Approaching Departure...

Dear Friends,

As most of you know, I graduated from EMU this past spring with a Biology degree and have been working at Grand View Hospital in PA this summer. During the past year, I have decided to spend some time after graduation traveling the world with my friend Eric Kennel. Over the past few years, travel experiences have had an incredible influence on my life and have helped me to have a better focus on where the future may be taking me.

In two weeks we will be beginning a journey around the world that will last at least a year. We will be spending our time visiting old and new friends, serving others wherever possible, and spending time backpacking and exploring all of creation. After this journey, I really don't know what will be next, but I do know that this experience will have impacts on my life that are beyond my understanding at this point in time.

Over the past few months, we have built a website to document our journey and to communicate with others. This site explains our reasons for embarking on this trip, our itinerary, and a lot of other related information. We hope to update this site weekly throughout the next year with journal entries and photos from our experience.

The address of this website is: http://www.vivaelviaje.com

If you received this email, you have somehow made it to our mailing list. If you would like to be removed from this list, follow the instructions on the journals page of the website. Otherwise, we hope you enjoy learning about our journey and the paths of others that we come in contact with, and that you share in our vision for this new & exciting adventure.

Over the next year we will encounter many new places, people, and challenging situations. Many risks accompany an undertaking of this magnitude, and we trust that our willingness will be met with a deeper understanding of the rewards that God intends for the journey of life. We welcome you to remember us in prayer and to follow us in spirit. Blessings as our paths interact and overlap throughout these next stages of our lives.

Live the Journey,
Dave Landis (& Eric Kennel)

Countdown time

It's now only three weeks away from our departure date from Harrisonburg, VA to the world. We spent most of Saturday buying the rest of our gear at the Campmor store in NJ, which was an adventure in itself between the flooding from Hurricane Ivan and the Italian & Chinese Eatery with it's large stuffed pizzas. It does feel good to have everything that we need to pack, but there is still a lot left to do before we head off.

Today I worked on the website for a while, and here are the various updates:

- New look for the navigation bar on the left
- Navigation pages with photo icons to help with site organization
- A translation page, powered by Babel Fish
- Travel Quotes page - more coming soon...
- Random additional graphics and photos
- Reworking the blog to allow us to publish permanent pages that look like the rest of the site, but allow us to change them easier on the road and for users to add comments
- I'm also working on a new opening page that improves looks and provides quicker access to the most important info

I also put the first coat of sealant on my sailboat this evening, and hopefully I can get the momentum going to finish that project up soon. I need to keep it moving because I have multiple layers of epoxy/paint/varnish that need a day to dry. My car is running now, hopefully. I'm just counting on one bolt holding down a sealant gasket as well as two. We'll see how that goes.

I have one more week of work, 60 hours more and that's it. I need to be done with my hardcore schedule soon, so that I can rest up for a little and get the rest of the trip prep done. I will be home starting this friday (9/24) until I leave for VA on the next Tuesday (10/5).

It's really hard to take all of this in and to understand what it means for my life. This is the largest transition that I've made up to this point, and I'm putting everything that I have into this one experience. I just hope that life slows down enough before I leave so that I can be mentally present for these last moments passing by...there are going to be a whole lot of goodbyes coming up really soon.

Vaccinations

I spent the evening on the CDC's website (www.cdc.gov) researching health issues and country-specific disease information. Basically the main vaccinations we need to have are Hep A/B, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, and up-to-date Tetanus, Measules, and Polio. I think both of us already have these taken care of. The questions:

Rabies - CDC recommends this for people doing outdoor activities and having exposure to animals on a frequent basis. Eastern Europe and South/Central America are particular hotspots. I think we should consider this...

Japanese Encephalitis - This is recommended for the Indian Subcontinent and parts of many countries in the South Pacific. This is a series of 3 shots, which are already too late to get, so maybe we can get this en-route if we need to???

Malaria - I downloaded a bunch of information about the different malaria meds necessary for various countries. It looks like Chloroquine will be our best bet, except in parts of South America and India, where there is resistance to the drug. We'll have to go with Malarone or a form of Doxycycline.

Tomorrow i'm planning to call about the cost of rabies vacc. and ask a few other questions. I'll let you know what I find.

Website Overhaul

I spent most of this afternoon and evening working out some of the technical and visual bugs in the website. The main accomplishment is synchronizing all of the header and side bars to match, especially through the movable type and gallery pages. I also added photos to the purpose, resources, and gear pages. I have also set up individually viewed blog entries to look basically like a regular page in the site would, so we can easily update specific pages through the movable type interface.

I've been trying to find a way to have a box on the main page that would be dynamically updated when we post new journal entries, but so far I haven't been able to figure it out.

As far as non-website trip preparation, I've been working on getting my car ready to sell and still plugging along at the sailboat. I'm also getting a bunch of stuff ready to sell. If anyone wants any of this, let me know:

? 2.4 Ghz Cordless Telephone with digital answering machine & caller ID
? Technics Stereo Receiver with digital EQ, Dolby Surround, and 2 satellite speakers
? Technics 5-disc CD player
? 2 Technics speakers
? Pioneer car amp ? 4x100W max, 4x50W RMS
? Car stereo system wiring
? 2 Stinger long RCA cables
? 4 gauge power cable
? fuse, T-block
? speaker wire
? miscellaneous stereo & computer wiring or adaptors
? 2 - 40lb dumbells

I was wondering how the biography page is coming along. I think once that's up, all of the fundamental parts of the site would be completed. I wanted to talk about the contact letter sometime too. I think we should basically customize it for each person we send it to anyway, so I'm a little hesitant about how much to work with it. When would be a good time to talk on the phone this week? I could do either tomorrow before 2pm or Thursday after 6pm. I'll be working for the rest of the week.

Brandon and I went backpacking last night on the AT and we were talking about the Campmor run. He said he might have interest in going and I was wondering if you are going to be around on the weekend of the 17-19th?

I'm only working a 3-11 tomorrow, and then I'm back into the mania of work. Three more weeks of work, two more of prep, and we're on the road...