Everyone Has A Plan Until...

Fortunately, only the first part of Mike Tyson's comment on boxing applies to our trip planning.  No punches in the mouth, no stunning setbacks.  Some changes, even some reversals, but most effected well before the actual start of traveling on August 24th, 2017.  I hope that means that the information I impart will remain valid, although the resources we used may make their own alterations between now and when my readers decide to apply them to their own trips.

I've come to think about travel planning as a series of large decisions - "when? where? why?" - followed by the minutia of "how." "When" for us was sometime near the end of summer, since that would give us time to make all the necessary arrangements after my last day of work on May 31st.  Plus, I really like summer in northern Wisconsin.  And my wife wanted to work through July.

"Where" started out as "around the world."  (Actually, it first was, "explore Canada," but that didn't last long.)  We looked into around the world airline tickets from American Airlines and others, and then discovered AirTreks, an online travel agency that has a nifty interactive map that lets you enter sequential stops and see what a round the world trip might cost.  But we didn't develop a clearer picture of where until we spent some time on "why."

"Why" had to involve our three middle and high school age boys, and we wanted them to see places that differed from the US so the trip itself would be a learning experience (how they would continue their formal schooling was a separate issue).  Given my own failure at learning a language other than English, I thought having our whole family work on one foreign language would give us a common purpose.  My dad  learned Spanish in his forties and since one boy had already taken Spanish I, I said "Let's all learn Spanish."

If you want to learn Spanish, of course, you go to Spain, maybe Barcelona, which we'd heard was beautiful.  Then you could go on to Mexico and South America to continue learning Spanish, and in between visit non-Hispanic places, like the rest of Europe and China and Australia.

The problem with that plan was that Spain, Europe and China have fall and winter like the US, not as severe as Wisconsin but still short cool to cold days.  And months later, South America and Australia would be having their own fall and winter.  Why subject ourselves to Endless Winter when we reverse course and seek Endless Summer?  So we looked into starting in South America and specifically Buenos Aires, which we'd also heard was beautiful.

All this was before May.  Even before I retired we knew we were going to leave in late August, go to Buenos Aires, learn Spanish and travel on to a number of other possible destinations, including China, Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, Spain, France and Great Britain.  And come back to Wisconsin at the end of June.  Essentially, spend the school year away.

We felt pretty good about these when, where, why choices.  We knew we could have made different choices because there isn't any one correct way to take your family away for a year.  And we had a lot of back and forth discussions, mostly between Lila and me, and sometimes with one or more of the boys, about these choices before we did anything that made them concrete.  But eventually you have to do that, settle down to the "how" of travel planning and that's what will occupy a lot of the next posts on this blog.