Take me back to the start

Since we hopped in a time machine to reflect on the past in last week’s blog post, I thought this week it might be fun to take a journey even further back to understand the experiences we’ve shared together and what has gotten us to this point.

Renée and I met each other in the summer of 2012 working for a company that supports cycling trips throughout Canada.  Our job was to help transport the cyclists equipment/tents and cook breakfasts/dinners from site to site.  Some days we even had an opportunity to cycle the route with them.  While we weren’t paired up as a team for the summer, we got to know each other very well during the 3 week training period and really hit it off.  We can both remember evenings chatting with each other over several cups of tea until the early morning, not wanting to head to bed and holding our bladders for fear that the conversation would end.  We continued the conversation via text messaging throughout the summer while on our separate tours and our bond continued to grow - we even had the chance to meet a up a few times during the summer as our crews intersected across Canada!  I think we both knew that come the fall we would begin officially dating and we were ready to make it work, even if the early stages were to be long distance.

I’ll spare you the dating period and fast forward a bit :P - Two years later we were ready to tie the knot.  As most couples do, we had a discussion about what our future would look like as a team.  Would we save for a house? Would we set a road map for potentially having kids? Or...would we do some extensive traveling of the world?  Given our natural inclination for adventure and how we met, we decided on travel.  This decision felt natural and would give us opportunities to grow our connection further, not just with each other but with what’s going on in the world.  Years earlier in 2010, I had an amazing experience solo backpacking through Australia and Europe for over 9 months.  Without this experience, I can say I would not be the person I was when meeting Renée.  Perseverance, confidence and positivity were all important qualities enhanced as I navigated my journey on a shoestring budget - which was quite thrilling!  I wanted to bring some of this to our relationship and imagined a multi-month trip, completely tailored to what we wanted to experience.

Our honeymoon to Iceland was a great precursor on how we liked to travel and what we wanted to experience.  Instead of fun in the sun, we opted for something a little different.  This was at a time when Iceland was first becoming a popular destination and we were intrigued by this country of fire and ice.  Right away, we decided on going for our first airbnb instead of a hotel.  We went to grocery stores and cooked over regularly eating at restaurants.  We self navigated in a rented car instead of pre-packaged tours.  Not only was this cost effective in an expensive country, but we felt empowered by how great a time we could have by doing it this way.  We even stumbled upon an excellent public thermal pool which we regularly frequented throughout our week and had a great bakery nearby.  Our one regret was deciding to walk to an airport shuttle pickup when the aftermath of a hurricane was passing through (we had to sit in soaked clothing for an hour until we reached the airport terminal).  A learning experience for sure…always watch the weather forecast before walking several kilometres with all your gear!

After 3 years of saving and many months of planning/researching, we were finally able to take the plunge and set out on our travels in September of 2017.  To those that have listened to some of our podcasts already, the first 3 months were planned out with detail.  Although my previous experience seemed to favour staying flexible and planning 1-2 weeks in advance, Renée was coming from a background of planning and details.  There was nothing wrong with this method, but we soon found that so much value can be gained by keeping that flexibility and being willing to pivot.  Especially since you will be chatting with other travellers in hostels that can suggest interesting/off the beaten path activities.

I won’t get into the specifics of the trip now (as we have a whole section on the site dedicated to the podcast), but we really found ways to craft the trip to suit what resonated with us.  It took awhile to get used to, but there was no way we could see absolutely everything a country had to offer.  We were okay with just scratching the surface for each of the 40 countries visited in the 15 month span.  We sought out volunteer opportunities for projects that we were genuinely interested in.  We looked into some epic hikes and cherry picked the ones that took us to the edges of the earth or pushed ourselves to the limit.  We attempted to touch base with friends and family across the globe and share our experiences with them.

I can’t recommend long term travel enough.  It is by far the best way to grow as a person, to learn what is important in life and to get perspective.  As a couple, it taught us many great lessons which we are bringing forward to new adventures/projects.  There is a calmness and contentment in knowing that you cannot see it all, you cannot experience it all, you cannot plan for every situation - but you can be grateful for the moments you have and feel lucky that you put yourself in situations to succeed and to experience life/relationships to the fullest.

Nik