You may think that Sabbaticals are just for college professors, and that they are a year long. I am not a college professor, but I did get a sabbatical. And while it was not a year long, it was long enough. In 2006, I went to work for a high-tech startup called Fulcrum Microsystems. As startups tend not to pay as much as companies that actually make a profit, they have to find other ways to compete for talent. One way that Fulcrum competed was to promise employees a 4-week sabbatical after 7 years of service. A sabbatical is extra vacation time on top of the normal allotment, but it must be taken all at once. The idea is to give the employee some rest from the stress of work, returning refreshed and re-energized and ready to work hard for another 7 years. For many startups, that could be a bit of a joke, as most don't last 7 years, but as I was joining Fulcrum in the 7th year of its existence, and as it was on a solid path toward an IPO (initial public offering), enjoying a sabbatical 7 years hence was a reasonable possibility at Fulcrum.
In 2011, five and half years into my tenure at Fulcrum, the company was in serious danger of going down in flames. Smelling a bargain, we were acquired by Intel before it was too late. It didn't make us all rich, but we still had jobs, for which we were thankful. And wouldn't you know, Intel had a sabbatical program too - an even better one: eight weeks off after 7 years of service. The only problem was that they would not count the years worked at Fulcrum, so I was back to zero and wouldn't be taking mine until 2018 at the earliest.
A bit more than 3 years after the acquisition, Intel announced a new sabbatical program. They would continue to offer 8 weeks off after 7 years of service, but now were also offering 4 weeks off after 4 years of service. I was just a few months away from marking my 4th anniversary with Intel and having been deprived of my Fulcrum sabbatical at nearly the last minute, I was taking no chances on this one; it took me all of four nanoseconds (a nanosecond is one billionth of a second) to decide I would invoke the 4 weeks off just as soon as I was eligible.
The next step was to decide what to do with four whole weeks of rest and relaxation. I began to fantasize about long days playing guitar, riding my bike, going to the beach, flying radio controlled airplanes, and dabbling in hobbies long dormant and household projects long awaiting my attention. I was suddenly awakened from my reverie by Sandra's suggestion. Well, not really a suggestion, more like a statement of fact: we would take a 4-week long trip. "But my darling," I immediately countered, "The company is paying me to not show up at work for four weeks, but they aren't going to pay for airfare, rental cars, restaurant meals, hotels or contributions to your collection of refrigerator magnets commemorating all the places we've been!" It is the nature of our relationship that while I try my best to temper the flow of dollars out of our bank account, Sandra ensures that I don't reach the end of my life having never had the joys and experiences for which life was invented. She usually wins, and I must confess I have benefited as a result. "When will we ever have a chance to travel like this again?" she asked. I had some answers, but all risked the uncertainty of a future we can't predict. In the end, I agreed it was a fine thing to do with 4 weeks away from the office.
The next challenge was deciding where to go. Sandra wanted New England to see the fall colors and do some historical sight-seeing. I wanted to return to Israel, where we had not been since shortly after we were married 29 years before. Mixed in there somewhere was a stop in New Jersey for the marriage of cousin Jessica. The big compromise was struck: the wedding, to be followed by a driving tour of New England for two weeks, then fly to Israel where we would do another two-week driving tour. Natalie and Benjamin would join Sandra, David and myself for the long wedding weekend, then fly back to their respective homes to go back to work. We would all meet again in Boston two weeks later and fly together to Israel - the five of us together for two weeks of touring. For some families, this could be a catastrophe, for others fairly annoying for most parties involved. For us, however, there can be nothing better. We are blessed with a family where the parents know no joy greater than spending time with their kids and where the kids are not annoyed, nagged, harassed or embarrassed by their parents frequently enough to prevent them from going on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel.
The second-to-last challenge was the planning of the trip. Sandra does great trips and I trust her totally to put together a trip that will be busy, interesting, compelling, comfortable and ultimately pleasurable. It's a huge amount of work to pull this off, but she does it every time, usually the night before we are to leave. On this trip, Sandra decided to try out Airbnb, a website that helps property owners rent out their private property to travelers on vacation. Sort of like Uber, except they don't move. One can find beautiful properties at a fraction of the cost of comparable hotels, and often in locations where hotels are not even available.
The last challenge was being able to catch our plane. The wedding was set for Sunday, October 11, 2015. We would need to arrive in New Jersey before Shabbat (the Jewish sabbath, which begins at sundown on Friday). Monday and Tuesday of that preceding week were Jewish holidays, when work, travel, phone, computer and commerce are all prohibited, just as on Shabbat. And the holiday was Succoth, which entails building a temporary structure in the backyard called a succah. Because of the holiday, my last day at work, and thus the beginning of my sabbatical as far as Intel was concerned, was Friday, October 2, 2015. The schedule for the following week shaped up to look like this:
Monday: Holiday spent in shul (Jewish temple)
Tuesday: Holiday spent in shul
Wednesday: Furiously disassemble and store the succah, prepare the house for our departure and pack
Thursday: Head to the airport for a 1:00 PM flight to New Jersey
When we've taken trips in the past, upon our return, people will ask me, "What did you see?" and "What did you do?" and "Where were you?" I can only stare at them with a dumb look on my face while I ransack my brain for a memory - any memory - of what the heck I had been doing for the previous week or two. I don't have a great memory (obviously) and the longer the trip, the more there is to remember, and the less I remember it all. As I was about to drop a ton of hard-earned savings on the trip of a lifetime, I thought it best to write down what we did each day so that in my old age, when I'm living in a cardboard box under the freeway, I'll have a chance of recalling exactly what led to my being there. (I'm joking - my kids are going to be wildly successful so that they can keep me appropriately sheltered in my twilight years!)
Right from the beginning, our days were packed and there was not much time to capture the memories before they were overwritten by the next day's adventures. That meant not much time for creativity. And as the purpose of keeping a trip journal was just to jog my own memory, my notes tended to be terse and dry at times. Well, like, almost all times. But when we got home from the trip, I thought there might be one or two people who might be momentarily interested in what we did, and at the very least, Sandra and the kids might like to have their memories jogged as well. So I decided to capture my notes in a format that could be easily shared, along with pictures (each of which can spare me the writing of a thousand words). In this age of the Internet, a blog seemed like a perfect platform upon which to plaster these memories. But this isn't a blog, in the sense that it was not produced a post at a time, nor is it something that will get updated after the whole story has been told. And while I will make some effort at keeping it interesting, much of it is nothing more than little bullet points intended to prod sleeping neurons in my brain to help me remember the sights and sounds already recorded therein. For those of you reading this without benefit of those recordings, this journal may be more confusing and frustrating than illuminating and edifying, and most certainly at many times, excruciatingly boring. You have been warned...