Daria Salamon - Dont Try This at Home: One Familys (mis)Adventures Around the World

I think I left a pair of dirty underwear in the hamper, I tell Rob.

What are you talking about?

At the house. I showered. And Im pretty sure I threw my underwear into the hamper.

So? he shrugs.

They werent just any underwear. They were that ratty, nasty, stains-that-never-come-out pair. You know, the ones I wear when I think I might be getting my period?

Except you never know when youre getting your period, so youre always wearing them. Those ones?

Yeah, I meant to throw them in the garbage, but I tossed them in the hamper by mistake. I worked so hard to make the house pristine and ready for this family. But when they look in that hamper

Taking a year-long break from our lives to travel the world was my version of a mid-life crisis. This was an expensive and elaborate way for me to avoid the fact that I was moving into my forties. What better method of distraction from this whole mid-life business than dragging my family halfway around the world to fifteen different countries, where we dont speak the languages or understand the cultures? Lets take a five-year-old, who needs structure and routine, stick her on all-night bus rides at dizzying altitudes, and feed her semi-cooked pork skewers bought in the street, late at night, from strange men with barbeques attached to their bicycles. And, for good measure, temporarily misplace her in Thailand for an hour. Lets take a seemingly normal eight-year-old boy on an adventure that will turn him into an explosives expert and activate a passion for kleptomania. Lets test the limits of my marriage by ditching the comforts of home that wed spent a decade forging, cram our entire lives into backpacks, and navigate ourselves around the globe with very loose plans and limited funds. In retrospect, maybe I should have just renovated the bathroom, or gone with a breast lift.

Extensive travel adventures are often reserved for the young, who travel before or after university, before getting so rooted into a career they cant leave for fear of missing out on a promotion or raise. Or, these trips are a carrot for the retired. Punch in thirty years at your job, retire, cash in on your pension, and then you may spin the globe and hop on a plane.

When I started talking about the idea of taking a year off to travel abroad, no one in my family took me seriously until the Lonely Planet and National Geographic books started arriving in the mail, and I started monopolizing dinner conversations with tales of places no one had heard of. Did you know you can swim with jellyfish in Palau? Theres this hotel in Japan thats run almost entirely by robots! Theres a place in Asia where you can get your teeth cleaned by monkeys!

I started to wonder why you cant bust up mid-life with some serious travel and adventure. Theres a certain sensibility that comes with middle age that you dont necessarily have when youre young, but health and mobility still allow you to do most thingsso it seems like the perfect time to embark on a trip.

But once you have kids or an established career, it becomes much harder to extract yourself from life, and harder still to pack up your family and take off . In several European countries, its illegal to pull your kids out of school for any reasoneven short trips. Sisters getting married? Too bad. Uncle Fred passed away? Send flowers. Won a trip for four? Head to Goa with the in-laws because the kids cant go. Government officials will not grant permission for students to miss school, and parents in some countries, such as Sweden, are fined or sued for neglecting their childrens education. We met a Swedish family in Samoa who actually had to hire lawyers in order to do a world trip. They lost the case, so the father fudged some sort of illness that required him to recuperate in various tropical locations. I often feel a bout of this coming on myself.

As kids get older, they start playing AA hockey. Or AAA hockey. Or A-to-the-power-of-infinity hockey, on top of soccer, swimming, and skiing practices seventy-five times a week. Its awkward explaining to a competitive coach that youre going to have to miss the next one hundred and fifty practices and forty-seven games. In a workplace where youre needed and valued (not really an issue for Rob or me), applying for a year off so you can watch turtles hatch in the South Pacific is a tough sell and not a regular work request.

I wanted to experience the world with my children when they had no choice in the matter, before they reached that age when they would pretend not to know us when we bumped into them at the mall with their friends. Let me be clear: long-term, extensive travel on a tight budget with young children is a probable lapse in judgment, an exercise in chaos, and a direct attack on ones sanity. But it was an idea I wanted to pursue. I thought it would be remarkable if, as a family, we could sink ourselves into new experiences together. Whether the experiences were good or badand I knew we would encounter boththe memories would become the glue, or maybe duct tape, that binds us. And so, just around my fortieth birthday, we decided we would embark on a year-long trip around the world.

I swing the door open. A woman with dark hair and a warm smile stands there, flanked by her teenage son and daughter. I have been touring families through our home and as they try to get a sense of the place, I try to get a sense of them.

Isla Blue and Oskar trail behind me as we walk through the rooms and I explain the particulars of parking and laundry to the family.

The washer and dryer are brand new, I say.

Thats not true, Mom. We got those things like three months ago, Isla pipes in, hands parked on her tiny waist.

My LEGO Republic Gunship doesnt come with the house, Oskar announces. It took me two weeks to build!

Im taking my stuffies with me, Isla adds, eying the teenaged girl as we pause at a trunk full of pandas and kittens that stare back at us with glassy pupilless eyes. This tour is kinda boring, huh?

Forget the Republic Gunship and the stuffed animalswould they be careful dusting the light fixture in the kitchen? We built it using the wooden hiking sticks from our West Coast Trail trek. Our home has become a gallery of relics from past holidays. In the living room, we pass a framed photo that I took at Versailles. Need to take that down, I think. It is from one of my first trips.

Even though my parents had never gone to Europe, they saw the value in sending both their kids overseas. For me, at seventeen, seeing Paris emerge out of the night fog as the plane descended was a wondrous experience. To this day, I can still see the glowing red and white bulbs on the windmill at Moulin Rouge with my minds eye; I can still taste chocolate wrapped in flaky, buttery pastry; and I can still hear the melancholic songs of the buskers violins echoing through the subway.

Two important things came out of that trip to France: exposure to the exhilarating possibilities of travel, and the literal exposure of a weird French guy.

My girlfriend Natasha and I decided to explore the hills overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. We asked a gentleman if he would mind taking our photo. This was before the era of phone cameras and selfie sticks. We handed my camera to the man and posed along the stone wall overlooking the sea on that sunny afternoon. Goofy smiles exploded across our faces, and a warm breeze swept through our hair. But as we stood smiling and posing, the man we had enlisted to take our picture was fumbling around with his pants. We waited, thinking maybe he was just doing up his fly. He was, it turns out, undoing his fly. Instead of taking our picture, the man unzipped his pants, pulled down his underwear, and flashed his dick at us.

And thats how I learned that while the world is filled with salty oceans and chocolate for breakfast, it is also full of weirdos with dubious intentions.