Recently I've had a good number of people ask me if I'm getting excited for the trip. My response is generally 'It hasn't hit yet', this is mostly because the logistics of this trip are a bit consuming. As if organizing a 10-month trip around the world hasn't provided enough excitement, it becomes increasingly complicated because we are leaving North Carolina, closing-up-shop and moving to Canada before the trip. As I'm not Canadian (this being Will: US citizen), I have several limitations until I come across on a student visa, which won't happen until we return from the trip.
Fortunately, Katy's last day from work was yesterday now giving her about two weeks to do research before we leave North Carolina, and my ability to 'multi-task' at work is giving us some time to work through the details. So here are a few of the logistics we've been looking into that you would never think of when preparing for a typical one or two week vacation:
-Storing a car for 10 months
-What to do to prepare your car for storage
-Where to register a car, and how to prepare so your plates don't expire while out of the country
-Exporting a car from the US
-Importing a car into Canada (which I can't do until after the trip)
-Travel insurance
-Health insurance for your home country (is this necessary in addition to travel insurance?)
-Travel medications
-Immunizations
-Taxes while away
-Finding the best bank accounts to avoid exchange rate fees
-Costs of moving from NC to Canada
-Costs of storage
-The time and effort it takes to move everything from NC to Canada
-Cutting cable and utilities
-Oh yeah, quitting your job and trying to do everything to make sure its on good terms
I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of details we've been looking into, but this gives you the general idea of what how this is different from your normal week at the beach. Non-the-less I think we'll be more relaxed when we are finally on a plane to London and have some bubbles in our hands... that or we'll realize we forgot our passports or all our ATM cards on the kitchen table!
