Unfortunately the band DayOne was not in Las Vegas (sorry for the misleading title). As you may recall, we recently had some practice booking flights for our friends wedding in Las Vegas. Last week we got to take those flights and spent 4 nights in Sin City.

With our big RTW trip coming up fast (24 days!) we went to Vegas with a bit of an agenda. Of course the wedding was a big part of that agenda, but we also wanted to do some last minute shopping, practice holidaying on a budget, and test out some of the stuff we plan on taking with us on our trip.

For some reason, I had a whole lot to say about our first day in Vegas, so I made it its own post.

Day 1:

We arrived in Las Vegas with a few things to get done before the wedding party showed up (we arrived a day earlier than everyone else).

First and foremost, we wanted to get to our off-strip hotel using public transit. We managed, but not without a fair bit of walking in the 30C heat. Our mistake was arriving without a map showing the location of our hotel. I thought an address would suffice, but it seems nobody in Las Vegas uses addresses. Although the bus driver and local patrons were very friendly and tried their best to tell us where to get off, we were unable to explain where we were going as we didn’t know what landmark casino it was near. In the end, we were only out by about seven (huge) blocks. I was kind enough to haul all of our luggage, while Ashley was kind enough to gather some photographic evidence so I could brag about it later.

Mike carrying all the luggage

The next, and last, item on our “to do” list for Day 1 was to take the bus to REI and shop for backpacks. As you can probably gather from the post we made on the road, it didn’t go so well. The Westcliff Airport Express bus leaves from Fremont Street roughly every hour on the weekends. Unfortunately for us, it was 1 hour and 20 minutes late.

We spent that hour and twenty minutes talking to a local cartoonist who made his living drawing caricatures on Fremont street during the summer. I imagined for a bit that our RTW had already started and we were trying to figure out how we could fill our time by asking the locals. Of course, we didn’t have the luxury of time to follow up on any of his recommendations, but we did learn a fair bit.

• Vegas’s busy season is the hot summer months (I always thought people went there to escape the winter). Apparently there are so few people in the winter that most street performers leave Vegas all together and don’t come back until the following summer.
• The university area was recommended as a place to shop and eat as it has both unique boutique shops and cheap food.
• There are a lot of things to do outside of Vegas. He recommended visiting the Red Rock Canyon, Mt. Charleston, The Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead.
• And last but not least, the bus drivers trade bus routes every 4 months to avoid chronic boredom. As luck would have it, today was the trade day and the undoubted cause of our late bus.

After our public transit friend gave up and hailed a cab, we decided to follow suit (giving up, not hailing a cab). That’s where we ran into Brian and Mike, two freight train hoppers who’ve been riding the rail for the last 6 weeks. They started in Massachusetts and are on their way to L.A. As I inquired, they explained that this super budget friendly mode of transportation is illegal, and one must be extra careful not to be caught. To cope with this, the internet has come to the rescue allowing the freight hopping community to share the best places to hop on and off trains while avoiding security.

Brian and Mike, two freight train hoppers

Moments later, our bus passed us by. Too late to catch the next one, we took a stroll down Fremont Street and eventually went back to our hotel for a swim, wrote our first blog post from the road, and settled into bed. All in all, one of my favourite days we spent in Las Vegas. It turns out I enjoy meeting new people, and the conversations more than made up for our troubles with the transit system.

Mike and I arrived in Las Vegas today for my good friend’s (Tamara’s) wedding.  Our flight got in at 1:05 pm local time and our plan for the day was to check in to our off-strip hotel and get to REI (which is open until 9:00 pm) to buy our backpacks for our RTW trip.  And we wanted to do this the most economical way possible (i.e. without having to pay for a taxi).

Sounds simple enough, right?

I mean, we figured we are reasonably intelligent individuals, Las Vegas is full of tourists trying to get around the city, and everyone speaks English.  Taking the bus to the hotel and REI would be a piece of cake.

A Las Vegas city bus

… Or not.  Because here I sit, typing out this blog entry on our Kindle (which in and of itself is a great and painful feat), without a shiny new backpack to play with.  We never did make it to REI today.  But man did we ever give it the good old college try.

Here are the lessons I learned about taking public transit today:

1.  If you don’t have exact change, your bus trip just got more expensive.

2.  Don’t just write down the address of your hotel/destination.  Look it up on a map before you venture out.

3.  Better yet, print a google map of your hotel’s location.

4.  Don’t just write down Google Map’s bus directions and try to follow them without knowing the name of the stops.

5.  Don’t assume that you can successfully make several bus transfers without a TRANSIT map of any kind.

6.  Don’t assume that you can successfully make several bus transfers without even having a CITY map of any kind.

7.  Even if a bus is an hour and a half late, don’t give up on it arriving.  If you do, and you start walking away, you will turn to see it drive by you five minutes later.

8.  If the name/route number on the bus that pulls up is not the one you are looking for, don’t get on it – no matter how tired you are of waiting for the one you want.

9.  If you’re at a transit station that all the major bus routes go through and the bus you’re waiting for does not show up, find an alternate route while you still can.  Don’t hop on a random bus that also stops at the bay you’re waiting at and assume it will take you somewhere useful.

10.  Know where your stops are.  Otherwise, the trip will be much longer and more scenic than you ever imagined.

11.  Even if a bus appears to loop around on its route, don’t assume you can just stay on it until you get back to the stop you missed.  You probably need to switch buses.

12.  No matter what happens, take advantage of every opportunity to see new things, meet new people, and strike up a conversation with someone around you.  The other stuff can wait.

Now hopefully these lessons have stuck.  Because tomorrow morning, we’re going to try it all over again!

Have you had any misadventures with public transit during any of your travels (or in your hometown, for that matter)?

May has been a HUGE month for us here at Traveled Earth!  Here’s a quick recap of the last 31 days:

• We reached our savings goal.  As of May 1, we had achieved 100% of our original travel fund goal.
• We paid off our mortgage and student loans… officially debt-free!
• Our house sold!  While we accepted an offer at the end of April, it wasn’t until May 4th that the conditions were taken off and the deposit was paid.
• We held a Boston Lee Day/Going Away Party – our “Last Hurrah” at our house
• We moved out of our home of 6 years (10 years for Mike)… we were married in the backyard, so it was kind of tough letting go
• We moved into our new temporary residence (Mike’s parents’ house), a whole block away from the old place
• We held a huge garage sale where we sold the majority of our worldly possessions.  The result:  another 1.5% added on to our savings goal.
• We relocated our cat to her new home with one of my work colleagues.  This was heartbreaking, but it had to be done.  I ask about her daily.  She is adjusting well to her new home.
• My union took job action in its labour dispute.  As a result, it’s been an emotional and stressful month at work and I have spent three unpaid days striking/rallying in Regina.
• We handed over the keys of our old house to the new owners.  No turning back now!
• I cancelled my cell phone contract (which still had 1 year remaining) and got the company to waive the $300+ in early cancellation fees… cha-ching!
• We attended a dinner party with Get Up and Globe and  Shahan & Donna-Lee, two fellow Saskatchewan couples preparing for their own RTW adventures.

Now there’s only 35 days and change until we get on the plane to Cancun.  Can’t wait!

Mike and Ashley - Boston Lee Day

We’ve been putting together a list of documentation to get together before we leave home. We’ve got most of it together, but there are still some things we need to collect. None the less, we thought our list was complete enough to share it with the world. If you happen to see (or not see as the case would be) something that should really be included, please let us know.

I’ve divided things up a bit based on how we plan to store them. In all cases, we are going to scan everything (front and back of credit cards). A copy of the scanned files will be left in our safety deposit box on a USB thumbdrive where my sister can access them should we need her to. Another copy will be encrypted and taken with us on our laptop. Those same encrypted copies will be emailed to ourselves just in case we lose our laptop on the road.

To carry with us:

Passports
Driver’s License
International Driver’s Permit
Vaccination Records
Health Insurance Cards
Credit Cards
Bank Cards
PADI Dive Certificate
Spare Passport Photos
Traveled Earth Business Cards

To leave in the safety deposit box:

Ashley and Our Safety Deposit Box

Last Will and Testaments
Living Wills
Enduring Power of Attorneys
List of Bank Accounts
Birth Certificates
Social Insurance Cards
Engineering/Teaching Certificates
Saskatchewan Health Cards
Marriage Certificate
Full Health Insurance Policy
Ashley’s Engagement Ring

Digital copies only:

Past Income Tax Records
High School Diplomas
University Degrees
University Transcripts
Criminal Record Checks
Resumes
Doctor’s Notes/Prescriptions
Eye glass Prescription

A bit of background information: Not too long ago, Mike came home asking the question “Why do we want to travel?” He had read Lauren’s Why Choose to Travel Long Term post at Never-Ending Footsteps and was astounded that we had never really sat down and answered it together (or individually). He proposed that we tackle the question separately by writing our own blog posts before sharing them with each other. If you’ve been following our blog, you’ve probably already read Mike’s answer. Now here’s mine…

You would think that after deciding to quit our jobs, sell our house, and travel the world, answering the question “Why do you want to travel?” would be a snap. Because I love to travel. Duh. You probably could have guessed that. But that doesn’t really answer it, does it? The real question is why do I love to travel? And why do I want to go on a RTW trip? And why now? It turns out that answering these questions and digging deeper is a tougher, but very worthwhile exercise.

Why Do I Love To Travel?

A Massive Kauri Tree in New Zealand

1.   I want to expand my worldview and experience what’s out there.  The world is an immense, diverse and powerful place full of interesting and unique places and people. I want to see experience a small piece of that. This is easily my biggest reason for the trip.

2.   I am obsessed with learning. I’ve always loved school because I love learning new things. And who wouldn’t prefer learning new things by experiencing them, rather than sitting at home on the couch reading about them in a book?

Why An RTW Trip and Why Now?

3.   Backpacking around the world is, in my humble opinion, the best way to achieve #1 and #2 above. By not having a timeline, agenda, or solid itinerary, I will have the time to really immerse myself in other cultures – not to just visit them for a while, but to live within them. Not having the pressure of a job, or even a house, to return to gives me the freedom to really experience the places I am in.

4.   I think we make our own fate. And mine was becoming that of the majority in North America… go to school, get a stable job, maybe have kids, work for 30+ years to earn a good pension, then retire. And then, if you’re still healthy enough, you can go out and travel. This safe, comfortable pattern wasn’t doing it for me anymore. The more I thought about, the more I realized my all-time favourite times of my life have been spent travelling with my husband – so why not do that long-term?

5.   I went through a bit of a career crisis last year – for the first time in my life, I didn’t know if teaching was THE job for me for the rest of my working years. While, ultimately, I decided it was and am currently quite satisfied with my job, this was the point where talks of an RTW trip switched from “what if” and “if only” to “we could” and “when” and “how.” After deciding that traveling was something we could really do, resolving the crisis certainly didn’t mean discarding the trip plans. There will be always be teaching jobs somewhere.

6.   I’ve been feeling that I’m living in a bit of a rut. I spend way too much of my free time doing mindless, boring stuff like watching TV. I know that you don’t need to travel to go out and experience everything life has to offer. But somewhere between my job (including the extra-curricular hours and homework), commuting almost an hour each way to work, and the daily grind, I stopped treating life like it was a journey and an adventure.

7.   I love Saskatchewan. I really do. But I can’t just take an hour drive from my house and climb a mountain. Or canoe down a river. Or go for a hike without getting a migraine from the heat since there’s no tree cover. Some people say that Regina is in the middle of nowhere, but I prefer to think it’s halfway to everywhere. And now I just want to go the rest of the way.

Summit Lake, Stone Mountain Provincial Park, BC

We were recently  interviewed by Amy and Kieron for their blog Don’t Ever Look Back.  Among other things, they have been conducting a series of #rtwsoon interviews showcasing burgeoning travelers as they prepare for their round the world trips.  Amy and Kieron themselves are in the midst of preparing for their own RTW adventure beginning shortly after ours on July 26th, 2011.

Follow this link to check out our interview #rtwsoon Interview: Mike & Ashley – Traveled Earth

Somewhat recently, I read a post by Lauren at Never-Ending Footsteps titled Why Choose to Travel Long Term.  I really liked the post, because it got me thinking: why do I want to travel? It suddenly dawned on me that this seemed like something I should have already thought a great deal about. You’d think answering that question would be easy for someone who had already handed in his resignation, sold his house, and booked a one way ticket to Cancun.

Truth be told, I hadn’t given the question one iota of thought. It’s been over a year since Ashley and I decided to travel, but not a minute was wasted thinking about why. Not one.

I’ve since spent a couple of weeks rolling the idea around in my head. Thank goodness I came up with a few reasons of my own. It would have been embarrassing to realize I didn’t actually want to do it at this stage in the game.

I just want to be happy.

No surprise here, so does everyone else. Still, this is probably the biggest reason I came up with for why I want to travel. Now I wouldn’t say I’m unhappy with my life as it is now, I have a lot going for me. I’ve got a reasonably good job, I’m happily married to Ashley, I have good friends, and a good relationship with my family. I wouldn’t say I’m unhappy.

Then again, I’m not as happy as I could be.

Here’s a quick fact. When I try to think of the happiest I’ve been, I keep coming back to the month Ashley and I spent backpacking across New Zealand. Canoeing the Yukon River comes in a close second, followed by our week in Cuba, and our trip to Las Vegas last winter. There’s definitely a pattern emerging: travel and Ashley.

If I keep doing what I’m doing, I can look forward to a whopping 3 weeks of travel a year. That’s only a little under 6% of my time that I can spend doing what makes me happiest.

Kissing in Kluane

Where does all the time go?

Despite my generally happy life, I spend very little time doing things that I want to do. Let’s break it down.

9 hours – Work
2 hours – Commute to Work
1 hour – Eating (okay, I like eating but not when I don’t have time to cook anything decent)

Take out 8 hours for sleep, and that leave a whopping 4 hours to spend doing things that I like. Some days I’m lucky and I get to go to my Karate class, visit friends, or play board games with Ashley. Other days I waste it on the internet, watching TV, and reading a book. Either way, I’m spending 75% of my waking day doing things that don’t make me happy.

What am I looking forward to?

I like to see a steady improvement in my life. I really enjoy setting goals, and working towards them. That’s probably why I’ve started so many hobbies over the years. As much as I hate to boast, aside from the fact that I’ve never become good at any of my hobbies, I’m pretty much at the top of my game right now. Ashley and I own a house outright, we’ve completed our university education, and we’re both employed full time. I’m 28, so I can look forward to 37 more years of full time employment before I reach 65, the retirement age here in Canada.

What changes am I going to see in those 37 years? I can imagine moving into a larger house, then moving repeatedly every 5 or 10 years as I advance my career. I’ll probably start working more hours as my job expectations continue to advance, and I’ll eventually lose touch with the once held notion that there are things I enjoy doing and I could be doing them if I weren’t working so much.  All in all, not too much left to work towards except retirement.

The theory of relativity.

In super simple plain language here’s my layman’s interpretation of Einstein’s theory of relativity: The world, the universe, and everything is only as big, small, detailed, or simple as you personally can perceive. You can’t experience anything more, only guess at what more there is based on your perceptions.

What’s that mean? It means that the kid who spends his whole life locked in a closet has no idea what he’s missing out on. Sure, he can guess at what the world might be like, he knows his food comes from somewhere, but he’ll truly have no idea. Worse yet, what’s outside the closet won’t matter to him because he hasn’t experienced it and can’t comprehend what he’s missing out on.

Having been in a closet before, I know quite well that there is a heck of a lot that I’d be missing out on. The same thing applies to the world in general. I don’t know what I’ll find traveling, but I know there’s more there than I’ve experienced, and I want to make as much of it count for me as I can.

In closing.

Travel makes me happy. I’ll have 100% of my waking day to do what I want to do. I can hike, relax at the beach, or even try and get a job at my leisure. The important part is it’ll be on my terms. 37 years is a long time to spend working for someone else. Taking a break isn’t going to set me back significantly in the long term, and I’ve got a few years before I’m too old to have kids. It’s a big world out there, and I can’t wait to see it.

Ashley went through this same exorcise, you can read all about it here -> Why Ashley Wants to Travel.