It's Happening

Bought a one way ticket to Dublin last week. June 20th. I am going. Unfortunately that I is indeed singular. Our other major members have had to scale back their plans to joining for only part of the trip. However, I will still be spending my summer abroad in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Currently the plan is as follows:

• Dublin
• Eurail Pass travel for 21 Days
• Greece w/ Kristen
• Cairo
• Istanbul w/ Parents
• (?) India (?)
• Vietnam
• Hong Kong
• Beijing
• Tokyo
• (?) Hawaii (?) w/ Kristen

The (?) parts mean plans are still in the works. And by all means, please contact me! I would love to meet people in different places around the world. Especially Europe, which is by far the cheapest location on this list for everyone to meet me. Email me and we will scheme, plan, and other words that mean plan.

!(Summer Time)

Wow it is not even close to summer time. I have not posted in FAR too long. Sorry guys. On the plus side, we have a bunch of updates. First off, we lost someone from the roster. Our hot chick has fallen by the wayside. Not really, she just found a better adventure. It looks like Laura will be doing a run with the Peace Corp. So a big congratulations to her!

We are now less than 1 year away (based on the countdown timer on the site, which actually has nothing to do with our actual departure date). So the next couple posts will be mostly based around gear. First on the list is netbook. I'll be waiting til December to buy the thing, but I know I will need something when I'm abroad. So here are the specs I think I'll need:

Processor: >= 1ghz

Memory: >= 1gb

Drive: >= 8gb SSD

Resolution: >= 1024x600

OS: Linux Distro

Cost: <= $400.00 USD

Right now I'm looking in the direction of the ASUS Eee PC 901. My biggest concern is that I have no way of checking out the Wireless cards. I've noticed the Linux has trouble with wireless. I've had laptops in the past that worked fine with Windows, but with Linux the wireless card would not have the same range, or sometimes would have almost no range at all. So I need to research a little and figure out which netbook has the right wireless card for my needs.

Anyway, hopefully my next post will be in a few weeks, and I'll talk about backpacks. But more likely I'll just ramble on about nothing.

Summer Time

And finally the work is done. Now on to summer. I'm back in New Jersey doing misc. freelance computer work. Brian and Wes are out west at PNWL doing research, and Laura is off to Italy teaching English. She mentioned something about never coming back because... well because it's Italy and it's amazing. If I could pull it off, I'd probably do the same.

So far we have a few trips planned for the summer. I've got Nova Scotia at some point in July I think, and the Penny Arcade Expo in September. Hopefully (money allowing) more trips will occur, but we'll just have to see. If they do, you can be sure there will be posts about them. Until then, have a great summer everyone!

Work, Work, Work

So I am the worst blogger ever. It's finals season and I have a work load so high I could probably base jump from the top of it. Failing tests tends to make you reorganize your priorities. Anyway, you probably won't get any real updates from us for a little while. At least until May when finals finish and I will be good and bored for a little while. Wish me luck! Oh and 495 days!

Slow Week

So it's been a slow week here in Winston. Most of us are buckling down and working hard to get through projects and tests. Our book readers are making their way through Shantaram. The nerds are playing marathon sessions of Starcraft, in between our work. Meanwhile, yours truly is trying to build up his resume and portfolio and find a job for the summer. Worst comes to worst, I can always just do freelance work all summer. Although that will undoubtedly leave me more poor than I would like. Anyway, I'll continue with our travel histories next week. But for now, I would bet most of us are settling in for a long, 500+ day wait for our adventure. 512 days to be exact!!!

Greg's Travel History

Now that the blog is up and running, we begin the long wait for our trip. I thought I'd being this wait with an expose on each of our travel adventures thus far. We'll begin with me.

So far I have hit the following locations:

• USA
• Nova Scotia
• Prince Edward Island
  
• England
• Scotland
• Italy
• Sicily
  
• France
• Belgium
• Switzerland
• Denmark
• Germany
• Several Caribbean Islands

After high school, I took a trip with my family following my grandfather's footsteps during WWII. It was a really fun and exciting trip that took us all over France, Germany, and a bunch of countries in between. My next adventure came Junior year of college, when I did a 6 month stay in Brighton England, studying at the University of Sussex. Using this as a launch pad, I visited a bunch of places, including Copenhagen, many many places in Italy and Sicily, and even an adventure into Scotland. (We wanted to go from out little Southern city all the way to the last train stop on the island. It was freezing but a lot of fun.) My final adventure was with our little group here. We found some super cheap airfare from Charlotte NC direct to London UK. And so we took a weekend and saw as much of London as we could. It was a blast to say the least. I can only hope this trip will be half as fun! Below you'll find all kinds of pictures from these travels. 525 days!

The Spreadsheet Nerd

I've been crunching numbers instead of doing homework for the past 3 days. If anyone reads the forums you'll see my posts about it. Right now our estimates are somewhere in the vicinity of $23,000 (I always estimate high to avoid getting screwed by.... well life in general). So now we are in the process of cutting back that number. We hope to be able to cut it back to a final number of $12,000. I think we can do it, mostly because we are an adventurous bunch that likes to go with the flow. Most of our travels will be vague and general, which will let us pick up opportunities for couch surfing, and other forms of free housing / work. We've done some looking around for information on these. But of course, nothing takes the place of real experience. If anyone has advice, info, or links for us, by all means share them. We would really appreciate it. In a few days I'll add a links page of things that are helping us plan our trip. Only 531 days left!