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

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.



Pat LePoidevin & Matt Sarty

You don’t have to quit your job and leave the country to experience new and interesting things. Or to delve into a new and different “culture.” You just have to look in your own backyard. Or maybe a neighbour’s backyard, as we recently discovered.

In July 2010, we attended the Dawson City Music Festival and came home with about 16 CDs from artists we had never heard of before but fell in love with. One of these artists was Pat LePoidevin – a young Canadian musician who performed magic with his voice, a ukulele, a guitar, and a loop pedal. We have been listening to his CDs ever since and were stoked to find on his MySpace page that he was playing a house concert in Regina. A house concert? we wondered. Like in an actual house? Is that really a thing? After emailing Pat, who directed us to Erin (who owns said house), we found out that yes, house concerts are an actual thing. This particular one would cost $10 a person and they would be having a potluck beforehand for anyone that wanted to partake. I naively asked if I needed to buy tickets in advance, or would I be sure to get one at the door? (I still hadn’t figured out the whole house concert thing yet).

So there we were at 5:00 on Easter Monday, standing in front of a strange house holding a dessert, not sure what to expect from the evening. We were the first guests to arrive and we were instantly made to feel at home and offered a glass of wine. We sat on one of the benches in the varied array of seating set up outside in the backyard, and before long Pat LePoidevin and Matt Sarty (the musicians) came out to join us. We sat and talked for a while as more and more guests started to arrive. This is when we realized how great this evening was going to be. How often do you get to hang out and chat with the musicians before a show? Eventually, a delicious meal of roast lamb, potatoes, and various salads was served. After dinner, Pat and Matt set up their gear in the backyard. It was such a beautiful evening everyone decided it would be best to hold the concert outside.

Beth and Erin (Organizers)

Matt set up a drum set and Pat played guitar and ukulele with the loop pedal, using a little amp. He kept the amp turned down fairly low, so he could sing over the music. The concert was magical… a fire was lit, blankets were brought out to keep us warm, and the music was fantastic. Pat’s set list was mostly from his new CD, Highway Houses, but he played several of our favourites from his other albums. The atmosphere was very low key due to the intimate setting and there was a lot of storytelling and audience interaction. One of the highlights of the evening was the final song… the title track from “Highway Houses.” Pat put down his guitar and ukulele and plugged a microphone into the loop pedal. After commenting on how much he hates holding a microphone, he started into the song. With his powerful voice and the aid of the loop pedal, he repeated the few verses of the song again and again, harmonizing with his own voice on each loop. It was a perfect end to a wonderful evening of music.

I hope to have many more interesting evenings of great conversations and music with new friends on our upcoming RTW journey. The Pat LePoidevin house concert was a reminder that you don’t have to cross country borders to experience something new and unique.

If you have never heard of Pat LePoidevin, he’s definitely worth checking out. His songs are built up carefully layer by layer, in such a way that you’re instantly drawn in. His passionate, poetic lyrics and sheer musicality draw you into an ethereal world for as long as you listen. You can access his music on his MySpace page or check out the videos below.

Highway Houses

Pat LePoidevin | Myspace Music Videos
Pat LePoidevin’s “Fire” – I really like this clip because the quality of the recording allows you to hear the power in his voice

Pat LePoidevin’s “Moonwolf Departure” – Love this song! It shows some of what he can do with a loop pedal.

Virtual Photography Studio, “Relaxing on the Beach” April 10, 2011 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.

Our first plane ticket is booked and we finally have a “go” date… July 6, 2011.  No less than 6 days after our final day of work (June 30), we will be on a plane to Cancun, Mexico.  This is going to be a tight schedule to get everything arranged before our departure, but Mike and I agreed that the sooner we could leave, the better.

Why Cancun?  It was the cheapest flight into Central America – our starting point.  It turned out to be even cheaper to fly from Regina than our original plan of busing it to New York, flying to Miami, and catching another flight out of Miami… which means we don’t have to start our trip with 3 days straight on a bus (booyah!).  From there we can catch a series of buses to our true starting point… Spanish courses in Antigua, Guatemala.

This is a huge step.  We now have a date to count down to (86 days, if anyone’s keeping track) which means we can finally post a fancy countdown timer on the blog.  Check it out on the sidebar.

Aside from vaccinations, this is the first real expense of the trip.  The damage:  $859.60 for the two of us.  However, as we have so diligently been charging all those shots to our travel visa, we were able to apply $150 in travel points towards the plane tickets.  So, all in all, we only paid a total of $709.60 to start our amazing RTW journey.

And so it begins!

It’s only three short months until we embark on our RTW adventure, so we thought it was about time we put down all the things we want to see and, maybe more importantly, do on paper.  OK, so we didn’t actually put this list on paper.  We typed it out.  But  I’m not sure what the digital equivalent of this expression is… encode in binary on a hard drive, maybe?

The result… our bucket list.  A list of things we want to do before we kick the bucket.  A starting point for an itinerary and an ever-growing work in progress.  We cheated a bit and retroactively filled it with things we’ve done in our past travels – they were on our previously unwritten bucket list, so we felt like they should be included here.

Check out our list and let us know if there’s any amazing experiences we may be missing out on.

Happy Pi Day everyone! There’s no better way to celebrate Pi Day then a nice slice of pie.  So if you want to stop reading and go get yourself one, I’ll wait.

Pi Pie

Got your pie?  With a little “mode” I hope?  Great!  Let’s continue…

In case you didn’t know, Pi Day is a holiday commemorating the mathematical constant, pi, and is celebrated each year on March 14 (3/14 in month/day format).  It’s a big day in the math world and, since I am a self-declared math geek and a math teacher, it’s an important day in my world.

It also happens to be our cat’s birthday.  And she just happens to be named Pi (short for Pythagoras).  No, I’m not kidding about this… I really am such a big math geek that I named my cat after a famous mathematician.

Our Cat, Pythagoras (a.k.a. Pi)

Pi Day seems like the perfect opportunity to talk about one of our biggest obstacles in planning our trip – finding a good home for Pi while we are away.  We’ve had her since the summer we were married (nearly four years now) and she’s truly become part of the family.  As soon as we started debating the possibility of this trip, we started brainstorming people that might want to look after Pi.   The Humane Society was not an option we wanted to entertain.  If we wanted to do this thing, we needed to find a good home for her.

We asked several family members and friends, but no one wanted another cat.  Finally, one of my coworkers offered to take her in.  Thanks, Lana!  Pi will have lots of adjustments to make though – she will be moving from our quiet little house to one with three kids, two dogs, and another cat.  But she should be happy there.  The family loves animals and will treat her well.

Finding someone to take care of your pets while you are away on a lengthy trip is a big deal.  It is a decision that is worth a lot of time and thought, and it is an essential factor to consider when deciding whether or not you can make an RTW trip work.

The Motherload of Budget Grocery Shopping - only 50 cents a meal

I grew up living on top of a grocery store.  Literally.  My parents owned a small town Saskatchewan grocery store with living quarters upstairs.  Grocery shopping as a kid consisted of running down stairs at supper time to pick up the ingredients mom required.  Anything we wanted was always on hand.

Needless to say, after I moved out there has been a gradual evolution of my grocery shopping habits.  When I first moved in with Mike, I drove him nuts trying to buy and keep on hand anything I might feel like for supper on any given day.  After I overcame that little compulsion, I developed fairly average grocery shopping skills – I didn’t go overboard on items, but I also didn’t pay too much attention to how much something I wanted cost.

After we made the decision to travel, there was yet another evolution – budget shopping.  Pretty much everything I buy now is on sale or somehow discounted.  Take last weekend’s grocery trip for example – I took full advantage of the 10 for $10 sale at my nearest Coop Marketplace.  I loaded up on boxes of pasta, bags of perogies, frozen chicken cordon bleus, canned meat, and nearly everything else I could get my hands on for $1.00 each.  All said and done, I ended up with 111 individual meals (or 55 meals for the two of us) for only $55.  Not too shabby.

What about when we feel the need to splurge?  Not a problem – consider Valentine’s Day.  In true Frugal February fashion, we forwent the fancy meal out and splurged at home – Veal Parmesan (for $1.25 a cutlet), homemade pasta (thanks to Mike), homemade tomato sauce (using canned tomatoes that were about $1.00 a can), and chocolate lava cakes.

I even got a box of Valentine’s chocolates – post V-day at 70% off, of course.