The Devil is in the Details
Back in January, when we decided to do this trip, it felt like we had a lifetime to plan it. The prospect was overwhelming, but we had seven months to prepare, right? So I’d just like to know who decided to play a really cruel joke on us and put the last four months on fast-forward. Now, with three months to go, Claude and I are already starting to panic. It’s one thing to close your eyes, spin the globe and choose your itinerary. (By the way, I spent two hours trying to create a map of our route last week, only to have it disappear when I posted the #$%$&% thing. I ended up having to do it in two portions to keep the template from crashing). It’s a very different thing to plan the nitty gritty details. For those of you who may be interested in planning a trip of your own, are actually interested in the logistics involved in the planning of our trip, or are trying to cure insomnia, read on. If not, feel free to skip this post and wait for the excitement of the actual trip. Unfortunately, unless I start making things up, I won’t be able to thrill you with our adventurous exploits until then. So, in the meantime, I’ll have to bore you to tears with the details…
Once we’d decided on our itinerary, we needed to break the overwhelming task of planning the trip into segments and divide those into areas of responsibility:
- Sell Stuff (House, cars, furniture we don’t love)
- Career (resign, succession planning)
- Organize itinerary/buy tickets
- Finance (Budget, accounts, credit cards)
- Admin (Passports, wills, visas, insurance, mail, etc)
- Home Schooling
- Medical (Immunizations, antimalarials, first aid kit)
- Technology (Laptop, camera, chargers, etc)
- Gear/Packing (backpacks, clothes, what to bring)
- Post-trip (where to live & work, school, etc)
Yikes! As you can see, this is a daunting task. My initial reaction was to panic and try to do everything at once. I spent endless hours on the internet researching all the topics until I thought my head would explode. If nothing else, I soaked up information like a sponge and got a general idea of what we needed to do. I’ve bookmarked so many webpages that I need a search engine for my favorites list. Thank goodness for Claude, who has a natural ability to prioritize and organize (that and he just finished a project-management course). He’s able to take all the information I’ve gathered and put it to good use. So as things slowly come together, I’ll share what we’ve learned along the way. If you’re planning a trip of your own, you can, hopefully, learn from our mistakes and if you’re not, you can laugh at us and go back to watching the latest episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” If I were to cover all the topics in one post, it’d become the world’s longest post, so I’ll cover them in individual posts following this one. Enjoy!
Tags: Planning, Travel
tambour
oooooooh boy do I understand the panic.We are also feeling like time is flying by.Nice plans,nice blog! See ya on the road soon! 😉