On October 30th, 1982 my parents got married in Bakersfield, California. For the next four months they planned and in March 1983 they left for Tahiti and a year of traveling.
My parents met several years earlier, while they were both working in Bakersfield. My (future) father as a prosecutor and my (future) mother as a reporter who crossed paths when they were both assigned to the same murder case. The story goes that my dad thought my mom was sexy and my mom thought my dad was full of himself. She finally agreed to go on a date with him and they had a midweek picnic lunch.
I have spent my entire life hearing about their epic trip. The time my dad bought my mom a rose at Oktoberfest and the subsequent Australian guy that took, and ate, the entire rose—thorns and all. Strangers waking my mom up and pleading with her in shared rooms, i.e. hostels, camping huts, and the like to make my dad stop snoring. The two of them arguing over a $1.50 upgrade in a New Zealand campground… should they pay for a hut or pitch their tent in the pouring rain? (They got the hut.)
In March 2023 I’m leaving for Tahiti and a year of traveling with my partner of 8 years. (Going forward I will refer to him as H, this should tell you which one of us is more internet shy.) H and I didn’t meet on a murder case in Bakersfield. We met in 2015 in a small bar (shoutout to Cafe Rev) in the Mission District of San Francisco after chatting on a dating app.
I don’t remember the first time I told him about the trip. (THE TRIP, folks! Please only refer to it as THE TRIP going forward.) But he jokes that I happened to find the right person to fit into my plan. He had just finished a year-long trip of his own driving from Toronto to Panama. (FYI: He slept in his car one night on his trip a mere four miles from where I was sleeping in my childhood bed.)
We start our trip March 14, 2023 by flying to Tahiti from San Francisco. From there we go to New Zealand for 4ish weeks and Australia for 4ish weeks after that. Over the summer we plan to head to Europe, Asia for the fall, and South America in the New Year. Will we keep to this *extremely* loose plan? Time will tell!
