How to Sabbatical
By Guli Fager, MPH, CFP®, Financial Advisor
I’m taking March and April off next year to bike from San Diego, CA to St. Augustine, FL. Between now and then, I’ll be blogging about training and planning so that others who might be interested in doing a cross country tour or sabbatical can learn from my experience and figure out how you can take — and fund — significant time off. This trip lives at the intersection of “can I physically do this?” with “can I afford it?” The physical elements of training may be relevant for some, and the financial and logistical elements may be relevant for others. Keep reading to find out how it goes :)
The word “sabbatical” references the Sabbath, when God rested after creating the Earth over the previous 6 days. My last sabbatical was in 2011, when I got put on a 10 1/2 month schedule at the University of Texas, and got 6 unpaid weeks off to do a road trip back East.
I’ve been fascinated by bike touring from a young age; my grandparents (below, in questionably useful hard hats — this photo predates commercially available bike helmets) toured Maine and Europe on their Schwinn Paramount tandem in their retirement. I recently learned that Nana and Papa rode this bike on route 76 to get to the Philadelphia airport for their Europe trip, and were stopped by an incredulous police officer who then escorted them the rest of the way. I have no idea if it would’ve been possible at that time to have the bike transported to the airport by, you know, a taxi service or a train, or simply shipped to their destination, but my grandparents lived by an ethos of, “Why spend money when you can build character for free?”
Far more glamorous than my frugal Quaker grandparents were Elizabeth and Jessica of the Sweet Valley High series, who were featured in a “Super Edition” called Perfect Summer where they went bikepacking up the California Coast and wore cute outfits and hung out with fun boys the whole time. When I read this book I had expanded my range on the W & OD rail trail, which began right behind my childhood home in south Arlington. I was allowed to ride as far as I could go and make it home in time for dinner (I think Falls Church is the furthest I ever went) and I was an experienced backpacker from several years at Catoctin Quaker Camp, but I had never had an opportunity to combine biking and overnight camping.
I thrive inside structures that I can figure out how to maximize (as a kid, this looked more like ‘challenging’). In triathlon, my training plan compliance is typically about 85%; that’s proven enough to get me to each goal but leaving me flexibility to still have a life (I’m delighted to place in my age group, but I don’t feel the need to actually win!). But if I don’t have the structure around me to bump up against, I get overwhelmed with trying to map my way to the goal. In The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, John Bogle quoted Carl von Clausewitz: “The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” If I don’t have a good plan, I spin my wheels trying to figure out the “perfect” plan and get stuck. Especially when I’m hungry all the time!
I started to get the bug to do a cross country bike trip after completing my first Ironman in 2024; many triathletes experience a period of disappointment after finishing their first big race; you suddenly have a ton of free time and you’re not working towards anything anymore, and the constant flow of endorphins from 15+ hours of exercise each week fades away. It’s not uncommon for people to sign up for another Ironman right away to chase that high again.
I wanted something that would take up a lot of room in my life, but the thought of training for a challenge I’d already completed didn’t get me that excited. I began exploring cross country bike tours and the more I thought about it, the more it felt like the next right thing. I spent 7 months training for Michigan Titanium, but the race itself is just one day; a cross country bike tour would require at least as much training time and the tour itself would take almost 2 months--my biggest physical, financial, and planning challenge yet.
In my next post, I’ll detail how I answered three really important questions for taking a sabbatical:
Can I afford it?
Will my boss let me go?
Will I even like it?