GTFO 2010: WTF?

I finally have the time to write about what GTFO 2010 is and why and how and all those other burning questions that you have. First of all, GTFO stands for “Get The Fuck Out.” It usually means dismay, but in this case it means to get the fuck out in the world. See it, feel it, know it, love it. That sort of thing. The 2010 part of that is important because hopefully after this first journey comes to an end we do it again. And again. Until I am too old to move or be carted around.

How this all came about was that I gave birth to Baby Bonner, aka Ripley in March, and then about 5 weeks into my maternity leave I was laid off from Topspin. I was OK with that because I wanted to look after Ripley as full-time as possible and going back to work after 3 months wasn’t very appealing to me. You see, I’m Canadian, and in Canada they give you ONE year off for maternity & parental leave. It’s pretty much the norm in any civilized country except for the US. See my tongue sticking out at you, you damn capitalist slave drivers? I digress.

In addition to my new found freedom, my husband Sean has been working remotely for Neoteny Labs in Singapore. About one month after Ripley was born Sean went over there for 2 weeks and it was not only extremely hard on me, it was hard on Sean too, so I decided that the next time he went there that Ripley and I would tag along. Sean would like to be in Singapore every 2 months or so and June seemed to be the next time to head over there. That’s what started the whole ball rolling. Why stop at just Singapore? Let’s travel to some other places. Our friend Harold has an empty apartment in Paris (because he fell in love with a gal in LA) and we mentioned that we’d love to hang there for a bit and next thing you know, we have a place to stay in July and August. Then Johannes of monochrom mentioned his Artist in Residence Program in Vienna in November so we signed up for that. We then had this problem of filling in the gap between August and November and my friend is getting married in Montreal and Sean has to go back to Singapore. So September was taken care of, but what about October? Well we both love love love Japan and it is so close to Singapore that we decided that is where we wanted to make our base for the month. Finally, Xeni posted a video of adorable orphaned baby sloths in Costa Rica and I absolutely had to go there too, so we’ll be hanging there for a week after Montreal.

To recap:
June: Singapore
July: Paris
August: Paris
Beginning of September: Montreal. Maybe Toronto
Middle of September: Costa Rica
Last two weeks of September: Singapore
October: Japan
November: Vienna

With all this traveling we decided it didn’t make sense to keep our very expensive apartment in Venice Beach. I was heartbroken to let it go, but it was the right thing to do economically. We moved all of our stuff into storage and now are officially homeless. My dog Funston is staying with my friends Rich and Mina and Lucky Cat is staying with Casey and Rudy. We feel so fortunate that we have such caring friends that were willing to take our animals in.

We will definitely be coming back to Los Angeles in December when our travels are over for the year. Ripley will be 9 months old at that point and I feel strongly about giving him some structure, routine and familiarity. There are some cute baby girls born the same week as Ripley as well as a bunch of other kids in our group of friends and I’d really like him to be able to hang out with them. I’m actually looking into starting a pre-school in LA with a curriculum that includes more outdoor activities and learning about animals and nature and just overall healthy living.

I plan to capture many details of our trip on my blog and on our podcast channel: http://gtfo.blip.tv. I will probably talk a lot about traveling with an infant. Already I have come up with some hacks including using a suitcase for his crib. I’m also going to be meeting up with “Mommy” groups to see if there are any differences in how they care for their kids.

In addition to looking after Ripley I am going to be volunteering with MYCAT. It is a lifetime dream to help figure out a way to keep tigers alive in the wild and Malaysia is a very short trip from Singapore. I am also working on some business proposals and hope that something will work out so that I can work on a gig on my own schedule during this trip and when we return home.

That’s the dealio. I’m using the hashtag #gtfo2010 when I tweet about something interesting or significant. I’m trying to keep our itinerary current on DOPPLR and Tripit. If you are in any of the cities that we are in, drop a line! tarabrown at gmail. In addition to sharing our adventures with people that are interested, I want to archive it for Ripley who isn’t going to remember any of it. Maybe when he thinks Sean and I are super uncool I can show him that at least one point in time we had it goin’ on.

Here’s our first GTFO 2010 Podcast. Enjoy and watch for more!

Hearts and Hugs,
Tara