While traveling, she quickly realized the futility of keeping her blog up to date, which was smart, because instead she focused her attention on the experience itself—as well as capturing it with enough photos and keepsakes to fill several 3-inch binders. And yet, incredibly, she continued updating her blog with tales from her trip in the months since she’d returned home. There was a lull at the end of last year, but then in January the posts resumed with a vengeance, motivated, I think, by the approaching one-year anniversary of her trip.
Her accomplishment is a triumph in and of itself, but the stamina required to continue blogging about it for a year afterward boggles the mind. As a proud and doting brother, I wanted to celebrate Katie reaching the finish line of her blogging journey. One of the things in her posts that tickled me time and time again were all the things she did for luck, things I’d never heard of before, and probably wouldn’t have done myself. And yet there she was, dutifully following in the footsteps of countless others, performing these secret rites of European passage. She is very lucky indeed.
My second inflight blog post
On the way home to San Francisco, taken shortly after takeoff
The novelty of blogging from the sky just doesn’t get old.
My first inflight blog post
The view from 35,000 feet, between SFO and JFK
In a similar vein: How to update your blog from the middle of the ocean
Our container ship voyage across the Atlantic written up in Neue Presse
One of the four passengers on our transatlantic container ship voyage was German journalist and radio personality, Björn Stack. Besides fulfilling his lifelong dream of traveling to the “new world” by boat (just like in the old days), he was also writing a newspaper article about the experience for the German press.
Björn and Justin in the Hanjin Palermo’s engine room
He let us know that the article ran last Saturday, appearing on the front page of the Reise & Urlaub (Travel and Holiday) section of Hanover’s Neue Presse (and several other German papers). I haven’t found it online, but conveniently he sent us a PDF.
Here’s a close up, highlighting a paragraph that mentions us:
It reads:
Dem amerikanischen Pärchen Sophie [sic] und Justin, beide Anfang 30, gefiel die Vorstellung, sich Zeit bei der Atlantiküberquerung zu lassen. Sie haben ihre Jobs gekündigt und sind ein Jahr um die Welt gereist. Bald sind sie wieder zu Hause in Texas, sie wollen die letzte Etappe ihrer Weltreise in Ruhe genießen. Eine Reise auf einem Frachtschiff ist der ideale Ort dafür; keine Hektik am Flughafen und kein Jetlag, die sechs Stunden Zeitverschiebung nach New York geschehen gemächlich: An jedem zweiten Tag wird die Borduhr eine Stunde zurückgestellt.
Or translated to English by Google (and cleaned up by me):
The American couple Stephanie and Justin, both in their early 30s, liked the idea, to allow time for the Atlantic crossing. They have resigned their jobs and are spending a year traveling around the world. Soon they are back home in Texas, so they want to enjoy the last leg of their journey around the world in peace. A trip on a cargo ship is the ideal place to do it, no hassle at the airport, and no jetlag, the six hours time difference to New York happened leisurely: on every other day the clock is changed by one hour.
I’m famous! (on a TSA sign at Orlando International Airport)
Someone brought this accidental QR Code usage to my attention last August, but thanks to Fred Trotter, O’Reilly Radar’s open source health blogger, who happened to be flying through Orlando recently, I now have photographic proof!
The TSA’s “Hola Niños!” sign at MCO, showing off my QR Code
In his post, The Transportation Security Administration’s QR Code flub, Fred speculates on the ease with which published QR Codes could be hijacked with stickers—and wonders if that was the case here. Think how trivial it would be for an “Anonymous” band of individuals to surreptitiously sticker over TSA QR Codes with ones that link to Bruce Schneier articles. This is the stuff of cyberpunk fiction!
Unfortunately the truth in this case is far more benign. My QR Code was accidentally used as a stand-in by whomever designed the poster, and was never checked before it went to press—not to mention anytime in the four months since it’s been on display.
Chris and Katie
While Stephanie and I were making our way across India and East Africa last spring, Katie, my sister, was traveling by herself across Europe. Our paths almost crossed—we arrived in Nice on June 5th just before she flew home from London on the 8th.
During her trip, on the way from Barcelona to Rome, she spent two nights with Stephanie’s mom in France, near Cannes. Keep in mind, they’d never met before, but apparently they hit it off—we heard so many stories from them that it seemed like they’d spent a whole week together, not just a whole day.
A great shot of Chris and Katie after visiting La Verrerie de Biot
All that to say, Katie has just updated her blog with a photo-filled post about their action-packed day, touring Grasse, Valbonne, Biot, Antibes, and Cannes. Check it out.
The 2010 Photo Book
Towards the end of last year, in the middle of our travels, I faced a challenge: do I begin working on a photo book for 2010, or do I delay the project until the end of 2011 and produce two volumes at once? Or, do I just drop the idea of doing annual photo books altogether and make a single book specific to our travels?
Our photo books from 2007, 2008, and 2009
The alternatives only seemed to put off the inevitable, and I knew that the longer I waited, the harder it would be to remember the details. As satisfying as creating an “Our Big Adventure” book sounded (I admit I haven’t entirely ruled out the idea), over the course of our lives the trip will be just one of many things we’ve done. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of continuing the photo books as an annual tradition, splitting the adventure over two years—continuity be damned! So I decided to plow ahead, even as Bali swirled around me.
Our Path
I don’t really have the words to sum up our adventure over the last year. So instead I made a map. It charts our path, departing from San Francisco on August 15, 2010 (on the right) and arriving in San Francisco on September 16, 2011 (on the left) exactly (and unintentionally) 13 months later.
Our route around the world (“read” from right to left)
Though it appears almost self-evident in retrospect, the truth is we didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing until we got there. It reminds me of a quotation by Joseph Campbell that I have always loved. He said:
If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.
That has never been more true than now.
