Who are we?
For those of you who we don’t know us, but stumble across this site, we are Tim and Dan, from Minneapolis, MN, United States of America. For some portions of our trip, we will also be joined by our dog, Jake.
Tim currently works as a Research Database Administrator at Marshall Field’s department store. Dan works as salesperson in the flooring department at Home Depot. The plan to do some serious travel was hatched a few years ago after Tim paid off the last of his student loans and credit card debt and began saving the money that had been going to pay off his debts. At about the same time, Dan switched from his longtime job where he had several weeks of vacation time to a new one with no vacation accrued. We were finally getting to the point of having some money to travel, but Dan couldn’t get away from work. So, we continued to save in earnest and planned for the day we could travel for longer than a week or two.
Where should we go? We have done several one- to two-week camping trips in the U.S. and Canada, including: a circle tour around Lake Superior, trips to the NW United States, SW United States and SE United States. So, we hadn’t traveled in the New England states; that should be on the agenda. And, since we’ll now have the time, why not check out the Atlantic provinces of Canada, as well. So, we’ll do that this spring.
In mid-July, we will be going to Chicago for a week and a half, where I will be participating as a percussionist (through the band that I’m in – the Minnesota Freedom Band) in the Gay Games VII Sports & Cultural Festival ( http://www.gaygameschicago.org/culture/culture.php?mgroup=Band). Musicians from bands all over the world will perform together for the opening ceremony, closing ceremony, several different sporting events, as well as in our own concert in the new Frank Gehry-designed Millennium Park Music Pavilion and Band Shell.
Then, this fall we hope to take a trip through several countries in Europe. The details of this trip are less firm, but we would like to visit Ireland, U.K., Netherlands, Germany, Austria, northern Italy and France. Neither Dan nor I been overseas before, so we’re especially looking forward to this trip.
After that, we’re not sure. Although, we’d like to visit our friends, Fritz and Robert, in Oklahoma City, so we might make a swing south and west. And, I’d love to travel to Alaska in the summer of 2007. We’ll play it by ear, seeing how Jake does traveling for long stretches, how money holds out, etc.
Tags: home, jobs, Pre-Trip
timdan2
You forgot this description of yourselves: you are two friends who will be missed greatly, especially by your Minnesota choir ‘family,’ as you follow the open road to wonderful experiences and memories! Tim – Maybe you’ll be back from Europe by All Souls Day, so you’d better take that music along with you! Dan – don’t forget we asked if you’d consider scoring your new Christmas song in SATB for our choir! We wish you well every day, and we’ll miss you like crazy. AND I’m sure many of us wish we could ‘go adventuring’ with you!
(We are the proud parents of Tim and like to think we are Dan’s second set of parents. We love them both and will miss them very much.)
You have created a wonderful site and we will be looking forward to every detail of your travels.