Author: admin

For data loving nerds out there, this one’s for you:

So how do you know that you traveled “Around the World”?  As far as I know, there is no association to call up and ask what the rules are on what qualifies as having completed a circle around this planet.  That means you pretty much get to make up whatever rules you want. In our case, the thought at the outset was to keep travelling east until we get back to our starting point and that should do the trick.  There is undoubtedly a camp of some type of purists out there with strict rules about routes, number of countries visited or something like that. I haven’t gone looking for them, but in the interest of providing a bit of data to our jaunt, I’ve decided to track our progress by comparing it to the circumference of the Earth.  Since our route is developing as we go, we might match this number, we might not, but it gives a tidy little benchmark.

According to numerous internet sources (if they all say the same thing it must be true after all), The accepted circumference of the earth is approximately 40,000 km.*  With that in mind, our starting point was Toronto, Canada and as I write this first data point we are in Annecy, France. Next step is to use some other fancy websites to obtain latitude & longitude figures, punch them into an online calculator & poof, we generate data!

As of today, This puts us around 7,000 km travelled or approximately 17% of the way around.  If I can figure out how to do it, eventually I’ll build some cool graphic to show our progress but since I’m really about the data, it’s entirely possible that this just won’t happen.

Happy Monday!

*note 1: several sources claim significant figures to the nearest km, others to the nearest meter.  In general this seems to be done for the purpose of illustrating the difference between the equatorial circumference and the polar circumference).  Quite frankly I don’t need this level of accuracy, nor do I believe it without having a detailed list of assumptions made since a perfect circle simply does not fit around the earth.  With this in mind, I will consider significant figures only to the closest 1000 km, anything less than that is well within the error of extra distance travelled on short car trips, bicycle trips or even daily walks to the grocery store which would just be absurd to measure!  Comparing the circumference of 40,000 km to say the distance if you just went around the 45th parallel (roughly 28,000 km according to the same internet sources), we see a sufficient level of accuracy at the 1000 km mark to see if we made it close to the distance that in general allows us to Circle the Sphere.

When you decide to take a year off and spend all of your time together as a family, it conjures up images of never ending smiles and happy moments.  Real life has a lot of that, but let’s be honest, there is a bunch of other stuff in there that we don’t talk about – especially in today’s world where the dirty bits get filtered out and social media feeds are full of happy beautiful moments.  This is the first in what I hope will be a series of snippets of real life – for those who can’t help but look behind the curtain.

Part 1 – Things my kids do that annoy me.

Now I love my kids, but being with them 24 hours a day for 8 months is an unusual circumstance – the sort where little things can get on your nerves.  This week, I’ve compiled a list of the top three things my kids do that really annoy me:

#1) Stop walking for no apparent reason when they are 6 inches in front of me.  This is a daily occurence. I’m getting better at anticipating it – if I notice they have started drifting in front of me, I fade back or look for an opportunity to move to the side, but inevitably, they get me. Sometimes I think it’s this subconscious power-game they’re playing.  When they make their move, I am forced to decide between slamming into them or throwing myself sideways into a wall / parked car / random pedestrian. Being their dad, my instinct is to protect, so my body somehow avoids them at all costs (many apologies to the random people I have bumped into).  Point being, it really annoys me when they stop right in front of me.

#2) Ask questions that no reasonable person would expect me to know the answer to.  Now I know what you’re thinking – my job as a parent is to teach my kids to be independent thinkers, to come up with questions that I can’t answer and to celebrate this as part of their development. I say BAH!  When it switches from curiosity to a daily interrogation of why I don’t know more things, it moves from cute to annoying. Maybe this makes me a bad parent, maybe it’s just that I’m a real person. Ultimately, it’s who I am – it really annoys me when they don’t stop asking irrational questions.

#3)  Act completely oblivious to the presence of other people.  I’m hoping this one is development based and will go away with time, but things like using the airplane seat in front of you as a drum kit or shouting with glee inside a museum because they “saw a bird – a real live bird inside” these things drive me bonkers.  Each and everyday we have a moment where we stop to discuss where we are (inside) and what voice to use (inside voice). I don’t get it, they learn so many things so quickly, why does this one take so long to sink in? It really annoys me when I have to remind them to consider the existence of other people.

Okay that’s my whiny pants post for today, I’ll try to make my next dose of reality less complaint oriented but right now, it felt good to get that off my chest – anyone else out there share my sentiments, or am I alone on this?

So jet lag – it’s a thing.  Everyone has their tricks for how to deal with it.  Ultimately, some people are just better at sleeping on planes and / or functioning without sleep.  Fortunately, having raised a child who didn’t sleep through the night until he was 3, we are a lot better at this than we used to be, but it’s still a slog.  Also fortunate, our kids love chocolate so when we hit the streets in Paris bright and early on our first morning after negligible amounts of sleep, we loaded up on coffee and chocolate and set off exploring for the day.  We had primed the kids for this ahead of time so even though they were exhausted, they perked right up after a pain au chocolat and a hot chocolate – breakfast of champions.

We had every intention of taking this first day slow and not pushing too hard – that didn’t happen.  After wandering along the Seine, we found ourselves in front of the Louvre with an unusually short line so seized the opportunity to see the Mona Lisa and 10,000 other masterpieces that everyone forgets are contained there (ancient Egyptian works were a big hit).

Next it was time to refuel – crepes and juice worked for that, and on to Jardin du Luxembourg – big open spaces and a pretty good playground (paid entry but then free toilets so a win overall).  Sometime in the afternoon, our hotel room was ready so we took a little nap before dinner then back to bed for a good night’s sleep.

Days 2,3 and 4 were spent in Paris checking out a variety of sites and clocking the kilometers on Lauren’s fitbit.  We took in some classic sites (Eiffel tower day and night), some sites to push the kid’s boundaries a bit (Modern art at Centre Pompidou) and some things purely for kid fun (the adventure wall built underneath Pont des Invalides followed by gelato).  We also took in a full day at Cite des science et de l’industrie, a family friendly science museum where I was surprised by how much the kids enjoyed touring an old French Naval submarine (the audio guide was a big hit), they had lots of questions and wanted to read all the exhibit info panels to learn as much as possible.

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After 4 exhausting full-tourist days in Paris, we hopped on the TGV (yay for fast trains) to the town of Annecy on the edge of the alps where we have rented an apartment for around 6 weeks.  This is our spot where we will try to really soak in the local culture, which seems to include spending as much time as possible walking, biking, running and swimming around the lake while feasting on delicious cheese, bread and wine.

I’ll update later with more details of our time here, for now I’m off to the boulangerie, time to start another day.