Why would anyone in their right mind haul heavy, expensive, cumbersome, and delicate computer equipment around the world, deal with all the hassles and headaches attendant to such equipment (theft, damage, incompatible electrical and phone systems, etc..), and then, periodically,  take time away from traveling and experiencing to pound a keyboard and update a web site?  

We're not sure.  

Indeed, we're not exactly sure what gave us this idea in the first place.  Sure, we always dreamed about traveling around the world, but doing it with a computer  and, at the same time, trying to build and maintain a web site seems a little out there, particularly for people who did not own a computer as the dawn rose on 1999.  

And we are also well aware that there are people who, as they read these words, are mentally composing the nasty email they will send to us chiding us for not being real travelers—preaching to us, for instance,  that the technology, and desire to write about our experiences, for instance, puts yet an additional barrier between us and the people and lands we hope to explore and come to know.  Others will merely say that we are not real travelers because a real traveler would never compromise a journey with the additional, unnecessary, weight and inconvenience of the equipment necessary to do what we are trying to do.  

We appreciate and understand such viewpoints (yes, this is intended to be a preemptive strike). 

Ultimately, our decision to try to build and maintain a web site to chronicle our journey was fueled by the challenge of it all, together with the promise of being able to share it all, on a relatively periodic basis,  with our friends and family.   Further, others out there have done, and are doing, this very thing, and we have learned much from their experiences and their web sites.  For instance, to us one of, if not the, best travelogue type web sites out there is www.wired2theworld.com.  Kris and Dave traveled the world for 9 months and maintained a very interesting, entertaining, and visually attractive web site on their own, from the road.  The fact that they did it themselves makes it so good.  Check it out; it really is a great site.

Think about it.  Most of us are excited and energized by new challenges.  Now consider the challenge that we were volitionally assuming when we began declaring to our friends and family not only that we were going to suspend our very successful careers for a year to travel around the world, but that we were also going to document our journey via web site.  As though traveling the world for a year was not difficult enough, we had to heap upon that the added difficulty of trying to build and maintain a web site, something that neither of us knew anything about (other than that we could, through persistence, figure it out).   Challenge is a wonderfully motivating force and it has figured prominently in our efforts to date.  

But more importantly, technology allows us to share our experiences in a way and with a timeliness that historically has not been possible.  Who doesn't enjoy, after they have returned from a great trip or amazing experience, reliving and sharing such experiences (through stories, photographs, or otherwise) with others.  As human beings, we are inherently story-tellers, and travel provides great grist for the story-telling mill.   

Other than the above, the answer to "why the web-site" may ultimately prove to be a combination of stupidity, hubris, and plain-old not knowing what we were getting ourselves into.  Only time will tell.   

Indeed, it is not lost on us that it is possible (but we do not think likely) that the next significant challenge we may face is how to send our computer home!