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| Sign on King George's Island, Antarctica 2013 |
Her first job was overseeing a project at the State of Minnesota. The project was a relative disaster but she learned how the software world worked outside of 3M and decided to write a book about the experience. It took a year of hard work, a complete rewrite of the first draft and innumerable reviews and contributions from Tom, but in the end the book they coauthored - Lean Software Development - was a huge success.
Gradually Mary learned how to promote the book by speaking at conferences and offering classes to companies. It turned out that the classes provided far more revenue than the book, and the conferences paid for her to travel to increasingly distant places. She quickly discovered that travel was more fun and less exhausting with Tom along, and he found that travel provided excellent opportunities for his favorite pastime - photography. So he "retired" and joined Mary as she traveled.
Soon the pattern for their "retirement hobby" was established. If Mary was invited to speak at a place they had not been to, the answer was always "Yes, if you pay your share of travel for both of us." Combining multiple engagements lowered the cost for hosts and provided free time for photography. Trips to Europe became common, then the itineraries expanded into round-the-world excursions. Before long the travel included six continents and over forty countries. After two decades of "trying to be retired," the pandemic slowed things down. Tom and Mary quit "trying" and actually retired.
This is the story of our travel, the story of what it was like to visit Antarctica, South America, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, Asia, Europe, and finally, rediscover the wonders of North America.
Antarctica
We start the story with Antarctica, the last continent we visited and the one where no one else paid for our travel.
