A Week or so at a Time, Over a Lifetime

[Editor's Note: As one of the co-winners of our Puzzles for Postcards challenge, Aaron "Hadley" Hadley wrote this week's post.

Hadley, after a long day pretending to enjoy my company, takes his frustrations out on his guitar

Zhou and I would like to thank him for writing, and more generally, thank him for being a stand-up guy and a good friend of ours. We hope that you all (I’m trying to avoid saying y’all on the blog, but it’s tough) enjoy these stories from Hadley’s travels as much as we did. We’ll see you next Monday (note Monday, not Sunday due to our wedding) with our last post before leaving! You won’t want to miss it!

Also, Puzzles for Postcards will be on a hiatus until we leave and begin sending postcards.

Now sit back, relax, and enjoy our special guest… Hadley!]

Travel.

Everyone does it, just some people get to do longer, crazier trips than others. To some extent I’m jealous, but part of me is glad I don’t have to go on an 11-month trip. That’s a lot of going from place to place, and while I enjoy travel, I can see myself getting sick of it. I’m not saying that’s what is going to happen to Kevin and Zhou, because it’s not, but that’s what’d happen to me. Because this is a blog about long travel, I figured I should talk about some of my old travel experiences.

My family did yearly trips from East Tennessee, where I grew up, to Kansas to visit my dad’s side of the family, most of whom live around there. For years it was a two day trip to do the 12 hours/700ish miles of driving five people in the Dodge Caravan. We would stop in Paducah, Kentucky, where my mom grew up, or St. Louis, where my aunt and uncle live. Finally one year my sisters were old enough to tolerate the entire drive and make it in one day. That’s when new varieties of travel began.

My family made a week long trip through the Northeast with the eventual goal being Niagara Falls and crossing to Canada when I was in 5th-ish grade. Looking back, that’s not that far of a trip, but it seemed like forever away.

In 8th grade my grandmother took me with her to visit my cousins who live in England. I got a week and a half there of drizzly weather and European good times. We saw the Tower of London, rode a double decker bus and even crossed the Channel to France for a couple hours.

In 10th-ish grade my family went on a 3 week/5,000 mile trip across the United States. From Knoxville we went to Kansas for a week, as usual, but then kept heading west. We went through Denver out to Salt Lake City, north past the Grand Tetons to Yellowstone, then back east past Mount Rushmore to Wisconsin for a family reunion. A week there then back south to Tennessee. All crammed in the family van. One of the things I remember is playing my Game Boy for the first chunk of the trip and my family getting mad at me for not looking out the window. I did look out the window when we actually got somewhere worth looking out the window, and my sisters at that point were done looking and were staring down at their books/Game Boy. For KC and ZhouZhou, it’s all about choices. If something is not that exciting for you, don’t burn yourself out on it. When you actually get somewhere good, you want to be able to enjoy it.

We made another New England trip five or six years ago, this time with the goal of hitting every single state so my sisters could mark them off their list. Spent some time in Philly, Beantown, Plymouth (where my ancestors landed with the Mayflower), and up to Maine. On the way down we spent a few days at a family reunion in Amish Country, Pennsylvania. We got to go to the Hershey chocolate factory, which was like being in a boring version of Willy Wonka’s factory (no Oompa Loompas). I also went to the Gettysburg battlefield, which is where I will be again on July 1-3, 2013, the 150th anniversary of the battle (and also Tom Cruise’s 51st birthday). If for some reason I disappear and lose contact with everyone, that’s where you’ll want to find me, as it is the only thing on my schedule past a couple months from now.

In 2005 I spent seven weeks in China, which is like a wussy version of the Brad Pitt movie Seven Years in Tibet. I was teaching English at Peking University, one of the top universities in China, even though I don’t know any Chinese. I saw the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Zhou, and even one time the sky! It was bad enough that when looking down a street you couldn’t see buildings 10 blocks down because of smog. Because of this trip and because I somehow accidentally ended up hanging out with Asians, Zhou, as president of the Asian-American Student Association, declared me honorarily half-Asian. I don’t think that holds up in court, though I don’t know why it would be important to a court case, unless I commit some sort of hate crime against an Asian.

Spring break senior year I made a road/cruise trip to the Caribbean, including a stop in Jamaica to go bobsledding. Ok, not bobsledding, but just good times in the sun.

Nowadays, all my travel is within the city of Cleveland or approximately eight hours away. Being up on the North Coast, every city I want to visit is not close. Nashville is eight hours, Knoxville is eight, New York is seven, Washington DC is six, Chicago is five. The next two weekends are eight hour trips for weddings to Jersey and Knoxville, so I’ll be traveling and enjoying our great country. On the way back from Jersey my lady and I are planning to go camping somewhere in Pennsylvania, not really sure where. As a grad student, that’s the most exciting travel I can do, no complaints though.

In regards to the 11 month trip, maybe I can join in over Christmas break. That’s the goal at least. I’m thinking Cambodia and Thailand could be fun. That’s on the burner. Kev and Zhou, and everyone else, love ya, stay awesome.

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Introducing…

… the newest member of the Zhang family:

Please say hello to Cheddar. He is three months old today.

Cheddar likes: cream cheese, ping pong balls, chasing bugs, chewing wood chips, licking people’s faces, getting his belly rubbed, taking naps, snuggling, hopping like a bunny

Cheddar dislikes: going out in the rain, being told what to do, when people appear suddenly and without warning

He’s pretty super.

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Back to Basics

When we originally created this blog, the intent was to provide our family and friends a place where they could keep track of what we are up to in our trip around the world. In fact, in our first blog post we mentioned how we would not subject people to random posts about our lives until we left for the trip. My how things have changed.

Zhou and I were discussing a couple nights ago whether or not we should buy our own domain name and work on customizing our blog with links and advertisements and pictures of Sanka in an ice cream truck. I had become convinced that by creating our own domain name, we would soon be generating millions of dollars in advertising revenue. Domain names, after all, are the gateway to fame and fortune. In fact, the only reason I hadn’t pulled the trigger already was because nohurrycurry.com was already taken.

[Random aside: nohurrycurry was open a month ago when Zhou looked for it on godaddy, but now godaddy appears to be holding it to sell it to some sucker for extra money. There's not even a real page there! I know Danica Patrick is the company's spokesperson, but can godaddy really do that??]

Anyway, I had done lots of research (I would like to thank Tina and thePlanetD for their help) and even decided that if I do end up applying for business school next year, starting a million dollar website would look great on my applications. Then Zhou pulled me back down to earth (and she’s not even my wife yet!). While making money off our blog would be fun – and I still think it would be possible if we put in the time that we don’t have – what would we do when we return from our trip? We aren’t travelers, we’re just two people who want to see the world before settling down. As I have found out, there’s a big difference. And nobody wants to hear about me researching business schools while at a desk job, or Zhou studying to get her economics PhD. (Zhou, don’t worry – I want to hear about your studying.)

So it’s now time to get back to basics… well, sort of.

This blog’s #1 purpose will be to provide updates to our friends and family. However, as a way to pay it forward, we will continue to use our blog as a way to help future travelers. There are a lot of travel bloggers out there who have helped us through our planning (see our travel blog roll on the right for some of our favorites), and we’d like to be able to do the same for others. We’ll try to make our site a one-stop-shop for all of your “gap year” travel needs – gear reviews, location reviews, FAQs and how to plan and budget for a trip. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll try to keep the blog fun by using contests, puzzles for postcards, Scrabble things and whatever else we can think of.

Who doesn't have fun seeing how few words they can make using all the Scrabble tiles?

In one episode of Friends, Phoebe attempts to find a selfless good deed in order to prove Joey wrong. [Spoiler alert!] She can’t. However, we have just found a selfless good deed. In an effort to keep things simple for you, our readers, we are forgoing the glitzy ads and the millions of dollars that comes with them. What do we get out of this? Nothing. We hope you’re happy.

While we’re on the subject of your happiness, we found out this week that our subscription links were broken. If you’ve tried to subscribe to our blog before, we apologize for the inconvenience. And if you hadn’t thought about it, we’d highly encourage you to. It’s a hassle-free way to keep up with all our hassle-free blog content. Whatever that means. If you have any questions about this, feel free to email us at nohurrycurry[at]gmail.com.

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In other news, my dad and I went canoeing on Monday. First, I must say that Dad did not force me to go – no one can force me to do anything (that is, until 13 days from now). Canoeing can be fun, and the two hour trip we were planning would still get me home in plenty of time to keep on my GMAT study schedule. After all kids, “if you hit the books, you won’t end up crooks.”

That being said, this canoe trip was like something out of a Calvin & Hobbes camping trip.

After encountering a few problems in getting out the door in the morning (causing us to be about three hours behind schedule), we parked my car in the middle of Indianapolis and took Dad’s up to the river entrance. There was a nice set of rapids that pushed us on our way. It turned out this was the last push we would get. Well, that’s not entirely correct. For two-thirds of our trip, there was a strong headwind pushing the water against us. It got so bad that I thought I’d have a better chance of finding a three-nut peanut than a still spot in the river. Unfortunately we didn’t have any peanuts to test this theory.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, what were supposed to be overcast, rainy skies turned into skies straight from the Simpson’s opening credits. That would have been a blessing in a Calvin and Hobbes vacation, but for my dad and me, who decided not to bring sunscreen, this turned into a disaster. The sun beat down on us like Lebron James on the Knicks. And since our two cars were parked 16 miles apart from each other, we had no choice but to keep on paddling.

Another problem we encountered was that every oasis of rapids flowing “downstream” (I use that term loosely) turned into a pit stop where we had to walk our canoe over the rocks in the shallow water. But those weren’t our biggest obstacles. About halfway into our journey, we came across big red signs signaling that there was a dam ahead. After realizing that beavers probably didn’t put the signs up, we heard the sound of falling water straight ahead. To our left: rocks. To our right: trees. We found no place to get out of the river with the canoe. After pondering our next move while wedged between the rocks on the left, we spotted a ramp on the far side of the river. The problem was you had to paddle right up to the edge of the dam to get there. Fortunately we’re two manly guys who no regard for human life (kinda like another guy I mentioned earlier), so we paddled onward.

I’ll be honest, the ramp turned out to be pretty easy to get onto, despite its proximity to the dam’s edge. The problem turned out to be the ramp itself. It was the dirtiest, smelliest, buggiest, spideriest thing I’ve seen since Spencer and Heidi were trapped in a cabin on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! And when it comes to bugs and dirt, I’m no longer all that manly.

Anyway, to wrap this up, we slogged our way over the dam, pushed against the currents, survived the UV rays (at least so far) and, over six hours later, finished our two-hour canoe ride through Indianapolis. My dad is convinced that all these unexpected obstacles would prepare me for the trip. I’m convinced that if this happened to Zhou, I would never hear the end of it.

18 days until take-off!

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Puzzles for Postcards (last one before the trip!)

Rhyme Time! (we’ve added one new one and re-worded the others, solve three of four)

A cooking appliance for Christopher Mintz-Plasse
What the person who cleans your teeth would use for a TKO
A tropical shelter for a tropical yellow fruit
Catchy commercial ditties for a salty snack

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Scrabble Log

Games: 55
Zhou WPLB: 28; 367; 315; SENIlES
Kevin WPLB: 27; 368; 397; sETTINGS

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Before Leaving I Touch Cold Feet

Our more astute readers may have noticed that as our trip draws near, we’ve gotten away from posting about it. Instead, we’ve shifted gears toward entries that look and feel like those that we will bombard you with once we leave the country. Why? Because they’re easier to write.

Sometimes in life though, you won’t be able take the easy route. When Irv Blitzer told Derice that Coolidge wasn’t going to sponsor their trip to the Olympics, Derice and the team found other ways to raise the money. In this Jamaican bobsledding spirit, today I am going to take the road less traveled (lately) and once again write about the trip.

Zhou and I are now less than four weeks from embarking across the Atlantic, and as such there is a lot to talk about. I suppose this is the time that we should be getting cold feet, so in an effort to further this post, I’m going to pretend like I am. (In real life though, I’m too manly for that.) In addition, there is a lot to discuss about the blog (off the top of my head, there is the Stat Contest, Puzzles for Postcards, our new tie to Lonely Planet and other general changes to the blog going forward).

The Trip

Cold Feet?

There are two popular beliefs when it comes to our trip (or so I read in the tabloids). The first is “Wow, in less than four weeks, we won’t pee in an American toilet again!” The second is, “Do you realize that in less than a year, we’ll be back in the States (the ‘real world’) telling people that the best part of our lives is behind us?” I’m not sure which belief I subscribe to. Zhou recently told me that she doesn’t want it to be October – she’d rather it stay now, so we’ll always be anticipating the adventures that lie ahead. As much as I can’t wait to go, I kind of agree. We’ve built this trip up in our minds to be the greatest thing ever (which I truly believe it will be), but in actuality we’ll have hard times and fights and bad breath and all that. The experience as a whole is going to be great, but inevitably there will be those moments where we will wonder what we’ve gotten ourselves into. This reminds me a little of one of my favorite DMB quotes.

“I will go in this way and find my own way out.”

The trip is going to be great not because of everything that goes according to plan, but instead because of how we’ll work through the unique problems we’ll encounter. In planning for the trip Zhou and I have met and read about seemingly hundreds of other travelers, and they all have drastically different stories to tell. To some we’ll just be two of the hundreds of thousands of world travelers, but to us we’ll be the only two people who have ever seen the world the way we’re going to. Ever.

Cold feet? Maybe in Japan in the winter.

iTouch

Right now, only Zhou Touch. But I’m beginning to think more and more that I need to Touch. I currently own and love the 80 GB iPod Classic. My dilemma is that it’s basically a music box. Before the invention of iPods, I’m sure world travelers didn’t take all their CDs, tapes and 8-tracks with them on their journeys – they would take up too much space. So really, do I need this? On the other hand, they recently invented this iTouch mechanism that not only plays music, but connects to the internet, has millions of apps and looks sweet. I would be able to keep up-to-date with my podcasts, world news and Brain Toot. If there was no such thing as money, I would steal an iTouch in a second. But I don’t feel good about dropping another unnecessary $300 while not earning an income.

Charity

I actually struggle with this more than I do the iTouch. I would love to be able to use the trip in some way, somehow to help others. Long ago, Zhou and I decided that this trip would be our chance to see as much of the world as we possibly can. This will increase our awareness of different areas and hopefully open our eyes to global causes. However, this eliminated the possibility of us doing something like WWOOF, where we’d live with a family for a month or two and do work that interests us before moving on. We’d be able to travel for dirt cheap, and we’d be helping others along the way. Unfortunately this would minimize our chances to explore.

Another thing Zhou and I looked into was Socialvibe, a program where we could include a link to a charity on our blog, and anytime someone would click on the link, money would go to that charity. This seemed like an easy way to help, but upon further research, it appears that the total allotment of money donated by sponsors on the site does not really change with each click, but instead the allocation does. So in effect, it would be moving money from one charity to another. If anyone knows better, please correct us.

I do like the idea of walking or flying or biking for a cause. For almost three years during college, my friend and I volunteered weekly at the Ronald McDonald House in Nashville. In the future I’d like to work with them again, but in the meantime it would be great if we could set up one of those charity donation promotions. I would like to do something where people could donate based on something we’ve done. A few ideas:

“Ride a bus and donate with us” – people/companies could donate for every hour we spend on a bus
“Eat something new for a nickel or two” – me trying new foods could help the RMH
“Visit our site to help the fight” – donations to help house the families of sick children would be directly tied to the traffic of our blog

That’s just what I’m thinking. I’ll be sure to let you know if I can get this ball rolling before we take off.

The Blog

Puzzles for Postcards

Back in March, we decided to start a game involving Puzzles for Postcards. There were a couple reasons for this: we like games and we’re cheap. We were tired of buying postcards of Charlotte, North Carolina, and we are sure that you were tired of receiving them. Well, we are finally nearing a winner of the game and thought it time to announce the next steps. After this week, whoever has the most correct puzzle answers will get to write a guest post on August 29th for the No Hurry Curry blog. This is entirely optional, but we figured you wouldn’t still be answering if you didn’t want to collect your “prize.” (Before we get a lot of complaints about the prize, remember that one of the top podcasts in the world, “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” has their announcer leave the message on winners’ home answering machines. Don’t we look good now?) If there’s a tie, the winner will be decided next week.

So what’s going to happen to PfP after the game is over? It will finally live up to its name again! Once we leave we will write one – two puzzles a week from the road, and the winners will actually get postcards! Real, live postcards with personalized messages from us, wherever we happen to be at at the time. However, there’s a twist. In an effort to make ourselves feel loved through comments, we will also be picking a random comment once every two weeks and sending a postcard to that person too. Not the comment we like best – just a random comment. So if you hate puzzles, but like postcards, this is your chance! Oh, one final rule – you can only win/get one postcard per month, otherwise we’ll just be wasting paper. And no one likes killing trees.

Stat Contest

Only 25 days left for entries to our Stat Contest! All the cool people have entered, have you? At the very minimum, the winner will get a huge shout out from us, and have bragging rights for life. At the very maximum, we’ll think of a sweet prize and the winner will get that. So make sure you don’t get left out when we close the contest! Feel free to comment anywhere on the site with your answers, or send us an email at nohurrycurry[at]gmail.com.

Lonely Planet

Remember back when we became famous? We are now famous times two. Earlier this week we signed up for Lonely Planet’s blogsherpa – a conglomeration of travel blogs from all over the world. Our Getting Visas Part 3 post has now made the big dance of travel blog. You can see it here, currently about seven posts from the top. For those of you who aren’t in with the travel scene like Zhou and I are, this is the equivalent of signing a shoe deal with Nike or getting caught at a night club with Jon Gosselin. Wait, scratch that second analogy. However, as we travel we do hope to keep posting to Lonely Planet as it is a great source for lots of travel information. We even did a lot of our research on that site and with Lonely Planet books.

Other Random Junk

I’ve been a huge whatever-the-opposite-of-proponent-is of Twitter ever since I first heard of it. These feelings grew with Conan’s spot-on Twitter Tracker bit. However, it does seem like it might be a useful way to keep in touch while we travel, so it’s something we’ll probably consider signing up for before we take off. That way we too will be able to tell the world “Kevin and Zhou just saw a man who looked like an Asian version of Denzel Washington. Whoa!” So I guess you could say I’m coming around on the idea like I came around on the idea of Lady Gaga. That Pokerface is just so catchy…

Finally (wow this was a long, picture-less post), we’re constantly trying to improve the blog. Before we leave, we’ll be adding a gear review page that we will update as we go. We’ve already added a rudimentary map of our current location to our itinerary page, a la the old “Where in the World?” section of our blogspot blog. Zhou’s also been making improvements to the Planning a RTW Trip page, so feast your eyes on that when you get a chance. Now we just need to decide if we want to upgrade to a non-free blog – the type where you pay money to keep it. This would definitely give us a lot more optionality, and it would work toward our goal of being more like Tina.

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Puzzles for Postcards (for 2.5 of you, last chance to get published on our site!)

Rhyme Time! (Solve all three)

A cooking device for Christopher Mintz-Plasse
What the orthodontist uses for a TKO
A tropical shelter for a tropical fruit

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Scrabble Log

Games: 55
Zhou WPLB: 28; 367; 315; SENIlES
Kevin WPLB: 27; 368; 397; sETTINGS

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Getting Visas (Part 3)

New York City – August 6, 2009

About a month ago, Zhou and I wrote about our first visa adventures in Washington DC (Part 1 and Part 2). As much of a disaster that trip turned out to be, we were at least able to write about what not to do when getting a visa. Today we attempted to get our China visas in New York City.  By the end of the afternoon, we had become closer than we’d have liked to (1) two random European people, (2) three of the four Chinese visa tellers and (3) the manager of and several workers at the Lucky Strike bowling alley.

(1) This morning we woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (no, I do not keep up with kids’ lingo these days), ready to explore the Big Apple. Since Zhou and I had learned what not to do during our previous experiences, nothing could stand in our way this time. We knew everything you could possibly know about getting a Chinese visa, probably more than Confucious himself. First though, we had to get to the Chinese consulate.

After picking up Zhou’s car from the shop, we caught the 10am train into New York City with the intention of getting to the consulate by 11:30. We boarded the train in the front row – the row that has two seats facing forward and two seats facing back, with about a foot of leg room in between. As we sat down I asked Zhou if people were really expected to sit down facing each other with that little leg room. It almost seemed illegal – I actually felt claustrophobic with the other seat wide open. She assured me though that only families could be comfortable that close together, so we put on our iPods and went to sleep. When I awoke, several people were standing in the aisle, but no one had dared tried to sit across from us. Then the train stopped. Not at a scheduled stop, but because of a TTJ (train traffic jam). This train carries thousands of people each day smoothly into the city, without delay. Yet for one hour we had a delay. That in itself wouldn’t have been so bad, since we had plenty of time to get into the city. Then the worst happened.

A large European woman and her medium-sized teenage daughter showed up. The lady said something which I did not understand, and then they began pushing their way into the seat across from us. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Sometimes I don’t even like to get as close to Zhou as they were getting to us. But they had pushed my legs so far into Zhou’s lap that I couldn’t get out. I could hardly breathe, and my body tensed up seeing the proximity of their body parts to mine. I did the only thing I knew how – I began to stare at them. What’s more awkward than staring at a random stranger while your knee is jammed against their hip? To Europeans, apparently lots of things are, as they continued to sit and look uncomfortably comfortable. Not a great way to start the day.

(2) We ended up making it to the visa office by 1:30, an hour before it closed. This place was a zoo! Except the cute baby giraffes were replaced by angry Chinese people, and instead of monkeys there were an inordinate number of police officers. Amidst the sea of English-less papers and signs, we finally figured out where the forms we needed were, and we sat down in the lengthy visa application line and filled them out. Windows 2 – 5 were open.

Window #5: “You guys will need to fill out an address you’ll be staying at while in China.” An address? We didn’t have one yet. We called Zhou’s dad and he gave us one. Back to the back of the line.

Window #2: “Mr. Curry, you’re all set. Ms. Zhang, we will need to see your previous Chinese visa since you were born in China.” Previous Chinese visa?  Zhou didn’t have it – it was at home. Maybe we could pretend she wasn’t born in China? Shoot, it was on her passport. We called her sister, Amy, and she said she could fax it to the consulate. Back to the back of the line.

Window #4: “Sorry, you cannot use our fax machine. You will have to find another way to get it.” Great, it was now 2:15, just 15 minutes before close. We went outside, dejected by the wasted day.

(3) We looked around outside for someone or something that could help us. There was nothing for miles. Then a light from heaven shone down on the building across the street: a Lucky Strike bowling alley. It was our only shot, so I told Zhou we should go inside and ask them if we could use their fax. I think she was ready to give up on the day, as she didn’t really want to try it. I made her do it anyway (I still occasionally have that power since we’re not yet married). After talking to several workers at the alley (all very helpful, might I add as a promotion to Lucky Strike), we were allowed to use their fax machine. Amy had the documents ready to fax.  2:22 – nothing.  2:23 – nothing. 2:24 – Amy called back, the fax was sent. We rushed to the manager, who went back to get it for us.  2:25, 2:26. We got us our papers, all smudged and not at all legible since faxes never really work in my experience, but they were there. We ran across the busy street, a la George from Seinfeld playing Frogger, and slipped in the entrance two minutes before closing.

Window #5: We got our visa applications submitted.

Afterword: the visas should be ready in a week, after which our friend Rachel is picking them up for us. When she offered, she was definitely being nice, but to wade through that office without speaking Chinese – she’s definitely going above and beyond, so thank you for that. We owe you a huuuge favor in return. But with this task out of the way, there’s not much remaining between us and our first flight across the Atlantic!

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Picture of the day: Only in New York… it takes three policemen to retrieve one clumsy pedestrian’s keys from the sewer.

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