Getting Started

I’ve been telling all my close family and friends for months now that I am planning to take 8 trips during my 8-week sabbatical that I get as a fantastic benefit of working for . Unsurprisingly, I’ve been asked countless times what I’ll be doing during my sabbatical. In fact, I feel sorry for the people I often hang out with because they’re probably tired of hearing the same stories over and over again.

Well today is Day 1 of the sabbatical. Yaaaaaay!!!!

It’s finally here, after months and months of discussion, planning, and preparation. I’ve gotten tons of well wishes and congratulations for making it to this point. Lots of people want to see pictures and follow me on Facebook. For security purposes, I’m not going to be sharing anything on Facebook about my travels until I get back. So I’m writing this private blog and giving you the inside track to updates as I go about this journey. I’ve never blogged before, and I’ve never publicly shared my writing before. So bear with me and give me feedback on what you want to hear more about, and what you liked or didn’t like in each post.

The list of places and people I get to visit over the next 8 weeks in chronological order:

1. Calgary and Banff (6 days): This is a trip with my wife, parents, sister and bro-in-law to celebrate my dad’s 60th birthday and my bro-in-law’s 30th birthday.
2. Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah (3 days): The primary driver for this trip is to meet my friends Jessi and Nolan and their, now not-quite-so-new, baby Hannah. The national parks are just an excuse while we hang out with them.
3. Vancouver BC (3 days): I’ve been telling my cousins for years that I would come visit them. Something else always seems to come up, so I made it a point to fit in some time with them during sabbatical as I’ve run out of excuses. My latest reason for not visiting after the whole family had planned a trip to BC was that I didn’t get my passport renewed. Oops! I’ll never live that one down.
4. Iceland (8 days): I’ll tell the story of how and why we picked Iceland in another post. For now, you just need to know that it’s going to be an endless stream of awesome pictures coming out of that trip.
5. Bend, OR (4 days): My parents have been hearing about how great Bend is from all their friends. My dad happened to have a week off scheduled during my sabbatical (which is a big deal because he has to schedule his weeks a year in advance, and I haven’t known about the timing of my sabbatical for that long), so I offered to take him and my mom on a tour of Bend. I’ve been there a few times, and it’s always a nice spot to get away.
6. San Diego, CA (3 days): I’ve got multiple friends I’ll be visiting.
7. Peru (10 days): Peru requires a long blog post on its own. For now, it meets my desire to visit South America, which is the 6th, and probably the last distinct continent, I will visit (I don’t have a desire at this point to visit Antarctica).
8. Kauai (5 days): After all that travel, need a chance to wind down in paradise.

The trip is a total of over 30,000 miles and 30 legs!! Even I couldn’t believe it after entering all the data. Over 56 days of sabbatical, I will be home for just 8 full days, and that includes the 2 days I’m taking now to prep for departure, and the 3 days I will have to get back to routine before starting work. So only 3 days amid the 8 trips. It’s going to be one heckuva memorable 8 weeks!!