Here, there, everywhere... A modest attempt at chronicling my around the world adventure over the next year (or so).

So you decided to travel around the world, great. Now what? Oh, not much except the important task of shutting down your current life and starting a new one. 1. Resign from job-check 2. Get moving company-check 3. Figure out budget for next few months AND the next year-check-on going 4. Travel insurance-in process 5. Shots-check 6. money, money, money-on going 7. buy international cell phone-check 8. visas, visas, damn visas!-2 out of 3-number 3 in process (there are in no particular order except how they came out of my head) First-I will start with travel insurance. Travel insurance is a necessity and every guide book and rtw traveler will probably attest to this. However, actually finding travel insurance that covers all of your needs can be a bit duanting if not impossible. That is to say if you are on a budget which I think most people are in preparing to rtw. Probably the biggest drawback for American citizens (sorry my european friends you have it much better) is finding coverage for such "extreme" things as mountain biking or kayaking. Some companies do include what are termed "extreme sports" or just "sports" riders but they fall short. Lonely Planet teams up with Nomad for some decent travel insurance for backpacker type trips but the sports covered under the policy are very limited if you are US citizen. Type in Italian-covered! English-No problem! Wisconsin-Sorry! All of this again does not matter if you want to spend close to $2000 for a year of coverage. That is quite steep compared to the Lonely Planet coverage of $238/6 months. Not sure where the disconnect is but without getting to opinionated my guess is the insurance and legal professions in the US are much more complicated and fraught with failings then in other parts of the world especially Europe. AIG has some decent coverage but expensive. A company called MNU has great medical coverage, way above the others including therapy and medical devices but has no trip or luggage coverage. The final word on this is get what you can and make it work for what you need. Second-Finding a moving company. This may not apply if you are leaving from your "permenant" address. I am not so I needed to find a reasonable and economical way to transport my household across four states to Idaho. Budget, U-Haul? Perhaps, and initially this was my first option. However, at the time of this blog and beyond the price of gas has risen enough to make this option cost prohibitive for all but the financially well off. So I began to explore the cube or U-Pack option. You have probably seen the white cubes around where you live sitting in someone's driveway. The company also has trailers you can load for a little more cost. They will move either cube or trailer anywhere in the country they serve and the price includes taxes, gas and some insurance. This option was actually cheaper then renting a U-Haul and towing a car without factoring in gas. U-Pack is on-line and have been customer service friendly. Third-Shots and the medicines that accompany. Get everything you can even if you are not exactly sure what areas you will be traveling to in a particular region. I went to a travel clinic as part of my insurance health care system. Exepct to pay a consultation fee which includes some overstated "the rest of the world is drug and crime infested" country snapshots and lots of advice from the doctor and nurse about the do's and don'ts of world travel. They were very helpful in helping me navigate the mess known as health insurance and managed care. Fourth-Visas are a pain in the ars and can add up. What books and articles don't always tell you is that the order sometimes matters because of the time it takes and the requiremnts. And if you have money it is worth paying a little more to an on-line company to help "facilitate" the process. Essentially they do all the leg work for you which in my situtation was worth the extra costs involved. Oh and if you plan on traveling for an extended period of time and you already have passport pages filled and are planning to add visas before you depart then the first thing you should do is send the passport away for extra pages. It currently costs $60 plus postage but you should do this FIRST unlike me who did while trying to get visas. All total I have spent close to $800 for three visas and extra pages including fees and postages, what a racket! Fifth-The cell phone! I have learned more about cell phones and how they do and don't operate world-wide in the last few months then I thought possible. I think the best option (and what I chose) is an international SIM card used in an unlocked cell phone. The unlocked issues is important to consider. What I did not know is when you sign up for service and the company includes a cell phone they will "lock" the phone digitally with their code. They must unlock it for you to use with another company or another SIM card, if not well you are stuck riding their wagon. What is a SIM card? The little microchip like card inside your phone that stores data and makes the phone operate. While going back in forth over a few months and driving Jessica crazy about which phone to purchase I finally decided on a phone that does EVERYTHING for a few reasons. First, I don't own a digital camera, one of the few remaining I am sure. This phone has the best digital camera/phone combo out there right now which is paltry compared to what you guy with just a camera but I wanted it all remember! Second, WIFI built in, nice new feature coming out in more high end phones in the US(Europe and Asia have been on this train for many years). Third, GPS loaded with over 100 country maps (the phone is from Finland). Finally, 8 gbs of internal memory which means not outside MicroSC cards needed until you need to download all your pictures, etc. I won't name the phone less I give them free advertising and I have not used it yet but I will give updates on its performance later in my travels. One last thing about the SIM card I purchased. I paid extra for a US number family and friends would not be charged international rates to call me. Worth the added expense I thought plus gives people fewer excuses to not keep in touch.