Find a City, Find Myself a City to Live In...

As Talking Heads fans, these lyrics keep running through our heads. We know we don't want to stay where we are, but we still haven't found the perfect place to move to. So we are taking advantage of our mobility -- provided by flexible careers (software developer / website designer) and a son in college -- and setting off on a walkabout around the United States. This will be the first trip we've ever taken that hasn't been planned to the hilt, with all the stops scripted and all the hotels selected. Spontaneity, flexibility that's what we're going for.

But our extreme technological bent, and our need for economic common sense, prevent us from wandering aimlessly. We know there are tremendous resources available, many free on the web, that will help us be more effective and efficient in our search. So we are creating this blog to not only share our travels with our friends and family, but to share our insights and lessons learned with fellow travelers. We have adopted a new motto: Wander Aimfully(can't say we've coined the term; there are currently 30 hits when you type it into Google).

So we'll start posting now, two weeks before we leave, about our preparations. Then we'll blog along the way, sharing what we're experiencing, what about our preparations worked and didn't work, and what new ideas we've dreamed up, inspired by necessity and many miles on the open road.

We also plan on using the trip to develop new software tools to make travel easier; we'll share our thoughts on those as well. There's no substitute for real life experience when it comes to designing truly useful software!