Setting The Stage

If anybody has ever said to you, New York will spit you up and chew you out. I believe it's chew you up and spit you out, but, you know, whatever…If anybody ever said New York will chew you up and spit you out, that's exactly what it does. That's also what drives you to love it and hate it at the same time.

A fun little story - 2020. The pandi hits and this affects everyone's world. It turns it upside down. And we were some of those people who absconded from the city and went out to our weekend home that we had in the Pocono Mountains. And this is really when I think we started getting serious about planning this trip, planning our departure, and planning to leave everything and travel around the world, for at least a year. So when it felt like the world was ending, we realized that life is short. You never know what's going to happen, and this is what we wanted to do.

Traveling has always been a passion of both of us. I think that we've been very fortunate to have done many trips, both pre-our relationship, and on our own. I'm lucky enough that I got to travel a lot for work. You've taken trips and we've done a lot together as well. But I think how the interest and passion for traveling was built, was very different for both of us. So why don't you talk about it, Farber? What got you excited and wanting to travel? The huge point of inspiration is going to be from hopefully, our core listeners, my parents, B and D - Becky and Damon (love you). They are the inspiration and have provided the ability to travel, to even get in trouble, to begin with. As a kid, we did it all. We did the pull-behind trailers. We did trips to Canada. We did trips to Mexico. We traveled around the US, and abroad occasionally when we were fortunate to do so. They are lifelong travelers. They are our role models, if you will, for such a thing. They're life goals and like, so you guys, you traveled as a family, but usually you traveled with two other families and not only did you all travel together, but your parents traveled on their own quite often with their friends and would come back and have like tales of the times and slideshow. Yeah. Pictures. Big slideshow actually, when they came home all the time. I think that as a family we were drawn to that.

And, personally, I was drawn to it and excited by it. That got me to dropping out of college when I was 20 years old and filling a backpack and going to Western Europe and doing the whole Eurorail thing and eating baguettes and drinking Belgian beers and just staying in hostels. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. The bedbugs, you know, regrettable experience. But, nonetheless, that was sort of the initial start of my travel time. How long did you do that? For six months, I was in Western Europe. Yeah. Okay. But then you decided, okay, it's time to go back and finish that degree. That was part of the deal with B and D. So you did that and then you graduated? Yes. And then after graduating, worked for some time and then decided it was, time to travel again. I said, okay I am going to Southeast Asia, I'm going to teach English, and I thought this would be, again, another six-month backpacking trip.

It extended to two years of living in the south, region of Thailand in a town called Trang. It was amazing taking motorcycle trips to the islands, spending time in Laos. And so that again, was sort of a trip that was planned to be short and became long. And it is very different than your travel bug ignition if you will. Yes. I think the great thing though about those trips, well, I feel like one was a trip and one was like just life for two years is that you met people who have now become kind of like lifelong friends, people that you still are in touch with, in one way, shape, or form.

I do think though, that he wrote these when, when he was younger. He was at a very, again, different point in his life and so everything that he talks about, at least in the books, we kind of took with a grain of salt, for example, ‘How to Travel on $50 a Day’, I will not be staying in hostels unless I can have a private room.

I don't see Jonica traveling anywhere on $50 a day. That's not true. I feel like there'll be countries in Southeast Asia that we could live off that hopefully, hopefully. But, yes, again, being older, I want my private space. I'm not going to be living in a room with a bunch of 20-year-olds farting and having sex. That's not a point in my life that I am at. Okay. Back to books. To each their own. I'm not saying it's bad. Again, everyone has their own experience. I'm saying my truth and what I want to experience.

I had a great time with the hostiles. I know you did. I know that's another story. But his blog and website have been incredibly helpful because obviously it's current, it's up to date. It's like what's happening now. There are a lot more resources online than I think when he started doing this. So definitely have used him as a big resource.

Some other books that we purchased and continue to reference as we're planning is Lonely Planets, the ‘Big Trip’. This is really good for details on countries and places, kind of what to expect, and, things such as budgets, food, getting around, that sort of thing.

And then another one that I truly love, and I have read multiple times is ‘A Year Off’ by Alexandra and David Brown. I feel like we connected most with them and their experience. Where they were in their life when they were starting to plan this and then actually like execute their plan to leave their jobs, leave their apartment in San Francisco, and take that year and travel around the world.

There were a lot of specifics in there around planning your route, what to pack gear, and pre and post-trip tips that I think we found very, very helpful. So that was a great book I think for people who are looking to do this, who are looking to take a year sabbatical or take a year abroad or, or whatever it may be - a gap year. So we felt that Alexandra and David's book was as, Jonica said, so similar to our own life currently, that it made sense to follow along and invest in their experience.

Whereas if you are retirement age, you may be looking at a different type of travel. If you are a business traveler and you are using miles and points and things like that, and you're still involved with business and maybe you're working while you're on the road that's, that's a different book.

The final step to this process is telling your friends, your family, your loved ones, and last but not least, telling your job. Yeah. And this was, this was an interesting thing. Again, everyone has a different point of view, a different way that they will approach this, but we decided to tell our families first. That made the most sense for us. And not shockingly, our families reacted very differently when we told them.

Yeah. What how did your father and stepmother take this? They were pretty chill about it. I think they had some questions. My dad's wife is, she used to be a flight attendant, so she definitely has traveled. My dad now has left the country and he has gone places, which is great. I don't think that travel has ever been a passion point of his, but they were very supportive. I think to them it's like if you wanna do it and you can do it, do it. There's always a sadness obviously, of being like, okay, you're gonna be very far away, but, as with our parents, and hopefully with a lot of our friends, and people listening, we hope that, they will come and meet us on the road at some point.

How about the Farber? The Farbers went through some different stages. They were more, I'll say that they were more receptive I think initially, but certainly they went through a grieving, not a grieving process, but stages of acceptance. At first, they were very enthusiastic, but then reality set in, and they became very concerned because they were questioning as parents. We respect that. And then, at the end of it came out very supportive and very happy and excited about it. Yeah, we're not, just throwing caution in the wind and being like, we're just gonna do it and it's gonna be great. We have been, I would say, very meticulous in the way that we have planned this out. From not only routing, and mapping, down to finances and budgets and all of that. So really making sure that everything is on the up and up. I think we, we started telling them, we told them like a year. Yeah. A year out ago. A year out, yeah.

A little different with friends. Yeah, friend we waited a little bit longer. It was interesting in one of the books that we read, they talked about not telling your friends until pretty close to your departure date because there was a worry that people would start to kind of almost reject you and not want to spend time with you, not want to do dinners or whatever because why would you? You're not gonna be here soon. We talked about it. I didn't agree with that. We've gone through this, not the same, but similar when we moved from Minneapolis to New York. We had a very large and amazing friend base there and we moved to the East Coast and everyone took it really well. So we knew that people would be supportive of this and they very much were. And even like our friends in New York, we're still seeing them, we're still hanging out with them. It's more of a sadness and adjustment. Again, I think everyone has to find their own way to do this, but we wanted to be open and honest to give people time to process. And then obviously do the goodbye tour with, with people.

Then, then came jobs and we could not have more different experiences when it came to this.

Why don't you talk about yours first? I came to my employer courteously after, you know, we knew this was gonna happen for years, right? So I go to my employer and I say, 30 days in advance. Listen, my wife and I have made this decision and I'll be leaving the company. I'm not going to a competitor, but, I wanted to let you know in advance so you can find a replacement.

So, we're jobless now. Yeah. Everyone knows. Everyone knows we've sold the house and we're going to start to ease into our travel lifestyle. Another piece of advice that we took from the book ‘A Year Off’ was taking some time to start to, I think retrain your brain. Honestly, for me, the fact that I don't have work email and I don't have Slack is mind-blowing to me. People who invented Slack, the worst, Slack is the worst. What an anxiety-inducing program. I'm sure there are many people out there who love it and you can handle it. It's just no…that was horrible. Anyway, not having those things is, is kind of mind-blowing.

You've been jobless for a month now. And I also think we have very different personalities, right? So I think how we adjust to this will be different. Exactly. So we're taking some time to be in PA a little bit longer, be in the Poconos a little bit longer, and then we are going to hit the road, and visit a few different places in the states here. More on that in the following episode, but we're excited.

Every episode we're going to end with, each of us talking quickly about something that we love and something that we learned, from the past week or so. Do you want to go first? Yeah. Okay. So what’s your love? What's my love? So I think that throughout this process of planning this entire trip, right, and this has been years in the making, this was not an impulsive decision. We set, I would say attainable goals and milestones that we wanted to hit, and we've succeeded in going through those from the budget, from how much we have to save to how we're going to get rid of personal items that we have to shed and put things in storage and how we're going to move out of our home and drive back to Minnesota. And we've actually, I think, fairly well executed each one of those milestones. And I love that because I was literally up at night waiting for the shoe to drop on one of these things, and I was like, this will hold us up. We won't be able to leave. Let's knock on wood real quick. So I'm glad that, that's my love and as was not anticipated. Because I literally have a sketch, it's almost like a shoots and ladders sort of situation of like doing X here, doing Y here, doing Z here and we made this over a year ago. Oh my God, probably like a year and a half, two years ago. And we hit everything almost to a T. That's a great love.

All right. Your learn. This may be obvious to some who are already, at retirement age, but in my past month of unemployment, I've learned that you must have a routine. You must have some sort of planning or a hobby, whether it's volunteering or exercising, or working on a podcast. You must have some sort of daily ritual that you have so that your mind stays sharp so that things don't go dull and turn to mush. A checklist if you will, to do Yep. To-dos. In retirement, and my parents would kill me if they heard me call this retirement. Yes, this is not retirement. We know that we're gonna have to come back from sabbatical and work but that is my learn that you must have something to look forward to and a plan each and every day to get up and get something done.

Cool. What is your love, my dear? My love is since I did just have my last day, I love the acceptance and the friendships that I have built, not only in the last three years, at my employer because I have made so many great connections and met so many amazing people that I know we will keep in contact. It's just the whole, you know, 10, 11 years that we've had on the East Coast. I loved everything. Not everything, obviously, the roaches, the rats, the smells, those sorts of things, but, I've just loved the experience and the connections and the relationships that I have built that I will cherish and I will take with me.

And what is your learn? My learn is, it's like a learning process. We kind of alluded to it, but I'm the stress ball in the relationship. I tend to stress more. Not that you don't, you do, but, you know, I'm trying not to transfer my stresses from work, in a pretty high-stress, high-paced industry into this planning process. Things that need to happen to getting us on the road and leaving because I do tend to like just spiral out and start to like, we need to do this, we need to do this, we need to do this. And we have time to do it and it'll happen. So my learn is to try to not be so stressed, be more in the moment, and know that shit will get done.

Okay. That's it. That's it. That's episode one, season one of Address Unknown. All right. Stay tuned. There will be more. We have an Instagram page. We have an Instagram page, @addressunknownworldwide - follow us!

We're excited for episode two. Let us know what you think so far. Be nice. Be kind. BYYYYEEEEEEEEE!!!

And people that we hope to perhaps see on our travels. We need a place to stay! Hopefully, but we will not impose. We're not going to impose on anybody. How I built my passion for travel is definitely very different. Growing up, my family - my dad and mom and two younger brothers would all cram into the minivan and drive from Minnesota down to Sanibel Island in Florida, every single spring break. And again, we're middle age, so didn't have tablets, we didn't have phones. We played the license plate game. We had magnetic, checkers, and stuff that we would play to keep us occupied. But they were fun. I mean, Sanibel Island is a beautiful place, but my parents weren't really ones for traveling outside of the country.

But then, in my sophomore year of high school, I was lucky enough to have a band director. Yes…I was in a high school band. Do you remember the band director's name? Yeah. Mr. Ziemann. RIP I think. But, he loved to travel and so, therefore, every single year he would pick a different arm of the band, be it marching band, be it jazz band, to do a trip and we would fundraise. I think I sold 5 million chocolate bars. I don't even know how it happened, but, um, my sophomore year went to Austria and Germany. You thought it was Australia? I thought it was Australia. That's how little I knew of the world. It was winter, so definitely was not Australia. But it was amazing and it was beautiful and it was a whole new world and I had an amazing experience and it got me really excited about what else was out in the world.

A number of years went by and, finally in my early twenties, I started to be able to travel a bit more too. And I went to Thailand, I went to Europe. It really just became something, like that's why I was working, right? I was working to save money to be able to travel. It's always been the kind of end-all, be-all goal for me.

We'll get into this more in another episode, but that was vacationing more. When you were living in Thailand that was travel, but, vacation is very different than travel. And we are going to be traveling. And so next episode maybe we'll get into the nuances and the differences in that, I think a little bit more, but.

So let's hit on quickly how we decided to actually make this dream a reality. How we got here? And we start with, again, the basic planning process.

Yes, it’s the pandi. It's maybe like six months, a year in, and we start really getting serious about this, and I'm gonna say, we start the process, but the process, I'm using air quotes, you can't see that, but loosely, because everyone will approach this differently. Everyone is at a different stage in their life. Everyone is coming from different situations.

There's no blueprint, right? For how to do this. So I think that for us, we wanted to soak up as much knowledge and experience from people out there that have done this before as we could. So, old school just started ordering a shit ton of books from people who have written about this topic. One of them is obviously. I think most people know Nomadic Matt, right? If you don't know who that is, look that up. He's incredible. He's been doing this forever. He really, to me at least, is the pioneer. He just travels - that's what he does. And I think that he has so much experience doing this. He's written two books, which we purchased immediately, ‘10 Years of Nomad’ and ‘How to Travel the World on $50 a Day’. These were super helpful. I think that these kind of started us asking the questions like what we needed to do, and started giving us kind of an outline of how we were going to plan this trip.

For the future, seek out authors that are similar to what type of experience you're seeking. And I think we found that there was a gap again in resources that were geared towards people of our age. There's a ton for people that are college-age and younger, because that's when a lot of people tend to do this. Then obviously there are people that are closer to and or of retirement age. We kind of had to like to find things on the cusp and then adjust them to us.

So one of the first things I guess after combing through these resources, and reading these books was to start to map out our route. Yeah. To start this we literally bought a map the size of our kitchen table. A map of the world - we're talking about a paper map, and started identifying cities we wanted to see, regions we wanted to see, geographic points, etc. And then started putting that into somewhat of a detailed trip itinerary. So we are now on trip itinerary number seven or eight or something like this. It keeps evolving. Which it should, I mean, right? Keep it loose. Yeah, keep it loose, which is very hard for me, but I'm trying to go with the flow. The other thing is trying to figure out, the economies in these different places in the world and what that means for you as a traveler, right?

So where do you start? Where do you peak your trip as far as economics are concerned? Meaning how much you plan to spend in each place? Budget. Yes. That friendly, fun word. But very important, right? Again, Nomadic mat. $50 a day? Nope, sorry. A - very different time. B - different stages of life. C - looking for a different experience. We've budgeted $250 a day. We feel very lucky that we've been able to save for quite some time to make this a reality. But for us, that felt comfortable because to Mark's point, there will be some countries that are very expensive, and will go over that for sure. There are gonna be some countries that are much cheaper where we will come in under, but on average, that's what we will try to stick to in order to be on the road and traveling around the world for at least a year. But, we're not gonna penny pinch because I don't wanna forfeit experiences because we're, because of our, the economic situation. Exactly. It's like if we run outta money, we go home. You know? I want to make the most of it, but not feel like I have to be tracking every single dime every single day. We'll do it and we'll have to do it to make the most of it but hopefully, in the way that we've planned our route, we've tried to start with more expensive countries - Australia, and then as we go around, there will be a mix and match of more affordable, more economical, and medium range. Yep. Because you know, again, we're lucky in how much we've been able to travel. And so for example, we probably won't be doing a lot of Western Europe. Nope, not during this trip because it's expensive and I think the time of year that we'll be there will be the peak, but there are places where we know people and hopefully we'll have places to stay.

So it's not to say that we won't be visiting any of those countries, but, we probably, unfortunately, won't be going to Paris, which is one of my favorite cities in the world. But, we'll be back again someday. Just not on this trip…

And this was May of 2022. And also because we were moving out here out to save money - to the Poconos to save money. And my job is not gonna allow for remote work or hybrid. They would not consider such a thing. So you thought I'm moving to the Poconos and I thought I'd be unemployed within a month. But, it also is the type of thing where you can commute in. People do it every day. People do it every day. Bless those people. I have no idea how they do it, but we were just like, no. Five days a week was just not an option, but they let me come in two days a week. Yeah. So we negotiated a nice agreement and I came in for the next 12 months to the day practically that I gave notice again and was able to walk away great relationship with my employer and earn a New York City income living in the Poconos. All the while you were working and your employer didn't know that you were planning to leave and go travel around the world. Did not know. Many agencies during C O V I D shut their doors. You were still having to go in a couple of months into 2020. When the world shut down, you had to go back into the city. So we were going back and forth, back and forth, but I was still very much working remotely, until sometime in 2022, when they wanted us to come back into the office one to two days a week. So, Yeah, again, fine. Totally doable because that's what you were doing. We commuted in together Tuesdays and Thursdays, but correct. My employer did not know until a month ago. No one at my work knew until a month ago. So, while Farber has been able to talk about this, and talk about planning and people asking him questions, I've had to, I decided to, keep this a secret. You were less, less forthcoming. Yeah, I was worried. It'll be interesting if people from, from my company listen to this, but I was worried that if they know that I'm leaving, they know that there's an exit plan why would they invest in me? Why would they keep me around? And so it was my choice to keep this private and it was hard because you're sitting there doing planning for the year out and in the back of my mind I'm always like, I'm not gonna be there then. But it also helped me to stay invested and stay engaged because I couldn't let this out. I didn't want to let this out. I had to watch myself. There were a couple of times things almost slipped out and it terrified me because we did have this plan in place. So yeah, I gave notice a month ago. My last day was yesterday.

And how's retirement treating you? It's been all of three, four hours. I don't know, it hasn't set in yet. Everyone was so, so supportive, you know? Upset, sad. It's been very bittersweet but, very, very supportive of my plan and our plan and what we're going to be doing. So, I feel very, very lucky. And it felt good to leave on a high note. And anybody who is planning to do a trip or leave a company and you want to leave on good terms, my suggestion, this is a personal thing, and, and I think we both agree, but give the company some time. Give them a month if you can. You never know. You may end up coming back, right? Yes, exactly. Or who somebody may know somewhere else down the road. And you know, there's no need to burn bridges, especially if you're not going to a competitor or not being terminated. Yeah. It's not, yeah, not necessary.

It's a very unique experience. I think most of the time you quit a job because you are disgruntled or you are going to a competitor at another company. So this is a unique experience and you really do wanna try to leave on that high note and leave a positive taste in everyone's mouth about you.