JUMPing, finally deciding to put the dream & planning in place, was likely the most difficult for us. We had dreamed in HD, planned for what seemed like forever and yet finally deciding to JUMP was agonizing. We had become so accustomed to our cush lives that the thought of drastically doing something different was quite challenging. At the same time the pull of the adventurer kept nagging at us and when all the stars lined up we went for it! We committed to the trip – departing May 2024 we would attempt to ride from Fairbanks, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina.
When exactly we decided to JUMP is uncertain – it seemed as if we continued to take baby steps toward the JUMP until eventually, maybe August of 2023, we felt we were pretty committed – our house had sold, we’d done a significant shakedown bicycle tour and we were headed into the doldrums of another year of mid-life.
Financially, we had enough but we continued to question whether that enough was really enough. A few times we independently got cold feet but were brought back to the dream by the other. Oftentimes we’d used the phrase “we can still change our minds”. Finally, in January of 2024 Patricia applied for “retirement” from her job even though she wasn’t of traditional retirement age – her employer gave a bonus if you announced retirement by a certain date. She said, “What the heck, I’ll apply for it!” – and it was approved…”I guess we’re doing this!” Then Dustin announced he’d be resigning from his job – another step!
Slowly but surely, step by step we put our years of planning into place. Patricia had a buyer for her car, we sold as much as possible on Facebook Marketplace. Yet, finally deciding to JUMP felt the most stressful because fears and doubts started to creep into our minds:
- “Who am I going to disappoint?”
- “What if something happens and we get hurt?”
- “What if something happens to Katy?”
- “What if this trip is a fail?”
- “What if something happens to a family member while we’re doing this?”
- “What about inflation/stock market/our spending? Will we have enough?”
We talked through each of these questions in order to get to the cause of our fear or doubt…often employing the reverse psychology techniques – yes, there is risk…yes, we can get hurt, but we can also get injured driving/biking to work or even at work.
Several times we consoled ourselves with the thought “if this trip is a fail we can always get jobs again” idea – we have skills and both of our vocations are in high demand. This seemed to set our minds at ease with finally deciding to JUMP.
Funny enough, we’d announced we were resigning our jobs & we’d sold half of our stuff (including our house!)but we (Dustin) didn’t feel the physical stress in our bodies until we’d made our JUMP social media official. This was quite unexpected…we’d taken so many steps but it was posting on social media “we did a thing” that gave Dustin tension knots between his shoulder blades! They went away in a few days 😉
Logistics of the JUMP
We used Backwards Design strategy to manage the logistics of the JUMP essentially reverse planning from our departure date to the present date. Here are some of the logistics that come to mind:
Our Stuff – embarking on such a trip we’d need to decide what to do with all our material possessions that were not coming on the journey. We’ve read extensively on this topic and learned that some people choose to store their things with friends/family/storage units while others elect to sell/give away everything and then purchase items for the post-travel life as necessary. We went with the latter and divested ourselves of (almost) all of our things. Getting rid of items that have been part of our lives, many for decades, takes a physical and emotional toll. We sold most items on Facebook Marketplace or found new homes for items with friends – anytime we gave something to friends we tried to make it abundantly clear that they could say “no” and were not obligated to take our worldly treasures.
Reading Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up helped immensely for the mental toll of parting with items. Asking ourselves if the item brings us joy or thanking an item for the joy it has brought us over the years was quite helpful. Many of the household items we had to part with we’d had for almost 20 years so thanking each item for its service seemed to work well for us. Another strategy is asking ourselves, “Why are we keeping [insert item]?” Certainly, this process is not easy and we experienced Decision Fatigue from constantly having to make choices. The process definitely ebbed and flowed until we were down to a limited number of items.
We chose to store one Rubbermaid tub of memories in Dustin’s parents attic as well as scanning pictures, documents and journals and uploading them to the cloud. A scanned journal is just not the same but it’s a sacrifice we made to choose this lifestyle.
Important documentation – we chose to get a safety deposit box for our important documents that we would not bring on the trip (birth certificates, marriage license, etc.) as well as a few small items we’d like to preserve.
Mail – for our dream trip we will not have a home and this means no address. Many people embarking on a journey like this use a friend or relative’s address but we decided on a scanning mail service so we would not burden anyone with managing our mail for such a long period of time.
Essentially we changed our address to a specific location and they receive our mail, scan it and then we see images of each piece on an app and we can decide to recycle, open & scan, shred or forward the mail to another address anywhere in the world. The United States also requires its citizens to domicile in a state for tax purposes – this scanning mail service allowed us to establish a “permanent address” while being nomadic.
02 March 2024 – We’re still in the process of JUMPing. We’ll update this once we’ve taken off on the trip…there’s sure to be several more reflections 😉