The Honeymooners - Indonesia, August 2010

Prepare yourself - this post is long and picture-heavy. But the pictures are really pretty, so stay strong and keep reading.
Also - new here? Get acquainted with our blog:

• Our first post (explains The Trip)
• The Route-ish (because we really don't have a plan)
• The Blog Name
• Pics

The Trip is going to be awesome. I don't want to have expectations that are too high...but I'm pretty sure it's going to be amaze-balls. So, when I'm complaining about cockroaches or lamenting my lack of a blow dryer or peep-toe pumps, remind me that The Trip is, in fact, amaze-balls.

This gal is probably on a
long trip with her husband.

We're in the thick of planning - we have an approximate route charted for India and are starting to make our pitstop wish list for that country. We've created a schedule/calendar for our cross-country road trip. (See that here.) We're making small purchases for the trip (more on that soon), and I'm slowly weaning myself off of luxuries like regularly shaving my legs. Tom loves this...but I'm a planner...and preparation is key.* My legs are going to be soft with fur on the trip.

All of this planning has us talking a lot about some of our past trips. Unfortunately, we didn't have a super witty and informative blog when we took those trips. Lucky for you, we have plenty of time between now and The Trip, so we're going to tell you about a few of them. Where to start? The best vacation I've ever been on was our honeymoon in August, 2010, to Indonesia.

Safety Dance

Check out our Pics page! It's updated with photos from previous trips. This is where you can find most of our photos while we're on the road. Or, you can skip straight to our Flickr account.

I'm sure a handful of our friends think we're nuts for taking the gadgets and electronics that we're taking but, as Tom mentioned in the last post about technology, it's just stuff. It's stuff we'd like to have with us as a nice little luxury (in the midst of our hostel/squatty potty/Delhi Belly/public bus adventures), but we wouldn't be heart-broken (or home-bound) if any of it was lost or stolen.

With that said, I'm a safety girl and, while Tom has taken past long-term trips all willy-nilly and carefree, that is not going to fly with this overplanner. Let's talk safety - for ourselves and for our shtuff. (I won't cover it again, but check out our plans for medical safety here.)

Do you know about Rick Steves? Tom and I love him. He has a PBS show about traveling through Europe and is a regular on the PBS telethons. He's super dorky and cheesy and, when I first saw him casually throw his backpack over one shoulder wearing his old school Dockers circa 1992 and cruise through the Tuscan countryside with the top down in possibly the most-staged TV footage of all time, he secured me as a lifelong fan. Nothing beats a Rick Steves marathon on a Sunday afternoon. The only complaint I have is that he never travels outside of Europe. At this point, I've seen multiple episodes about Germany, but nothing about Kuala Lumpur. What gives, Rick?
By the way, Googling "Rick Steves Asia" turns up this gem: http://onion.com/pz320I.

Go-Go Gagdet

It's been awhile since I've taken a long-term backpacking trip. In 1995, I went to New Zealand and Australia for 6 months and, in 2000, I went through Eastern Europe, Russia and Scandinavia for 4 months. On those trips, the only gadget I took with me was an older camera (film, obviously). Consumer technology has evolved a lot in the last 10 years, and we found ourselves with plenty of options when thinking about what gadgets to take and how we best wanted to document our trip. Since I'm generally as averse to new technology as your grandmother in New Mexico (I still have a BlackBerry because I don't want to learn a new system), deciding what to take was a bit overwhelming.  Lucky for me, Steph is a bit more tapped into the tech world and is a voracious researcher. She's figured out what other people are taking on the road these days and carefully read reviews of each choice in the many tech categories. Because we're taking quite a few gadgets, we'll likely be considered Flashpackers by the backpacking community. There are some travelers who frown on gadgets on the road, but we're not those travelers. We like gadgets...and convenience...and entertainment...and technology. We are, after all, San Franciscans, living and breathing the Silicon Valley craze for nearly a decade. 

Inspector Gadget, the Modern-Day-San-Franciscan's ancestor