One of the funnest, craziest, most inappropriate offices I’ve had the pleasure to work in!

I joined Cheezburger as basically a favor to a good friend. Amber Dunn brought me into the crazy, funstastic, wild world of Cheezburger because she needed someone she could rely on in the face of an increasingly dire battle with ovarian cancer. Some people bake lasagnas for friends with cancer, or maybe knit them a prayer quilt. I’m an entrepreneur, so my way of helping was to leave the comforts of my stay-at-home part-time consulting practice and dive back into the tumultuous world of digital consumers and startup-like offices, doing whatever was necessary and helping to complete a turnaround Amber had started.

Amber hanging out with her daughter Lolee.

From brand consultant, to VP of Product, to COO, my career path had two unique elements in the short time I was part of the company: 1) I learned that a brand promise can actually mean a great deal to the world; and 2) The experience was bittersweet, as my old friend and co-worker faded and eventually left us, succumbing to a fight she fought as valiantly as any decorated warrior. I learned a lot about life and death in those weeks and months, often holding 1:1’s with Amber at her bedside at Swedish Hospital, as she faced dwindling options. I got the unfortunate ticket to sit ringside at the deathbed of someone too young, too vibrant and too alive. As we worked to position Cheezburger as a once-again fast moving, growing concern, I also was humbled by the relentless beat of time, which for Amber slipped through the hourglass at a greatly accelerated rate than for the rest of us. Our brand promise of laughing out loud and laughing with others – of spreading happiness just for the sake of being happy – felt more and more urgent with the ensuing dusk gathering around all of Amber’s family and friends.

Ben trying to find the electronic cricket hidden in Cari’s walls!

And so, as I leave my position to ultimately help my own family find their path to happiness, I wish all of you at Cheezburger godspeed in delivering on your brand promise to as many people as you can touch. We get bogged down in ad sales reports and daily unique visitor stats and trending reports – but remember how important your mission is to so many, and remember how someone named Amber Dunn touched all of us in so many ways.

We consulted the travel doctor, reviewed detailed maps of all the countries we are visiting and we figured out what we needed.  On Thursday last week, we visited the travel clinic at Rite-Aid in Bellevue.  What an awesome place!  Ash and her team there are terrific! …4 hours and 20 shots later, we were done with ROUND #1 of shots…only 3 more visits to be complete…YIKES!  ….mind you, this is all AFTER we have already visited our primary care physicians to ensure that we are up to date with everything else!

What are we getting?  We opted for:

Typhoid

Meningitis

Hepatitis A & B Series (3 shot series)

Polio Boosters for Cliff and me

Rabies (3 shot series)

Japanese Encephalitis

Yellow Fever

Some people choose not to do Rabies but we decided that with the number of wild dogs running around Indonesia and Africa it is a good idea.  We have been talking to the kids about how they just have to pretend they don’t like dogs on this trip.  Dogs in some countries are not like dogs in Cannon Beach, OR.  But it will be a challenge not to want to pet cute animals like monkeys and puppies so we decided to play it safe.

In addition to shots, we have a laundry list of other medical supplies/first aid stuff we are dragging along.  See my earlier post on Medical.

Tuck gets the award for Mr. Brave, who volunteered to be FIRST for everything to get it over with.  Weighing in at only 35 pounds, he was really sore after his 3 shots!

We named our trip Project Equator in part because as we began pinning favorite places, they all seemed to hover around the equator line. Alas, this is not an absolute rule where we may not veer  more than 10° north or south of the equator or face abject failure of our mission.  You’ll notice wanderings as far north as 45°N in Florence Italy, and just south of the Tropic of Cancer at 27°S in Easter Island, Chile. Maybe it’s our settlement in the upper-left corner of the continental United States, where our vitamin-D starved bodies crave sunnier spots, or maybe there is some centering line we’re in search of as we hop scotch across the Earth. Whatever the reason, the places closest to the equator have always had a special pull for us.

So, without further ado, here’s the route as a stands today. This table gives you a rough idea as to where and when we will be located, based on when we arrive. Many of the country visits bleed from one month to the next, and in a few cases, we’re wandering near or around the destination, but you’ll get the gist:

Once we expanded our horizons so to speak, I had a brief obsession with the symmetry of the seven of us traveling to the seven continents. How cool would THAT be?! Alas, those dreams were quickly dashed after seemingly countless hours and many phone calls researching how we would get to Antartica. To state the obvious, this is a VERY hard place to get to! Not just the expense, but when you have kids under the age of 11, your choices are extremely limited. In the end, it was the expense that killed this particular dream… The least expensive option I could find for our family of 7 was $90,000!! Yes, ninety… thousand… dollars! Lisa and I quickly realized this would be a great empty nest trip in our retirement years – sorry kids – and we’d find another way to teach global warming and the social behaviors of penguins.

We landed, at least at this point, on 13 countries, averaging about a month in each nation, with the shortest stay being a little over a week to the longest stay lasting 2 months. If you include North America as the starting place for the trip, we end up on 6 out of 7 continents, which seems pretty awesome to us! Factoring into the list of what countries included the following factors / criteria / mandates:

• Each of us got a sacred cow destination to start
• We wanted to connect and revisit our other “home” countries of China and Vietnam, so they both had to be on the list
• Bali and Greece are not optional on any itinerary draft
• Erin Jones and her husband Nayay, who is a Masai from Tanzania, created a personal connection to Tanzania, and agreed to accompany us on that part of our journey
• Myanmar has recently opened up, and we LOVE Southeast Asia
• Wescott and Otto know a little Spanish
• The Heads of Easter Island have been a bit of an obsession for a while
• French Polynesia happens to be a mandatory stop over if you’re heading to Easter Island

There were many other factors, but the bulk of the trip came together pretty quickly for us. Sequencing, optimizing for weather and finding the best times to visit given places helped the rubrik’s cube fall into place. Unfortunately, not everyone’s sacred cows made the final cut. For example, Otto had chosen Madagascar, but it happens to be one of the more remote spots on the planet to get to, so it fell victim to the budget. In the end, however, we’re feeling good about balancing the desire to not move around too much with the opportunity to be in so many amazing regions of the globe.

“A gap year is a structured period of time when students take a break from formal education to increase self-awareness, challenge comfort zones, and experiment with possible careers.”

Traditionally a time when students, often between high school and college, take a year to find focus, mature, ready themselves to maximize the opportunity of higher learning, and go abroad to legally drink, the concept has grown in popularity and acceptance. A gap year typically involves traveling, with the goals of expanding one’s world, learning new cultures and connecting students with possible routes to life-long passions.

So our question, jealously asked by my wife Lisa and I, is: why do the kids get to have all the fun?! We’re all students of life, right? We  all could use a dose of self-awareness. Our comfort zones have become pretty entrenched in the routine, the couch and our electronic devices. As entrepreneurs, we’re perpetually in search of our careers. We deserve a gap year, and in fact, so do our kids at an even earlier age than is typically average.

With that, we conceived our gap year, which borrowed the concept so brilliantly created by folks in the United Kingdom in the 1970s as a way to fill the 7 to 8 month gap between final exams and the beginning of University. In our version, however, we expanded upon and added elements to suit our prejudiced needs. I do truly believe that part of a successful, happy life is to never stop being a student; so that part of the expansion of the concept was easy. Discovering wonderful wines and culturally relevant shots like ouzo is merely a bonus. Certainly self-discovery and reflection are also components of any great adventure, as is challenging comfort zones – so we could still be, if not a member, at least a distant faction of the AGA.

What’s missing from the textbook description for us, however, is the notion of connection. This is a central part of our mission in life and core value as a family. Whether it is seeking great connection with each other, new cultures, diverse peoples, new experiences, broader perspectives or the world at large, we really think connection is one of the greatest gifts we can imprint on our children and on each other. Yes, of course the danger of over-connection is high, and when we’re holed up in a cramped room in Yangshuo with weary, cranky kids that never leave on the magical schoolbus for several hours each day, I will most likely downplay the connection theme… But in general, connections feel like they are slipping away, even in a world with more digital connectedness than ever.

There’s also the “slow it down” underlying message a gap year transmits that is equally appealing to us. For students, the message is not to necessarily rush into college or university life automatically, robotically following a pre-determined path of lecture halls, dorm pranks and fraternity mixers. For us, the message is to recognize the speed in which the years fly by in the form of soccer games, homework assignments, dinner parties, work trips, home improvement projects and folding laundry is only increasing; and soon our very, very full nest will be drafty and quiet. So we need to take a breadth. We yearn to slow it down. We want to enjoy each other’s company. We want a break from the routine. We hope to turn off the distractions.

We need a gap year.

With that, I found this amazingly addictive site called 99Designs.com, where a community of designers from around the world submit designs for your project.  It’s pure brand porn for the graphic design obsessed geek that I am. After answering a questionnaire, clicking through a series of graphical elements, uploading a one-sheet for Project Equator (of course, you have to have a one-sheet), going through two design contest rounds, and selecting a winning designer, we have a brand ID worthy of our venture!

One of the inspirations I included for the designers was an image I took of our kids at Death Valley, CA a couple of years back. We road tripped down the West Coast for the holidays in our trusty steed (aka Megavan), hitting some national parks in the “off season” including Yosemite and Death Valley. Coming down from a wonderful hike in Marble Canyon, the kids had run ahead to where Megavan patiently awaited our return, ambivalently gazing out over the expansive valley as the sun set.

It captures exactly the essence of connection and the absolute “at home” feel we all have when we’re out in the world exploring. Tow of the designers latched on to this concept, and we’re so happy with the results!

Here are some of the entries that we considered:

Though a great deal of thought, planning, dreaming and list-making has ensued over the course of the last year in contemplation of our gap year, we finally arrive at the construction phase of our adventure. We’re starting at sea level and we should already have inhabited Everest Base Camp by now… there is much to be done.

And with that, the story of Project Equator: A Family Gap Year begins!

To learn why, check out: About

To learn who, check out: Travelers

To learn where, check out: The Itinerary