The Global Slowmad

Sure, the world is a dumpster fire at the moment. But this could be as good as it gets for a while.

Ok, I suppose we should elaborate. Stuart first began dreaming up this crazy adventure way back in 2019 and finally built up the courage to propose it to Darla about a year later. She said yes. (Admittedly, this was the pandemic era, so people were willing to try anything back then if it got them out of the house.) We started downsizing with a garage sale in 2021, eventually selling our home and moving to a much smaller house in early 2022. Planning began in earnest once Stuart retired near the end of 2023. We knew we wanted to head out while we were still young enough to tolerate long days of walking, uncomfortable beds and semi-challenging hikes from time to time.

The initial target departure date was September 2024, but our son ended up needing an extra semester to finish his undergraduate coursework after spending a semester in Japan. We decided to wait until 2025 to embark on our little escapade so he could take care of the house and our aging dogs (ages 16 and 10) while we are away. It’s a win-win: he gets the house to himself for a year while applying to medical school, and we get an affordable (i.e., free) and reasonably competent house- and pet-sitter. We ultimately agreed to wait until after Alex took the MCAT so he could focus his energy on that. We identified a nice departure window in mid-April and started planning our trip.

In the meantime, our country had an election. The results were disheartening to us, and it caused us to reflect on just how different our values and priorities apparently are from the majority of our compatriots. It’s only been a few months, but we have been appalled at many of the decisions being made by our nation’s leaders and the potentially devastating impact they will have on so many already disadvantaged people in the USA and around the world. It’s not someplace that feels like home anymore.

We left the country less than two weeks after so-called “Liberation Day.” Like everyone else, this meant that our brokerage and retirement account balances tanked pretty hard and still have not fully recovered. Fortunately, we prepaid for all of our AirBNBs and booked all of our flights and hotels using points and miles months ago. Everything is fully refundable if things really go sideways, but our hope is that everything will return to some level of normalcy soon.

Along similar lines, several people have asked if we are worried about our personal safety traveling outside the United States right now given the growing frustration around the globe with America and tourists in general. It’s a fair question. I wouldn’t say we are worried, but we’re not totally blind to reality either. We fully anticipate encountering some anti-American and anti-tourist sentiment while abroad. So far, the most we have seen is a couple of examples of “Tourists Go Home” graffiti in Spain, but we’re pretty sure that was not directed specifically toward American tourists. We can attest that British and Spanish tourists are not always respectful toward the locals or much fun to be around either.

In reality, the locals to this point have been quite welcoming and seem quite capable of distinguishing between who we are as people and the actions being made by the leaders of our homeland. As an Uber driver told us on our first day in Lisbon (before we figured out that Uber is consistently the slowest way to get anywhere in the city), America is a very young country. Europe has had many more centuries to make mistakes and learn from them. But even the oldest societies still make mistakes from time to time. You can be frustrated with the leaders, but don’t blame the people who are mostly just trying to live their lives.

In fact, given that we openly support the rights of the LGTBQIA+ community, refugees, immigrants, social welfare programs, the rule of law and general human decency, I don’t know that we would feel much safer traveling or merely living inside the United States right now. Unfortunately, it seems like it will have to get worse before it can get any better. America is far from the safest country in the world even in the best of times. (Other countries had to warn their citizens about gun violence when visiting the United States long before they had to be concerned about accidental deportation.) And this is clearly not the best of times. It is particularly strange to feel like we have to travel abroad to comfortably exercise our right of free speech.

So, yes, it would be nice to spend the next year with our son, but he is an adult now and deserves a little space to do his own thing. Yes, we hate being away from the dogs and know they miss us too, but they are well taken care of. And, yes, we will miss our friends and family, but we’re not going away forever and are quite excited about the possibility of meeting up with them in different locations during our travels. We suspect this voyage will be healthy for us over the long run. If nothing else, we will come back with a fresh perspective on our place in the world.

The timing for this sort of thing is never perfect, but it feels pretty darn close right now.