July 7: Pre-game

Here's the deal: I figure I'll just hit it at the jump. For all of you comedians tripping over each other to point out that the idea of me taking a sabbatical might be a bit... ironic?  I totally get it.  

And it's hilarious, right? What's this guy taking a vacation from?

Okay, okay, lets lay this out. Though I may have my own thoughts on the sabbatical-worthiness of my life, this is not -- technically -- my sabbatical.  Actually, forget the technically.  By every definition and every angle, this is not my sabbatical.  It belongs to my wife, the hyper-focused, ageless and surplus-energy-having Sandra Bullock. (Not her real name, of course. More so you can picture her. But what if it was? What if my wife really was Sandra Bullock?  What sort of sabbatical would we be taking then?).

Sandra Bullock's employer, a benevolent biotech behemoth that sends her to Europe an average of six times a year, offers -- no, demands -- that each and every one of its employees, be they the CEO, the guy who takes inventory of the weird little scales and timers in the lab (me, actually, for a few weeks, during one particularly low career phase) or the Head of Network Strategy take a six-week vacation every six years: a sabbatical.

Six years ago, with our then-16-year-old son in tow, we took our first sabbatical, to Italy. I recorded that one, too, but I used Tumblr, which promptly erased the whole blog about year later. More on that to come. 

As for this sabbatical deal; at best, I am Sandra Bullock's co-pilot. At worst, I am her enthusiastic wingman.  At home and abroad, then, I am a mere passenger on this thing called life. 

So here we are. Ha ha. This guy who makes podcasts for free and is "working on a novel" is taking a sabbatical.

My role, besides enthusiastic passenger: to make hotel reservations, drive on the wrong side of the road and give daily updates of the trip here on Blogger. 

And speaking of that, for all the eyebrow-raisers, Millennials and tech-savvy code-jockeys scoffing at my choice of platform, let me say that a few weeks ago, when Sandra Bullock charged me with this task, I opened up Blogger (a platform I've used in the past to effervescent success here and here) and found that all I had to do to start a new blog was make up a name, I was in. That Tumblr blog from 2013 that's now gone? It was great. Hilarious. I wish I could link to it, but I can't. 

Short, dense, weird, uninvited

But enough of that. You want to know where we're going, right?  Truth of it is, we're already on our way there. As you read this, we, Sandra Bullock (the wife and biotech legend, not the movie star and occasionally unfairly-treated tabloid subject) are jetting across the country, minus our now-college graduate fledgling Hollywood mogul son and short, dense and weird dog. We are 30,000 feet over Peoria, or Boston, or maybe the Atlantic Ocean. Or maybe we've already landed at Heathrow. Maybe we're in customs. Maybe we're dragging our stylish new Patagonia bags through the streets on London, eyes pinned open with excitement and amazement, Jonesing for some authentic crumpets after a lifetime of subpar Thomas' English Muffins. Maybe we're napping, victims of inevitable jet lag.


If you're a regular player in our lives, you already know this. You've been witness to months of planning, theorizing and strategizing. You were there when we realized, with a cold sweat, that my passport was to expire on July 1. You've heard Sandra Bullock describe her family tartan, which is "really cute." You may have reminded us, with a rueful shake of your head, that post-Brexit England is "a mess" or pondered aloud how interesting it would be to see the Corbynistas close-up if you were a guy who hosts a podcast called (Is it) Good for the Jews?  By now you've heard it all, you've speculated along with us, and maybe are eager to either follow along and track our every sabbatical move or maybe put the whole thing to bed and check back in August. 

If you are of the latter mind, this may not be a safe space for you.

If you are the former -- or are new to this whole thing, let me welcome you. Let me lay out the particulars of this sabbatical: from now until August 23, Sandra Bullock and I will be in the aforementioned mid-Brexit England, but also Scotland and Ireland, and then back to England. We will see great cities, small villages, country roads dotted with disinterested sheep, castles, the birthplace of golf, Hadrian's Wall, distilleries, verdant islands... whatever this part of the world can throw at us. We will fly in small planes, ride in luxurious trains and, terrifyingly, for the slack loser who ends up driving, i.e. me, drive vehicles whose steering wheels and controls have confoundingly been placed on the wrong side of the car. 

We will, at times, be joined by my mother-in-law, also seeking to track down her Scottish  heritage and cute family tartan, and my old college friends Peter O'Toole and Princess Grace, who will be reprising their cameo roles from Sabbatical #1 in 2013. They'll be doing the ride-along for part of Ireland. 

There will be tea.  There will be beer.  There will be a surprising amount of vegetarian food.  There will be royalty but probably no corgis.  There will be husbands dragging their wives to bars frequented by slightly obscure English authors.  There will be Stonehenge.  There will be music by The Pogues. 

But before all of that there will be/has been packing; thoughtful, complex packing that began as a brainstorming session at the Palo Alto Patagonia store and has included video tutorials about bundling, a life-changing packing strategy which may backfire on certain members of our traveling party when they realize that bundling, un-bundling and re-bundling 14 times in 45 days could lead to complications that eventually make the purchase of an auxiliary suitcase inevitable. 

So many toiletries. 

There are all kinds of things to consider when packing for a trip of this length; how many pairs of underwear do we need? Will we find places to do laundry? What are the best, most versatile and least space-consuming shoes to pack? What about jackets?  How will we fit all of these vitamins, toiletries and oral hygiene products in our stylish Patagonia bags? Can I bring my Sonicare?


What about our phones? My child told me I just needed to "find a wireless place" and "get a new sim card."  "I did that in Germany," he said with the casual confidence of one whose semester abroad has been characterized as a "$10,000 pub crawl."  "They didn't even speak English!"

Did Sandra Bullock remember to bring her European outlet adapters home from work? Have we included everything we need to include on the list we've been making for our house- (and short, dense, weird dog-) sitter?

Again, by the time you read this, frankly, i'll be too late. We'll be in the air, not in Business Class of course but I'm not about to complain because after all, I'm just a passenger, taking a sabbatical from a life many would consider to be a day-after-day sabbatical. From here, fully-reclining seat or not, there's not much we can do if we forgot toothpaste or a back-up pair of reading glasses. 

Sabbatical is a go!