August 22, 2019 • 40 mins
My feeling is usually, it is best to simply go with the flow. What's the point of resisting a marvelous pending adventure? Like when you're stuck on a giant cruise ship with no easy escape, and then you end up having to be smuggled into Guatemala, for better or for worse. Also, I ask Cunard Cruise Ship Captain Inger Thorhaug - to cruise or not cruise? Finally, I have a lovely chat with Matt and Brad of the new Parklandia podcast about life in an RV. #travel
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, and welcome to everywhere. I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler.
Today's travel commandment thou shalt just go with it. As
a travel writer, my belief is don't say no to
(00:22):
any trip, and don't go only once, even when it
comes to the open seas with thousands of people tagging
along to cruise or not to cruise, That's what I
like to say. I do think there's a rather robust
cruise cliche here, and I know my grandmother would say
the marketers have started to circle her. She resisted, but hey,
(00:45):
if I want to be an open minded traveler and
travel writer worth my salt, I cannot scoff. Even the
late David Foster Wallace went on a Caribbean cruise, and
he did end up writing his finest essay, a supposedly
fun thing I'll never do again. Everyone's experience is different.
(01:06):
So I did what any sane person would do and
spent some trusty hours researching the different cruise lines. Some
of them are themed like star Wars, perfect for Holly,
or perhaps focused on a more niche audience, like gay
men who love to play scrabble or women who love
to knit. I wasn't exactly sure how any of these
(01:27):
activities were enhanced by being out at sea, but I
was absolutely willing to find out. I felt it the
first time. The smaller the monolith of this boat, the
better for me. A shopping mall of four thousand people
floating the ocean seemed a stretch for a maiden voyager
like me. On the cruise websites, everyone looked utterly thrilled.
(01:52):
They had those giant, big smiles I've never had. Plus
they seemed like everyone had their own individual seafood tower.
Don't get me started on the many many relaxed spa faces.
So I reached out to some veterans who cruised once
a season to get a little bit of advice. Their
advice to me is get to a cruise early. You
(02:14):
don't want to risk missing the boat such deep insight.
How useful cruise ships like aeroplanes and I guess cars
and trains come with a very strict set of rules,
from the don't lean over your balcony to get a
better selfie because nobody, and I mean nobody we'll even
(02:35):
notice you down in the water, to the please don't
wear those jeans to dinner. Actually, it's more like I
hope you packed a jacket or even a penguin tuxedo,
and yes, check check, I always travel with those. No
fuss if you didn't bring pants or they're required attire,
because there's a handy tailor on board who can start
working those hem lines for you right away. Personally, I
(02:58):
felt I looked better in jeans and in the Palazzo
pants that was now being fitted for me. But apparently
I'm not making the rules. Of course, since pants take
a few hours, the gene wearing meals you now have
to enjoy in your own cabin or at the pool
seated on a deck lounger. I personally think it's odd
to have Osso buco poolside or a burrito with some
(03:22):
pico de gaio. And as my friends Sue and I
were horrified to witness in Florida, even hot tubs are
perfect for eating Mexican food, especially when you can just
wash your hands in the water. No problem, nothing to
see here. What I haven't told you is that I
jumped onto a press trip. Sometimes they call this a
(03:42):
fam meaning a trip to make you and other travel
writers familiar with place, hotel, city, cruise, ship, Oh the
joys so part of being on a group trip, as
I'm sure many have you've done with co workers, family members,
and hopefully friends, is that you cannot do everything by yourself.
(04:04):
You're sort of required to join people who you may
or may not enjoy for various activities. Oh look, the
artinery has a group mini golf session. I can't wait.
So during these group trips, there's always one lovely soul
who drives everybody insane. And I mean we all know
this person. Maybe it's your very special aunt who treats
(04:27):
you like a child, or maybe you're super annoying coworker
who tells all those inappropriate jokes at fancy work dinners. Well,
you see, press trips are no different. Meet Deborah and
I've changed her name from deb in order to protect
her identity. Among our little swarm of travel writers influences,
(04:50):
Deborah was the self appointed cruise credit. She carried a
clipboard to show off this authority. And I'm using air
quotes here. She was exactly the picture that has just
conjured up in your hand. After a few very very
long hours of Deborah interrupting every single person so that
she could lament just about how terrible everything is on
(05:12):
the cruise. I started to feel that I may have
to take one for the team. Day two, the captain
came to greet our little posse of eager Beaver cruisers.
While they were interrupted him mid sentenced to discuss her
issue with a carpet right at elevator B one on
floor sixteen, near to her room. She was told this
(05:32):
carpet would be replaced. This was it for me. I
was replacing her. So I want to preface this by saying,
I'm really not a horrible person. This was much less
about me and about an entire room of people having
their time ruined by one individual. Luckily I paid attention
during orientation, and due to the size of these cruise ships,
(05:55):
if anyone shows signs of sickness, so many thousands on
case hundreds of people can very quickly spread ill. Oh,
how perfect. You've heard those stories of cruise ships having
to offload thousands of passengers vomiting somewhere super unsexy in
the Caribbean. Yeah, so this is the fate I decided
(06:17):
Deborah deserved. I did what any generous team player would do.
During lunch, I made sure to sit close enough to Debora,
but not too close because I just didn't want to
be there close to her. She was just wrestling with
yet another shrimp. When I said, Debora, you don't look
so well. Are you feeling ill? Please know that I
(06:39):
said this loudly enough for a nearby staff member to overhear.
Of course, anyone looks like after all that shrimp. But
I had bigger goals in mind. She struggled to respond
as her mouth was full. My timing was perfect. Oh no, Debora,
you're looking a little green at the gills, darling. So okay,
(06:59):
I had it up a little. But I was in
custom beige Palazzo pants at this point, and I was
merely assimilating. Within moments, a team of husmad wearing professionals
unplugged Debra. She disappeared so fast, I think we forgot
that she was even with us. Don't get me wrong,
she lived. She was perfectly fine. I didn't push her overboard.
(07:24):
In cruise language, that would have been called an oscar.
The sweet, sweet irony Betty Davis would say. Debra had
also cruised many, many, many many times. She told me
this herself, and she told me she was the formidable
expert on cruising. Her words to me were nobody cruises
like I cruise. Well, honey, you're not paying attention, and
(07:48):
so they quarantine you to a special part of the ship.
And this is where Debra went, where you can be
sick without infecting absolutely everybody else. I don't suppose it's
beautiful there, but I'm sure it's very RESTful. And since
Debora wasn't really sick, I'm sure she spent this time
contemplating her life and thinking about how miserable she made
(08:08):
everybody else and how she could really cheer up and
not be such a Debora down. But probably not. She
probably made a voodoo doll of me with her own hair.
The sun suddenly came out, and cruising didn't seem so bad.
I loved it for about the rest of the day.
After I had gambled, been to the pool a number
(08:31):
of times, snapped twice, eating at seventeen restaurants, and toured
the entire ship again. If I was a drinker like Holly,
I would have had ten cocktails at this point and
I probably would not have cared. But no, I was done.
Oh good, we're talking in Guatemala, which means I could
hop right off and just go home. Perfect. So at
(08:54):
some point I stood with my suitcase in my palazzo pants,
waving this beast of the sea goodbye, and I got
into a taxi. I speak a handful of languages. Spanish
happens to not be one of them. Spanglish if that counts.
My driver was unsure of what I was saying when
I was sharing my cruise ship stories with him, but
(09:15):
the word airport is pretty unit jostle, so off we
made for about twenty ft. At the harbor border control,
I was told I didn't have a stamp. Where did
you come from? They kept asking me. I kept saying,
the giant cruise ship that just left you. Somehow missed that, Yeah,
(09:38):
what cruise ship. Well, the cruise ship didn't do the
right paperwork, and I couldn't show where it comes from.
I kept being like, Oh, let's not live in the past,
let's totally look at the future blank. I was starting
to sense that I had a problem here. But you know,
Guatemala looked nice. It was warm. I could live here
at the ducks. Why not. I didn't need so much
(10:01):
except that I do. So I had this lovely idea
for getting out of the harbor and into the country.
I conspired with my driver in Spanglish for the Daniel smuggle.
I do not endorse or recommend this to anyone, but
sometimes desperate times call for pulling out the tire from
the trunk of a taxi, clambering in and layering luggage,
(10:25):
kid's toys, and all kinds of flotsam on top of yourself.
The border authorities were none the wiser, and into Guatemala
I went. My taxi driver felt like we were Fellmer
and Louise at this point, and I was still in
the trunk, wishing Brad Pitt was going to find me.
(10:47):
I'd also like to add that this was the day
that the volcano, aptly named Volcan de f Weego decided
let's erupt. I'm not sure if there was a zomb
Be situation happening, but they were definitely burning tires along
the freeway as the volcano was busting out some serious
smoke clouds. Needless to say, I arrived at the aircraft
(11:12):
door as they closed it without me. So here I
was stuck in Guatemala until the next flight out, which
was conveniently not today. So I did what any reasonable
person would do. I found the finest hotel I could
possibly get my hands on. I ordered excessive amounts of
room service and bubble bathed hard. I was also single
(11:37):
at this point, and so I've learned that the easiest
way to make some new friends in a new city
is to go on the apps. If you gave grind,
it works perfectly. If you're not, I don't know, you
have to do something else. Of course, these apps come
with all kinds of horror stories, so I always googled
and checked some linked in page to be sure. Because
(11:59):
some Q what a marlin gentleman who works at the
National Bank as a manager and enjoys puppies in his
free time, Well, he seems just fine. I had a penthouse,
I had champagne on ice, and I was the freshest
meat in town. So I cruised, and then I cruised.
(12:27):
Let's take a break to hear from our sponsors, and
we'll be right back with more travel from everywhere. The
time has come for more of everywhere. Now where were
we at this point? I'd like to invite my friend
Holly to come and talk to us about her cruise.
I have actually never been on a cruise. I feel
(12:48):
I should preface this with exactly my point. Yeah, I
will eventually. Part of it for me is being potentially
trapped in a steel tube effectively with people I do like,
and because I probably we would do like a Disney
or Star Wars one, there's a whole kid thing to wrangle.
I know there are adults only spaces on those cruise
ships every That's what everybody always tells me. We're going.
(13:09):
You and I are going on a Star Wars day
at sea. That's fine, but you will have to protect
me from sticky little people. I'm sure those kids are
the best, but I'm telling you, there are kids on
those cruises. You have to protect me from. Deb. I
can handle deb, no problem. But I thought we should
talk a little bit about how cruise lines got to
be the way we see them today, because now it's
(13:30):
a floating city. But obviously that was not always the case.
I'm not going quite that far back, but you know,
there was a point where there were a lot of
ships going back and forth, for example, across the Atlantic,
but they were carrying cargo. And then eventually it was
like eighteen when one of these cargo lines got the
(13:51):
idea of like, maybe we should make things a little
nicer for the people that may have to travel on
this ship. That was the black Ball Line. They operated
of New York. The name was one. It was the
black Ball Line, and I just grown up with me
up to cruise on not to cruise. They ran a
primary route between New York and Liverpool and back and forth,
(14:13):
and they did have an eye towards their passengers, but
really they were still a cargo ship. They were transporting
things like livestock and mail. A lot of it was
mail on all of these ships. But even though they're
often cited as the one that is like, oh, they
were the first ones that started thinking about comfort in
terms of accommodations. It was not fancy. It was not
(14:33):
comfort of the type that would be touted today in
an ad for your your cruising experience. It was definitely
like there's actually a space for you to lie down now,
like fancy. And it was a few decades later when
this idea of maybe offering premium accommodations began. Some ships
actually started to shift their business from we're carrying cargo,
(14:56):
or we're carrying cargo and we'll make room for some passengers,
to what if we only carried people? Yeah, part of
me is like, does that make it easier or more
difficult than if you were carrying like a load of cows?
And I don't know. Cows probably asked for less, but
they come with their own complications. This also starts that
(15:20):
shift where at that point they're not just giving you
a place to lie down at night, but they're starting
to think about, hey, we should have some onboard entertainment.
Hey we should maybe make spaces where people could be
on deck just for leisure. So that's where that all
starts in the mid eighteen hundreds. And then there's this
great moment we've talked a little bit about before, and
(15:40):
it comes up on our History show a lot, this
idea of traveling for the benefit of your health, which
really started in the eighteen eighties. That was when the
British Medical Journal extolled the virtues of sea voyages as
a way to improve your health and possibly cure your ills.
So nice to get the norovirus wild at right again,
(16:01):
trapped in a thing with a bunch of people. And
this is also the time though, when this idea of
class based passenger segregation started to happen. You know, the
immigrants went down in steerage and then down with more
money could be in much prettier spaces. So that started
to happen at that point as well. Isn't it ironic
(16:24):
that now the people in the front of the plane
are taking their own food because the food on the
plane is so terrible. Everything is always a circle. Time
is a flat circle, Daniel, it's only Earth flat too.
Don't even get me started. It was they have a
cruise ship. In fact, the Flat Earth Society next meeting,
(16:46):
which is later this year, is on a cruise ship.
Are they going to go to the edge? They will
fall off the edge. The irony event is that the
Earth has to be round an old for you to
sail this boat. Yeah, perhaps they'll find the edge and
kudos them um. The first ship that was actually just
(17:09):
built as a cruise liner though, didn't happen until nineteen hundred,
and that was the Princess in Victoria Luis, which was
a German ship that one first had its maiden voyage
starting on June nine hundred. It was part of the
Hamburg Victoria line. That ship only lasted six years, though
it was accidentally run aground in Jamaica, but it still
(17:29):
was really like the beginning of this idea of just
building ships with I know you hate the word, this
idea of luxury travel and it being about humans being
catered to completely, because even though that kind of activity
was already happening, the design of the ship had not
been built with that in mind, so it was all retrofitted.
Of course, not too long after that was when the
(17:49):
Titanic went down. That's its own story then, way bigger
than the scope of this. Do you want to know
what the next big thing that shifted the cruise line
industry was? Kind so yeah, I guess since the cruise
industry seems to love all things royal, right, princess cruizes
royal blah blah bah, it's probably something related to the
(18:12):
Queen for Love and Country. I'm gonna make the hand
signal and go ish, not really love and country, you're
onto it. It was World War One fair enough, because
it kind of stopped the cruise industry for a while
because all of those ships got requisition to transport troops
and it wasn't safe for many people to just be
cruising around on the sea. And then what really gets
(18:34):
interesting one is that as part of the reparations that
Germany had to make. They had to give the United
States in Great Britain a bunch of their cruise liners.
That's only right. Um. That actually led in some ways
to the real boom that happened in cruising in the
twenties and thirties, because suddenly the US had cruise liners.
(18:55):
And that's really when Americans started getting on this idea
of like, oh, cruising is a trip that sounds great, Yes,
let's do that. I don't have to go to Florida.
I can go on a boat, right, we can go
across the Atlantic Ocean and won't have you romantic? Uh?
No surprise that World War Two had a similar effect
on on the cruising industry, where once again it was like, hey,
not so much safe for you guys to be tootling around.
(19:18):
We actually need these boats and maybe get out of
the water if you're not military. So leisure cruising ceased
entirely for a while, and then post World War Two,
let's get back up on it. Because there had been
this big boom after World War One, the same thing
did not quite work after World War Two because just
as that industry was starting to really get robust again,
(19:39):
airline travel became much more accessible, and it really punched
a hole in that industry because it's so much fun
to rather go on a plane for three hours opposed
to getting that by cruise over three weeks. I understand,
I mean different people think fun is different, but particularly
it really he really got a lot of interest in
(20:02):
a lot of financial backing in the nineteen sixties, where
the cruise industry was like, we have to fix this,
and that is how we got the cruise city. That's
where they were like, we need to make the actual
travel just as important and fun and engaging and as
much of the vacation as getting them to a place.
I think they called that up sailing. Yes, So that's
(20:27):
where suddenly cruise ships start to have not just lovely
accommodations and a beautiful dining room and maybe a chef,
but now also full casino, full shows every night, also
twenty two water slides for all of the kids to
be busy like. That is really how the industry got
to the point where now they will have people like
(20:47):
you come and do a tour of the ship that
lasted day and a half because there's so much I'm
still on my tour, so Holly at one point did
we get the famed cruise direct at That kind of
started also in the nineteen sixties, and then of course
that entire aspect of having someone on board that could
(21:09):
just give you your itinerary and keep you occupied. It
sounds silly, but it really did get popularized because of
the Love Boat, because the people who had never been
on a cruise were like, wait, there is a person
who will arrange your days and nights for you and
make sure your fun is optimized at all times. That
show really did have a significant impact on the industry
(21:31):
and drawing more people to it because it always looked fun.
Of course, everybody who's having nutty adventure, I think they
were all having sex. Well probably, I mean, but it
was the love Boat, not the boat. But I wonder,
like the point of cruising is one I have friends
that have done a number of cruises and they always
(21:52):
joke that their personal cruise mentality is eat until you're
sleepy and then sleep until you're hungry, and them it's
just like a nice way to check out. They don't
worry about like the rules of life. They didn't they
don't worry necessarily even about doing the activities on the boat.
You just want to hang out together in a way
where there's no pressure and no concern about like what
(22:15):
are we going to do next? Where do we have
to be at next? That's the ultimate. We'll just walk
to the restaurant. It's fine, they're ready for us. That's
a big appeal for people. Right, everything is right there.
You don't have to worry about logistics at all if
you don't want to, unless you're wearing jeans. Unless you're
wearing jeans and you have to get your palazzo pants handled.
Even if the boat docks somewhere and at the port,
(22:38):
like they're letting people off to do activities and come back,
it's still structured in a way where you don't have
to waste a whole lot of brain space. The thing
we haven't talked about is gay cruising. Yeah, so I cruised,
and I cruised, well, I cruised and then I cruised,
cruise on the cruise. I didn't cruise on the cruise.
(22:59):
They now have proper gay cruises. That's only for cruising.
But I am interested in the drag queen cruises, and
I think you and I should do a drag queen cruise.
Both of our shows. What would be more fabulous and fun, right,
and just giggling constantly in delight. So much glitter, so
(23:21):
much glitter. It's true. How do they clean that ship
from all the glitter? I think we should get someone
on the line to tell us how they do that.
They have to go into like a NASA grade clean
room and create a vacuum and all glitter anti gravity.
If they and anti gravity, all the glitter will float
(23:44):
to the top. Maybe it gets caught in crevices, but
I want of those people. It's like, I don't understand
why people are so obsessed with cleaning glitter. Leave it.
It's fabulous and sparkly. Yeah, but I have to go
to meetings and then I'm in glitter. Great people be
like that. Daniel Shuffler is so sparkly. I love it.
Usually they say that about my personality, not my glitter
(24:06):
combo burrito. You could have both in a hot tub.
Oh my god, this is sanity. I'm gonna pause this
right here for a moment for our sponsors to weigh in.
You've been somewhere, what say we go everywhere? My next
(24:31):
interview is with Captain Inger Klein Torhaug, the Faroese cruise
captain for Conard Lines. We're on the MS Queen Elizabeth
in San Francisco chatting about whether we should cruise or
not cruise. Thank you so much for spending a little
(24:53):
time with me, and welcome to my show. Thank you
very much. It's pleasure. There's this new wave of cruise shipping.
People are more interested in it in new ways, and
they're trying to get young people to get involved in
cruise ships. Tell me a little bit about that. Well,
I think finally it has come to people that it's
(25:14):
a really, really nice way to travel and see a
lot of the things. So you come onto the ship,
you unpack ones, and you see lots of destinations. You
can some of them basically with seven countries or eight
countries maybe in the time you are on board, if
you choose a two weeks voyage. Now for young people,
I think with the development of the ships some of
(25:36):
the ships have to offer today, it's spreading more and more,
and we see younger and younger people coming because they
see the opportunity in traveling to so many countries and
only unpack ones. They used to be this thing in
cruise ships that they called it. It was for newly
wards and nearly deads. I've never heard that conspression before,
(25:57):
but I think I think also that's the concept of it,
isn't it. A many people think that that's that's what
it is. The thing that I really want to talk
about is you are the lines only female captain, and
I think that you are in this position and successful
(26:17):
not because you're a woman, but in spite of the
fact that you're a woman, and that for me is interesting,
So please indulge me. I think it's it's about a
choice and life to me is not about the gender.
It doesn't really matter. It's a choice you choose in life.
What what would you like to be? What would you
(26:39):
where would you like to go? And the choice is
open for everyone. For me, it's about equality and I
think that everybody has the same rights and for me,
that's what I believe in. And I'm, you know, an
equalist rather than anything else. Some people want you to
identify as a feminist, and I think that the fact
that you ident fire as an equalist is so much
(27:02):
more important because you inspire people. Little girls in particular,
or someone who identifies as a girl. A young person
can look at you and think yes, there's an opportunity
in anything I want to do. Look at her. I
think we have a duty of care to actually do this.
I think we have to the world is looking at
(27:24):
right now and and there's so much division. An equality equalists.
It's more about the equality of the world, and I
think we need that more than anything else in as well,
to try all to be equal rather than separating in
different groups. You know, I I totally believe in equality,
and I think that it's so important, and the more
people who can carry that messages is it's important for me.
(27:48):
So I'm still going to tell you about something funny.
So one of the things that is always funny is
when the pilots come on board and they come onto
the bridge. So if you if I'm not standing right
next to the door, when they come in, they all
go straight to the deputy captain because it's taller than me,
so they think that must be the captain. So it's
the funny thing about that. I never considered that it's
(28:09):
oh there's a woman or a female, maybe she's the captain.
They'll go straight to the tall this guy, really, but
you guy, I've also experienced and and I think it
was in Bulgaria. I think in Sofia, one of the
countries we went to, and the pilot came only he
was so overwhelmed by the fact that I was there
was a female captain that while as I was maneuvering
(28:32):
coming alongside, he came over and it's like, should we
take a selfie? And like the middle of and I
could you just wait, pilot until I'm just put the
ship alongside and then we can take a I don't
know what it is, what people is, you know, it's
it's very often very overwhelming for people to experience. I
want to talk a little bit about the Faroe Islands.
(28:55):
Tell me a little story about the Faroe Islands. Painted
little pictures of people. I think a lot of people
don't have an idea of what it is and what
it looks like and how it is. Tell me a
little something personal for me. Okay, So I grew up
on the Fair Islands and it's just a very small society.
So it's eighteen islands and there's only about fifty five
(29:16):
people who lived there. It's a very modern society, but
it's also in those days when I grew up, was
a very free country to live in. Very open. I
remember my mom always if we went out, like just
come back before it gets dark. So it wasn't really
like where you're going, or you can't go there, and
(29:36):
don't go that far away and we need to see
you or any of that. Just be back before it
gets dark. And if we sometimes we lived outside in
a small village about two people, and if we went
into the main city, which is you know in those
days maybe an hour to drive now it's about a
half an hour, she would lock the door, but hang
the key. And I wandered afterwards and I said, I
(29:58):
said to some MoMA work wide to hang the key,
and she's like, just in case somebody comes by, if
somebody wanted to come in and visit, so the key
was there. At least they could get into the house now.
So in that sense, it was a very open um
maybe clean environment to grow open. You know on Google
when you when you went on Google Maps, I wanted
(30:20):
to if you look for San Francisco, then it comes
up on the map. You can go in, and you
can swim in and you can see the street names
all these things. Right, So on the Faroe Islands, you
just got this landmass and there was nothing there, and
there's a bunch of young people on the Fair Islands.
So they wrote to Google and said, you know, why
can't you put it on? And they were like, oh,
(30:41):
well there's not so many search for it and blah
blah blah, and you know, we're developing all the time.
So they then made a deal with Google that if
they could get as many people you know, so so
many to like them, then they would put it on.
And they had this crazy idea, so they put all
these webcams on the on the sheep. There are you know,
(31:02):
twice or three times as many sheep on the Fair
Islands as there are people. So all these sheeps were
walking around with this web camps on so you can
actually go on the into and actually follow as they
walked around. And Google were so impressed by what they did.
So now when you go go and go on Google
Maps and the right Fair Islands, you can sum in
on streets and everything. So they put it on. It's cool.
(31:27):
What is your favorite journey you've ever done? I think,
you know, people are very often asked me what's your
favorite destination. I always say it's any because I think
that everywhere we go it has something particular to offer
or is amazing to look at, or you know, we're
just on Alaska and then coming back into San Francisco
(31:50):
this morning, it was absolutely amazing with just the twilight
and just coming off and there's the bridge and you're like, yes,
that's why you come here as well. This beautiful place, No,
and and this is for every place. I think you
just gotta open your eyes and see it. I'm with
(32:12):
fellow podcasters and hosts of their very own show, park
Landia Bradley and Matt carro Whack. I really wanted to
have their dog on, but apparently she's visiting a national
park and unable to come on my show today. Hi Bradley,
Hi Matt, Hello, Hey Daniel. How are things. Things are
(32:34):
going great. We are continuing our travels and really enjoying
the road. So just take me through this. You sold
your condo and you bought an RV and decided Chicago
no more. And you now live in an RV with
your dog and you travel to the national parks all
(32:57):
over the country. Do I have that right? Yes? You do. Yeah.
We bought an r V before selling our loft in
Chicago and kind of transition slowly into it over a
few months period. We've been doing it full time for
about ten months now, and we've been traveling NonStop ever since,
across the country, visiting national parks and tons of places
(33:19):
in between. I think about states in the last ten months,
that's the lawn. Have you done every state? We're missing
a couple, just the ones that were a little bit
out of the way, you know, like Alaska a little bit,
just a little? Can you take the r V to Alaska?
We probably could. Honestly, it would take quite a while,
(33:39):
but maybe one day. But you have time. You have
nothing but time, right for sure. So I think what's
interesting that I would love you to talk to me
about a little is about the logistics and all that stuff.
I don't care about. What I care about is the feeling,
like how does it feel to just have no home
that's on the ground, that's just on wheels. Well, America
(34:03):
is our home now. That's the beauty of it. Our weekends,
instead of spending them at the local pool or the
you know, the local state park, you know, we go
to these like grandiose of ventures to Yellowstone or Carl's
Bad in New Mexico, or Shannondoah, in Virginia or even
down to the Ever Grades where we're kayaking with crocodiles
and alligators, the one place in the world that they
(34:25):
coexist and to have that as part of your daily
or weekly life is truly a blessing and sometimes we
have to pinch ourselves. Yeah, very much. It's definitely a
dream come true. And it's taken a lot of time
to acclimate to that or kind of get used to
it because living in Chicago and having this full time
(34:47):
home base, as great as that was and as much
as we love it there and loved ar condo, this
has been just so rewarding having these kind of NonStop
amazing memories that we've made, and it's been really exciting.
It comes with all these other struggles and emotions and whatnot,
but we love doing it. But wait, what is that emotion?
(35:08):
I think that that's crucial to this part, Like, what
is the emotion that you go through you give up
this this kind of life that we're supposed to. I mean,
I think we grew up in a society where it
tells you yes, what you want to do is settled
down by a house. I think there's a song that
I'm about to sing you don't want me to sing.
I can do Johnny Cash, but you don't want me
(35:29):
to sing anything else. So that's the thing, right, Society
tells us we need to do this in this one
weird way, and then when we funk with that or
we destroy that idea and we construct something else. There
must be a kind of creativity that needs to be
employed in order to create this world that very few
(35:50):
people do. Yeah, totally, Like that's definitely something we're kind
of adjusting to the whole aspect of getting comfortable with
the travel process supposed to just like the kind of
inspirations and memories that we make in the destinations, and
the r V has helped with that a lot. Like
I've never really been super enthusiastic about airports or air travel,
(36:11):
even though like I would do it a ton, And
my dad actually flies. He's a pilot for American Airlines,
so like, I, yeah, the American tell him to look
for me. I know all the pilots at this point
in fact, the flight attendants come and say hello to
me and asked me how how things with Michael next
step the pilots. Totally, Yeah, but like it kind of
(36:33):
in spite of that I've always been. I didn't hate it,
but I guess I was someone ambivalent about it. But
r V travel has been so different, and it's made
the whole travel process and the in between very enriching.
And making these unexpected memories along the way has made
us love the travel process. And now ten months in
seeing all that we've done and what we continue to
(36:53):
do has turned any kind of challenging emotions into fun
exciting ones, least for me, no, absolutely. I mean I
grew up in Michigan and the farthest I went until
seventeen was Ohio. I believe that was the Cedar Point,
which is at the northern part of Ohio. So it's
like basically still in Michigan. And then I joined the
(37:14):
Marines and I got to go to countries like um Dubai, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,
Guam two more or less day where we got to
um rebuild schoolhouses for the children there that actually had
doors on them instead of them being bamboo sides. And
that point in my life when I was in the Marines,
I got to start experiencing other cultures and it became
(37:38):
this like part where I wanted to just experience and
explore all the different parts of the world. And recently
we've been allowed to do this with both of our
work life balance and our styles of travel. We've been
able to take on this challenge of visiting America, and
while doing that, it's not exactly going to the national
(38:00):
park that's the most exciting for myself. Now, don't get
me wrong, that is a super big highlight, but I
mean just meeting these real people across the country and exploring,
exploring their homes even I mean just seeing how they
live compared to how we lived, and not exactly balancing
(38:20):
them against each other, but finding those common grounds even
though they might be more conservative or they might be
more liberal than I am, and finding these beauties in
all of it, and like kind of dismantling what the
media is telling you about. Just finding those common grounds
between people is very fulfilling for myself. That's beautiful. I
(38:41):
love that. I mean, that's the power of travel, and
I think, I mean, I kind of want to inspire
people to set off and reinvent nuclear family, nuclear life.
What I wish for people is that they could see
travel is something that you could incorporate more into a
date today that it's something that doesn't need to be feared,
(39:02):
it's something just to be embraced with love. I mean,
you guys have made a home of it, and you've
made a life of it. But baby steps, baby steps
like inspire people just to step out and incorporate this
sort of travel mentality. I think it's exciting. Yeah. Absolutely, well,
I um, I've decided, whether you like it or not,
(39:22):
I'm coming to meet you on the road. That would
be so um. Let's figure out schedules and schedules and
you can show me a little bit of the RV life,
because I haven't done that. I'll rent a little r
V and I'll come meet you somewhere beautiful. That sounds great.
That would be so much fun. Yeah, So thanks guys,
Thank you. Thanks for hanging out. Connect with us on
(39:50):
Twitter at everywhere pond, Instagram, at Everywhere podcast, or on
the website at everywhere podcast dot com. Of course, I
couldn't have done any of this without my executive producers
Christopher Haciats and the loveliest of lovely Holly Fry. The
big thank you to my lead producer and editor Chander
(40:13):
Mays and also co editor and creator of the soundtrack
Dristan McNeil. I am your host, Daniel Shaffler, and as
I'd like to say, good boys go to heaven and
bad boys are everywhere.
Hi, and welcome to everywhere. I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler.
Today's travel commandment thou shalt just go with it. As
a travel writer, my belief is don't say no to
(00:22):
any trip, and don't go only once, even when it
comes to the open seas with thousands of people tagging
along to cruise or not to cruise, That's what I
like to say. I do think there's a rather robust
cruise cliche here, and I know my grandmother would say
the marketers have started to circle her. She resisted, but hey,
(00:45):
if I want to be an open minded traveler and
travel writer worth my salt, I cannot scoff. Even the
late David Foster Wallace went on a Caribbean cruise, and
he did end up writing his finest essay, a supposedly
fun thing I'll never do again. Everyone's experience is different.
(01:06):
So I did what any sane person would do and
spent some trusty hours researching the different cruise lines. Some
of them are themed like star Wars, perfect for Holly,
or perhaps focused on a more niche audience, like gay
men who love to play scrabble or women who love
to knit. I wasn't exactly sure how any of these
(01:27):
activities were enhanced by being out at sea, but I
was absolutely willing to find out. I felt it the
first time. The smaller the monolith of this boat, the
better for me. A shopping mall of four thousand people
floating the ocean seemed a stretch for a maiden voyager
like me. On the cruise websites, everyone looked utterly thrilled.
(01:52):
They had those giant, big smiles I've never had. Plus
they seemed like everyone had their own individual seafood tower.
Don't get me started on the many many relaxed spa faces.
So I reached out to some veterans who cruised once
a season to get a little bit of advice. Their
advice to me is get to a cruise early. You
(02:14):
don't want to risk missing the boat such deep insight.
How useful cruise ships like aeroplanes and I guess cars
and trains come with a very strict set of rules,
from the don't lean over your balcony to get a
better selfie because nobody, and I mean nobody we'll even
(02:35):
notice you down in the water, to the please don't
wear those jeans to dinner. Actually, it's more like I
hope you packed a jacket or even a penguin tuxedo,
and yes, check check, I always travel with those. No
fuss if you didn't bring pants or they're required attire,
because there's a handy tailor on board who can start
working those hem lines for you right away. Personally, I
(02:58):
felt I looked better in jeans and in the Palazzo
pants that was now being fitted for me. But apparently
I'm not making the rules. Of course, since pants take
a few hours, the gene wearing meals you now have
to enjoy in your own cabin or at the pool
seated on a deck lounger. I personally think it's odd
to have Osso buco poolside or a burrito with some
(03:22):
pico de gaio. And as my friends Sue and I
were horrified to witness in Florida, even hot tubs are
perfect for eating Mexican food, especially when you can just
wash your hands in the water. No problem, nothing to
see here. What I haven't told you is that I
jumped onto a press trip. Sometimes they call this a
(03:42):
fam meaning a trip to make you and other travel
writers familiar with place, hotel, city, cruise, ship, Oh the
joys so part of being on a group trip, as
I'm sure many have you've done with co workers, family members,
and hopefully friends, is that you cannot do everything by yourself.
(04:04):
You're sort of required to join people who you may
or may not enjoy for various activities. Oh look, the
artinery has a group mini golf session. I can't wait.
So during these group trips, there's always one lovely soul
who drives everybody insane. And I mean we all know
this person. Maybe it's your very special aunt who treats
(04:27):
you like a child, or maybe you're super annoying coworker
who tells all those inappropriate jokes at fancy work dinners. Well,
you see, press trips are no different. Meet Deborah and
I've changed her name from deb in order to protect
her identity. Among our little swarm of travel writers influences,
(04:50):
Deborah was the self appointed cruise credit. She carried a
clipboard to show off this authority. And I'm using air
quotes here. She was exactly the picture that has just
conjured up in your hand. After a few very very
long hours of Deborah interrupting every single person so that
she could lament just about how terrible everything is on
(05:12):
the cruise. I started to feel that I may have
to take one for the team. Day two, the captain
came to greet our little posse of eager Beaver cruisers.
While they were interrupted him mid sentenced to discuss her
issue with a carpet right at elevator B one on
floor sixteen, near to her room. She was told this
(05:32):
carpet would be replaced. This was it for me. I
was replacing her. So I want to preface this by saying,
I'm really not a horrible person. This was much less
about me and about an entire room of people having
their time ruined by one individual. Luckily I paid attention
during orientation, and due to the size of these cruise ships,
(05:55):
if anyone shows signs of sickness, so many thousands on
case hundreds of people can very quickly spread ill. Oh,
how perfect. You've heard those stories of cruise ships having
to offload thousands of passengers vomiting somewhere super unsexy in
the Caribbean. Yeah, so this is the fate I decided
(06:17):
Deborah deserved. I did what any generous team player would do.
During lunch, I made sure to sit close enough to Debora,
but not too close because I just didn't want to
be there close to her. She was just wrestling with
yet another shrimp. When I said, Debora, you don't look
so well. Are you feeling ill? Please know that I
(06:39):
said this loudly enough for a nearby staff member to overhear.
Of course, anyone looks like after all that shrimp. But
I had bigger goals in mind. She struggled to respond
as her mouth was full. My timing was perfect. Oh no, Debora,
you're looking a little green at the gills, darling. So okay,
(06:59):
I had it up a little. But I was in
custom beige Palazzo pants at this point, and I was
merely assimilating. Within moments, a team of husmad wearing professionals
unplugged Debra. She disappeared so fast, I think we forgot
that she was even with us. Don't get me wrong,
she lived. She was perfectly fine. I didn't push her overboard.
(07:24):
In cruise language, that would have been called an oscar.
The sweet, sweet irony Betty Davis would say. Debra had
also cruised many, many, many many times. She told me
this herself, and she told me she was the formidable
expert on cruising. Her words to me were nobody cruises
like I cruise. Well, honey, you're not paying attention, and
(07:48):
so they quarantine you to a special part of the ship.
And this is where Debra went, where you can be
sick without infecting absolutely everybody else. I don't suppose it's
beautiful there, but I'm sure it's very RESTful. And since
Debora wasn't really sick, I'm sure she spent this time
contemplating her life and thinking about how miserable she made
(08:08):
everybody else and how she could really cheer up and
not be such a Debora down. But probably not. She
probably made a voodoo doll of me with her own hair.
The sun suddenly came out, and cruising didn't seem so bad.
I loved it for about the rest of the day.
After I had gambled, been to the pool a number
(08:31):
of times, snapped twice, eating at seventeen restaurants, and toured
the entire ship again. If I was a drinker like Holly,
I would have had ten cocktails at this point and
I probably would not have cared. But no, I was done.
Oh good, we're talking in Guatemala, which means I could
hop right off and just go home. Perfect. So at
(08:54):
some point I stood with my suitcase in my palazzo pants,
waving this beast of the sea goodbye, and I got
into a taxi. I speak a handful of languages. Spanish
happens to not be one of them. Spanglish if that counts.
My driver was unsure of what I was saying when
I was sharing my cruise ship stories with him, but
(09:15):
the word airport is pretty unit jostle, so off we
made for about twenty ft. At the harbor border control,
I was told I didn't have a stamp. Where did
you come from? They kept asking me. I kept saying,
the giant cruise ship that just left you. Somehow missed that, Yeah,
(09:38):
what cruise ship. Well, the cruise ship didn't do the
right paperwork, and I couldn't show where it comes from.
I kept being like, Oh, let's not live in the past,
let's totally look at the future blank. I was starting
to sense that I had a problem here. But you know,
Guatemala looked nice. It was warm. I could live here
at the ducks. Why not. I didn't need so much
(10:01):
except that I do. So I had this lovely idea
for getting out of the harbor and into the country.
I conspired with my driver in Spanglish for the Daniel smuggle.
I do not endorse or recommend this to anyone, but
sometimes desperate times call for pulling out the tire from
the trunk of a taxi, clambering in and layering luggage,
(10:25):
kid's toys, and all kinds of flotsam on top of yourself.
The border authorities were none the wiser, and into Guatemala
I went. My taxi driver felt like we were Fellmer
and Louise at this point, and I was still in
the trunk, wishing Brad Pitt was going to find me.
(10:47):
I'd also like to add that this was the day
that the volcano, aptly named Volcan de f Weego decided
let's erupt. I'm not sure if there was a zomb
Be situation happening, but they were definitely burning tires along
the freeway as the volcano was busting out some serious
smoke clouds. Needless to say, I arrived at the aircraft
(11:12):
door as they closed it without me. So here I
was stuck in Guatemala until the next flight out, which
was conveniently not today. So I did what any reasonable
person would do. I found the finest hotel I could
possibly get my hands on. I ordered excessive amounts of
room service and bubble bathed hard. I was also single
(11:37):
at this point, and so I've learned that the easiest
way to make some new friends in a new city
is to go on the apps. If you gave grind,
it works perfectly. If you're not, I don't know, you
have to do something else. Of course, these apps come
with all kinds of horror stories, so I always googled
and checked some linked in page to be sure. Because
(11:59):
some Q what a marlin gentleman who works at the
National Bank as a manager and enjoys puppies in his
free time, Well, he seems just fine. I had a penthouse,
I had champagne on ice, and I was the freshest
meat in town. So I cruised, and then I cruised.
(12:27):
Let's take a break to hear from our sponsors, and
we'll be right back with more travel from everywhere. The
time has come for more of everywhere. Now where were
we at this point? I'd like to invite my friend
Holly to come and talk to us about her cruise.
I have actually never been on a cruise. I feel
(12:48):
I should preface this with exactly my point. Yeah, I
will eventually. Part of it for me is being potentially
trapped in a steel tube effectively with people I do like,
and because I probably we would do like a Disney
or Star Wars one, there's a whole kid thing to wrangle.
I know there are adults only spaces on those cruise
ships every That's what everybody always tells me. We're going.
(13:09):
You and I are going on a Star Wars day
at sea. That's fine, but you will have to protect
me from sticky little people. I'm sure those kids are
the best, but I'm telling you, there are kids on
those cruises. You have to protect me from. Deb. I
can handle deb, no problem. But I thought we should
talk a little bit about how cruise lines got to
be the way we see them today, because now it's
(13:30):
a floating city. But obviously that was not always the case.
I'm not going quite that far back, but you know,
there was a point where there were a lot of
ships going back and forth, for example, across the Atlantic,
but they were carrying cargo. And then eventually it was
like eighteen when one of these cargo lines got the
(13:51):
idea of like, maybe we should make things a little
nicer for the people that may have to travel on
this ship. That was the black Ball Line. They operated
of New York. The name was one. It was the
black Ball Line, and I just grown up with me
up to cruise on not to cruise. They ran a
primary route between New York and Liverpool and back and forth,
(14:13):
and they did have an eye towards their passengers, but
really they were still a cargo ship. They were transporting
things like livestock and mail. A lot of it was
mail on all of these ships. But even though they're
often cited as the one that is like, oh, they
were the first ones that started thinking about comfort in
terms of accommodations. It was not fancy. It was not
(14:33):
comfort of the type that would be touted today in
an ad for your your cruising experience. It was definitely
like there's actually a space for you to lie down now,
like fancy. And it was a few decades later when
this idea of maybe offering premium accommodations began. Some ships
actually started to shift their business from we're carrying cargo,
(14:56):
or we're carrying cargo and we'll make room for some passengers,
to what if we only carried people? Yeah, part of
me is like, does that make it easier or more
difficult than if you were carrying like a load of cows?
And I don't know. Cows probably asked for less, but
they come with their own complications. This also starts that
(15:20):
shift where at that point they're not just giving you
a place to lie down at night, but they're starting
to think about, hey, we should have some onboard entertainment.
Hey we should maybe make spaces where people could be
on deck just for leisure. So that's where that all
starts in the mid eighteen hundreds. And then there's this
great moment we've talked a little bit about before, and
(15:40):
it comes up on our History show a lot, this
idea of traveling for the benefit of your health, which
really started in the eighteen eighties. That was when the
British Medical Journal extolled the virtues of sea voyages as
a way to improve your health and possibly cure your ills.
So nice to get the norovirus wild at right again,
(16:01):
trapped in a thing with a bunch of people. And
this is also the time though, when this idea of
class based passenger segregation started to happen. You know, the
immigrants went down in steerage and then down with more
money could be in much prettier spaces. So that started
to happen at that point as well. Isn't it ironic
(16:24):
that now the people in the front of the plane
are taking their own food because the food on the
plane is so terrible. Everything is always a circle. Time
is a flat circle, Daniel, it's only Earth flat too.
Don't even get me started. It was they have a
cruise ship. In fact, the Flat Earth Society next meeting,
(16:46):
which is later this year, is on a cruise ship.
Are they going to go to the edge? They will
fall off the edge. The irony event is that the
Earth has to be round an old for you to
sail this boat. Yeah, perhaps they'll find the edge and
kudos them um. The first ship that was actually just
(17:09):
built as a cruise liner though, didn't happen until nineteen hundred,
and that was the Princess in Victoria Luis, which was
a German ship that one first had its maiden voyage
starting on June nine hundred. It was part of the
Hamburg Victoria line. That ship only lasted six years, though
it was accidentally run aground in Jamaica, but it still
(17:29):
was really like the beginning of this idea of just
building ships with I know you hate the word, this
idea of luxury travel and it being about humans being
catered to completely, because even though that kind of activity
was already happening, the design of the ship had not
been built with that in mind, so it was all retrofitted.
Of course, not too long after that was when the
(17:49):
Titanic went down. That's its own story then, way bigger
than the scope of this. Do you want to know
what the next big thing that shifted the cruise line
industry was? Kind so yeah, I guess since the cruise
industry seems to love all things royal, right, princess cruizes
royal blah blah bah, it's probably something related to the
(18:12):
Queen for Love and Country. I'm gonna make the hand
signal and go ish, not really love and country, you're
onto it. It was World War One fair enough, because
it kind of stopped the cruise industry for a while
because all of those ships got requisition to transport troops
and it wasn't safe for many people to just be
cruising around on the sea. And then what really gets
(18:34):
interesting one is that as part of the reparations that
Germany had to make. They had to give the United
States in Great Britain a bunch of their cruise liners.
That's only right. Um. That actually led in some ways
to the real boom that happened in cruising in the
twenties and thirties, because suddenly the US had cruise liners.
(18:55):
And that's really when Americans started getting on this idea
of like, oh, cruising is a trip that sounds great, Yes,
let's do that. I don't have to go to Florida.
I can go on a boat, right, we can go
across the Atlantic Ocean and won't have you romantic? Uh?
No surprise that World War Two had a similar effect
on on the cruising industry, where once again it was like, hey,
not so much safe for you guys to be tootling around.
(19:18):
We actually need these boats and maybe get out of
the water if you're not military. So leisure cruising ceased
entirely for a while, and then post World War Two,
let's get back up on it. Because there had been
this big boom after World War One, the same thing
did not quite work after World War Two because just
as that industry was starting to really get robust again,
(19:39):
airline travel became much more accessible, and it really punched
a hole in that industry because it's so much fun
to rather go on a plane for three hours opposed
to getting that by cruise over three weeks. I understand,
I mean different people think fun is different, but particularly
it really he really got a lot of interest in
(20:02):
a lot of financial backing in the nineteen sixties, where
the cruise industry was like, we have to fix this,
and that is how we got the cruise city. That's
where they were like, we need to make the actual
travel just as important and fun and engaging and as
much of the vacation as getting them to a place.
I think they called that up sailing. Yes, So that's
(20:27):
where suddenly cruise ships start to have not just lovely
accommodations and a beautiful dining room and maybe a chef,
but now also full casino, full shows every night, also
twenty two water slides for all of the kids to
be busy like. That is really how the industry got
to the point where now they will have people like
(20:47):
you come and do a tour of the ship that
lasted day and a half because there's so much I'm
still on my tour, so Holly at one point did
we get the famed cruise direct at That kind of
started also in the nineteen sixties, and then of course
that entire aspect of having someone on board that could
(21:09):
just give you your itinerary and keep you occupied. It
sounds silly, but it really did get popularized because of
the Love Boat, because the people who had never been
on a cruise were like, wait, there is a person
who will arrange your days and nights for you and
make sure your fun is optimized at all times. That
show really did have a significant impact on the industry
(21:31):
and drawing more people to it because it always looked fun.
Of course, everybody who's having nutty adventure, I think they
were all having sex. Well probably, I mean, but it
was the love Boat, not the boat. But I wonder,
like the point of cruising is one I have friends
that have done a number of cruises and they always
(21:52):
joke that their personal cruise mentality is eat until you're
sleepy and then sleep until you're hungry, and them it's
just like a nice way to check out. They don't
worry about like the rules of life. They didn't they
don't worry necessarily even about doing the activities on the boat.
You just want to hang out together in a way
where there's no pressure and no concern about like what
(22:15):
are we going to do next? Where do we have
to be at next? That's the ultimate. We'll just walk
to the restaurant. It's fine, they're ready for us. That's
a big appeal for people. Right, everything is right there.
You don't have to worry about logistics at all if
you don't want to, unless you're wearing jeans. Unless you're
wearing jeans and you have to get your palazzo pants handled.
Even if the boat docks somewhere and at the port,
(22:38):
like they're letting people off to do activities and come back,
it's still structured in a way where you don't have
to waste a whole lot of brain space. The thing
we haven't talked about is gay cruising. Yeah, so I cruised,
and I cruised, well, I cruised and then I cruised,
cruise on the cruise. I didn't cruise on the cruise.
(22:59):
They now have proper gay cruises. That's only for cruising.
But I am interested in the drag queen cruises, and
I think you and I should do a drag queen cruise.
Both of our shows. What would be more fabulous and fun, right,
and just giggling constantly in delight. So much glitter, so
(23:21):
much glitter. It's true. How do they clean that ship
from all the glitter? I think we should get someone
on the line to tell us how they do that.
They have to go into like a NASA grade clean
room and create a vacuum and all glitter anti gravity.
If they and anti gravity, all the glitter will float
(23:44):
to the top. Maybe it gets caught in crevices, but
I want of those people. It's like, I don't understand
why people are so obsessed with cleaning glitter. Leave it.
It's fabulous and sparkly. Yeah, but I have to go
to meetings and then I'm in glitter. Great people be
like that. Daniel Shuffler is so sparkly. I love it.
Usually they say that about my personality, not my glitter
(24:06):
combo burrito. You could have both in a hot tub.
Oh my god, this is sanity. I'm gonna pause this
right here for a moment for our sponsors to weigh in.
You've been somewhere, what say we go everywhere? My next
(24:31):
interview is with Captain Inger Klein Torhaug, the Faroese cruise
captain for Conard Lines. We're on the MS Queen Elizabeth
in San Francisco chatting about whether we should cruise or
not cruise. Thank you so much for spending a little
(24:53):
time with me, and welcome to my show. Thank you
very much. It's pleasure. There's this new wave of cruise shipping.
People are more interested in it in new ways, and
they're trying to get young people to get involved in
cruise ships. Tell me a little bit about that. Well,
I think finally it has come to people that it's
(25:14):
a really, really nice way to travel and see a
lot of the things. So you come onto the ship,
you unpack ones, and you see lots of destinations. You
can some of them basically with seven countries or eight
countries maybe in the time you are on board, if
you choose a two weeks voyage. Now for young people,
I think with the development of the ships some of
(25:36):
the ships have to offer today, it's spreading more and more,
and we see younger and younger people coming because they
see the opportunity in traveling to so many countries and
only unpack ones. They used to be this thing in
cruise ships that they called it. It was for newly
wards and nearly deads. I've never heard that conspression before,
(25:57):
but I think I think also that's the concept of it,
isn't it. A many people think that that's that's what
it is. The thing that I really want to talk
about is you are the lines only female captain, and
I think that you are in this position and successful
(26:17):
not because you're a woman, but in spite of the
fact that you're a woman, and that for me is interesting,
So please indulge me. I think it's it's about a
choice and life to me is not about the gender.
It doesn't really matter. It's a choice you choose in life.
What what would you like to be? What would you
(26:39):
where would you like to go? And the choice is
open for everyone. For me, it's about equality and I
think that everybody has the same rights and for me,
that's what I believe in. And I'm, you know, an
equalist rather than anything else. Some people want you to
identify as a feminist, and I think that the fact
that you ident fire as an equalist is so much
(27:02):
more important because you inspire people. Little girls in particular,
or someone who identifies as a girl. A young person
can look at you and think yes, there's an opportunity
in anything I want to do. Look at her. I
think we have a duty of care to actually do this.
I think we have to the world is looking at
(27:24):
right now and and there's so much division. An equality equalists.
It's more about the equality of the world, and I
think we need that more than anything else in as well,
to try all to be equal rather than separating in
different groups. You know, I I totally believe in equality,
and I think that it's so important, and the more
people who can carry that messages is it's important for me.
(27:48):
So I'm still going to tell you about something funny.
So one of the things that is always funny is
when the pilots come on board and they come onto
the bridge. So if you if I'm not standing right
next to the door, when they come in, they all
go straight to the deputy captain because it's taller than me,
so they think that must be the captain. So it's
the funny thing about that. I never considered that it's
(28:09):
oh there's a woman or a female, maybe she's the captain.
They'll go straight to the tall this guy, really, but
you guy, I've also experienced and and I think it
was in Bulgaria. I think in Sofia, one of the
countries we went to, and the pilot came only he
was so overwhelmed by the fact that I was there
was a female captain that while as I was maneuvering
(28:32):
coming alongside, he came over and it's like, should we
take a selfie? And like the middle of and I
could you just wait, pilot until I'm just put the
ship alongside and then we can take a I don't
know what it is, what people is, you know, it's
it's very often very overwhelming for people to experience. I
want to talk a little bit about the Faroe Islands.
(28:55):
Tell me a little story about the Faroe Islands. Painted
little pictures of people. I think a lot of people
don't have an idea of what it is and what
it looks like and how it is. Tell me a
little something personal for me. Okay, So I grew up
on the Fair Islands and it's just a very small society.
So it's eighteen islands and there's only about fifty five
(29:16):
people who lived there. It's a very modern society, but
it's also in those days when I grew up, was
a very free country to live in. Very open. I
remember my mom always if we went out, like just
come back before it gets dark. So it wasn't really
like where you're going, or you can't go there, and
(29:36):
don't go that far away and we need to see
you or any of that. Just be back before it
gets dark. And if we sometimes we lived outside in
a small village about two people, and if we went
into the main city, which is you know in those
days maybe an hour to drive now it's about a
half an hour, she would lock the door, but hang
the key. And I wandered afterwards and I said, I
(29:58):
said to some MoMA work wide to hang the key,
and she's like, just in case somebody comes by, if
somebody wanted to come in and visit, so the key
was there. At least they could get into the house now.
So in that sense, it was a very open um
maybe clean environment to grow open. You know on Google
when you when you went on Google Maps, I wanted
(30:20):
to if you look for San Francisco, then it comes
up on the map. You can go in, and you
can swim in and you can see the street names
all these things. Right, So on the Faroe Islands, you
just got this landmass and there was nothing there, and
there's a bunch of young people on the Fair Islands.
So they wrote to Google and said, you know, why
can't you put it on? And they were like, oh,
(30:41):
well there's not so many search for it and blah
blah blah, and you know, we're developing all the time.
So they then made a deal with Google that if
they could get as many people you know, so so
many to like them, then they would put it on.
And they had this crazy idea, so they put all
these webcams on the on the sheep. There are you know,
(31:02):
twice or three times as many sheep on the Fair
Islands as there are people. So all these sheeps were
walking around with this web camps on so you can
actually go on the into and actually follow as they
walked around. And Google were so impressed by what they did.
So now when you go go and go on Google
Maps and the right Fair Islands, you can sum in
on streets and everything. So they put it on. It's cool.
(31:27):
What is your favorite journey you've ever done? I think,
you know, people are very often asked me what's your
favorite destination. I always say it's any because I think
that everywhere we go it has something particular to offer
or is amazing to look at, or you know, we're
just on Alaska and then coming back into San Francisco
(31:50):
this morning, it was absolutely amazing with just the twilight
and just coming off and there's the bridge and you're like, yes,
that's why you come here as well. This beautiful place, No,
and and this is for every place. I think you
just gotta open your eyes and see it. I'm with
(32:12):
fellow podcasters and hosts of their very own show, park
Landia Bradley and Matt carro Whack. I really wanted to
have their dog on, but apparently she's visiting a national
park and unable to come on my show today. Hi Bradley,
Hi Matt, Hello, Hey Daniel. How are things. Things are
(32:34):
going great. We are continuing our travels and really enjoying
the road. So just take me through this. You sold
your condo and you bought an RV and decided Chicago
no more. And you now live in an RV with
your dog and you travel to the national parks all
(32:57):
over the country. Do I have that right? Yes? You do. Yeah.
We bought an r V before selling our loft in
Chicago and kind of transition slowly into it over a
few months period. We've been doing it full time for
about ten months now, and we've been traveling NonStop ever since,
across the country, visiting national parks and tons of places
(33:19):
in between. I think about states in the last ten months,
that's the lawn. Have you done every state? We're missing
a couple, just the ones that were a little bit
out of the way, you know, like Alaska a little bit,
just a little? Can you take the r V to Alaska?
We probably could. Honestly, it would take quite a while,
(33:39):
but maybe one day. But you have time. You have
nothing but time, right for sure. So I think what's
interesting that I would love you to talk to me
about a little is about the logistics and all that stuff.
I don't care about. What I care about is the feeling,
like how does it feel to just have no home
that's on the ground, that's just on wheels. Well, America
(34:03):
is our home now. That's the beauty of it. Our weekends,
instead of spending them at the local pool or the
you know, the local state park, you know, we go
to these like grandiose of ventures to Yellowstone or Carl's
Bad in New Mexico, or Shannondoah, in Virginia or even
down to the Ever Grades where we're kayaking with crocodiles
and alligators, the one place in the world that they
(34:25):
coexist and to have that as part of your daily
or weekly life is truly a blessing and sometimes we
have to pinch ourselves. Yeah, very much. It's definitely a
dream come true. And it's taken a lot of time
to acclimate to that or kind of get used to
it because living in Chicago and having this full time
(34:47):
home base, as great as that was and as much
as we love it there and loved ar condo, this
has been just so rewarding having these kind of NonStop
amazing memories that we've made, and it's been really exciting.
It comes with all these other struggles and emotions and whatnot,
but we love doing it. But wait, what is that emotion?
(35:08):
I think that that's crucial to this part, Like, what
is the emotion that you go through you give up
this this kind of life that we're supposed to. I mean,
I think we grew up in a society where it
tells you yes, what you want to do is settled
down by a house. I think there's a song that
I'm about to sing you don't want me to sing.
I can do Johnny Cash, but you don't want me
(35:29):
to sing anything else. So that's the thing, right, Society
tells us we need to do this in this one
weird way, and then when we funk with that or
we destroy that idea and we construct something else. There
must be a kind of creativity that needs to be
employed in order to create this world that very few
(35:50):
people do. Yeah, totally, Like that's definitely something we're kind
of adjusting to the whole aspect of getting comfortable with
the travel process supposed to just like the kind of
inspirations and memories that we make in the destinations, and
the r V has helped with that a lot. Like
I've never really been super enthusiastic about airports or air travel,
(36:11):
even though like I would do it a ton, And
my dad actually flies. He's a pilot for American Airlines,
so like, I, yeah, the American tell him to look
for me. I know all the pilots at this point
in fact, the flight attendants come and say hello to
me and asked me how how things with Michael next
step the pilots. Totally, Yeah, but like it kind of
(36:33):
in spite of that I've always been. I didn't hate it,
but I guess I was someone ambivalent about it. But
r V travel has been so different, and it's made
the whole travel process and the in between very enriching.
And making these unexpected memories along the way has made
us love the travel process. And now ten months in
seeing all that we've done and what we continue to
(36:53):
do has turned any kind of challenging emotions into fun
exciting ones, least for me, no, absolutely. I mean I
grew up in Michigan and the farthest I went until
seventeen was Ohio. I believe that was the Cedar Point,
which is at the northern part of Ohio. So it's
like basically still in Michigan. And then I joined the
(37:14):
Marines and I got to go to countries like um Dubai, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,
Guam two more or less day where we got to
um rebuild schoolhouses for the children there that actually had
doors on them instead of them being bamboo sides. And
that point in my life when I was in the Marines,
I got to start experiencing other cultures and it became
(37:38):
this like part where I wanted to just experience and
explore all the different parts of the world. And recently
we've been allowed to do this with both of our
work life balance and our styles of travel. We've been
able to take on this challenge of visiting America, and
while doing that, it's not exactly going to the national
(38:00):
park that's the most exciting for myself. Now, don't get
me wrong, that is a super big highlight, but I
mean just meeting these real people across the country and exploring,
exploring their homes even I mean just seeing how they
live compared to how we lived, and not exactly balancing
(38:20):
them against each other, but finding those common grounds even
though they might be more conservative or they might be
more liberal than I am, and finding these beauties in
all of it, and like kind of dismantling what the
media is telling you about. Just finding those common grounds
between people is very fulfilling for myself. That's beautiful. I
(38:41):
love that. I mean, that's the power of travel, and
I think, I mean, I kind of want to inspire
people to set off and reinvent nuclear family, nuclear life.
What I wish for people is that they could see
travel is something that you could incorporate more into a
date today that it's something that doesn't need to be feared,
(39:02):
it's something just to be embraced with love. I mean,
you guys have made a home of it, and you've
made a life of it. But baby steps, baby steps
like inspire people just to step out and incorporate this
sort of travel mentality. I think it's exciting. Yeah. Absolutely, well,
I um, I've decided, whether you like it or not,
(39:22):
I'm coming to meet you on the road. That would
be so um. Let's figure out schedules and schedules and
you can show me a little bit of the RV life,
because I haven't done that. I'll rent a little r
V and I'll come meet you somewhere beautiful. That sounds great.
That would be so much fun. Yeah, So thanks guys,
Thank you. Thanks for hanging out. Connect with us on
(39:50):
Twitter at everywhere pond, Instagram, at Everywhere podcast, or on
the website at everywhere podcast dot com. Of course, I
couldn't have done any of this without my executive producers
Christopher Haciats and the loveliest of lovely Holly Fry. The
big thank you to my lead producer and editor Chander
(40:13):
Mays and also co editor and creator of the soundtrack
Dristan McNeil. I am your host, Daniel Shaffler, and as
I'd like to say, good boys go to heaven and
bad boys are everywhere.
Everywhere News
Host
Daniel Scheffler
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