(Yes, we have a house sitter, alarm, big dog, good neighbors, etc. This is not an invitation to try to find my (not) empty house, it won’t end well for you, I promise.)

We leave in 14 days; gone for 71 days.

We will cover 20 countries, drive some 10,000 miles and fly close to 40,000 miles.

North America. Europe. Africa. Asia. Australia.

Virtually all of it booked using airline miles. Hotels using reward points and combo cash/point awards whenever possible. This is why loyalty matters.

This is our reward to each other. Reward for raising our family together, our baby started collage last week! Our reward for saving all those miles and points from all of our business travels.

It’s not a vacation, we’ll be working along the way. We’re planning single day training events along the way. Business meetings too. If you have a user group in one of the places listed below, let me know, we’ll try to stop by. Some of the places we’re staying for days, a couple of them our stop is measured in hours.

There will be lots of blogging. It’s been months (if not years) of exploring and planning and now 14 days out is when I can finally put some words down and blog about it. There is simply so much to it that it’s almost overwhelming.

People keep asking me what part of the trip, which stop, am I most looking forward to, what country/city? I don’t care, it will all be great. But I have never spent 70 consecutive days with my husband before. That’s what I am looking forward to the most.

Below is the list of our trip, if there’s a specific place you’d like a postcard from, drop me a line. I’ll do my best. And unless I am your mother, please don’t just say “all”.

Fly Colorado Springs to Washington DC
Fly Washington DC to Frankfurt Germany
Fly Frankfurt to Oslo Norway
Drive Oslo to Flam Norway
Train Flam to Myrdal Norway
Train Myrdal to Bergen Norway
Boat Bergen to Flam
Drive Flam to Oslo
Fly Oslo to Munich Germany
Drive Munich to Prague Czech Republic
Drive Prague to Budapest Hungary (via Bratislava Slovakia)
Drive Budapest to Zadar Croatia
Drive Zadar to Venice Italy (via Slovenia)
Drive Venice to La Spezia Italy
Drive La Spezia to Zermatt Switzerland
Drive Zermatt to Schwangau Germany (via Vaduz Lichtenstein)
Drive Schwangau to Stuttgart Germany
Drive Stuttgart Germany to Munich
Fly Munich to Oslo
Fly Oslo to Istanbul Turkey
Fly Istanbul to Dar es Salaam Tanzania
Fly Dar es Salaam to Johannesburg South Africa
Fly Johannesburg to Cape Town South Africa
Fly Cape Town to Hoedspruit South Africa
Drive Hoedspruit to Mala Mala South Africa
Drive Mala Mala to Pretoria South Africa
Fly Pretoria to Bangkok Thailand
Fly Bankok to Krabi Thailand
Fly Krabi to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Fly Kuala Lumpur to Singapore
Fly Singapore to Bangkok
Fly Bangkok to Hong Kong
Fly Hong Kong to Sydney Australia (via Bangkok)
Fly Sydney to Queenstown New Zealand
Drive Queenstown to Akora New Zealand
Drive Akora to Picton New Zealand
Boat Picton to Wellington New Zealand
Drive Wellington to Napier New Zealand
Drive Napier to Rotorura New Zealand
Drive Rotorura New Zealand to Auckland New Zealand
Fly Auckland to Honolulu Hawaii
Fly Honolulu to Los Angeles California
Fly Los Angeles to Seattle Washington
Fly Seattle to Denver Colorado

So she is intelligent and successful and she happens to have great legs and good hair.  I had heard about the (gasp!) photos of her that accompanied the story and was expecting something risqué and controversial.  I was all ready to be offended and disappointed.  Well I’m am none of those things. Sure she looks awesome, it’s Vogue for crying out loud, that’s what they do.  There’s no boobs hanging out, the dress goes to her knees and did you see THOSE SHOES?!  BUT, if you find arms or shins or awesome hair sexy, I guess this could be considered sexy.  I find it whimsical, artsy-fartsy, not provocative.

As I scrolled and read the article I was quite pleased to read that she is about as nerdy as I am.  But it is also apparent that it’s ok for us professional women in technology to be feminine.

If you have a problem with intelligent women also being attractive, that is obviously YOUR problem.  As to why is she is Vogue?  WHY NOT?  Not that Vogue is knocking on my door, but it might be cool to get all dolled up (with strategic post-production photoshop) AND talk about nerdy stuff and be all successful-like to another audience of powerful women.

And for the record, I have been and still am a Yahoo! search engine user.  It started way back in the 90s when I was first spending lots of time online (I used to have a BBS and was an IRC chat room host from my house in Belgium, paying for internet by the fraction of a minute).  It is now cemented in my brain, it is a habit and what I am used to, and it works for me.

As if I needed more proof of my nerd status, I as I was scrolling the page to read the article, I realized it was quite long.  So I scrolled to the top of the page (ok, it’s a touchscreen so I did the touch equivalent to scrolling, dragging? Swiping?) to see if there was a control above the article for a “read all” option instead of paging thru 7 or more pages.  What I found was a nerdy distraction.  At vogue.com (the article is linked below, go play with it) when you scroll DOWN a page, the top nav disappears, it essentially scrolls away, as expected.  But, once it is gone, as soon as you scroll UP, it comes back, regardless of where you are on he page, so it may not come back at its original placement on the page, but it’s there for you.  It’s intuitive and cool and I sat here and tried to screw it up and just could not break it.  That’s rare, I can usually break almost any software/website.

 

Vogue article here