Welcome! So glad you want to join us...

Day 1

July 20th, 2021

Hi friends and thank you for coming along for the ride!

Welcome to “Day 1” of this journal… though the truth is that the story began a while back - we have been planning for our "adult gap year” since late 2019. We bought our Ford Transit van in late 2020, affectionately named Coddiewomple, or “CW” or “The Womp” (after the term Coddiwomple — which means “to travel purposefully toward an as-yet unknown destination”) and started our build in earnest this past January. We are actually at the 40 day countdown to “take off” now and there is SO much to do, both in terms of van build itself and with all of the various life things that we need to take care of (think: insurance/s, mailing addresses, various paperwork, moving/storage of stuff, deciding what to take with us/packing the van, etc.) Not to mention “closing out” here in NJ which also includes moving H to college sometime in August, and helping E resettle in a new apartment in Florida too. Excitement is growing, but so is the crazy check list we have to make it all happen.

Anyway, we plan to post written entries here about how our journey unfolds. Yes, I will also post pictures to my facebook and our instagram accounts, and I may also update amieswinehouse.com now and again, but my Substack journal is great for those who don’t want to search and surf. These journal entries will just arrive in your email box, easy peasy, as if I had written a letter (I do miss old fashioned letter writing so this is my way of writing people who like to get letters!) I am not going commit to a particular writing schedule at this point but you should expect reasonably regular posts from us about the places, people, food, drink and music we discover and also the the challenges of preparing for and undertaking this trip and the hurdles we face along the way; we’ll share some good days and maybe some not-so-good ones as well. Hopefully you’ll celebrate our successes and also give us friendly encouragement when we fail. Some of you might be curious or thinking about van life, so we’ll include things that we learn and the mistakes that we make. Buckle up! We look hearing from you on the road.