For those who have followed my story and my journey over the past nearly three years, a new chapter is starting! In October, my niece Ana and I will leave for Asia for six months of travel and homeschooling from the road.

This is a pretty big change for both of us and this plan has been cooking behind the scenes for a few months now. The short of the situation is this: my brother (her father) and I discussed (at great lengths) the pros and cons of her traveling right now, with me. And the pros won out. In fact, they overwhelming won out.

I gathered all of those goodbyes in my mind, and they propelled me forward; I took my leave. Excitedly, with joy and fierce anticipation, and yes, a hint of sadness.

You see Travel, I’ve received emails from other travelers “Wow, I could never travel solo and long-term, I’d miss my family too much.”

I miss mine too. That’s what they don’t understand, traveling doesn’t take that away; instead, I weighed the trade-offs and realized travel was a piece of my story, a piece of my personal journey, a piece I had no choice but to honor.

I wrote this post two weeks ago as I was sitting on the airplane on my way to China and feel like it’s a great way to kick off the coming posts about my whirlwind travels through Beijing, Yangshou, and Shanghai.
Groggy from the rude awakening blaring out of my alarm clock at 4:30am it was far too early to even bat around the term “awake.” No, it was pure instinct that kept me from endlessly hitting the snooze button this morning.
Instead, I grabbed my comfortable-but-not-a-hobo travel outfit I had carefully laid out …

A routine forms when you hunker down in one place, when you pick a spot and decide “hey, I’m going to live here; not just travel through, but live here.” Is it safe to admit I thought the routine and normalcy would still elude me? Coming to Chiang Mai was the next leg in my wanderings; I didn’t realize that the entire pace of my life would slow back down into a routine.
I’ve been in near constant motion for more than two years; my months home this fall were a …

And so it is that I prep once again to leave the United States. My bags are slumped beside me, a crisply new book (Gun, Germs, and Steel) in my backpack waiting for my endless airport layovers and my anal-retentively neat morning checklist ready to see me on my way with all my power cords, bags, books, toothbrush and water bottles in tow.
Can I just say, I’m seriously psyched.
It’s hard to describe how right this feels. You’d think that leaving is old-hat now, I’ve done my fair-share of goodbyes over …

The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
`To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax –
Of cabbages — and kings –
And why the sea is boiling hot –
And whether pigs have wings.’

This fragment of a Lewis Carroll poem wandered into my wayward thoughts as I sat down to write tonight;  I often quote these lines to my niece and nephew when they spout nonsense…
…but worry not, I’ll keep away from nonsense and instead note that my travel plans, like the winds of the world, have changed direction.
Several months …

I’ll tell you right up front the point of this blog post if you haven’t extrapolated an inkling of a notion from the title – for those who approach me with yearnings to hit the road and recite a litany of reasons they can’t do so: figure out the solution, it exists.

A common refrain I hear when I tell people I travel the world is “wow, I wish I could too.” And of course I tell them they can. And I talk about traveling is cheaper than most people assume. …

Right here and now I am going to cop to my own travel snobbery…I used to never ride public transit in the US. That’s what your car is for…
Over the past year I gamely embraced the adventure of using rickety chicken buses in Central America, open-air tuk-tuks in SEA, bikes throughout Amsterdam and yet last week I scoffed and whined at the idea of being forced to ride the metro in LA.
New York? Of course you ride it there.
Same with Chicago, DC, and Boston. I was fine with the idea …