Address: Everywhere

By Kari Randolph

Address: Everywhere is a true account which follows a thirtieth birthday spent traveling the world. After leaving her successful, responsible career and life in Wisconsin, Kari and her husband head out around the world to fulfill a dream and discover themselves. Through nine months and six continents of travel, the book relays heartwarming, inspiring and sometimes hilarious tales of the journey. Thanks to their unique travel method of crusie boats and their passion for adventure in unusual places, the couple encounters unique and inspiring personalities from each corner of the globe. Faced with having to decide on what's next during each step of the unplanned adventure, they overcome challenges and find new opportunity along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kari Randolph
• Release date: Dec 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466178403

Kari Randolph

Kari Randolph was born and raised in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. She graduated from UW Madison with a degree in International Studies. With a passion for travel, she has visited more than forty countries. . Her address is still somewhat transient but remains for now in the Midwest with her husband, Jeff and cat, Nestle. She is employed as an IT Consultant with Nordic Consulting Partners. Besides travel, Kari loves to run, read, write, and bake.

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Address: Everywhere

Kari Randolph

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Published by Kari Randolph at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Kari Randolph

For more information visit Smashwords

Print copy available on Amazon

For pictures from the trip visit Picasa

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Smashword Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction: June 9, 2011

Chapter 1: The First Step (December)

Chapter 2: Leaving Home (January)

Chapter 3: Falkland Islands (February)

Chapter 4: South Georgia (February)

Chapter 5: Antarctica (February)

Chapter 6: Argentina (March)

Chapter 7: Argentina cont. (April)

Chapter 8: Mediterranean (May)

Chapter 9: Norway (June)

Chapter 10: Thailand (July)

Chapter 11: Singapore (July)

Chapter 12: Australia Cruising (July)

Chapter 13: Australia by Land (August)

Chapter 14: Hawaii (September)

Chapter 15: Alaska (September)

Chapter 16: Coming Home (October)

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Introduction: June 9, 2011

I am 30 years old; an age that as a child always seems an impossibility and as an elder I predict will seem enviously young. It is an in-between, transition period for me. Though many by this age are happily living the enigmatic American dream, at the age of 30 I find myself homeless and happy. As the famous saying goes, ‘all those that wander are not lost’; this phrase paraphrases the past six months of my life better than I could have imagined. I spent my thirtieth birthday yesterday somewhere in the middle of the North Sea, on a boat built for 650 passengers, on my way from London, England to Bergen, Norway. Just one small leg of the wanderlust journey I was on. The older I get, birthdays, perhaps even more so than New Years for me, are a time of reflection and resolution-making. It is a chance to attempt an understanding of what I’ve spent the last year not only doing, but being. It’s a reminder that there’s always an end to this ride called life and that anything I can do to enjoy every moment, perhaps improve someone else’s, is of utmost importance. In the face of mortality, all the little stresses we all tend to get so worked up over suddenly seem unimportant and sometimes those larger than life puzzles we try so hard to push away become moments of clarity. In my case, my year of being 29 brought vast life changes. I quit my steady, successful and profitable job of six and half years and started out on a journey some would consider a move of lunacy (perhaps midlife crisis if only I was older), and others would cheer on with envy. Everything I owned was sold off or put into storage and I was officially commitment free. I went from being the 20-something year old who always followed the straight path to an almost 30-year old who’d suddenly made a sharp turn. Who’s to say what I will or won’t regret looking back on life, but if I had to guess I think inaction is a universally larger reason for remorse than action ever has been.

On the flip side of reflection, birthdays are a chance to set goals. Once back in my twenties, I had decided that to keep myself from becoming a home-body I would set the goal of making it to six of the seven continents before the age of 30. Having thought at the time that Antarctica probably wasn’t a realistic possibility, six seemed a reasonable number and ensured many ventures during my twenties. My count at my twenty-ninth birthday was four, far behind my intentioned goal yet still seemingly above average for a small town Midwesterner such as myself. So while I refused to be disappointed I decided instead to up the goal to a full seven continents. Less confident than I’d been at twenty, I was less willing to put an exact ending date on this one. I’d learned during the last decade that the more I had traveled, the more I realized longer periods of time in each area is sometimes more valuable than covering large distances in short time periods. Which continent I was on mattered very little in comparison to being able to enjoy experiences out of the norm. So while some might argue a goal without a due date is useless, I knew it would still be enough to motivate me to get out there and see more and therefore the point of the goal would be achieved even if the goal itself fell short. Strange logic perhaps but when I’m setting personal goals I believe I’m the only one who needs to understand them. Beyond the travel goals, I decided to set two more: write a book and run a marathon. Fairly simple and straightforward at least in quantitative success measures, both are an inspiration of nothing more than my love of these hobbies. I truly enjoy both writing and running, each is a solitary escape and both are natural activities I find myself craving and missing when absent. So in theory these three goals together should all be quite easy to achieve. In reality, I fully realize there are plenty of obstacles that will no doubt come with all of them. But what would keep life interesting without a few obstacles?

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PART I: NEW BEGINNINGS

Chapter 1: The First Step (December)

‘I quit my job.’ Each time I spoke it aloud, I moved a little closer to understanding the reality of what it really meant. It wasn’t so much fear that led to the slight denial, for who couldn’t be excited about leaving the rat race behind to circumnavigate the world? But it was more about the reality of all the responsible aspects of life that had been so thoroughly drilled into me since early childhood. The words ‘how could anyone not work for a year?’ rang through my head; a statement I had heard just a month earlier from my father during an unrelated conversation. The question had been accompanied with a shrug and shake of a head giving it an obvious ‘that’s crazy’ implication. As I prepared to tell him that I was one of those people who could not work for a year, I was surprised at my own level of nervousness. I know my parents well enough to predict reactions, but there’s always a sliding scale of predictability when it comes to big new events. When your parents are expecting your next big piece of news to be ‘I’m pregnant’, telling them instead ‘I’ve quit my job to go travel around the world’ can be a tough sell.

Going on thirty, I was somewhat astonished to realize just how much my parent’s approval still mattered to me. I was used to pleasing them and with the usual exceptions throughout the first eighteen years of my life, I had done so. In so many ways, I fit each of the American stereotypes of what we should all do with our lives—after finishing high school towards the top of my class, I went on to a respectable college where I received a four year degree with a reputable grade point average. Here my life took a slight detour as I took six months off following college, but even then I was working on a research volunteer program so it still fit into the ‘responsible’ bucket. While this choice was not necessarily a popular venture with some who strongly believed in the path of gainful employment, expectations of coming back to the Wisconsin vicinity to ‘settle down’ were always part of the undercurrents so the short break was palatable. Sure enough, I followed the path of coming back and finding a responsible job, earning a title of Project Manager with a top notch software company. Soon after I married the man of my dreams, and right on cue, bought a house—even close to home! I was the model of a responsible child without even trying. I spent the next few years collecting raises and diligently saving. I didn’t necessarily have a particular savings goal in mind, but I had been taught that saving was the responsible measure and responsibility was a habit I’d acquired well. Living cheaply was quite easy for me, I had an innate tendency towards penny pinching, perhaps an inherited gene from my father. The house was larger than any apartment I’d lived in and at a whopping 800 square feet, and I found an empty room rarely used was just something else I’d have to clean. I’ve been called a minimalist and have never minded the label; I was happy in a small house with an old used car and a wardrobe I’d brought with from college. My husband, Jeff, generally had similar penny pinching inclinations and we only enhanced each other’s minimalist qualities. Being able to choose to live minimally is a gift, and I was grateful to have it. I have always felt extremely fortunate to have the opportunistic lifestyle I was born into and tried to remain unaffected by status symbols and outside pressures of what ‘should’ happen as incomes increase. A few years into my career, I’d hit a six figure salary and found myself wrapped up in a responsibility trap that meant long hours, stressful days and seeing very little of my husband or pet cat. I felt primarily lucky to have an opportunity to save and to have all that I did. But luck slowly became overshadowed by stress as I realized just how much of my life had been taken over. Instead of working during my life, work had somehow become my life. The feeling of being fortunate faded as I realized with greater clarity that there’s more to the world than money and I couldn’t help but feeling I was missing out on discovering what else was out there. Even then I had traveled just enough to realize how much of life is driven by luck and while I was fortunate in so many aspects, I couldn’t claim to be happy.

So it was for all these reasons and more that I found myself more nervous that I’d imaged, sitting at my parents’ kitchen table with my husband silently sending me obvious eyebrow messages which clearly stated ‘hurry up and get this over with!’. I had falsely prepared myself for the conversation via one-sided rehearsals in my head, hoping to downplay the situation effectively enough to avoid a tearful drama. Fortunately, I successfully pulled off that feat, though it was touch and go for a minute. Unfortunately, I inadvertently seemed to have left my parents with the impression that this was just an extended vacation and we’d be back soon working at the same job and living out their American dream. I slowly began to realize their assumptions over the next couple of weeks, as side comments about ‘you’re so lucky your job is willing to let you just take time off like this’ were brought to light. However, I was quite happy to discover they were more encouraging than expected and it was evident from day one they were trying their hardest to be supportive even if they didn't fully understand the goal.

Reality was, regardless of my parent’s reactions and opinions of where I should be in my life, my husband and I had finally taken a step we’d been dreaming of for years. I remember meeting Jeff seven years earlier and being thrilled when he told me his hope was to sail around the world within the next five years. I had fallen in love with travel years earlier and believed Jeff’s sense of adventure and desire to expand his own horizons moved me that much closer to falling in love with him. The five year mark had come and gone with realities of responsible ventures always taking precedence. Jeff decided to pursue another dream of his, getting his undergraduate degree, while I bided my time working diligently as a project manager, traveling around the country helping to implement healthcare software. Though our responsible roles certainly had their perks, Jeff and I would still find ourselves listlessly fantasizing of leaving it all behind. Each year we would take a fairly major vacation, generally going to an international destination that was reasonably affordable and not far enough away to require more than two weeks of travel time. Highlights were wonderful: rainforest ventures in Costa Rica, camping explorations in Iceland, cruises through the Panama Canal, road trips across Eastern Europe, national parks of the Canadian Rockies, fireworks in southern France and Caribbean paradises, all of which lived up to their hype! Each trip we took, however, just fueled the fire for a bigger trip. No matter how wonderful each of these destinations were, we always had to return within two to three weeks. Time was our biggest limiting factor and living an American working lifestyle, I didn’t see this limitation disappearing soon. Occasionally we would meet other travelers out on the road who were true free spirits—no timelines to return, no itineraries to follow—and we’d find ourselves feeling jealous of their abilities to ignore the rat race. We’d fantasize together about what it would be like to be so free-willed as to not have to worry about time and money and instead just take things day by day.

So after seven years of knowing Jeff, six years of marriage and job responsibilities, we finally decided to stop talking and start doing. We were great at coming up with excuses—namely time and money—of why we couldn’t go someplace or why we couldn’t uproot ourselves all together and finally we stopped making excuses. We had gotten ourselves to the point of non-commitment. We had traded in our house and were living in a studio apartment with a four month lease sublet, having stored or sold a good portion of our belongings, and we had found a long term cat-sitter for our ever-adorable pet. We had saved enough and let enough time pass to convince our emotional selves that we could make it a reality and I’d even gone so far as to put in notice at my job and told our parents of the future plans. So progress had started.

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The next step was making arrangements…Jeff and I already held a reputation among those who knew of our travel bug for our last minute planning skills (if you can call it that). Procrastination was part of the game; we once got lost in Venice and ended up jumping on a cruise boat that left in two hours for a week around the Greek islands. We once had planned on going to Boston and doing an East coast road trip but found out the weather was going to be rainy, so we switched and went to Vancouver instead, booking our tickets two days in advance. Some would call this, quite fairly, poor preparation, but despite stresses it always worked out somehow. The previous year I had taken two weeks off of my job, and with no plans a week out, I was asked to go help out in the Netherlands. Suddenly we had an expenses paid vacation opportunity. Our travel style often consisted of sitting down a week or two before our planned departure and randomly searching plane ticket prices for various places around the world—wherever we could get the best deal to is where we would end up. Prerequisites existed of course; things like we had to be in warmer weather if it was during winter in Wisconsin. And if the experience was worth it, we’d be willing to pay more—to an extent. While travel can never really be called cheap, Jeff and I tried hard to keep it budget friendly; a trait that helped us coexist peacefully most of the time. So though oxymoronic, on this trip we’d planned to use our lack of planning to our advantage. We’d find the best deal to an unknown location and take it from there, continuing the trend until we were sick of traveling, loved somewhere so much we wanted to stay forever, or ran out of funds in our travel budget.

The last day of my job was Dec. 31st – the New Year was a new start and a chance for us to go find out what else was in store for us. We had made our first commitment just a couple of weeks earlier by purchasing a cruise that started in Los Angeles and ended in Santiago, Chile, leaving in mid-January. Those first two weeks of unemployment were spent packing and re-packing while we attempted to figure out how in the world to take enough along to survive all weather possibilities while still managing to walk upright when carrying it all. The first challenge!

We had decided to take camping gear with us and finding space for a tent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats and pillows along with all our standard traveling clothes, cameras, etc. caused the Mission Impossible theme song to start playing through my head but eventually the impossible became workable. We did rounds of packing and eliminating—the list of ‘essentials’ we had initially come up with soon became shorter and shorter. Suddenly my minimalist character was rebelling and I fought the urge to consider everything ‘essential’. Nonetheless, there were some realities we had to keep on the list. We knew our spoiled selves well enough to realize we’d never camp if it meant too much sleeping on hard ground, so sleeping mats were our gift to ourselves. We begrudgingly eliminated shoes and clothes until we were down to survival levels that required constant reminders to each about it all being worth the sacrifices. After finally sorting out the packing jigsaw, we had officially upheld our reputation as minimalists. With two 21 inch roller bags and two backpacks, we’d summed up our lives enough to hit the road (or in our case the ocean). We still had no official plans after Santiago, but dreams of Antarctica, Africa and Australia all were floating around (possibilities of Antarctica supplied plenty of packing challenges in and of itself). We’d also started to research Chile and Argentina enough to realize that we could easily spend a full year in each of those countries and still never see it all. I would describe those two interim weeks as intimidating and overwhelming – the reality of what we’d gotten ourselves into was slowly sinking in with each box we put in storage and every Freecycle post we posted. Jeff and I fully realized that worst case scenario—we run out of money or drive each other crazy (either of which was equally likely to occur)—we could always come back and pick up where we’d left off, being the responsible working Americans. Somehow this felt like a comforting thought; though neither Jeff nor I expected or wanted things to stay exactly the same in small town Wisconsin.

Chapter 2: Leaving Home (January)

Having overcome the packing challenge (or at least given in enough to the idea of buying clothes and supplies as we went), we flew out to LA in early January and stayed with my sister. Our brief stop in LA provided an interim adjustment period where we hadn’t left reality or life as we knew it yet, but also was far enough away from home to be out of the routine and starting our explorations.

What we knew about our travels at this point was that we were starting by heading to South America. We had a goal in mind of making it to Antarctica; a reward we’d decided to grant ourselves if the price and timing worked out. We had initially planned on leaving for our world adventures in mid-September but had postponed our trip by three months due to various family health issues and work responsibilities (plus I’m a sucker for the holiday season at home). As disappointed as we’d been back in September, Antarctica had become the bone we’d throw ourselves for lasting another season of Wisconsin responsible life. We knew that Antarctica would be a quick blow to our budget, but we justified the cost with those extra three months of work and the hopes of being able to find a last minute deal. We’d read a few blogs and researched enough to know that it was possible if you were patient and had flexible travel plans, so we bargained on our luck and hoped we’d make it to the mysterious white continent. We had in our possession a travel book for Chile and one for Argentina, two countries we assumed we’d spend some time in but knew very little about. The first step is always the hardest and we assumed once we got out there it would be easier to keep on going, wherever we may end up.

LA was a great start to our extended vacation (I had yet to come up with a better name for the trip). We lucked out with weather and hit 80 degree days in January, an anomaly even for the sunny west coasters. We spent our two days with my sister eating, a favorite pastime when in LA. We stuffed ourselves with frozen yogurt and marveled at her roommate’s fresh homemade pasta. It was delicious and thoroughly enjoyed, though I wouldn’t typically advise stuffing oneself prior to going on a cruise boat. We missed out on all the typical LA tourist stops, purposefully though as we’d been there before. We did have classic experiences, most notably meeting a porn star in a pawn shop while getting our watch battery changed. But overall it was a relaxing couple of days. LA gave us some time to read our Chile and Argentina travel books, helping us to get into the spirit of what we were about to take on. Jeff and I stayed in a hotel the final night, right next to the cruise port. We realized that our possible thoughts of biking through Patagonia might not be the best fit when we couldn’t get our hotel door key or our hotel TV to work (the key we just weren’t pulling out fast enough and the TV was unplugged…both of which we found out from the friendly maintenance man who I’m sure must have thought we were ridiculously inept.) So after proving ourselves barely able to function at a hotel in the US, we took off for the first leg of our international journey that was still in the planning stages. Lucky for us, it was a quite gentle introduction by way of a cruise ship from LA to Valparaiso, Chile. Little did we know at this point how one cruise could lead to another so easily.

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Cruise boat travel is kind of like what I imagine it would be like to temporarily check into a luxury assisted living retirement community at sea. While that description may dissuade many, on further analysis it’s actually quite appealing. It’s a very spoiling way to travel and one I highly recommend over plane rides. It’s also a great way to make yourself feel young if you’re under the age of 70 and a great way to gain weight should you be looking to do so (I was definitely not). It’s quite easy to not lift a finger for anything but enjoyment purposes. This particular trip was a sixteen night venture and the focus for us was not on the port stops, but rather just a delightfully spoiling method of covering long distances. For anyone who’s ever traveled such distances via plane, I can assure you that cruise boats – even with an interior tiny cabin – will far surpass any first class plane ride that exists. We had already learned years earlier, during our first Caribbean cruise, that cruising is a much more pleasant way to get from point A to point B as long as you have the time to pass. Since for one of the first times ever, time wasn’t the limiting factor to our venture, we took full advantage of this by starting early with a cruise aboard the Mariner of the Seas.

A typical day for Jeff and I on our cruise went something like this: wake up and go for a walk around the track, looking for (and successfully finding about half the mornings) dolphins, whales, sea lions or some other mysterious lump in the water that was sure to slow down our walking progress. We’d then head to breakfast where we consumed at least twice the calories we should/could have but enjoyed them all. I, more than Jeff, would then insistently tell myself I’ll eat less for lunch (a promise that always seemed to fall apart by the time lunch rolled around). Then we’d check out the daily schedule, finding things like table tennis tournaments, ice skating, cooking demonstrations and belly dancing lessons and plan our lounging/sun/nap time around these. And of course in between each there would be more eating of some sort; the arctic zone (frozen yogurt) was a favorite spot of mine. It was definitely an affable way to spend our days. While it may not necessarily be the best for the waist line, there really is not much to disagree with when living life on a cruise ship. After all, when you have someone to cook delicious food for you, someone else to serve you twenty four hours a day and someone else still to make your bed not only every morning but after each afternoon nap you might take, you can’t help but wonder if you’ve actually started to live someone else’s life. I was always surprised when I heard the occasional grumbler complaining about the littlest things and it always prompted me to mentally promise myself that if I ever became that ungrateful, I would send myself back home and get a job immediately. It only took standing near to the customer service desk to hear funny but sadly serious complaints about not having enough ice cream flavors available, too much wind outside, or my favorite—the old man with a cane who was complaining there were too many wheelchairs getting in his way.

Our biggest stumbling block during this first leg of our travels was a literal one; Jeff managed to sprain his ankle on day three of the cruise about four minutes into a basketball game, allowing him to meet the cruise medics and hobble around on crutches for a few days. It was a painful reminder that we needed to be careful or our dreams of