Thursday, May 24, 2012

Let's do this!


From Matt:  Early in life I learned to be outdoorsy and created an adventurous spirit through:  camping, hunting, fishing, sports, surfing, snowboarding, hiking etc.  Eventually in college, I was able to expand this and went to study abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico which flung the international doors wide open and kindled a passion to travel.  Then I went on trips to explore and see places like DC, NYC, Boston, and Chicago.  Finally, when I finished college in 2009, I planned a trip through Central America (all the countries south of Mexico and north of Colombia) with my good friend, John Lee.  As it turned out, John had to return early for work, so after 3 weeks with him I then continued on my own for the rest of my 3 month journey.  Although I finished solo, teaming up with John and flying down to Belize ultimately changed my life forever.  Within the first few days of our travels, my eyes were opened to an abundance of people from around the world that set out to travel: 6 weeks, 6 months, 1 year, and some even longer (shout out to Ray!). After talking to quite a few people, some of whom became my close friends, and carrying on to have a trip of a lifetime in Central America, I was determined to set out and travel the world for an extended period of time once I returned and worked a few years first.  Eventually, my biggest task was to convince a girl named Kristin to join me and experience this trip together.   


From Kristin:  Growing up, my parents were dedicated to making sure that our family of six went on a vacation every summer no matter what.  Whether it was camping in Garner State Park or road tripping to Washington D.C. with all of us piled in our van (to add to it- the air conditioning went out on the way home in the middle of the summer ;-) ), our family experienced some amazing trips together including visiting numerous state parks and national monuments, taking train trips, going to amusement parks, and camping all while getting to see most of the lower 48.  This family tradition instilled in me the desire to travel and see new places with the ones I love. I've always enjoyed traveling around the U.S., but I figured traveling outside the U.S. would be much harder and mostly out of my reach.  After Matt and I started dating, he began dropping hints about his idea to travel the world one day.  I laughed at this crazy idea and thought it was just that.  That is until Matt introduced me to the blog, "Where in the world are Jon and Jenn".  From reading their blog and talking a LOT with Matt about this "crazy idea" I slowly started to realize that maybe we could do it. 


From both:  Thanks to our mutual enjoyment for traveling we've conducted our own research to places such as Chicago, Banff National Park, Santa Barbara, and the Grand Canyon to ensure that we are suitable travel companions.  Conclusion:  we are.  Thus, we were able to put our heads together and come up with a rough plan for how we would take off to travel the world.  It was something we definitely wanted to do, it was just a matter of when the right time would be.  As it turns out, there really is no "right" time. "If it is important to you, you will find a way.  If it's not, you will find an excuse." - Anon.  As we talked about our future over the holidays, we knew we were going to be in a transition of one of us either moving to Abilene or Dallas. That's when we realized we hadn't quite set roots anywhere, so, now is as good a time as any.  Now we're about to leave in a month to follow what was just a dream for us a year or two ago and is now our reality! 


Grand Canyon May 2011
Banff August 2010


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Countries we plan to visit:

Here is a rough outlook on the countries we plan to visit and our expected time frame for each region. We expect our plans to change quite a bit along the way, thus this is our rough itinerary and we will update plans through our posts.

South America: (July '12 - November '12)
Colombia
Ecuador
Peru
Bolivia
Brazil
Uruguay
Argentina
Chile

Australia: (November '12)


New Zealand: (December '12)

South East Asia: (December '12 - May '13)

(in no particular order)
Nepal
Myanmar
Thailand
Laos
Cambodia
Vietnam
Philippines
Indonesia
Malaysia
Singapore

Friday, May 11, 2012

Contact Us:

We would love to hear from y'all while we're gone on our travels! Please feel free to leave comments on our posts, email us, or facebook us anytime with questions, comments, hellos, whatever :-). We will try to respond back as soon as we have access to internet.

Matt Lankford and Kristin Heider-
email: texansintransit@gmail.com

About Us:

Howdy, I am Matt Lankford from Lake Jackson, TX.  After a great childhood I went to TexasA&M University where I graduated in 2009 with a B.S. and M.S. in Accounting.  Then I went to work at Ernst & Young in Dallas with the Audit group.  Although a great job, I definitely knew it wasn’t “me”.  Thus, I got out of the corporate world and into a job that I wanted to do, coaching and teaching.  I landed a job at Abilene High School, so I moved out west where I taught Algebra II and coached football and soccer for the 2011-2012 school year. It was very rewarding, fulfilling, and memorable.  Although I will miss it, now comes a time to set out and accomplish a great goal to see the world!




Howdy! I’m Kristin Heider from Spring, Texas. I went to Texas A&M and graduated in 2007 with a B.S. in Accounting and a M.S. in Finance. After graduation, I moved to Dallas in the summer of 2007 to start with Ernst & Young working in the Audit group. I worked with Ernst & Young for 3 years and enjoyed it, but the hours got to be a little too much for me. So, I left and have been working the past 2 years for EXCO Resources, an oil and gas company in Dallas, in the Internal Audit group. Thanks to both of these great jobs, I have learned so much in the last five years and had the opportunity to work with some amazing people. At this point in my life though, I'm ready to pursue a dream that’s a little bit different than what I’ve been doing the past few years.




Matt and I (Kristin) met at Texas A&M through Fish Camp, an organization where current students facilitate an orientation for incoming freshmen. We were counselors together in Camp Holder '05 where we became good friends.  Then, suprisingly (and fortunately) we were also in Camp Blum '06 together which is quite uncommon.  Although I graduated 2 years before Matt we continued our friendship and kept in touch while he was still at A&M.  After he graduated and travelled through Central America, he moved to Dallas in the Fall of 2009 at which point we started dating and the rest is history :-).  We are so excited to be embarking on this journey together and can't wait to see what the world has to offer!