The administration for this trip seems far more complicated than for our last adventure. We think our lives have become too complicated!We had heard it said that you need to spend as long planning a trip like this as you intend to spend on it. If that were the case we were stuffed before we started. There was certainly a lot to do and no where near enough time to do it. Just working out how to get to the start and get home from the finish was a challenge.

I had frequent flyer points to use but there were no FF flights to London. New York looked good for a stop over and flights were available. We decided to take a few days off en route just to use the points.

Using the net, we booked some flights, enough to get us going, and some accommodation, enough to get us started. Our budget was already starting to creak and D Day was still weeks away.

A visit to the travel doctor was another round of financial misery. Fortunately we were given blood tests to determine our level anti-bodies for the common diseases. After years of traveling to “interesting” places, we had been inoculated so many times that we had immunity to EDKM, or at least the common strains, so we were spared the worst of the misery.

Nonetheless, two rounds of injections and funny tasting liquids left us out of pocket by hundreds of dollars. And that was just the beginning. Being of mature disposition, we both had to acquire enough drugs of various sorts to last a year or so (more money) along with a range of medical supplies sufficient for a small war. At this point it was as well that the kids had left home as we were looking for something of value to sell to pay down the credit card debt.

But it wasn’t finished. Dental checks, spare glasses, updated wills, overseas medical insurances, mail redirection, traveling cloths, GPS mapping and all sorts of other “special” purchases clicked over day by day. At this rate we would be broke before we started.

While we watched the money flow out, there was plenty to keep our mind occupied. Dozens of documents needed to be copied or scanned into the computer. Our “contacts” files were brought up to date, newspaper deliveries were stopped and all manner of services and insurances were suspended.

There were several meetings with the accountant and financial adviser during which we tried to convince ourselves that we could do this and not sentence ourselves to a life of penury. We developed a feeling that the adventure would not be pain free in the years to come but we put it out of our minds and pressed on. Sometimes you just have to do that.

When we started to eat out the larder and give away the meat from our freezer to neighbors, we knew we were close. Emptying our little swimming pool and making cotton drops to cover the doors and windows was another clue. But what sealed the thing was the morning, with just a day to go, that we pumped out our water bed and moved into the guest room.

Now this might seem like a small thing in the big scheme of things, but we had been very happy in this bend for nearly 20 years. It had always been a comfort and a sanctuary. Cozy and comfortable on a cold night and always welcoming after the shortest trip away, this was “our” personal space. Now it was gone. Our life had been simplified and disentangled from our world to the point that we were camping in our own home. It was time to go.