The Airport Family Selfie

So the Hattas are doing a thing. We leave today on a year-long journey through parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, New Zealand, South and Central America. Before getting into all the details, I’d like to share some context on how we got here (CMH airport, about to take off on a 9-hour flight to Reykjavik, Iceland), both for others as well as myself (Robert). Here’s the “short” version…

Late last year, a dear friend and coach challenged me with a simple question: where is your happy place? At the time, I was feeling out of alignment across every part of my life — my kids, my marriage, and my career. In spite of the chaos that I felt swirling around me, as well as my inability to tame any of it, I answered his question quickly and with certainty. My happy place, where I feel both present in the moment and excited for what’s to come, is when I’m at the airport, with my family, getting ready to embark on a trip somewhere.

Going somewhere far enough to require an airplane flight is exciting for a lot of families. It usually means we’re heading out on vacation. But for us, this family, it’s not just about the destination and what we’ll do when we get there. We enjoy the actual traveling part, including the shuffle, the lines, and the volatility that comes with navigating airports domestic and abroad. We even like that dirty, dirty Chinese food from the airport food court. The kids are resilient, adaptable, and even patient. They enjoy the day bags they’ve packed full of treats, drawing notebooks, and more recently, devices. Meg and I are experienced travelers, comfortable in the knowledge that things goes sideways all the time and it’s best to just roll with it. We’re good at it and operate like a team.

But for me, it’s more than that. For the better part of the last 10 years, I’ve put my career squarely ahead of family, marriage, and relationships. There is a lot more to unpack there than is appropriate for this blog. But the relevant part is that traveling, the act of going from one place to another for more than a few days, is one of the only times where I’m truly present with my family. I’m not checking email or taking a quick call or thinking about the meeting I just left or the one I’m about to enter. I’m actually there, with the space and time to adjust that a mere weekend cannot provide.

These moments are captured in the Hatta Family Airport Selfie. We usually look a bit ragged, either because of the early hour or the fact that we’re dressed for comfort rather than to impress. But each of these snapshots represent to me the moment when I’m at my best, doing the things that matter most — being a present father and husband — with the people that matter most.

That question about my happy place led to another: why not build a life that aligns with that feeling every day?

Hold that thought for a moment…

Meg and I have for years dreamed of living abroad as a family. Fifteen years ago, before kids or even getting married, we were tempted to build our family globally. We lived in London and saw many of our expat friends choose to build their lives and families in far off places. We foresaw a vision of the multilingual, global citizens our kids would become and we wanted it. However, we wanted more for our kids to know their grandparents. And we decided without regret to return to Ohio where all four of our parents live.

Quietly, however, we held on to the idea that we could still live abroad with the kids for perhaps a year at some point. Ideally, it would happen when they were old enough to appreciate the experience, but before they start to pull away from us.

But life happened. And fifteen years went by. Our daughter, Sydney, turned 13 this summer and is on the doorstep of starting her high school experience. Tick. Tock.

Both of these threads converge into this particular Hatta Family Airport Selfie. A shared dream between Meg and me, so close to slipping away, colliding with a mid-life reckoning that I was living a life out of alignment with what makes me happy. All in the nick of time.

As we prepare for takeoff, I want to express special gratitude to Meg for her patience and fortitude these last nine years. When I recognized just how out of alignment I’d become, I knew I had to start reinvesting in our relationship. And she was there waiting for me. We are fortunate to have incredible friends and family in support of all the little things that led up to and fed into this experience. And I have two friends in particular, Christopher Celeste and Bradley James Davies, who helped guide me back to me.

Thank you.

Soooooo, what’s up with this trip?

When we started seriously thinking about it, Meg and I laid out a few “guiding principles”. Each provides answers to many of the questions we are asked about the trip.

1. We’ll homeschool the kids though their education won’t be a priority — at least in the traditional sense. We’ll integrate learning into the experience and do what’s required from a math, reading and writing standpoint to minimally keep up. We’ve hired a couple of amazing educators the kids already know and love to help guide us through a curriculum and add a layer of accountability. But travel will drive their educational experience and not the other way around.
2. We decided to do a bucket list tour versus go deep into life in a single country. We listed our big must-see destinations and experiences (Galapagos, African Safari, Nepal, Angkor Wat as examples), noted the best seasons in which to visit, and started charting a rough course. We also took recommendations from our friends who’ve been to so many amazing places. We will continue to take any and all suggestions.
3. However, we’d like to take each place in a bit, staying for at least two weeks in a location if not a month or more (thank you, AirBnB). But that means we’ve had to say “no” to a lot of amazing places.
4. We are prioritizing natural beauty and smaller town experiences over large cities, museums, and churches. There will hopefully be future trips to Rome, Paris, Sydney, or Cairo.
5. We expect things will go sideways. Someone will get COVID. A war might erupt. Or maybe we decide to stay somewhere longer or meet friends somewhere off our path. Whatever happens, we’re keeping things flexible in terms of our itinerary.
6. We hope to keep things in a 50–70 degree Fahrenheit band, so we don’t have to pack clothes for colder climates. Sadly, that means no snowboarding in the next year.
7. We’re not the first family to do this sort of thing. So let’s copy and learn from the experiences of others as much as possible (see EarthTrekkers).

Our first destination is Iceland, where we’re renting a camper van and touring the island’s many natural wonders (waterfalls, glaciers, mountains, and a currently erupting volcano). Then we spend two weeks each in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland’s Bern Oberland and Lake Bohinj in Slovenia’s Julian Alps. October will be in England’s Lake District before spending November among Morocco, Kenya and Tanzania (including a safari through Maasai Mara, Serengeti, and Ngorongoro national parks). We’ll end the year in Lesotho, a beautiful and mountainous country in Southern Africa. It will be a return for Meg and me to the village and family who hosted us there fifteen years ago (check out our blog from that experience here).

After that, we don’t yet know where we’ll go except for some anchor experiences on our bucket list. Likely destinations in January and February are Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. We know we want to be in Nepal in March to visit our friends at Sam’s House, before things start to get too wet and muddy there. April is probably New Zealand and May is for Ecuador and The Galapagos Islands. The plan is to get back to Columbus in early August 2023*. Our current plan has us following this general path.

As our journey unfolds, we will be posting updates and experiences to this blog and our instagram account, @hattagetaway. As much as possible, we want Sydney and Oliver to share their stories as both a means of keeping in touch and gaining some much-needed writing experience. We are grateful for those that take interest in this chapter of our lives and for the technology that allows us to feel close while being so far away.

Peace out,

Robert

• I don’t yet know what I’ll do professionally when we return. And I’m not going to think about it either until we get back.