We Did It!

Thank you for joining us on our journey Traveling Neverland!  I will use this blog to share our travels, share my thoughts, and share some photos and videos 🙂  I would also love to hear from you so please get in touch.  Click the “Contact” link on this page and submit a comment through this site, or through Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, or E-mail (listed in order of preference.)  Or, most importantly, come join us for a portion of our travels.  Away we go – second star on the right and straight on til morning!

How Did We Get Here?

Once upon a time (about 10 years ago), in a galaxy far, far away (Muncie, Indiana), my wife, Valerie, sent me an article about “The Benefits of Retiring Often.”  It more or less promoted the idea of setting up, in your budget, a savings path different from your general retirement accounts and home savings.  This pot of savings would be built up to an amount that you would use to dip out of your “normal life” for a certain period of time every so often.  Could be 6 months every 3 years, 1 years every 10 years, or whatever makes sense for you (for us it ended up being 10 years or so of savings for 2 years of dipping out.)  What you do during the dipping out time depends on your passions.  Maybe you love to surf, or to paint, or to climb mountains, or to volunteer, or a number of other things.  For us, the shining light resides in (largely international) travel.  Whatever it looks like for you though, the point of it all is that when you officially retire later in life, too often you are not physically or mentally capable of doing the amazing things you have been looking forward to your entire life.  This “retiring often” path promotes your ability to do those things while you are still young enough to be capable of enjoying them more fully (and maybe, as in our case, giving your kids the amazing experience as well.)  Needless to say, I read the article and was all in and we started saving.

Why Did We Decide to Travel Neverland Now?

When we started saving, we did not have an exact start date in mind for our travel, but rather figured we would “let life lead” and be present for what it uncovered for us.  My oldest son, Henry, graduated high school this year and decided that he wanted to enter college in the fall rather than defer and join us on this journey.  We are proud of Henry and very excited for his collegiate adventure!  For us, Henry graduating high school provided one “break” in our “normal life” and ties to Muncie.  That, combined with the current state of government and life in the US, provided the indicators we needed to determine that summer 2025 was the right time to begin.

But Ari, You Left Muncie 2 Weeks Ago…What You Been Up To, Cuz?!?

Ezra and I ended up leaving Muncie one day after Valerie and Naomi.  Getting everything out of your house never goes quickly.  We gave away 80% of our belongings, sold 10%, and packed up the other 10% on a 16″ Budget Rental Truck and drove from Muncie to my parents house in northern NJ.  Driving the truck was actually surprisingly easy once I got the hang of it.  The only real point to pay extra attention to is changing lanes as there is no rear-view mirror and limited side-view mirror access. 

We spent the first few days in NJ unloading the truck and bringing a lot of our stuff to a storage unit, while a small amount will stay in my parents’ house. 

Ezra, my mom, and I drove down to Philadelphia for a Club World Cup soccer match between Manchester City and Wydad AC from Casablanca, Morocco.  While Man City won the match 2-0, the Moroccan fans made their presence felt and far outdid the Man City fans in terms of sound, movement, and support.

After that, Henry flew in for 6 days and my parents threw a combined high school graduation party for Henry and going away party for us.  It was great to see so many friends and family.

We hung out with my parents, played some video games, and even made a day trip into NYC to spend time with our dear friend, Lindsey and her family, who were visiting from MN.  We took a tour of the catacombs in the original St. Patrick’s Cathedral downtown, got donuts at the Doughnut Plant (the coconut cream is especially amazing), and, of course, ate a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli.  I have to say that often, when repeatedly going to a restaurant in a city you visit once a year or more, you eventually decide you don’t really have to go to that restaurant anymore.  Not Katz’s!  Every time I go, I lament that I can’t eat that pastrami more often! 

Henry, Ezra, and I also got to see a NWSL match with Gotham FC defeating Bay City FC, with Rose Lavelle’s first start of the year!

Finally, after saying goodbye to Henry at the airport (I cried a lot in the car), we loaded up a rental (thanks to my mom and dad for the going away present) and drove to Revere, MA to spend 3+ days with our friends, the Carrier-Ladds, before flying out of Boston. (The kids also got to go to movies and pools and such, with my mom, as I packed and Valerie worked full-time up until the day before we left.)  Revere was also fun, with a lot of time for us and the kids to reconnect with good friends who we hadn’t seen in 3 years (Ezra has already video chatted in Iceland with his friend Mira).  We had three days in a row of beach fun with our friends at Revere Beach (which happens to be the oldest public beach in the US), and felt even more deeply that it is the wonderful people in our life that is what we will miss while we travel Neverland.

Drum Roll, Please . . .

And then, on Tuesday July 1, we got on an IcelandAir plane and flew the surprisingly short (less than 5 hours) flight from Boston to Reykjavik, Iceland.  It was nice to have flexibility in our travel as flying out from Boston on a Tuesday saved us money and avoided a red-eye flight.

As I said at the beginning: Second star on the right, straight on til morning!  We made it.  We have begun to travel Neverland.  Part 1 – Iceland!