There's a good chance that if you're here and reading this online travel journal, than you're already quite familiar with us. However, we might have a few curious web surfers and, plus, we've lost touch with far too many friends and family members so this will be a quick "catch up" on what we've been up to.

Shawn Kobb and Jennifer Witty met while attending Manchester College, a small liberal arts school hidden among the cornfields of northern Indiana. Both grew up in small town Indiana life, so we fit right in. We started dating in college and did the typical pattern of breaking up and making up through school until Shawn proposed while he was working as a newspaper reporter and Jennifer was finishing up her senior year of college.

We both took our first international trip together as part of a "class" during January of 1999. We travelled about Germany, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic with about 25 other intrepid travellers. We studied cathedrals, WWII history and beer.

We got married in June of 2000 (a year chosen due to the ease of which Shawn could remember which anniversary they were on) after Jennifer graduated from college. The wedding went off without a hitch other than the notable exception that Jennifer's dad's appendix decided to burst during the rehearsal the night before. He's fine now.

They were off to the Bahamas for a week of honeymooning and days after coming back to Indiana they packed up the Chevy Cavalier and drove straight to Portland, Oregon to start a new life, a city which they'd never even seen. Why Portland? We don't know, so quit asking.

We settled in and got the traditional crappy retail jobs to get started. We soon worked our way out of those and Jennifer started working for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and Shawn began working as a travel consultant convincing high school teachers it was a great idea to go to Spain in the summer with 30 high school kids. (Some of them even fell for it.)

We grew tired of those jobs and decided to try some new ones. Jennifer then became an administrative assistant for a social research company. Shawn started working for the city of Portland as a 911 Operator/Dispatcher.

One day after meeting with a mortgage broker and figuring out how to save the money for a downpayment on a house, Shawn casually mentioned that the money they wanted to save for a house would fund a kickass trip. Jennifer just as casually said, "Yeah." And so here we are.