Sprinter Van for family

So if someone had challenged me to downsize my life back then, I would have balked. Trimming the fat off of my strenuous routine would have seemed an act of austerity, an ascetic denial of small pleasures, a cruelty set to make me even more miserable than I was. And boy was I miserable. I constantly worked overtime, my anxiety levels were soaring, and I couldn’t sleep at night.

Then, without fanfare, the ax dropped.

I was let go from my fancy, soul-crushing job in the fall of 2009, during the height of the Great Recession. Without my income, we could no longer afford our apartment, and I scrambled to find a job with equal or greater pay. Within two weeks, I was on my third interview for a position paying a quarter of a million dollars a year.

As I lay in bed the night before the final interview, I worried about my no-win dilemma. If I didn’t get the job, we’d have to move inland and give up our seemingly idyllic life — no more sunsets on the beach, no more shopping for organic fare at Whole Foods. But if I did get the job, things might be worse. With larger salaries come long hours, endless internal meetings, and unyielding corporate pressure to do more, more, and more. I might just lose my mind.

The next day, I came home crying. I’d been on enough interviews to know I didn’t get the position. My boyfriend, who had a keen understanding of our situation, held me in his arms and consoled me, but he didn’t give me the proverbial get-back-on-the-horse pep talk. Instead, he lobbied for us to do something dramatically different.

“Let’s go on a road trip, ” he said.

“Sure, okay, ” I whimpered.

“To the tip of South America, ” he added.

Six years and 18 countries later, we haven’t stopped driving.

We quickly dispatched all furniture and appliances to friends and Goodwill, and gave away our extra clothing. Old trophies, journals, and photo albums were put into storage, and the rest — a couple of bags of clothes, 10 pairs of shoes (mostly mine), five surfboards (mostly his), and some kitchen supplies — were packed into our Sprinter van.

We drove through Mexico and Central America, shipped our van from Panama to Colombia, and drove down the Pacific side of South America to Patagonia, and then continued back up the Atlantic side through Brazil. It was — and still is — the trip of a lifetime.