Change In Plans

We have been without internet access for several days, so I will try to catch up in abridged form.

We drove across Ireland, to stay in Dublin for a few days. The first 50% of the drive took nearly 80% of the time, because the roads were so narrow and twisty. Once we got about 30 kilometers east of Athlone, there was a big, multi-lane carriageway, and we flew.

Athlone was great. More complicated history, in the sense that the biggest event in city history was the sieges of 1690 and 1691. If I understood correctly: William of Orange, and his forces (supprtoed by the Dutch) were trying to win the English throne by attacking the Irish and French in a castle in the center of Ireland, which market the dividing line between Munster and Connacht. Eventually the Williamites won, and a Dutch general named Ginkel was named Earl of Athlone for his efforts. Irish history is complicated. Athlone has the oldest pub in Ireland,Sean’s Bar, which dates back at least to 900 AD. I had a Guinness. The bartender (who looked as though he dated back to about 1100 AD) gave me a priceless look of disdain when I asked whether they served lunch.

Arriving in Dublin was a little bit of a crowded shock, after a week in the rural west. Our hotel, on St. Stephen’s Green, was nice. Overall, Dublin is a nice, small city. There are still a lot of areas to be renovated, refurbished, and upgraded, but the influx of money in the last 20 years is apparent.

The highlights were ChristChurch Cathedral, where we heard a competition on the huge pipe organ, and our walk along the old canal on our last day. Food was marginally better, and the city itself was pleasant. Weather continued to be awful, which many people assured us was anomalous (not sure we believe them). Lots of literary history, and lots of confusing, bloody Irish history.

On Wednesday, we took the fast ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales. Apparently, Jonathan Swift took this route frequently, and he even wrote a poem about it. The ferry and train was great after so many days of driving. We got to London in about 9 hours door to door, and saw a lot of beautiful NW Wales scenery. Unfortunately, we promptly left Zola’s bag on a sidewalk in London, and lost a load of little boy’s clothes. Not the worst thing that could have happened.

Overall, Ireland: many beautiful places, and a lot of compelling history. Very expensive with the strong Euro, and the people drink a lot. The weather is dodgy at best. We learned a lot about travelling as a family, and on balance had a good time.

We have been in Ireland for the last eight days, learning expensve lessons about how to travel as a family. With the dollar so weak ($1.70 to buy a single Euro), everything is going to be expensive.

That said, by not really paying attention, we have gotten creamed.

The best example was at Ashford Castle up in Cong (which was probably a very luxurious hotel in 1988, which was the last time they updated the decor, service, amenities, etc), where our “family suite” got changed to “two interconnected rooms”. Each room was 495 Euros per night, multiply by two, and gross up by 1.7x, and you see that we were paying nearly $1,700 per night for nothing particularly special. I am very glad that we only stayed for two nights!

We have started a list of Top 10 Things to Bring on Vacation In Ireland:
1- Loads of money (see above) in cash (ATMs few and far between outside of Dublin)
2- Appetite for chips (lots of pub food, lots of fries)
3- Appetite for beer
4- Ability to keep track of incredibly complicated Irish history
5- Raincoats and hats and umbrellas
6- Nerves of steel for driving on the narrow roads
7- Appreciation for the beauty of the West, particularly County Mayo
8-
9-
10-

We still need three more.

Although Ireland has been expensive and rainy, we have seen a lot of cool stuff.

• Staying in the Ballyhannon Castle was special and unique.
• Going to the folk park and the medieval feast at Bunratty Castle was a little hokey, but fun.
• The Connor Pass, on the unbelievably long drive to Dingle, was pretty spectacular.
• The burren was cool to look at.
• Walking on the Connemara beaches, and seeing and inlets and mountains were all distinctively beautiful (best day of the trip).
• Listening to the group of friends playing Irish music at the pub in Dublin was amazing.
• Having a Guinness at Sean’s Bar in Athlone (the oldest pub in Ireland, and maybe the oldest in the world) was special
• Listening to an organ competition at Christ Church in Dublin was inspiring (standing next to the organ was awesome)
• Taking a falconry lesson at Ashford Castle was also something special for Zola and for me
• Going for a run at Ashford Castle, and going down into something called the “Pigeon Hole,” a 50-foot-deep, medieval-looking hole in the ground was flat-out creepy

Too many verbs and adjectives.

We are also learning about travelling together as a family. The kids have not quite adjusted to the time change, even after a week. In part, this is because it doesn’t get dark until about 11pm. Also, we haven’t established any kind of routine, and we have been arriving/eating late. In the real trip, we will need to move less frequently, and build in some down time.

Quick note.

We arrived in Shannon, Ireland at 7:30 this morning, after a long day of travel from Nashville yesterday.

I sat next to a Catholic nun on the flight (joined her order in 1955!), which was amazing. She was flying to Ireland with the body of an Irish priest, a long-standing professional and personal friend, who died last week of cancer. She and another priest were bringing him home to County Kerry to be buried. She has had an interesting life (mostly working with emotionally disturbed and mentally ill children), and radiated goodwill and serenity.

Finding our rented castle was not easy, even with two GPS systems going in the car. Two minutes from Shannon Airport, it becomes very rural.

Castle Ballyhannon is unbelievably cool. It is basically a big stone tower, built 600 years ago. We will try to post pictures later. It has a stone spiral staircase, a murder hole, big fireplaces, a portcullis, all real castle stuff. Zola, in particular, thinks it is just great.

Everyone slept for a few hours, and now we are going off to find food and water (600-year-old well apparently doesn’t taste so good). These are baby steps in the world tour, but exciting ones for us to take.

We had an important shedding moment yesterday, when the sale of our house in New Jersey closed.

There was some drama at the finish: the buyers wanted to knock an additional $10,000 off the price because there was a little water in the basemant after a big rainstorm. Two cups of water ended up costing us $2,000. It is a lousy time to be selling a house (duh), and we feel slightly beaten up by the process.

That said, everyone signed (we were on the phone from Nashville, experienceing it all through our lawyer, who was great), and 10 minutes later the net proceeds were in my checking account.

It is a great feeling to no longer have our monthly mortgage + tax + insurance payment. We still have our small house in the Catskills, and a small mortgage to go with that, but our cash fixed costs have literally dropped by almost 70%.

Today we are travelling (separately, unfortunately) back to Newark, and then overnight to Ireland. The warm-up phase of our adventure really starts today.

India and I went to Bermuda for four days to plan our trip.

Overall, Bermuda is great: convenient to get to, not overly touristy, beautiful beaches and climate, friendly and relaxed culture, sophisticated, good for running, swimming, etc.

Bermuda is also wildly expensive. We stayed at The Reefs hotel, which was awesome, but cost more per night than most hotel rooms in Manhattan. By renting a house, it can probably be done less expensively, but everything was priced at a premium to the U.S. I think they discourage budget travel pretty actively (like Botswana does), and it doesn’t seem to hurt them.

We ran a lot, mostly on the Railway Trail, which was the route of the trans-island train that was discontinued in 1948. The roads are narrow, and felt a little hazardous, so it was great to have the trail.

We also did a lot of trip planning, and have the basics laid out for the next several months. There are a lot of details to firm up, and bookings to be made. We agreed to start the real trip in mid-August with Northern Africa (Morocco) and Southern Europe (Spain, Greece, Turkey). Already, what seemed like a vast expanse of time is feeling too short and too hurried.

There are also a lot of details to follow up on in the U.S. before we go. The closing on our house in New Jersey is supposed to happen today. I need to finalize my separation agreement, which has taken a lot longer than expected. We are establishing Tennessee residency, which requires some legwork. No shortage of things to do.

On top of all of this, I am definitely starting to feel a psychological change. This isn’t a vacation: there is no job to go back to. There is no physical place called home at the moment: home is where India and the kids are. A lot of things that others have done for me for a long time (particularly travel), I am doing myself. It is difficult to answer the basic questions: “What do you do?” and “Where do you live?”

The psychological change is an important part of this, I think. I haven’t really processed the change in plans very thoroughly.

Part of the “travel is educational” no-school rationalization is that we will have our eight-year-old son interview kids who are roughly his age in every place that we go. His first interview was with his step-cousin in Nashville today. Look out David Frost!

1. What is your name?
Hannah

2. How old are you?
Eight

3. Where do you live?
Hendersonville, Tennessee

4. Who is in your family?
My step-father and my Mom

5. What does your house look like?
[Insert drawing, if we had the technical capability - it is peach colored]

6. Do you go to school?
Of course

7. How do you get to school?
My Mom drives me there

8. How many kids are in your class?
Twenty

9. what is your favorite subject and why?
Science. I like nature and doing experiments.

10. What do you do for fun?
Watch TV and play woth my friends

11. What is your favorite holiday?
Christmas

12. what is your greatest fear?
Spiders and snakes

13. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Don’s know yet

If we can get our son to interview kids at every stop, it would be cool. We will see how we do.

Part of the plan for the year is to run consistently, and to do a couple of long races. My wife is a star long-distance runner, and very dedicated. In the eith years since we moved back to the U.S. from South Africa, I have become a sloth. We will lay out the plan for training, and commit to the two races, while we are doing the overall master plan.

In the spirit of getting going, I have run pretty much every day for the last three weeks, which is a first in this millennium. Today was a real test in Nashville. Only four miles, but at about 92 degrees in the late morning sun. Mad dogs and Englishmen.

The only guidance I have gotten for making these posts interesting is to be brutally honest. I’m not quite sure what that means.

Yesterday, blessing #1 that I started with (healthy family) got a qualifier. After being seizure free for several years, our son appeared to have an absence seizure yesterday afternoon. Thinking about it, we realized he has probably had several seizures over the last few weeks. He has definitely not “been himself,” and we feel a little negligent, in retrospect, for not realizing what was happening.

Many of the same triggers which were associated with his seizures in late 2004 are present now:
stress and uncertainty of moving house (from NYC to New Jersey then, from New Jersey to California and then New Jersey to a great unknown now), a major change in family dynamic (birth of his sister then, me no longer working now), irregular and insufficient sleep schedule, poor eating. We also got him his first-ever video game last week, which we probably let him play for too many hours, including very late at night with friends during sleepovers. Reading this over, it doesn’t seem like the model of responsible parenting, but until there is a problem, I guess I let it slide.

His seizure raises a lot of questions about our travel plans. Fortunately, we are in Nashville, and can take him to Vanderbilt to be seen in their pediatric epilepsy unit. He was very well controlled with Lamictal for the two years after his last round of seizures (and then we weaned him off), so maybe we go back to that.

It is scary and sobering to have our child go through this.

Let me start by counting a few blessings:
1- happy, healthy, supportive, and adaptive family
2- good physical and mental health
3- a great network of friends, acquaintances and former colleagues around the world
4- enough money to make it feasible to travel as a family for a year
5- confidence (misplaced or not) that we can pick up our personal and professional lives whenever and wherever we return

As a family, we have had a change in plans. Literally ten days before our long-planned move from New Jersey to San Diego, my boss and I had a discussion which caused me to resign my corporate job. No need to move to San Diego.

Fortunately, “resignation with good reason,” meant that I did not leave empty handed. My wife’s immediate response, having spent months preparing for the move to California, was to suggest that we travel for a year. We had already sold our house and pulled our kids (8 and 3) from school, so we diverted the moving trucks to a storage space instead of to a new house. We bought a bunch of books and a big wall calendar, and we started to plan a long trip. I have been working and/or in school since I was 12 years old (I turned 42 today).

Not sure why I want to write about this time in our lives, or whether anyone would want to read it. Travelogue meets family sitcom meets mid-life crisis meets journey of self-discovery. If nothing else, it will encourage our 8-year-old son to write about where we go, and what he is learning.

Like many round-the-world trips, our started with a few days in Nashville. From here, we go to Bermuda to really think through what we are trying to accomplish, and to plan the big sections of the trip. After that, we have six weeks at our cabin in the mountains, and then off we go.

Good things will come of this: time together as a family, deeper understanding of ourselves and of the world, connecting and reconnecting with people around the world, maybe some growing up for all of us.