Well here it is, only 7 weeks and 2 days until we're off! If you're receiving this email from either Paige or me, you can consider your name officially added to the growing master list of people who will be receiving our updates from the road. If you have been forwarded this email from someone other than us and want to be added to the list, please let us know ASAP so everything will be worked out before we go. Here's how it's going to work: we will forward our updates via cyber-cafes on the road directly to Jim Saunders (you may know him as "Smilin' Jim - Arrgghhh!") who is the official gatekeeper for our record company's website: www.tarantism.com Once Jim receives our message, he will immediately forward it to each of you, and then update the site itself with our stories. There is a travel section within the site that will be completely reformatted prior to our departure, but at least you will know where to go or where to send people if they want to check it out. If you need to contact Smilin' Jim, you can reach him at jimcat@tarantism.com In addition, Paige and I will have a hotmail account so you can communicate directly with us if you need to (personal messages only), and we'll pass along the address as soon as we're up and running.

So, the last time we left you we had just purchased our first round of tickets - what we had considered the point of no return for us. And while a constant flow of plans and preparations are still falling into place every day, since that last email there has been one specific thing that has occurred that pretty much overshadows all others: yes, I'm talking about officially resigning from our jobs! If we thought there was no going back after buying our tickets - now we're really committed! (Or need to BE committed!)

Paige took the plunge in mid-May, planning out the strategy as far as who to tell, when, how, and the best method of post-celebration. Although it is very difficult for her to leave her job and the wonderful experience (and her coworkers!), it unfortunately is a casualty of the process. Paige is now in the process of hiring someone to take her position, and will transition into a consulting position until the week before we depart.

I notified my company of our plans last week and gave four weeks notice. We had heard the horror stories of companies who upon receiving a resignation notice literally taped-off the office and instructed the employee to leave immediately - paying off the two weeks notice instead of working due to confidentiality issues. Luckily, that was not the case - although I do have to admit that it felt a little strange to quit the day after being presented my five-year gold pin in front of a business meeting... Again, it will be difficult to leave all my friends at work, but it's a necessary evil. Oh well, we have a feeling that all these "work" things won't seem so important when we're watching the sunrise from the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro!

We finally purchased our backpacks over Mothers' Day at REI: Eagle Creek World Journeys. We had scoped these babies out a few months ago at the REI in Berkeley - testing out each model by loading them up with 30lbs. of sand bags and nonchalantly walking around the store for awhile pretending like we were wandering through some remote Middle-Eastern marketplace. Eagle Creek World Journeys come in a man's and woman's version - the difference being the way that the pack's shape handles the natural curves of one's body (Rrrrrrrrr!) We were sold at the time, but since we still had 6 months before we left, we figured we'd wait until REI had a sale and get them then. And have a sale they did! Paige and I are joint members (and we all know how painful that can be), so when we received our "20%-off any ONE item in the store" coupon, good only over Mothers' Day weekend, we concocted a plan involving my parent's presumably unused coupon. We were going to be in Sacramento for the weekend, so we figured we'd take care of everything on the last day of the sale - Sunday. The only problem was that after calling around, the Berkeley REI only had women's packs and the Sacramento REI only had mens. Actually, that wasn't the only problem. When we arrived in Sacramento, we realized that we had left OUR coupon back in the Bay Area, and we needed both membership cards in order to use the coupons. Confused? Here's what we did: took my mom out for Mother's Day brunch, bought the men's pack in Sac at full price, jammed to Lafayette to get our coupon, then raced to Berkeley a scant hour before they closed. There, we returned the men's pack, bought it back with my parent's coupon, and bought Paige's pack with our coupon. Whew! It seems like a big hassle, but when you're saving over $100 on a severe budget, it's pretty significant!

So now we've got these great packs - so clean and new... I can only imagine how they will look after a few months of road-induced stank and grime. Oh well, I guess you could say that we're learning to love them unconditionally while they're still in their pristine attractive states...

In preparation for our impending Visa hassles, Paige surveyed her passport and realized that her past travelling excursions had left her with very little entry & exit stamp pages left. Being the female-traveler version of McGuyver, she quickly sent off her passport to the San Francisco office so that they could sew a bunch of extra pages in the book. Being the well-oiled machine of efficiency that the government is, they processed her request for four weeks, then sent the passport back to Paige in what they considered to be the newly-improved "fixed" state of a request fulfilled…except, they forgot to sew in any extra pages. Mrs. McGuyver marched right on down to the office to made them rue the day, and under her glaring evil eye, they sewed in the extra pages of her passport in under an hour. God bless America!

Visas have turned into being somewhat of a pain-in-the-arse. Now that we know exactly which countries require Visas, we're quickly finding out where we have to get certain ones (either in the U.S. or other random countries), time stipulations (some are only good 3-6 months from the moment it's issued - and when it has to be issued in the U.S. it can create some serious problems), and most shocking: price. We sent off our passports and Visa applications to the Tanzanian Embassy in Washington D.C. last week at $65 per Visa! Syria has apparently formulated a new law which prohibits Visas that last longer than 3 months from the day they're issued - and they will only issue them to U.S. citizens IN THE U.S.! Since we weren't planning on being in Syria until the December timeframe, this could pose some serious problems. Oh well, if worse comes to worse, we'll just take the roundabout trek from Turkey to Jordan through Iran and Iraq...

One of the most invigorating things we've done in the past month is to have dinner with some fellow world-travelers in order to pick their brains on their own year-long experience. Over an amazing dinner at Michaelangelo's in North Beach, San Francisco, Brian and Leslie diligently watered our seeds of inspiration with their truly fascinating tales of travel heaven and hell. They took their trip about 6 years ago, and traveled west instead of east: Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Pakistan, India, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Greece… I'm sure I'm missing some… We learned everything, from the fantastic miracle drug Noxaprophine (?)which can cure dysentery in a mere matter of hours, to how to send and develop film while on the road, to the reasons why we'll have to decide whether to smoke opium with strange tribes who have never laid eyes on Westerners, to why laundry detergent is so much stronger abroad than in the U.S., to the perils of Asian pears and ceiling fans. Most importantly, we secured a sense of near preparedness and confidence by comparing their trials to our plans, and returned home excited and seriously longing to leave IMMEDIATELY! 7 weeks and 2 days seems like a lifetime away sometimes.

After much discussion, Paige went ahead and invested in the whole mosquito net thing. It's not that I was skeptical, but my main concern was that there wouldn't be any consistent or predictable means to hang the damn thing. However, as usual, her instincts were right on. Our version can fit over a King Size bed, and has this bamboo contraption on the top that spreads out and can be hung from a single point on the ceiling. I contend that we bring along a single plant-hanging hook and inconspicuously drill a hole in every single room we sleep in along the way. However, it isn't all perfect - the net rolls up into a fairly large bundle - 14"x5" and weighs nearly a pound. When you only have a couple of cubic feet and less than 30 pounds of weight to bring along with you for an entire year, those dimensions seem titanic. Although - in the end, we have come to the conclusion that we are in fact taking the net, and can use it as a pillow when it's not fending off Malaria and Yellow Fever festering in mosquitoes the size of flying Hobbits.

Before I tie this up - we did find out that our brief initial stay in the first world, in England between Ireland and Zimbabwe, is going to bring us smack in the middle of a Beatles convention! After diligently researching the logistics of Abbey Road Studios and what they could offer a slightly overzealous Beatles fan such as myself, I found out that Abbey Road does NOT give any kind of tour whatsoever. Bleh. But, alas, I am not discouraged; I am confident that my path will eventually lead me within the coveted walls of Abbey Road in one of two options: either my musical ability will inspire some musical bigwig to demand that I record within the walls of this historical creative Mecca, or I will - disturbed and deranged - break into the studio wearing nothing more than a microphone spit-guard, screaming "You know my name, look up the number..." over and over again. Either way, it's a-goin' to happen. You can take that to the bank.

So, we'll check out the Beatles convention - it's actually being held up in Liverpool around the first of September - I'm not sure how much Paige can take, let alone me. I have a feeling I'd be more inclined to check out the original site of the Cavern, the Apple office building, and Paul's old house where he used to serenade the fans living on the sidewalk, than to have to listen to bad Beatles-band imitations plod their way through medleys of "Twist and Shout," and Ringo's "Electric Bugaloo" while extras from the movie Caveman talk about how they saw Ringo pick his teeth after eating fish and chips ("because that's what Ringo calls fries: chips!"), and - please form a single file line to see the toothpick that was stolen out of the garbage later that day on the set… On second thought, we may be off to Zimbabwe a little sooner than expected.

Well, that's it for now. We have a lot planned for this month, and we'll definitely get you at least one more update before we hit the road. Hope you don't mind these long updates even though we're still here in the U.S., we consider it good practice for when we're on the road. While Paige is working through the last week of July, my last day of work is July 2, and I'll be spending most of July in Santa Monica finishing up a new album with Smilin' Jim at the Tarantism Records Studio. I'll also be working a lot on the website, so feel free to offer suggestions or give us some inspiration! We've still got the major garage sale during which we hope to sell everything that isn't already allocated to storage or thrown out, selling the Toyota Camry as close as possible to August 2 in order to make sure we can still get around until we're actually gone, and attempting the "test-pack" where we will get a good sense of what we're up against as far as weight and cubic packing space for our backpacks.

Thank God there's beer.

Love,

Chris and Paige