Why?

It occurred to me, as I anxiously awaited new visits to our Facebook page, that I hadn’t offered a real reason why you should come to our Facebook page. (Facebook page.)

So, here’s why.

John and I started Lost and Found in November 2008. John was laid off his lucrative job in August 2008, we got married in September and then I lost my job in October. When we had jobs, we were going to Thailand for our honeymoon. Now that we were both out of work…

We decided to chuck it, throw it to the wind, leap and net appears – and go to Thailand anyway. But if we went, we had to make something. So we made this. A mini-travel video. Neat.

But Thailand didn’t save our souls, I mean, it did. In many ways. But life was still here when we got back. No money, no jobs.

I started my own tour company in 2009. Chicago Elevated. It is my pride and joy. After a thousand years of true struggle, losing my job was the best thing that ever happened to me. John basically got his job back. And by 2010, we were back in it. Catching up. Paying off debt, lots of debt. There was no room for travel.

We managed a trip to India in 2011. By god. That was something. All the words you hear associated with India, crazy, hard, joyful, tearful…heartful. We made a video there too, but I cannot stand doing voiceovers, so it’s coming…I promise.

And now, well…now we’re all caught up. We’ve found our way out of debt, my business is secure and John, well, his office feels small, really small. After you’ve swam in the bays of Thailand, an office gets real little.

My mom passed away recently, on the last day I saw her, I whispered in her ear – among other things – “I’m going to travel the world.” I asked John not too long after that, after the impatience of death kicked in, what is it you want, more than anything? He said “to travel.”

And I realized once again that our goals were the same. With both of us working together, we could do this, we can figure it out.

So we’re doing that and we want you to come with us. Here’s a little about us, so you can enjoy our struggles and joys and failures with us, especially the failures, those are our greatest successes:

John and I are trained improv comedians. We met at the improv theater, got engaged at the theater and had our reception at the dive bar down the street. We’re funny see.

I’m a tour guide and John’s a graphic designer. That’s a pretty strange pair with a nice, cool, sensual viewpoint.

We’re not experts. We can’t tell you the best place to go in the Galapagos or how to move ahead in a train line. It’s usually us standing around causing a ruckus somehow. But we can tell you how it feels to travel and don’t get me wrong – we know THE BEST place to stay in Jaipur.

We’ll tell you stories like the time we heard a good way to avoid unwanted attention in India was to pretend you speak another language. We tried it on an aggressive sales guy by using our limited Spanish – yeah, he started talking such rapid Spanish we just had to run away.

John takes beautiful photographs. Just beautiful.

I drink too much and get tattoos.

John has also gotten into these cool, vintage travel videos. They’re kind of badass.

I like to write about our experiences, like our trip to the Taj Mahal,  the longest night of my life.

John is hopeful, he makes busloads of Indian kids laugh their asses off. I get frustrated sometimes.

We’re Americans. This is a different perspective. There are lots of Americans who travel, of course, but do to our RIDICULOUS vacation policy, Americans usually spend their precious time on a vacation with pools and beaches than on a tough trip to Old Delhi. We get that. That’s what we’re trying to rally against. It’s RIDICULOUS. But I think we have a special voice because we are Americans. I dunno. We’ll see. You can find out with us.

What are we doing? We’re not sure yet. We’re figuring it out. We’re taking a chance. We’re trying to change our lives, change what our culture has taught us about how to live. It’s not easy, to free ourselves from the Matrix. But we’re going to do it and we’d love it if you watched us try.

We’re headed to Morocco in the fall. Isn’t there just something appealing about watching Margaret and John figure out Morocco? The photos, the stories, the videos…the camels.

Meanwhile, we want to know what you know, how have you gotten out of the rat race, how do you do it and isn’t it kinda fun?

Welcome to Lost and Found. We’re really psyched you’re here. And we’re going to make it worth your while.