|
Home
A little something about us
FAQ's
Sabbatical 2000
Itinerary
Journal 2000
Meandering Thoughts
Images from the Road
Lasting Impressions
The Adventures of Randy
Just like being there
Gear and Resources
Thank you's
| |
A little
something about us...
How did we get here? To the point where we've
quit our jobs, sold our house, said "so long!" to our
families and friends, and put our beloved cats up with their aunt
for a year? Yeah, it seems odd, but it had to happen sooner or later...
 Our
names are Wiley and Christie Long, and we've been married for ten years.
That's us in Jamaica renewing our wedding vows on our tenth anniversary
in August 1999. We started our life together with a month-long honeymoon
in Europe, and we've never been the same since.
 During
that month, we traveled through eleven European countries, spending time in Portugal,
Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Holland, and England. We discovered
that we had an appetite for learning about and seeing the way people worship, celebrate,
monumentalize, govern, and socialize the world over. 
We came back to Atlanta and pursued our careers
in earnest. Christie has been in the Information Technology industry in various
capacities, most recently as a Systems Engineer at Informix
Software. Wiley started and built a successful health insurance
business. During those years we worked hard and played hard. Playing
including indulging our passion for travel again and again. We've made some
incredible trips over the years, including Moscow and St. Petersburg during the first
years of Glasnost, the Big Island, Maui, and Kauai in Hawaii, the Honduran rainforest, the
American Rockies and the Grand Tetons, the Desert Southwest, and back to Europe to
England, Paris, Scotland, and Spain. On each trip we had incredible experiences, saw
amazing sites, and met wonderful people. 
Despite our need to pay the bills and earn a living, we found plenty of ways to keep
ourselves busy with extracurricular activities. We've done quite a bit of backpacking, enjoyed snow-skiing and snow boarding, biked down an active volcano,
soaked in the tunes at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
for nine straight years, gone hang gliding, scuba diving, tree-climbing, bungee-jumping,
and white-water rafting, canoed the Okenfenokee,
hiked into and out of the Grand Canyon, and run a marathon. We're not trying to brag or make anybody envious
- we're just trying help you understand just how far we'll go to find adventure and good
times.
We often dreamed of extended travel, of a chance to really get to know places and people,
but it remained just that - a dream. We always returned home to Atlanta after no
more than 2 weeks to continue working hard at advancing in our careers.
After thirteen years in the insurance business,
Wiley longed to do more with his life, and he began exploring a career in longevity and
health. He has always been interested in how supplements, diet, and exercise, and
stress-reduction techniques can enhance health and quality of life. After much
soul-searching, he decided to go back to school and pursue a degree in naturopathy.
Once this decision had been made, we began thinking, "If not now, when?".
What better time to take a year off from daily responsibilities and do the kind of
intensive traveling we've always dreamed of? We've always believed that seeing the
world makes us both feel truly free.
And so it began... Our Long's Strange Trip.
Starting in February of 2000, we will begin our travels, starting in South
America and ending up some where in Europe or Africa, approximately 12
months and thousands of miles later, before heading back to Atlanta, a
year older and probably much changed.
Email
us at christieandwiley@longsstrangetrip.com
Home |
About us |
Sabbatical 2000 |
Itinerary | Journal
2000 | Images from
the Road | Just
like being there
|
