I’m sitting on a plane on my way to Phoenix for the weekend and met the most interesting guy. I came on board with my Thailand Lonely Planet book, kind of hoping someone would see it and ask me about it so that I could tell them about our trip (hey, I haven’t really been able to tell very many people and I’m so excited that all I want to do is talk about it).

Anyway, this guy with a serious beard and a huge travel backpack came on the plane and sat down next to me and I knew he had just come from some sort of awesome trip. Well, it turns out that he’d pretty much come from 10 years of awesome trips. Most recently though, he spent a month in Ecuador climbing volcanoes.

Of course, I told him about our plans and everywhere we were thinking about going and he thought it was an awesome idea. It was nice to meet someone else who was living the same kind of lifestyle that we’re about to start living. He comes back to the states every winter to teach skiing lessons in Breckenridge, but once ski season is over, he packs up his backpack and hits the road.

The overwhelming reaction to our trip plans to the very few people I’ve told has been “OMG wait, you’re doing what? That is awesome, but so crazy. I could never do anything like that.”

It was refreshing to meet and talk to someone whose reaction was just simply, “that’s the way to do it.”

I guess there really are other people (Americans) out there who are doing the same thing as us. I guess maybe it’s not as crazy (or even as big of a deal) as everyone makes it out to be.

This guy (Aaron) told me about all of the places he’s been and all the people he’s met and made me even more excited (if that’s even possible) for our upcoming adventure.

Oh, and he gave me a great tip. He said that we can download Skype on our ipod touch and make unlimited calls anywhere that has WiFi for only $3 a month.