Preparing for the 2008 USA Roadtrip

I don't know when I first got the idea that I wanted to take a month (or two) and drive around the United States, taking my time, stopping here and there, and really enjoying the experience of learning about the country we live in. I've been pitching the idea on and off to Mark for several years, but a "driving vacation" from his "driving job" (he drives for UPS) doesn't appeal to him, and I can understand why.

But then, he got challenged by my sister to do a half-Iron Man with her in New Hampshire this August. There's a whole story behind that, which I wont go into, but the kids want to be there, and the rest of the family - mostly in Michigan or on the east coast - wants us to stop in and visit. After looking at airfare for the family on a multi-stop trip and working in rental cars and hotels, I decided perhaps I would "just drive". If you do the math, you'll probably figure out that I'm not actually saving any money at all by driving, but this is where dreams and drain come in. The idea of spending about $5000 to go on a multi-city plane trip drains me. The idea of spending about $5000 to adventure accross the USA for a month excites me - it's doing something I've always dreamed of!

Mark only gets the middle two weeks of August off, so he'll spend part of our time with us, but for a lot of it it's just me and the kids. Common sense says I'm going to follow my bliss right into a stressful drama of being alone on the road with two litle kids, and the other part of me (we'll call it intuition as long as this story has a happy ending) says, "it's time".

I've never shut my business down for a whole month, but all my clients have been so supportive, and many asked me to blog about the experience. At first I thought, why in the world would anyone want to read it, but now I'm thinking, why not? Most of you have probably guessed that this is more than a driving trip for me - it's kind of a spiritual journey. I've been watching those webinars with Oprah and Eckart Tolle and it's so darn hard to get still that I thought maybe in the middle of Lake Mead or on a prairie in Nebraska I'd be likelier to tune into some deep insights.

With this in mind, here is what I THINK this trip is about:

1. Getting out of my head and into some real life experiences.
2. Getting more connected with my kids
3. Making learning fun - for them and for me
4. Seeing if it's really possible to have a business that "goes dark" each year in August
5. Perhaps discovering some new deep insights about life that are worth sharing

If wireless is everywhere, you'll hear from me a lot.

But for now, I'm off to tie up some loose ends. We are leaving in five days....