Thanks for all the kind responses and suggestions. As life would have it my wife is recently unemployed so I guess no trip worked out. Currently I view it as a stepping stone to whatever goal I achieve in the end which right now my profession (Digital Forensics, Cyber, Cyber Intel, Open Source Intel, etc..) is kinda a flux profession so I've been focusing on Certs and marketability.

My end goal is to hopefully gain enough insight into the industry to either move laterally into a position of enough power that I stop dealing with retards or start my own consulting business.