Intro of Mark

Dave has done a good job summing up the trip. I can't believe we're actually going to do this! I quit my job working at Wachovia several months ago in June 2006 and moved back to Raleigh to work in the family biz for 4 months before departing on the trip in October. We leave October 14th and are going to travel up to a year or as long as our budget holds out. We will try to make this blog as interesting as possible so that people besides Dave and me actually view it.

Please let us know what sort of things you enjoy hearing about. If you want to see more pics of Dave with his shirt off, let us know. If you want to hear more about Dave's struggles with the Spanish language, let us know.

One of my goals is to visit all 7 continents and this trip will help me achieve that goal. We'll have been to 5 of 7 and possibly 6 of 7 if we go to Egypt.

Our overall goal is to try/experience new things. So along the way we may try to work, volunteer, meet locals, try local cuisine, hitchhike, write a book, learn to sail, make new friends, gain new perspectives, and so much more. This blog is where we plan to chronicle our journey.

As Dave said feel free to leave comments or email us.

"This suspense is terrible, I hope it will last." - Oscar Wilde
Ultima Thule

Intro

Welcome to the travel journal!! (Or blog if you prefer). This will chronicle the around the world trip of myself (David), and Mark, who will introduce himself in a later post. For those of you reading the journal who have only met one of us, the quick background for this trip is we've been friends for basically our entire lives, and we've been talking about taking this around the world backpacking trip ever since we spent almost four weeks backpacking through Europe after graduation. Mark is also indentifying himself with a sign in the picture to the right of the post, which makes me the guy on the left.

Well, now the trip we've been talking about for years will finally commence as we fly to Argentina on October 14. The quick overview of the trip is we will be going to Argentina, Chile, and Peru first. From there we'll head to Australia and New Zealand. Next up is Thailand and Southeast Asia. Finally we'll wrap things up in eastern Europe before heading back to the good ol US of A in a year. If this type of travel interests you and you'll be in the neighborhood of our trip, be sure to track us here and let me know.

This blog has a comment feature under each post, so in addition to email you can also directly comment on anything that's posted here. My last day in Virginia is Sept 30 when I lose my apartment; I'll spend the remaining time before departure in NC.

Testing 3 2 1...

Starting up

T minus one month and 3 days until liftoff...