Brainplug

This friday, the 9th, will be my last day at Six Apart. My wife, Laurie, and I will soon embark on a year long trip around the world. On Saturday we will fly to Atlanta for a few days to see my family, and then Charlotte to see hers. Then, on January 20th we will fly to Casablanca, Morroco to start the West Africa section of our trip. We'll be visiting Morroco, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, and Ghana. Then we'll head to the Middle East to see Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. Then East Africa to Ethiopia and Kenya. Finally, we'll end our trip in India and Nepal. Of course, this rough itinerary is subject to change due to weather, war, ticket prices, indigestion, and romantic spontaneity.

We're very excited to say the least, but we're also sad to leave San Francisco. We've had a lot of fun over the last few years, and we'll miss you all.

Naturally we'll be blogging about our trip. Being the photo nerds that we are, we'll be taking lots of pictures, too. You can find our trip blog at brainplug.org/worldtrip although it's a little empty right now.

A few years ago Laurie and I went to Southeast Asia for three months, so the idea of a year long trip is not entirely insane to us, but we've never done anything this long before, either. We wanted to do something like this before we "settle down" and have kids. We realized that we weren't ready to stop traveling after that trip, and so the idea of this upcoming trip started to grow and fester in our heads until we recently sat down and actually bought the plane tickets. We know that much of our journey will be amazing, but it will also be very challenging.

While in Asia, and on other trips to places like Central America, we saw first hand how a large part of the rest of the world lives. In America, we often take for granted how lucky we are to have been born into such wealth and prosperity. As Warren Buffet always says, "You won the ovarian lottery." Even if you don't take your way of life for granted, it's hard to imagine actually living on less than $2 per day as over three billion people do. I've seen it first hand up close, and yet I still can't fathom it.

After that trip, Laurie and I wanted to help raise awareness of various issues around the globe. In our spare time we started Collective Lens, a nonprofit organization that aims to bring attention to important causes and charities through the use of photography. Our goal is to help bring important yet overlooked stories to the forefront of popular media. Check it out at www.collectivelens.com and upload photos if you have any. Organizations can list their contact information so that anyone wanting to get involved with a particular issue can find out how. While on our trip, we plan to meet with various organizations that are doing important work. We'll be blogging about this over the next year on the Collective Lens blog.

So, thanks to all of you who have made our time here in San Francisco great. We won't forget you, and we'll be back eventually.