How it all began...

Can I come home for the summer?
We could slow down for a little while
Get back to loving each other
Leave all these long and lonesome miles behind
Ray Lamontagne
 
It started with a song, like many good stories.  I had been working for the same company for 16 years-- almost 40% of my lifetime. It was hard work and lots of travel but for much of that time it was also very rewarding. I had started as a sales rep in 1995 and worked my way up to the Director of Sales.  The company had been very good to me and I loved the people I worked with. But over the last three years things had become increasingly more difficult in my division. The issues were Vendor related and therefore outside our control, but we still had to manage our way through them. As the business climate deteriorated, the choices we were forced to make had left me exhausted both physically and emotionally.  By January 2011 I knew I needed a change, but I was so burnt out I couldn’t find the energy to look for a new job.  Meanwhile, as I was driving to work or heading to the airport for another business trip I kept hearing this Ray Lamontagne song on the radio.
 
Can I come home for the summer?
We could slow down for a little while
Get back to loving each other
Leave all these long and lonesome miles behind
 
At first the idea was just about taking a small break.  My husband Shaun was well aware of my sleepless nights and the dilemma I was facing regarding my job. We talked about the idea of renting a cabin in Maine for a month or two that summer.  I would take a short break to regroup and then look for a new job.  Shaun was totally supportive of whatever I wanted to do.   He had left the tech industry himself a few years before and was happily working in his new career as a triathlon coach, personal trainer and high school track coach.
 
But a bigger idea was forming in my mind.  The prior year we had planned a ten day trip to Paris that we had looked forward to all spring. Unfortunately, a volcano in Iceland had other plans. Five days before we were scheduled to leave, the airlines started canceling flights. Soon the European airports were shutting down altogether. Was it really possible that an Ash Cloud an ocean away could ruin our long awaited vacation? Shaun tried to keep my spirits up but it was becoming clear that our trip was in jeopardy. Finally, the morning of the trip arrived along with a text from United Airlines.  Ours ended up being the last overnight flight to Paris that was cancelled, and the trip had to be completely scrapped because the European airports were so backed up.  Looking back on that experience, I started thinking about how that plan had gone awry and how little time you actually have in your life to do those kinds of things. So I came to Shaun with an idea. Why don’t we take a year off and go see as much of the world as we can now while we’re still young?  
 
At first I don’t think he even took me seriously enough to bother considering the idea. I’m a typical Type A personality and my job had been a huge part of my life for sixteen years. Shaun and I had actually met at my company, so for as long as he had known me I had been wrapped up in this role. I’m sure at first it seemed like I was just fantasizing to blow off steam.  After all, everyone says things like this when things get tough, they just don’t actually do them!  It wasn’t until I started to do some in depth research about planning this kind of trip that he realized I was serious. To be honest, it scared the hell out of him. To be honest, it scared the hell out of me too at first.
 
A funny thing happens though when you start looking into something like this. You find out that you aren’t crazy, that it can be done and that lots of people do this. There were books and articles and websites galore.  College students, young couples, even families did this.  They quit their jobs, got rid of most of their “stuff” and hit the road.  Some sold their houses while others rented them. Some did one continuous journey, others broke the trip into segments.  Some budgeted a specific amount of money, others budgeted based on a timeline. The more I shared about what I had found out, the more I could see Shaun warming to the idea.  Finally one weekend in March, Shaun went away for the weekend to the ski house in Vermont with our friend Adam. While he was there he met some friends’ of Adam who had actually done this and he spent time discussing what they had done and how.  On the three hour drive home he and Adam discussed it even more and by the time he got back to the house he had made up his mind.   He hugged me and said “OK, let's do this". The dream was becoming a reality!
 
The first decision we had to make was regarding the timeline around my job.  There were some important changes we were making and I wanted to leave on the best terms possible so I decided to wait until after the close of our second quarter. By then I hoped things would be more stable.  We decided I would give my notice at the end of June and leave in mid-July.  The second and easiest decision we had to make was regarding the house. The house had been on the market for 5 months so it was just a matter of actually selling it!  We had a buyer within a few weeks and convinced him to push the closing to the beginning of June. We decided we would get a storage space big enough for just the essentials and sell everything else.  We held Yard Sales, sold stuff on Craig’s List and donated to charities until all we had left fit into a 10x10 storage area. We needed a place to live for six weeks while we finished up work. Fortuitously for us, Shaun's friend Lynn was working in Germany and her condo in Newton was unoccupied. She graciously offered to let us live there. We packed up our clothes and moved into her condo to wait out the last few weeks of work.
 
We had two commitments that summer before the big trip- USA Triathlon Nationals for Shaun and the wedding of a friend of mine. The wedding was July 7th and Shaun would compete in Nationals on Saturday, August 21st.   We decided to spend the time in between in Maine with as much family as we could fit in.  We booked a cabin at a place where my family vacationed when we were kids. My brother and his family from Colorado booked another cabin at the same place and my sister and her family decided to come out from Arizona. Soon it seemed like everyone was coming. It would be a summer full of family, friends and relaxing. I could feel the worries wash away every time I thought about it and I became more and more certain we had made the right decision.  Now every time I hear that Ray Lamontagne song it makes me smile:
 
Can I come home for the summer?
We could slow down for a little while
Get back to loving each other
Leave all these long and lonesome miles behind
 
On March 22nd we used my frequent flier miles to book two tickets from Boston to Germany.  We would leave on August 23rd and return on December 12th.  The first leg of the trip had been decided and it would be Europe. We were on our way!