INTRODUCTION V: PRACTICAL MATTERS

In which we confront the lamentable fact that High Adventure includes annoying quantities of Low Logistics

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If you've read the first four installments of this Introduction, you've probably got at least as good an idea as we do as to what we're trying to do.   Which leaves only the small matter of actually making the whole nonsensical enterprise function, of course.  This brings us to a number of Practical Matters to finish out the Introduction.*

Healthcare

I have multiple sclerosis.

This has the unfortunate effect of making healthcare somewhat more important to us than it might be to a pair of perfectly healthy twenty-three-year-olds whose medical planning consists primarily of carrying a small bottle of ibuprofen and hoping for the best.

We therefore care quite a lot about access to competent doctors, hospitals, medications, and the possibility of receiving treatment without needing to sell a kidney to pay for the other kidney.  This of course matters during the trip but matters even more importantly when evaluating possible retirement destinations.

We do not need a world-class teaching hospital on the next block or anything, but we reckon we should really try to make sure we can get healthcare that is reliable, accessible, affordable enough to actually use, and capable of managing chronic conditions without reacting to the words “multiple sclerosis” with wailing, gnashing of teeth, and measuring me up for a coffin.

Adventure is all very well, but we are attempting the relatively low-peril variety.

Medications

Then there are the pills.

I take enough medication each day that transporting a long-term supply begins to resemble a minor pharmaceutical smuggling operation, except with more annoying documentation and fewer exciting car chases.

The practical problem is not merely having the medicine, of course.  It is having enough of it, storing it properly, carrying the necessary documentation, knowing which medications may cause bureaucratic excitement at borders, and having some sort of plan for replacing things if luggage disappears, bottles are damaged, or a small but determined lizard develops an unexpected taste for statins.

We intend to carry documentation for prescription medications, keep essential medicines with us rather than in checked luggage whenever possible, and maintain enough redundancy that one misplaced bag does not turn the trip into a cautionary tale in a medical journal.

We will also be paying attention to how easy or difficult it would be to obtain routine medications in the places we visit.

This is the sort of thing that rarely appears in YouTube travel videos.  “Beautiful beaches, inexpensive dining, and reliable access to your neurologist” lacks a certain advertising sparkle, to be sure, but that third item matters as much to us as the first two.

Passports and Visas

Passports are easy; you only have to obtain them once and you can use them for ten years (for  US passports, anyhow; we don't know how other countries do it).

Visas, though, are where things get complicated.  Different countries want different things.  Some let you arrive with little more than a passport and a pleasant expression.  Others want an application, a photograph, proof of onward travel, bank statements, accommodation details, travel insurance, vaccination records, fingerprints, your grandmother’s maiden name, and possibly a notarized statement from your third-grade teacher confirming that you were generally well behaved.  And they want all of this through a single-purpose visa app with what can only be described as a Profoundly User-Hostile Interface (PUHI).

And once you've gathered all of that, the rules change.  Sometimes a lot.  So a travel guide published two years ago may now be describing a border procedure that exists only in history, nostalgia, and several thousand obsolete blog posts that feed misinformation to your confidently wrong AI of choice.

So our approach is fairly simple:

• Check the rules.
• Then check them again.
• Then, immediately before traveling, assume something has changed and check them a third time.

This may seem excessive.  It probably is.  Nevertheless, being overly prepared beforehand strikes us as at least marginally preferable to arguing with immigration officers in languages we do not speak while our prepaid means of transportation moves on without us.

Driver’s Licenses

We hope not to drive very much, but this does not mean we will never drive.

I mean, there are places where public transportation is excellent, and others where it is apparently an occult concept known only from exotic foreign media.

As a result, we are both carrying our valid Oregon driver’s licenses, and I've got an international driving permit.  (If you want one, get it before you leave the country!)

• We would very much prefer trains.
• We would very much prefer ferries.
• We would very much prefer city buses.
• We would... uhh... tolerate long distance buses.

But if the only practical way to see something involves a small rental car with the steering wheel on the wrong side, I suppose one must occasionally make sacrifices.

Mail and Address

One slightly odd consequence of this whole undertaking is that, for a while, we will not really have a conventional home address.  The US, however, remains stubbornly committed to the concept.  Banks, government agencies, and insurance companies all tend to want a physical address, and don't react well to hearing "Well, we don't really have one."

So we need a stable mailing address in the United States.  Luckily, we have a son who is willing to receive our mail, throw away the junk, and scan and email anything that looks at all important.  And we've of course tried to reduce the amount of paper that matters at all by going paperless with every account that allows for that.

Phones

We want our American phone numbers to continue functioning while we travel.  This turns out to be one of those problems that sounds simple until you begin reading about it.

We need our existing numbers because they are attached to banks, government accounts, friends, family, two-factor authentication, and approximately nine thousand other systems that were apparently designed under the assumption that nobody would ever voluntarily leave the United States.  But we do not wish to pay international roaming charges substantial enough to blow out our entire retirement budget.

So the plan is to keep inexpensive U.S. mobile service active on our existing numbers while using local or regional eSIM data where necessary.

This should allow our phones to remain phones while also functioning as maps, translators, boarding passes, wallets, cameras, entertainment systems, emergency reference libraries, and small rectangular objects we will periodically panic about having misplaced.

If our parents traveled around the world, they needed phrasebooks, maps, traveler’s checks, guidebooks, paper tickets, postcards, and a working knowledge of international telephone operators.

We, on the other hand, pretty much just need to keep a couple of glass rectangles charged.

Progress!

Banking and Money

International travel seems to involve a great deal of planning around very small possibilities with very large consequences.

• Losing one credit card: annoying.
• Losing the only credit card: potentially very annoying.
• Losing every credit card, phone, passport, and cash reserve simultaneously: probably the beginning of an entertaining blog post, but one I would prefer someone else write.

So despite the obvious aesthetic advantages, we are not planning to travel with sacks of gold and silver coins.  Instead, most of our money will remain safely in banks, where it can presumably be stolen electronically in a far more civilized manner.

But if a card is lost, stolen, eaten by an ATM, or suddenly declines a perfectly innocent purchase because a bank computer has decided that getting a haircut in Kuala Lumpur is behavior inconsistent with our well-established "boring homebodies on the Oregon coast" profile, we're definitely gonna need another option.

Therefore, we're planning for glorious redundancy**:

• Multiple cards.
• More than one bank account.
• Ways to access cash.
• Backup payment methods.
• Some actual currency on hand.

And, critically, we'll not be storing every possible means of accessing money in the same backpack, wallet, or hollowed-out shoe heel.

Contingency Plans

Finally, there is the question of what happens when something goes wrong.  And we know something(s) will.***

It is simply statistically implausible to spend many months crossing a significant portion of the planet without eventually encountering illness, weather, cancellations, mechanical failures, lost property, bureaucratic surprises, civil disruptions, transportation strikes, natural disasters, or a hotel reservation that turns out to be more metaphorical than expected.

We can't realistically try to anticipate and prepare for every possible contingency.  That way madness lies.****

The solution, hopefully, is flexibility.  And we have that in spades.

• We do not have to be in most places on a particular day.
• We do not have jobs to rush back to.
• We do not have children waiting at home to be picked up from soccer practice.

Most of the itinerary can bend as we see fit; we have a few hard-and-fast dates scattered throughout, but those are relatively rare.

• If a train does not run, we can take another train.
• If a destination becomes inconvenient or unsafe, we can go somewhere else.
• If one of us gets sick, we can stay put.
• If we hate a place, we can leave.
• If we love a place, we can stay longer.

If the Grand Detour turns into a completely different Grand Detour halfway through, that is not necessarily failure.  I mean, "Detour" is right there in the name; we should expect a certain number of on-the-fly modifications, right?

There are, of course, more serious contingencies.

• Health could force us home.
• Money could change.
• Family circumstances could change.
• Disasters of both the Natural and Geopolitical varieties could cause plans to shift radically with little to no warning.

If any of those happen, we will adjust expectations and deal with it then.*****

I reckon it's the most sensible way to approach any completely ridiculous endeavor.  And I'm probably wrong, but we're running with it anyhow, because it's the best plan we've managed to come up with.******

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* Finally!

** If you are wondering whether I have created a spreadsheet for all of this, wonder no more.  Of course I have!

*** Like NASCAR, I assume the anticipated crash-and-burns are why a goodly number of you are reading this anyhow.

****  But also even more spreadsheets, so at least there's a silver lining.

***** A process known among the vulgar classes as "winging it".

****** Or "because it's the best plan up with which we have managed to come" for all of you dangling preposition enthusiasts in the crowd.