So if there’s anything missing from this ingeniously written and lovingly crafted chronicle of my far-flung thoughts and adventures, it’s the deeply pleasing, sonically delightful, Barry White-esque timbre of my voice. For those who have been living a mere half-life in anticipation of listening to my sweet words echo across your eardrums and lull you into a blissful trance of mesmerized euphoria, well then today is your da–
Okay, nevermind. But I did get a chance to speak recently with Travis from the Extra Pack of Peanuts podcast, and we had a great time talking about all sorts of travel-related topics, from why we travel, to what we travel with, and the weird moments that end up becoming more memorable than the monumental sites you thought were going to be trip highlights.
The interview is hosted over on his site, where you can listen to the podcast, or download the file to save for later.
It’s also on iTunes, under the Extra Pack of Peanuts podcast, where you’ll find them by the dates they were posted (May 5th and 7th, 2015; iTunes changes episode numbers so the newest one is always #1, so you can’t look them up by episode number).
But anyway, I’m just going to send you over to him, where you can listen online, or download the interview.
Here’s the first part, where we talk about love of travel, travel burnout and potential solutions, and how red plastic keg cups are a cultural learning opportunity. I mean, not the best one, but still:
And here’s the second part, where we dive into the rabbit hole of obsessive gear nerd topics, particularly the carry-on only travel style we both encourage everyone to attempt at least once, even if neither of us ever manage to convince anyone:
I expect I’ll never bother to convince anyone to travel lighter, but I always have a good time trading tips with people who already do it. Hopefully you will too.
I enjoyed the podcast and commiserate with you on failing to convince others about the joy of small bag travel. I think fear of the unknown makes people’s logic go out the door. You can tell them all the facts, they agree with the facts, then decide that they don’t want to go lighter because they are emotionally scared. When people are scared they get into all or nothing thinking. They think that they will have everything they need in a large bag or they’ll have nothing at all in a small bag! They can’t acknowledge that a carry on bag has 90% of what they actually carry in their big bag and the rest is waste.
A few family members of mine just went on a trip where they each took suitcases of about 40 pounds each, for a one week trip where they had a laundry machine the whole time. I’ll just never understand…
Yup, I had that happen with my cousin last year. Here’s the irony – we had a hotel room that was on the 2ns floor and only had stairs. She couldn’t carry the big bag up the stairs. At that point she moved clothes out of her giant suitcase into her tote bag and proceeded to live just fine using the contents of the tote. Which means she knew exactly how to do it.