The Long Haul

The trip start date is quickly approaching and we are very ready for it to start. For a year now we have been on a budget of forty dollars a week, that's twenty dollars a person! So, needless to say, those forty dollars usually went to buying groceries for the week, leaving no money left to do anything else in Miami. Grabbing a drink with friends, going out to dinner, catching a movie, you know all the simple pleasures in life... yeah, those were out of the question. I was even working two jobs for most of the year. We worked together, lived together and exercised together, combined with the budget, it was definitely a strain on us.

From reading other blogs we found that we would need between 15 to 20 thousand for the year. We have made it to our goal with no help from our incessant purchasing of gear for this trip. Was all of it necessary? no, but was it fun to buy? yes. We bought all the fancy gear from cool hiking shoes, rain gear, and sleeping bag to the silly little things like waterproof matches, spork type utensils and a lunch tin (there is a lot more but I am embarrassed to mention it all). I guess being on such a tight budget, it was too easy to use our trip as an excuse to buy stuff. Christina sold her car to free herself of a car payment and it did not hurt to have the extra cash. Now that the trip is actually here it seems a little surreal. I am anxious about just letting the trip happen. We have a rough itinerary, but for the most part we have no schedule, but that is what makes it interesting.

I am also a little nervous about the three shots I have to get tomorrow. We have already gotten Japanese encephalitis which made us feel a little weird but nothing too serious. Now we have Yellow Fever, tetanus, and typhoid fever. I am told that tetanus hurts really bad but I wouldn't know since my fear of needles has kept me from renewing my shot for 5 years. Luckily we had Hep A and B shots when we were kids. We found this out after we had already gotten the first shot in the series.