We found out that Tyler has to use all of his paid time off by the end of December. That means we will be taking a vacation within the next five months! He has 8 days left. We are trying to figure out where to go. We were thinking about going to Australia, but we would want at least 3 weeks there. Our fall is already pretty busy and we don’t want to travel in December so we are thinking we will be planning a trip in November – possibly over Thanksgiving to get two extra days off. Hawaii is on our mind…

We are a twenties-something couple living in the Kansas City metro area. We have been married since January 12th, 2008. Our hobbies include fixing up our sixty year old house, scuba diving, learning to sail (okay, just a small one person sail boat, but still…), aspiring to be on The Amazing Race, and eating yummy Chinese take-out while watching a good movie. Oh, yeah, and traveling!

Tyler
Tyler earned a degree in Film and Video Productions from Full Sail University in 2004. He works at a small video production company in Kansas City. For his job, he has had to travel to Boca Raton, Palm Springs, Canada, Las Vegas, New York City, Houston, and Denver. He has been able to meet Jay Leno, John Cleese, Cal Ripken Jr., and Gena Davis on some of his business trips. At his previous job at a news station, he was able to film former President Bush twice. Since we bought our house in June of 2008, Tyler has increased his knowledge of home improvement and likes to hunt during the autumn months and stay up late playing video games whenever Lauren goes to bed.

Personality type: The Caregiver – ESFJ
States Visited: 28
Continents Visited: 3
Favorite Place: Italy
Most Memorable Traveling Experience: Sleeping on a 12 hour overnight train from Vienna to Venice and sharing the giant bed made from the folded down seats with Lauren and 3 American tourists.

Lauren
Lauren graduated with a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Kansas in May of 2009. She currently works at an advertising agency in the Kansas City area as a website marketer. She enjoys learning how to garden, making jewelry, surfing Facebook, traveling, writing, and cooking (unless she just got home from work on an empty stomach – that’s the worst time to cook).

Personality type: The Duty Fulfiller – ISTJ
States Visited: 27
Continents Visited: 2
Favorite Place: Italy
Most Memorable Traveling Experience: Sipping the best coffee she had ever had at a cafe in Berlin, Germany.

We purchased the domain name www.travelfad.com in October of 2010. We thought we would have our website up and running by the start of 2011. It’s almost the end of July 2011 and we haven’t gotten anywhere. Since we are both perfectionists, it’s been difficult to find a web layout and logo design that we love. Since we haven’t made much progress in that department, we are switching our plan of attack. Maybe writing first and then worrying about our website will actually get us somewhere.

It’s a little hard writing the very first post of a new blog. You feel pressured to find your voice, your unique way of looking at the topic your blog is about. We have to give that up. I am starting to realize it’s something that evolves so if you are one of our very first readers, please bare with us. I can only promise you it will get better!

Why did we start Travel Fad?

We are a twenties-something, double-income couple with no kids and are addicted to traveling. Since we aren’t millionaires, we still have to work hard to save money for trips and we are restricted by the amount of paid-time-off we get. This is the case for most people. We are all in the same boat. Through this blog, we want to share with other people our traveling adventures and write about interesting places, delicious food, and amazing people from all around the world. For those of you who love the idea of traveling, but can’t travel for whatever reason, we hope you can live vicariously through our blog.

Where would we like to see Travel Fad in 5 years?
Dreaming big, we would like to have enough readers and sponsors to be able to quit our full-time jobs in order to be full-time travel bloggers. (Oh, and we wouldn’t mind having our own show on the Discovery or Travel Channel!) Even if this doesn’t happen, and even if no one other than us read our posts, we know we are accomplishing our goal of finding out more about the beautiful, breath-taking, adventurous, exhilarating world that we live in. There’s so much to be conquered.

This is a beginning of a beautiful adventure. We hope you come along.

Tyler & Lauren