We want to welcome Marcus Milukas, the newest member of our Road Tripping Family! Marcus and his family actually did what we here around the office consider the dream of road trips. They sold everything and spent 18 months on the road. You can read more about their trip at Family Tour USA. Marcus will be writing a column on why they took the trip, and what they learned. He’s also recruited the family (who still begs to go to the camper to play games and would go on the open road in a heartbeat) to cover some destinations for us. Welcome, Marcus!!

In the summer of 2003 my wife and I had an epiphany. Actually on my end it was more of a hissy-fit-melt-down, but she still kindly refers to it as an epiphany. We had just recently sold our Mom-and-Pop business which, after the first of Celeste’s three difficult pregnancies, had quickly become a “Pop” business. I worked 364 days a year, and I saw little of our young children.

She, meanwhile, had spent a number of years pretty much single-handedly raising three small children amid periods of bed rest and lived a 24 hour-a-day schedule which looked something like this: diaper change, diaper change, feed, clean, feed, diaper change, diaper change—[cry]—feed, laundry, diaper change. By far she worked harder than I did. The kids looked quizzically at me half the time I came through the door, no doubt trying to place where they had seen me before, and Mommy’s ears never stopped ringing.

It was during a rather hot July day when my meltdown—I mean, “the epiphany”—occurred. Having changed careers to the more sedate work of lobstering, I had just returned from a rather hot, sweaty, breathless day on the water where I had pulled empty trap after empty trap, yet again unable to recover the bait and fuel costs of the day. The living room where I was standing had overflowing toy shelves, more stuffed animals than any 64 children should own, and cardboard box upon box of goodness-only-knows-what waiting to be lugged up the steep stairs to the attic. Clutter and stuff seemed to rule our lives, and we worked simply to keep it all dry and out of the rain.

Cuties amidst the clutter