I'm Dave and my wife is Kimberly. We have two children Courney who's 18 and studying in a local college and Amanda (this can be spelled Boo Bear Kitty if you know her well) who is 10.

Our list of friends is driving the itenerary so lets see where we can actually "stay for free"

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam:
Minh's Family live here and we can probably bum with them for a few days until they put us to work.

Tokyo, Japan
Toshi is a good friend of mine from Aikido. He is a super-engineer working with Mitsubishi and yet another reason the dollar is failing..

Moscow, Russia
Alexandr Orlov is my favorite Aikido teacher. Yes, I found this Ironic that my favorite teacher of a Japanese art would be Russian, but hey, He's like Barishnikov with a sword..

London, England
Steve is a great friend of ours, and although anyone from Cuba can become a US citizen, it appears that a "Global Custodian with HSBC Bank" must wait 5 years.. Shame really. Steve loves Jamie Oliver (not really, but he'll probably read this..) and Twizzlers.

Edinburg, Scotland (or about an hour away)
Ben and Ani Holdsworth
Ahh, "Pastor" Ben is my favorite "filosophizer" and a great teacher. He is getting his PhD in (I'll probably get this wrong at some point) "Biblical Studies with an emphasis in Hebrew and Greek" and needless to say he sees the bible like Einstein sees the atom. Ani is the kewlest person ever, she "tutors" Ben in Greek, and makes the -BEST- veggie lassagna on the planet.

Dublin, Ireland
Frank Brooks
Frank is bar none the wickedest coder I know, and a great friend.
I think Bill Gates probably consults him on Windows threading concepts. ("Okay maybe not, but if I don't butter him up, he'll probably make me buy him a Guiness"). Frank has new little one "Ewan" who probably speaks slurred Gaelic already and is into Yoga.

Reutte, Austria
Andreas Wittich
Andreas is from East Germany, but lives in Austria because his house is on the side of a ski mountain. I met him on a Bus Tour where he drives silly Americans around europe in a "lets not actually breath the air of the country we're visiting" sort of way. But I must admit he is the best bus driver I've ever met and at 6'8" I don't think ANYONE would argue that point.. EVER...

Q. What do you do, when its more fulfilling to learn about other cultures and yourself than live in the rat-race?
A. Ya run away from home!

Well, that's as far as I got. My wife and I love to travel, and we've made friends that live all over the world.

"So why not visit them?", I hear you asking.

Thanks, don't mind if we do

Our journey started hap-hazardly. My wife's family is from Vietnam, and she wants to visit some of her relatives before they pass away. So we started to plan a vacation to Vietnam. Now comes the fun part, my wife, who I must admit is almost as flaky as I am, asked me one day if I wanted to leave the country for a year, and I think she was half joking when I took her up on the idea!

We've been to some nice spots in Europe, but that's hardly the world, so I found that by basing the trip around the friends we have that we could basically see the North Easter hemisphere in 6 months and decide if we wanted to pack it up, or to continue the adventure.

-Dave

Our family is going to take a six month trek to explore our world!

I'm Dave and my wife Kim and I are taking our kids Amanda and Courtney along with a few other friends Cliff and Bryan along for the ride.