50 days till 50/50/50

Well, I have my first official experience of typing on the go. I am writing to you as a fly my way to Florida (yeah, I know, rough life) for my last business trip before Tim and I head out on our journey. Today is a very special benchmark. We are 50 days from our 50 day, 50 state, 50 organization odyssey (or, as one of the organizations we are visiting has appropriately termed it, our 50/50/50 project). As of this moment, we have 32 organizations completely confirmed. With each day, we receive confirmations from additional organizations and I exhale a little bit more. Because this is happening. It is really happening!

"Tackling" Community Problems

We got a really good question the other day: “How do you expect to tackle the problems of a community if you are only there for a few hours?”

It is something that I mulled over for a long time when discussing our plan. I mean how much good can we do if we are only spending approximately 4 to 8 hours at each stop? Oh, no. Buckle your seatbelts and prepare to spiral into the free fall of self-doubt. What could we possibly accomplish? Is it even worth it? How can we expect to “tackle” anything if we are in each place less than a day?

Those questions got me thinking about expectations, and effectively managing those expectations. What I finally decided is it was really all a matter of properly defining what “tackle” means in the context of our project. Depending on how we choose to interpret the word, then the answer is really quite simple – either we will or we can’t.

If I interpret “tackle” to mean “solve”, then we can’t. No way. No how. No dice. We have no intentions of solving all the problems of each community we visit. Heck, I am not sure we could necessarily solve the problems of any given community with a life time of dedication (Please note: “we” in this context is limited to Tim and me. Some of you folks out there are simply miracle workers and “we” would like to you to know that “we” respect your skills when it comes to social justice and problem solving). This is not to say “we” (ok, I am losing the quotation marks now) won’t or shouldn’t try, but to say the purpose of our journey is to solve the problems of every community we would be giving us way too much credit and would render our initiate futile, given we would most surely fall short of that goal. If we emerged from our trip and the world wasn’t obviously saved, we would feel defeated.

Instead, we are interpreting “tackle” to mean “work at”, which creates much more realistic expectations for what we are trying to accomplish. The intent of our trip to highlight local organizations that are making a difference in their respective communities (i.e. are working towards solving the problems in their community), and join them for a day. During our time with each org, we will complete service, while exploring what volunteer opportunities they have to offer, in an effort to get people really jazzed up about service. You don’t want to work with food? Hey, you don’t have to! There is a family center down the street that would love to have you. Allergic to animals? Bubba, have I got an opportunity for you – a children’s literacy program! Feeling cooped up? Work outside with eco restoration program! You get my point – the choices are endless. By getting people interested in what their local organizations are doing to solve the various community problems (literacy, poverty, hunger, unemployment, etc) and letting them have a peek at the diversity of volunteer activities, we hope that people to have take an honest look at their own community and see where they can help. Our work is not to solve problems in each community (though I desperately wish we could), our effort is to bring awareness and motivate others to volunteer.

Additionally, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this trip is also our way of demonstrating that a little every little bit counts. Let’s repeat that, just for the sake of ingraining it - every little bit counts. I am as guilty as anyone for choosing to watch tv instead of donating my time. I am guilty of thinking a service project is too early on a Saturday morning and I have better things to do (a.k.a. sleep). I am guilty of thinking “it is two hours – what could I possible do in two hours that could help anyone. I don’t need to do it.” I am also guilty of thinking “I don’t want to commit to this long term, because it might infringe on my personal time.” So many times, I have convinced myself that it would only matter if I could donate a full day every week end, or give an entire evening every week. I have convinced myself, on occasion, that one evening every few weeks or every month would not make a difference to anyone, so why should I miss out on what ever it was I was planning on doing to engage in an activity that wouldn’t really make a difference, one that doesn’t really matter.

Well, it does matter. It matters to the person who eats the meal containing the potatoes you spent an hour chopping. It matters to the child you read to for 30 minutes, who now has experienced the wonders of Dr. Seuss. It matters to the recipient of the wheel chair you just spent two hours refurbishing, or the kid you just spent 45 minutes teaching to use a computer. It matters to the dog that has now had a good long walk and returns to his newly cleaned pen. It matters to the family that shows up to the shelter and finally feels safe (and hey, you only volunteer there on holidays). It matters to someone – no matter how little you feel that you are giving, it matters, primarily because it all adds up. Once you think back on all those times you didn’t volunteer because you only had a little bit of time to give, you notice something funny. You notice that all those times you had an excuse add up to a pretty big number.

So this is your challenge, if you choose to accept it: whenever you have even just a little bit of time to give, volunteer. You’ll be surprised how quickly the time adds up. Because in the end, we are not asking you to solve all the world’s problems – we are asking you to support the organizations that just might.

Final note: We love getting questions from people! Tim and I have spent so much time with this project, we forget that others may not understand aspects of it. So throw your questions our way - we are more than happy to share our answers with you.

How the heck are you guys going to pull this off?

So, two things have recently occurred to me: One, I need to start blogging more to gear up for the 50 posts I will be writing during the course of our journey. This is terribly intimidating! I envisioned that I would sit here and my thoughts would effortlessly flow from my mind to the page, each word wrought with significance and clear, concise intent. In reality, this is a really “exposing” experience. So please, friends and soon-to-be loyal followers of this blog, bare with me while I find my voice. Two, I think we need to talk logistics. What Tim and I have set out to do is fairly daunting. To be honest, it is completely overwhelming when we consider it at any length. I think an explanation of how we will execute this odyssey of this nature is necessary, especially because Tim and I get a lot of crazy looks when people realize our journey does include Alaska and Hawaii (and, no, we won’t be driving to either location…I know, I know, bad joke).

So how do you go about traveling to 50 states in 50 days? How do you do it while keeping your sanity, your health, and some semblance of routine? And how do you not only get to every location, but also have time to volunteer?

Well, we aren’t completely certain, because this is the first time either one of us have attempted anything like this, but we have spent quite a bit of time talking about it, google-mapping it, and consulting others who have ventured to all 50 states in 50 days to fish, hike or what have you. Our goal is to maintain somewhat of a routine – to begin driving at approximately the same time every evening, to go for a run every morning (wishful thinking), to blog everyday. It is these little things that will help us maintain sanity.

So, here’s the plan folks: we begin in the northeast, moving west by zigzagging up and down across the nation (see logo for our route - the yellow line is our actual path. One could say “just follow the yellow brick road”, but one will refrain from doing that in order to avoid looking foolish). We will leave each destination in the late afternoon/early evening, driving to our next location the night before we are serving in that state. Our longest drive time is approximately 7 hours, the average is around 3 hours – not too bad at all. On February 20^th, after 48 days of driving, we will serve in Seattle before flying to Anchorage. We will serve in Alaska on February 21^st and catch a flight to Honolulu that evening, where we will end our journey on February 22^nd. This is going to be whirlwind adventure, to say the least.

Now that we have covered travel, lets move on to other needs – lodging and food. We are very blessed that Tim’s mom knows a kind person in almost every state who is willing to house us (thank you for all your help Mrs. Malcolm - You have definitely made this trip seem a lot less daunting now that we are able to stay with friends and family rather than in the car!). For those states where we do not have the Malcolm connection, we are relying on the generosity of friends, both new (thank you Jess, you are awesome!) and old (you know who you are!), to put us up for the evening. And for those states where have yet to find accommodations, we are contacting churches to see if we can camp out in their rec rooms. We were going to try to camp for a portion of the trip, but we seemed to find housing in most of the “warm in the winter” states, and we are not ready to experiment with snow camping in the northern states.

A lot of people have been asking us how we are going to eat on this trip…umm, we are going to eat how we normally eat (insert shoulder shrug here). Though I may joke about Tim’s penchant for Quizno’s, we are actually going to attempt to be healthy eaters and avoid surviving off of fast food and gas station snacks (this is were we touch upon “keeping our health” during the journey). For all those who thought I was silly for buying a dehydrator, I will now have the last laugh - we are researching various nutritious meals that can be rehydrated (think camping food…anyone have any recipes?). We will also travel with a cooler so that we can hit the grocery store on our shorter drives and indulge in some fruits and vegetables.

So, that is a very generalized description of the main logistics of our trip (travel, lodging and food), answering the questions we are most often asked. There are so many other logistical considerations, but we will address those over time (like, how we will do laundry – stay tuned!). All I can say is that it is coming together and we are so excited to get on the road. T-minus two months and two days…