Making meaningful connections through travel

My love of GO

As a two year old, I was inclined to GO. I hopped in my mom’s VW Bug and launched it into neutral to roll it down our driveway. Then later when I could form simple sentences I always perked up when my mom would include the word “go” in any conversation. I’d yell, “I wanna go too!” While our family didn’t travel much on far away trips when I was young, we did take a family vacation to Disneyland when I was in the 6th grade and after the first flight on a PSA MD80 I was in love with aviation and the movement that affords.

I’ve since been to over 60 countries, flown on all kinds of airlines in all parts of the plane, stayed in hostels, hotels, Airbnb’s, and even under the stairs of a Swedish ferry heading to Germany. I’m passionate about travel, aviation, photography and meaningful connections with people nature and inspiration along the way.

Why do I travel?

The answer has changed throughout my life. At the beginning it was just to GO. Fly away, anywhere. BE IN MOTION. Sometimes I was definitely tying to escape. But then, who doesn’t go to Hawaii to escape into the pristine beauty and idea of paradise? Regardless of the reasons, with only a few tiny exceptions, my travel spirit led me to all kinds of wonderful experiences everywhere, allowing true connections with my travel partners, new people along the way, nature and myself.

Travel challenges me in all kinds of ways by taking me from my normal routine and familiar world to the new; to adapting, to open up to vulnerability. And vulnerability doesn’t have to mean going to a place with unfamiliar alphabets and language, it can also mean striking up a conversation with someone at your local coffee shop, if that’s something outside your comfort zone. I’ve found that these more difficult steps add exponential chances for self awareness and evolution and travel by nature sets up the opportunity all over if you’re open to it.

Meeting up in London

One of my first real moments of vulnerability traveling was August 1992, when my cousin Monica and I embarked on a year abroad program in Europe. We were to meet the group of 38 students in London for a two week tour through France, Germany arriving at our home for nine months, stunning Salzburg, Austria.

I worked the whole summer prior on the farm and in construction to save up money and counted down the days before we would leave. We were both so fresh. Excited Americans eager for this unknown. Our flight landed in London early in the morning and we weren’t able to check in to our lodging until later in the day. We dropped our luggage, and having purchased five day transit cards for all modes in London, set off to see the city during the day until we could arrive at our rooms.

The circle route

I was completely out of my element and luckily had Monica by my side to make this a bit easier. We (mostly Monica) learned the basics of the bus system and started riding the double decker busses around the city and figured out that one of the lines near our hotel went in the circle around the city, so we would eventually come back to where we started. Seemed like a safe plan. So we boarded the bus and of course ran upstairs to the double deck part to look out the windows at this great new London world.

I didn’t mention we got no sleep on the flight because I asked the gate agent in Chicago to upgrade us, a 16 and 18 year old, to business class and somehow that worked? As such, we were pretty distracted with all the shiny objects, and awake, for most of the flight.

Sea of red

The lack of sleep caught up to us sometime in the afternoon and we both ended up dosing off. How long is hard to tell, but definitely long enough for us to wake up in a sea of red. Red London double-decker busses as far as the eye could see. We were now in the bus barn for all the busses in London, somewhere very far outside the main city.

It seems even busses that do a circle route eventually go out of service and retire for the day. The driver didn’t check the upper level of the bus before heading to the barn and we found ourselves stuck somewhere in the middle of all this red. This was quite a shock but also a stunning sight.

The great escape

What to do? We were able to get off the bus and walk toward what seemed like the exit to the large building. A nice man who was shocked to see us appeared from somewhere nearby and tried to help us get back on track. Except we were new to recognizing English through a thick London accent and couldn’t understand him. I opened up my map of London and he looked at it, both sides, and looked again and then said, “We’re not on this map.”

For an 18 year old from Oregon, this felt very vulnerable. Here I thought I was so clever with my map of London and a transit card. The man was very kind and convinced another driver to take us a few miles down the road to the nearest bus stop so we could catch something back into the arterial bus lines of town, where our transit pass would be valid. It seemed to take a long time to make it back into the central part of London and to our rooms.

The feeling of being in a new place can be terrifying and feel vulnerable but it also expands us and gives us a different glimpse into humanity and the knowledge that there are nice people all over the world who just want to help.