As some of you already know and others will find out in the ensuing paragraphs, Gina and I have BIG news for 2010 – we are relocating to Sydney, Australia.  AUSTRALIA.  Where coffee orders consist of flat whites and long blacks, cockatoos are the suburban equivalent of pigeons, a car accident hardly sounds dangerous at all, as it’s not a brutal “crash” but instead a delicate “bingle”, and where all, I repeat ALL, of the world’s most poisonous spiders and snakes reside.  Yes, this is the land we’re choosing to call home for the next few years.

Australia, you say – why Australia?

To answer that question, let’s go back to the beginning, when our story really took root over the Christmas holiday week in 2008.  We had rented our favorite riverside cabin in the tiny town of Index, Washington.  Most folks think Index is nothing more than a roadside diner along Highway 2, a place you might stop for a quick burger on your way down the mountain après skiing.  Gina, being one of those “most folks”, didn’t know that Index is actually more than that – an artsy community tucked about 1 mile back from the main highway, settled along the Skykomish River, with uninterrupted views of Mt. Index and The Wall.  It’s now become our little Switzerland, as we like to call it, and a relaxing destination on a cold winter’s holiday break.

We had four nights to spend at the cabin all to ourselves, a rarity for us in that we usually fill such time with at least a guest or two.  But this time we were focused on our ‘projects’.  For me, this meant finally going through that stack of outdoorsy magazines, tearing out articles about places of interest that mostly involve exploration on two feet or two wheels, and filing them away for future reference.  For Gina, this meant trying to finish another scrapbook or two.  For some, scrapbooking is a pleasant hobby.  For Gina, it’s akin to taking final exams.  When she first sits down and begins sorting and sifting and snipping away, there is much grumbling and griping and general talking to herself, as if she can’t find her lecture notes or is seriously considering changing her major.  Eventually she settles down into the flow of the ‘booking and ultimately produces a really nice product, even if it is then just stuffed into a packing box in the back of a closet.  I like to believe that someday she’ll appreciate that she has these pretty paper windows to the past.

It’s hard to remember the exact point during our holiday break in Index when the tide shifted and we became flooded with a tsunami of exciting and forward-thinking ideas and goals for 2009 and 2010.  But somewhere between the ripping and the snipping, they materialized before us and it was all we could do to fall asleep at night, being as excited for our future as we were when we were six years old, waiting for Santa Claus to drop down the chimney.  What did that future look like?  In our minds, either (a) I had secured a job abroad and we were living overseas, or (b) we were quitting our jobs and taking a year off to travel around the U.S.

Now why would we want to quit our good jobs?  There never really is a good time to quit a job, unless you’re being harassed or otherwise mistreated, which neither of us was.  We could just stay doing what we’re doing and living where we’re living for many years to come.  After all, we make good money, live in a beautiful home in a beautiful city in a beautiful state, and have amazing friends and family nearby.  All good reasons to stick with the status quo.  But if we really are spiritual beings having a human experience, as I read somewhere once, then why limit our experiences?  Yes, we are happy here, but we are not yet satisfied – there is a certain urgency in both of us to see more, do more, EXPERIENCE more.  And we’re blessed to have the resources to do just that – after all, not everyone can drop what they’re doing and head out on the road (although I might now argue that if that’s what you really want, you could find a way to do so) – but we have no kids, no pets, no dependents of any sort.  So instead of asking WHY, we decided to ask WHY NOT?

We gave a timeline to the future options we envisioned for ourselves – a year to find a job overseas or we were heading out in the van in early summer 2010.  While applying for international positions and at the same time sticking pins in a map of the U.S., we were also saving our pennies, earmarked for the “BurritoWagon Fund”, our financial means to make our future possible.  We found it relatively easy to pass up filling our bellies with that daily latte by instead filling our minds with images of weekend trips tobogganing in the Swiss Alps and extended stays in Yosemite National Park, Half Dome rising behind our pitched tent.

As we focused our energy and passion on our goals, things began materializing around us to help make them possible and the proverbial pieces started falling into place.  In February 2009, a few weeks after our Index holiday, we came across what would become our anticipated means for traveling around the U.S. – a pristinely preserved 1995 Eurovan Camper Van.  To think that we weren’t even looking, and yet there it was.  As we laid eyes on it, there was no hesitation – in unison we said “THAT is our van” – and so it was.

We discovered that people we knew were linked with people that we didn’t at overseas companies, providing networking opportunities for potential jobs.  Transitions began at work that would make it easier for us both to ultimately resign, and Gina was inching ever closer to a layoff package in the down-turned economy.  We believed our plan was possible and we stuck with it.

The diversion from the road trip to an overseas job came by surprise.  One of those random events where junk email that I normally wouldn’t read for some reason caught my eye, and inside, like a sparkling treasure chest, read that job description that I’d been looking for since January.  Where was it?  Australia.  Hey Gina – what about Australia?  Absolutely (!), she replied.  Well cheers, then, mate; let’s head Down Under.

A few months later, with all of the interviews and the should-I-or-shouldn’t-I-take-the-offer conversations behind us (during which many, many nights of back-of-the-envelope calculations were scribbled, analyzed, and re-analyzed), we decided to accept the offer.  WHY NOT? we said.

And so here we find ourselves in the midst of planning for this amazing and exciting move to Australia.  And what about Gina’s job?  Well, as pieces surrounding Sydney started falling into place, it could only follow that Gina would get laid off from Qwest.  And after 13 years of service, it could again only follow that Gina would get a one-year severance package.  Some might call that dumb luck.  I call it smart goal-setting.  Besides which, momentum has a mind of its own.  We’ll contentedly enjoy our time on its positive side.