I’ve left Mattapoisett after successfully consuming two and a half pints of lobster meat along with a significant amount of fries. I have to thank the Oxford Creamery for my success, for their lobster rolls are second to none and highly addicting. One may assume that I got sick of lobster rolls after eating them for five days straight, but it’s actually quite the opposite. I’m still craving the utter pleasure of the Oxford Creamery lobster roll, for nothing else brings me the same unique tastes. I wish we had an Oxford Creamery in Seattle because any time I’m feeling a little bit down, I could have Mom just drive on over and I could scarf down a couple lobster rolls. I never appreciated the raw power that the Oxford Creamery held because my taste buds hadn’t quite matured, but with a year of traveling under my belt,  I understand why my parents constantly obsess about the Oxford Creamery lobster roll.

While we were in Mattpoisett, Terry and PopPop arranged a party with an exclusive visit by the Oxford Creamery, Oxcart, which is their version of a food truck.  This was encouraged partly by Wescott’s Great Wall Of China Blog Post with his wise comment: “My eyes have sampled holy lobster rolls from the Mattapoisett Oxford Creamery, and now just roll their eyes (pun intended) whenever you say, ‘We’re going to go down to the xyz restaurant and get some lobster rolls.’”    The Oxcart is a small trailer hauled by a pickup truck that holds a great amount of cargo considering it’s size. The Oxcart set up shop in Terry & PopPop’s driveway and we had a bash with all the blog followers that were on the east coast.  So there I sat, on my grandparents’ deck, enjoying my lobster roll and fries while looking out to Cape Cod across the wide Buzzard’s Bay.  It was at that moment that I finally understood that while I saw many things traveling,  it still can’t get much better than enjoying time with family and friends with a lobster roll in hand (and mouth)

Mom and Dad hanging out in the Oxcart

YUMMMMM!

Mom, Dad and Yve with Mom’s cousin John, Aunt Muffin and my great-grandmother, Grandfan!

Views from our table!

Outside Deck

Nepenthe is a greek word meaning anti-depressant drug. So good news depressed people, this restaurant is the cure!  But seriously, their hamburgers are in fact sublime. The fluffy bun is baked to perfection and practically melts in your mouth while the patty oozes it’s flavorful juice onto your tongue. Every bite reveals a new flavor, triggering sheer pleasure to arise. benin As your mind experiences emotions you had never discovered, you look out to the beautiful view of the open sea beyond the crackling fire, and realize the name, Nepenthe, fits this place as much as “awesome” fits Otto.

The Nepenthe Burger, worth the trip!

 Sushi Heaven. That’s not a way to describe the restaurant, that’s literally the name of it.  Maybe they just figured they’d save the trouble of describing it by making the name of the restaurant the description of the restaurant. After a plate of five rolls, my sushi pallet was broadened greatly along with my stomach.  What iI love about sushi, is the amount of flavor that is packed into one roll and Sushi Heaven took that to whole new level. Usually, all sushi, to me, tastes pretty similar, but not Sushi Heaven.

 It just so happens that we also tried making sushi ourselves in Carmel. I am still a newbie in the sushi making world, but I plan on being a master sushi chef by the end of the year.  Anyway, we made some mean rolls with the ingredients: nori, rice, carrot, cucumber, tuna, salmon, and crab.  We rolled them up in a disorderly matter with our ingredients of choice. They tasted great, but not particularly restaurant quality from the display side of things.

 We also visited a stupendous sushi restaurant in Sausalito, Sushi Ran, for Wescott’s B-day that offers Sushi Heaven some stiff competition! I’ve learned that California is, in fact, the place to go if your looking to get a killer sushi meal!

If you are near Carmel, CA, make sure you stop by Sushi Heaven on any day but Sunday!

Before we dive right in, let me take you through a brief history of the bottle opener. Bottle openers have always been an understated kitchen item, but they weren’t even invented until a Baltimore bottler named William Painter came along and did so in 1892. Before this spectacular invention, soda, beer, and all other bottled liquids came with attached stoppers. This method would of worked fine had it not been for the loss of freshness through the lid. Good old beer enthusiast William came along with a solution: the crown top which is what your bottles probably have on them today.  The crown top technology was a huge improvement from a hygienic perspective, but also required a tool to be opened…thus, the bottle opener was born!

Mermaid – Florence	Crazy Donkey – Santorini	Lizard – Barcelona
Flamenco Dancer – Seville	Rooster – Portugal	Hand – Morocco
Rhino and Lion – Tanzania	Country – Vietnam	Ho Chi Minh
Thai Boxing – Bangkok	Carved Wood – Myanmar	Elephant – Changmai
Insect – Yangshuo	Tallest Building – Shanghai	Twin Towers – Kuala Lumpur
Frog – Ubud	Say No Evil – Canggu	Koala – Austalia
Whale – CA	Lobster – MA

All of our gadgets and tech unpacked when we got home!

I know what you’re thinking… didn’t you venture out into the world to get away from it all? Didn’t you successfully cut the electronic cord, shedding all the distractions to engage in daily debates, conversation and non-electrified noble pursuits? The short answer is, no! The behind-the-scenes reality of our journey, and the ability to leave home for a year, given educational priorities, career aspirations, visions of blogging grandeur and an obsession with photography demanded tools of the trade… times seven!

No one has ever accused us of traveling light, and the Trip Around the World kept our reputation intact. There was probably over 300 pounds of equipment that we carried and divided between our seven suitcases – all referred to as Troop Gear. Each time we moved locations, troop gear was assembled and divided up between each of us. This gear represented at least 50% of the weight carried across the world by us, including all of the technology, gadgets and the 35 pounds of text books the three older kids required to stay in educationally good graces. Most of it turned out to be useful; some not as necessary. Did we really need an electronic scale? No, Wescott, we probably did not. Did each member of our team need a personal iPad Mini? A resounding absolutely from all of us. Can you rely just on iPads, and leave your laptop behind? No, not if school work, travel booking, blogging and business planning are part of your agenda. Did everyone need their own camera? Maybe not, but the 80K + images will be with us forever!

For those of you contemplating a similar journey, here are a few tips from us:

Only have one cell phone with a US contract. We figured out half way through the trip that it was a lot more economical to buy a cell phone that you could swap out the SIM card in each country for a local phone number and plan. Skype was going to be our main go-to communication system to talk to people back home. However we realized that in many places, the WIFI just isn’t strong enough to support consistent connections. Lisa and I were fairly regularly on conference calls to places across the globe, and eventually we realized that having people call us on our local cell number was a much more reliable communications technology than relying on the Internet. In those first few months of travel, when we still relied on our AT&T iPhones for reliable connections, we had some horrendous cell bills!

Tech Check is Your Friend. While there were many things we probably didn’t get right on the trip, we did a great job at Tech Check, which we credit to coming home with all of the devices we left with. Almost every day that we would venture out into the village, city or countryside of the resident country, Lisa or I would yell the familiar “Tech Check!” call. That meant all iPads, computers, cameras, lenses, hard drives and phones needed to be collected and deposited into a designated suitcase, which was locked up. After a couple of countries, we realized that since all of our suitcases were cloth, it would be pretty easy to cut into our technology booty. So we ditched one of the bags and bought a hard suit case with built in locks, upgrading our security. Really tech check was more about keeping track of items and not leaving them scattered about for an easy poach than a highly secure vault; and the results kept us theft free for the entire year.

Be wary of Cellular Internet Service. When we arrived in Seville, Spain, we settled into our awesome apartment and reveled in the speed and power of the most awesome Internet service. With 7 iPads humming, YouTube videos, Skype calls and iTunes downloads abounded in the first 24 hours. And then, the pipe ran dry! Like a cripple trying to climb Everest, downloading an email took 10 minutes. The video player and Skype laughed at the mere click of intention. It was like cement was poured into the digital river of ones and zeroes keeping us connected. It tuned out that the house had a cellular modem, which only had 3 GB of data allocated a month. And, there was pretty much no way to get more bandwidth allocated! So much for productivity at the apartment. Wescott needed connectivity for online high school, and I was trying to speak to YouTube Creators around the globe. We spent a lot of time at a cafe in our neighborhood that offered unlimited WIFI. Actually, that turned out to work in our favor, as we met a wonderful friend named Julian, who took us under his wing for the 2 weeks we spent in Seville. We also ended up renting a room at local hostel in order to do Skype calls from midnight to 3 am, since the cafe was closed!

Sleeper Device that was Awesome: LED projector. On a whim, I purchased a tiny LED projector that measured 6″ x 5″ x 2.5″ so we could watch movies as a family. This turned out to be such a fun addition to the trip. We watched Khan Academy videos about art history, movies from iTunes and documentaries about a given location on whatever wall  that worked in our current home. We didn’t use it every week, but it turned out to be a fun event we all enjoyed, and I would definitely take it again.

Bring a Couple of External Hard Drives. We live in a data-intensive world. Our phones shoot HD video. Our cameras create large files for each image. When you’re traveling, pictures and videos eat gigabytes like a legion of ants defoliating a jungle. That GoPro camera you think would be fun to use? It is fun, but just that one device required 300GB of storage per country! Luckily, external hard drives are tiny, light and packed with storage. We used 3 individual terabyte drives to support the 3 computer hard drives on our laptops. Luckily, we had no major crashes; but we needed almost every ounce of storage space.

Online High School is a Really Deceiving Name. The University of Nebraska offered a great solution for Wescott to complete his sophomore year of high school while traveling around the globe through their online course offering. While assignments, projects and tests were submitted online, all of the course materials took the form of workbooks… 35 pounds of workbooks! Given our spotty Internet connections, good old print and paper remained a relevant technology that allowed for theoretically consistent studying… if only there was a solution for procrastination…then we may have been able to shed pounds sooner in the trip as Wescott completed each class!

For you shoppers out there, here is a list of the technology and devices we took across the globe:

• (7) Apple iPad Minis
• (4) MacBooks – we started with one 11-inch MacAir thinking we could all share, which lasted about a month before we realized that wouldn’t work; then added a 13-inch MacBook Air that Mouni brought to Vietnam for Wescott as he needed a dedicated machine for school; then added a MacBook Pro for Cliff when he traveled back to North America for work; then added our other MacBook from home when we got to Carmel for Otto to code!
• (6) cameras including a Leica film camera, a Cannon 5D SLR, (3) waterproof Lumix point and shoots, and a GoPro Hero 3
• (1) mini tripod (never used it!)
• (5) SLR lenses
• (5) iPods
• (2) iPhones
• (2) Samsung phone with local SIM cards
• (2) wireless keyboards for the iPads
• (1) electronic weigh scale
• (15) Apple charging cords
• (7) Binoculars for safari
• (3) Headphone splitters
• (14) sets of headphones, thinking we’d lose some, which amazingly, we didn’t!
• (1) Jambox speaker for dance parties and movie watching
• (1) Optoma LED mini projector
• (7) headlamps / flashlights
• (1) solar charger (never used it!)
• (3) USB Memory sticks
• (3) 1 Terabyte external hard drives
• (2) sets of International electrical adaptors
• (300) Kodak T-Max 100 B&W film
• (14) Workbooks for University of Nebraska
• (4) Math textbooks
• (1) Literature textbook

I woke up that first morning in Carmel to a kitchen full of grocery bags. All the counters had disappeared and it was overwhelming. I found myself quickly moving towards the doorway leading to the living room where I stopped and turned. There, out in the open, on the counter was the yellow and purple package with the words “Fig Newtons” printed expectantly on the top. Still, I moved into the living room, trying my best to resist the urge to grab it and go.

Sometime later, Mom walked in wielding the same yellow and purple package. I felt the corners of my mouth tugging up and I couldn’t stop the smile that had already taken center stage. I all but inhaled half of its contents. But it was inevitable that my high would come to its climax and I would be left with only the feeling of dissatisfaction, however intuitive. Almost as if I was searching for some lost item. But why; what? The same feeling was felt at the towns local candy shop. I stood, unsure of what to get. There was so many different kinds of candies. It seemed like a hard decision, yet was it also something else, something—

Ah! I know.

Alchemy’s raw peanut butter cups in Ubud, Bali. They completely, thoroughly, wrecked me  And now, no matter what, they will always be better—a bit above the rest—superior to any pre-packaged food.

I  guess it’s just the way things are now and I’ll always be itching to go back.

Doesn’t get better than this!

– Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

            I care about my shoes (although I probably would throw them out if they were moldy…that’s just flat out disgusting).  My shoes, my old, worn-out, navy-blue Lacostes, hold a special place in my heart.  When they were new, my mom begged me to wear them.  Now, ironically, she begs me to throw them away.  My mom bought them for me at the Nordstrom Rack one day and forced me to wear them: “I threw away your old ones and now you’re wearing these.”  In an act of rebellion – I mean, what’s up with an alligator on a shoe? – I made it a point to specifically wear the new shoes each and every time I went long boarding, which, for those of you who don’t know, entails your choice of footwear to slide and smash against the rough, hot pavement repeatedly. Little did I know, this would only make me more fond of them and for a mere twenty dollar pair of shoes, they sure could take a licking and keep on ticking.

Somehow those stubborn shoes withstood the test of time and wound up in my packed bag for Project Equator. Due to a greater distain for the other footwear I packed, I almost always ended up wearing these time-tested Lacostes. Where I went, so did they: up all 463 smooth marble steps of the Duomo in Florence, through the twelve-hundred year old cracked stone streets of the ancient Phaistos in Crete, over the scorching-hot, bright-orange dunes of the Sahara desert, across the wild African plains in the Serengeti, in and out of the dark, crammed Viet-Cong tunnels in Ho Chi Minh City, and practically everywhere else. I did this all unconsciously of course until one moment, which I can recall with a surprising amount of clarity — one moment in particular made me come around and realize their sentimentality.

As I walked ahead the rest of my family, I listened to the soft impact of my shoes against the dusty, granular pathway on a grey day in April. I thought about what returning to Mercer Island was going to be like, most likely inspired by the comforting overcast skies. I finally reached a venerable stone watchtower surrounded by sizable chunks of fragmented façade in this decidedly remote area of forest. Careful to test the integrity of the structure, I slowly leaned against the delicate wall and took in the stunning scenery: the Great Wall of China wound over hills and across mountain faces for as far as the eye could see.  My gaze drifted from this to the pathway from which I came, in an attempt to locate the rest of the family. I couldn’t see them quite yet, but my eyes focused on the pathway itself and honed in on the imprints in the dirt.  My footprint looked as though it belonged there, like the whole scene would not be complete without it.  I started thinking: have I been leaving this footprint everywhere?  It made me proud.  Proud that I had left my mark, a testament to my globe-trotting, albeit temporary and sometimes virtually invisible, in every single place we had been.

My gaze rhythmically followed my footsteps one by one and eventually fell upon my shoes: my shabby sneakers, bursting at the seams with gaping holes and fraying fabric, pattered with dust, but full of radiant memories.  Each gash, rupture, and tear embodied a snippet of Project Equator: the time I scaled a rock face in Santorini or when some crazy dogs attacked me in Chiang Mai or when I hiked a slippery gorge in Crete.  These shoes were my friends, I know it sounds weird but “practicality isn’t the whole thing with gloves or with anything else.”

Serendipitously, I recently encountered a new pair at Nordstrom Rack….so oddly foreign compared to my shoes

Yve especially gets her share of the action. Everyday, at one point, she is spread out on the carpet with a sweatshirt and book. In fact Yve, the fuzzy carpet connoisseur herself, is here to tell us a bit about her profound love with the Carmel floors.

“I like carpeted floors because it’s like a cloud. Wherever you are the cloud is there, unless you have a hard wood floor somewhere. If you’re aching for a fuzzy blanket, just let your legs loose and fall to ground and the cloud will catch you!” Yve says.

Floor to floor carpeting also has its downsides. The fact that you can just lie down on the floor at any time can be a bad thing. Your laziness level at least doubles. It is almost like gravity is stronger and it’s hard not to drop to your knees and give into the power of the fuzzy carpet gods. Nice to be almost home!

Tuck and Jones spent hours playing with paper dolls they made on the carpets in Carmel!

We did this a number of times while she and her family were here in Carmel. Some days the waves were so big, it was hard to keep up. I’d like to say we became somewhat professional body surfers in those two weeks. Though… not really. Accompanying us in the water was a plentiful bunch of kelp that I kept trying to gift to Indi, but she rudely refused each of my offers. Anyway, we’d always end our body surfing expeditions by riding one last good wave and then we’d make our way back up to the house to take hot showers and to reheat ourselves. And no matter how hard I tried, I still found sand hiding away somewhere on my body the next day.

My cousin, Indi catching a wave!

Cute picture of us sightseeing on 17 mile drive!

Politically not correct picture of us drinking coffee and smoking bubble gum cigarettes

 Jet Lag. What does that mean? When I think of jet lag I think of my sleep pattern. I’m guessing that’s what most people think of also. It was until I flew from Australia to Los Angles that I thought sleep was the only victim of a time switch.

I came to Carmel feeling normal. I had a lot of energy; I went to bed on time, and I woke up at a reasonable hour. The next day was the same way: I had a lot of energy and excited to be back on American soil. I watched Chasing Mavericks on the couch, and went to bed; although this time there was no sleep involved. I lay on my bed with my eyes forcefully shut. For some reason this guitar riff at the end of Chasing Mavericks was stuck in my head for the whole night and trust me, that’s annoying!

For your information, don’t watch any movies while recovering from a jet lag. They violently adhere to your brain, and it keeps you awake whether you liked the movie or not. I fell asleep at around five in the morning and woke up at noon. Surprisingly, I also had diarrhea. I didn’t know at the time, but this was actually linked with jet lag too. My digestive track was thrown for a loop when I ate at different times during the day. Yve even pooped whole blueberries… a fact I would have rather not known! I also had a dull, annoying, persistent headache.

So with diarrhea, a pounding headache, and a screwed up sleep pattern, 48 hours had gone by and finally I recovered so I could experience Carmel!

After the jet lag, I was psyched to head to the beach for some skim boarding!