International travel and community

My wife and I took off from Portland in February 2018, and ended up working and traveling for ~2 years after that. Luckily in January 2020, we ended up settling down in Bend, at the planned end of our travels. We’ve been here for 5 years now, and we’re about ready to take off again!

Me hiking inPatagonia

Community

We just told our landlord and jobs that we’re planning to travel. Having done this before, we know that our primary goal will be building community. Traveling with a partner for a year+ starts to become isolating, especially when you’re in countries that you don’t speak the language and have very different cultures.

Last time my wife and I both worked 4 days a week, but this time she is fully leaving her job. This means she’ll be doing a lot more hiking, and I’m going to have a bit more pressure to spend less time working and more time exploring! It will be an interesting new dynamic to manage, but I’m excited to have more chance to see the world.

Our current plan (March - August)

The current plan is:

  • March 2 - March 9: Atlanta, for a Read the Docs offsite.

  • March 10 - April 2: Turks & Caicos, visiting family and doing some diving and whale watching.

  • April 2 - 7: Dominican Republic, mostly just a long layover but checking out Santo Domingo and a couple other areas.

  • April 7-29: Costa Rica, planning to hike the Camino de Costa Rica with our friends Russ & Quyen, along with some other wildlife viewing.

  • April 30: San Francisco for a dev event, but have some time for dinner.

  • April 31 - May 7: Portland, Write the Docs Portland.

  • May 7 - May 14: Virginia, visiting family.

  • May 15 - May 22: Pittsburgh, Pycon US.

  • May 23 - *: Europe, likely doing some hiking in the Alps & Dolomites, as well as visiting friends in Amsterdam, and a possible offsite in Berlin. We also want to hike some in Montenegro, which we’ve heard is great, and isn’t in Schengen which is important for managing our 90 days there.

I’ll plan to update my location regularly, and would love to meet up with folks and talk hiking, travel, tech, or anything else if you’re in a similar place!



Hey there! I'm Eric and I work on communities in the world of software documentation. Feel free to email me if you have comments on this post!