December 17, 2019 • 28 mins
Jo Piazza met a guy on a boat in the Galapagos Islands. Three months and five dates later, they were engaged. Shortly thereafter, she lost her job and was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease. They got married and decided to test their new relationship — and Jo's newly fragile physical abilities — by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Cue the sleepless nights. Cue the vertigo-inducing thrills. What they learned about each other along the way was not what they expected.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Every time you walk in it, you're creating an imprint
that will be there on your marriage for the rest
of your lives. So we wanted to create this huge imprint,
and to do that, we just we decided to do
this really hard thing, which was to climb a mountain.
Welcome to A Way to Go, a production of I
Heart Radio and Fathom. I'm Jerlyn Gerba and I'm Pavio Rosatti.
(00:33):
Our guest today is Joe Piazza, an award winning journalist
whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The
New York Times, and countless other publications, including our website Fathom.
She is a novelist of the political novel Charlotte Walsh
Likes to Win, and co author of the knockoff and
hilarious send up of women's magazines. I read both and
I loved both. She's the host if you are paying
(00:55):
attention to your I Heart podcasts. She's the host of Committed,
which elves into the hilarious, heartbreaking and inspiring stories of
couples who have soldiered through unimaginable circumstances and still want
to wake up next to each other, Which brings us
to what we're talking about Today. Joe met her husband
on a boat in the Galapagos while on assignment as
(01:15):
the managing editor for Yahoo Travel. Three months later, after
five dates in New York, San Francisco, Joshua Tree, Corsica,
and Paris, they got engaged. Terrified of failing at her
first year of marriage, Joe used her job as a
travel editor to crowdsource marriage advice from around the world.
The result is how to Be Married What I learned
from real women on five continents about surviving my first
(01:38):
really hard year of marriage, hilariously candid and raw account
of her newlywed year. Along the way, Joe lost her
dream job and learned she had a rare genetic form
of muscular dystrophy. As a way of testing her new
marriage and her physical abilities, she set out, to, of course,
climb Mount Kilimanjaro with her new husband as one Yeah, so, Joe,
(01:59):
can you tell us why you chose Kilimanjaro as the
test of the middle of your health and your new marriage. Well, first,
I have to say, hearing this whole story set out loud,
it sounds fake. It sounds like I made all of
that up, doesn't it. Yes. By the way, sometimes sometimes
when people ask me how I met my husband, I
just say Tinder because it's easier. So we chose to
(02:20):
climb out Kilimanjaro because we wanted to do something challenging
that neither of us had ever done before. And my
husband's a big traveler. I'm a big traveler. Combined between us,
we had been to something like fifty countries. He's climbed
mountains his entire life, and I wanted to do something
that would really test both of us, so test us
(02:40):
as individuals and then test our relationship too, because I'm
always looking for an out. I guess I love that
you're testing it, but after you get married, not like
as a prequel to Well, I kind of think that
a great thing about being married is that you you
can't just run away. So I wanted to do it
after we got married, and we did it at the
(03:00):
tail end of our first year of marriage, which people
kept telling us the first year of your marriage is
the hardest year. They called it the wet cement year
because it's the year where the cement is still kind
of icky and gloopy but everything. Every time you walk
in it, you're creating an imprint that will be there
on your marriage for the rest of your lives. So
we wanted to create this huge imprint and to do that,
(03:21):
we just we decided to do this really hard thing,
which was to climb a mountain. Had you already checked
off zip lining and bungee jumping, jumping off mountains and
things like that, Well, I studied abroad in Australia. You
do all that when you're eighteen years old. So I've
done the sky diving, the zip lining, the scuba diving.
So really it was it was the final frontier. This
(03:45):
was the frontry. It's hurdle for you to have to
do this together. Well, we couldn't get on the SpaceX
list Kilimanjaro. Was there something about getting physically away from
your home where you were living at the time, and
having this experience away from home that you thing added
to it? And was that one of the things that
you said, we have to get out of home and
get out of the routine as much as possible to
(04:08):
do this. Well, I think that the whole point of
the book was to really push ourselves out of the comfort,
out of our comfort zones. And pushing ourselves out of
our comfort zones meant getting away from home it meant
not just getting away from San Francisco, but getting away
from the United States, because I think that travel tests
the person in a way that nothing else does, because
you're vulnerable and in a way that you're not at
(04:30):
home and you have to get out of your comfort zone.
And when you do that, when you get there, you
can actually see a real person. I tell people all
the time, the amount of traveling we did for the
first year of our marriage, I think equaled ten years
of fights and getting to know someone, peeling back the
layers of the onion, because you just start to see
(04:50):
a person for who they really are when Because travel,
and it's I think it's best form, isn't easy. It's hard,
little things up that you don't expect, and so watching
a person navigate that you may see a person come
out that you wouldn't see for five years in your
marriage if you stayed at home. But then all of
a sudden they lose their job right or you can't
(05:14):
pay your mortgage one month, and then you're dealing with
these things. But when you're traveling and you miss flights,
or your hotel reservation falls through, or no one speaks
the language, and you get food poisoning. You're dealing with
that stuff right up front, right right. So how did
you go about planning the trip? Did you do it
together every step of the way. Were you doing like
(05:35):
a tip for tech and a thing like I want
to do this. I want to do this because you're
both season traveler, both season travelers. Yeah, so we planned
the trip together. We plan pretty much all of our
trips together, except for the fact that I let Nick,
my husband, do all of the airline booking. He is
a miles geek, a master of points, so I never
(05:56):
I never even touch our our airline accounts um and
he's so good. I mean, we haven't paid for a
domestic flight in years at this point. So I let
him take care of all of that. He did all
of our booking, and then I usually handle hotels and restaurants,
and I took care of finding the different um group
that was going to help lead us up the mountain.
(06:16):
What was that group in Trepid Travel? Okay, in Trepid Travel,
and they were they were great. It was a small group.
How many people were on the trip eight eight people total?
And is that a good number for doing Kilimanjaro? I mean,
is that with the standard. So what I learned is
that these Kilimanjar trips can really run the gamut from
group size too. You can pay a gazillion dollars to
(06:38):
do a private trip up the mountain. I didn't want
to do that. I think it's more fun when you
have more people to interact with. Or there's a thirty
person trip, which is just insane because everyone walks at
a different pace. Everyone climbs at a different pace, and
when you're trying to wait for thirty people to catch up,
it's like you're hurting, hungry, angry, sweaty kittens. Do they
(06:59):
ask you beforehand what your level of activity is to
pair you with people so that there are similar abilities
on the trip at a time, precisely so that there's
a more even pace to the trip. They do? They do?
They ask you what your physical activity is? I mean?
And so our group was mostly people that were like us,
people in their twenties, thirties and forties, who were relatively
(07:23):
physically active, but not marathon runners. Um. Meanwhile, Nick could
drink a six pack of beer and climb a mountain
the next day. I'm a person that's like slow and steady.
I can I can run a nice mile and then
I want to I want to want to do a
nice walk and have a cocktail. So we had we
had people that were pretty similar to we were, and
so even though you were fit, you had just discovered
(07:47):
that you were, in fact sick. I did. I did.
So right after we got married, I did a genetics
test because we knew that we wanted to have kids
relatively soon. I was thirty five, I'm like, why should
we wait? And we wanted to find out if I
was a carrier from muscular dystrophy, which my dad had
recently passed away from. And so we got the test
(08:08):
done and found out that I was. And it's this
rare form of muscular dystrophy that hits you later in age.
You have no symptoms, and all of a sudden you
do have symptoms. So far, I've had no symptoms, but
it was in that way. But it was another reason
we wanted to climb a mountain, that we wanted to
do this really physical thing, because what happens with this
(08:30):
disease is your muscles started degrade and you can ultimately
end up in a wheelchair. And I wanted to make
sure that we've done this big physical challenge together that
we had that kind of muscle memory in case it
was something we couldn't do later on. And and I
also wanted to challenge my body. I wanted to prove
that I could do this. And I thought I always
(08:53):
thought I was going to be the weink link on
this trip um because I'm in perfectly acceptable physical condition?
Am I in mountain climbing condition? We didn't really know?
So what was it like? We chose a four day
(09:14):
so four days? Is it? Two days up and two
days down? Is that how it works? It's really only
one day back down. It's really first to get back down.
It was one day of kind of acclamation and to
start the climb. And how far up the mountain do
you get on that first day? On that first day
you don't go that far. There are sherpas and guys
who are carrying your stuff or you're carrying your carrying
(09:36):
your stuff, but you do, just you and your back.
You've got a backpack and a water bottle. You how
cold is it hot? So this is Africa, but climbing
kilman Jar you go through about seven different climate systems.
So strike a layer. Oh, I mean, it's like living
in San Francisco. So you're wearing layers, you're peeling them off,
(09:57):
you're putting them back on. You're in a rainforest, jungle,
and then all of a sudden you're in a desert,
and by the time you're at the top, you're in
kind of an Arctic zone, which can be below freezing temperatures.
So you're packing for This is literally a test of
everything you would ever take on and travel because you're
packing for absolutely every ecosystem on the planet and trying
(10:20):
to fit it all into a carrier in to a tiny,
little beautiful bag. Um. Okay, so you're going up the mountain.
And then so day two, what was it like like
going to sleep at night? Was it climbing the mountain?
I was slow. What I realized is that I'm like
not a very good mountain climber, and it wasn't. That
(10:43):
was an interesting test for our marriage and relation. It
means like you can't put one ft in front of
the other, like no, I was. I was just I
got I got out of breath really easily. I found
that I was kind of in the back of the
group and Nick was in the front of the group.
And it's not it's not that I couldn't do it,
but I was. I was one of the slow were
people climbing this mountain? Uh? And it was really great
(11:04):
because he hung back with me. He chose to adjust
his pace to my pace, which looking back, is this
nice lesson because all of us are constantly going at
a different pace than our spouse and he chose to
match mine. Did you? Was this Uh? Okay, baby, thanks
so much. Where you're like, no, no, you go ahead.
I don't want to hold because I mean as like,
(11:27):
you know, a strong empowered feminist woman. I'm like, oh no,
I'm fine, go get away from me. Um. And he
didn't let me, which was also interesting to watch to
watch him be like you know what, no, I I what.
I want a beat? Can you just let me be
with you? And we'd heard stories going into this of
couples who had broken up on Kilimanjaro. In fact, our
guide had a couple on their honeymoon, maybe a year
(11:49):
before we did the trip who broke up on their
honeymoon and he went ahead of her. Her pace was slow,
he didn't want to match it, and he kept going.
He gets all the way to the top. She sees
him as he comes back down and she's no, and
she's like, we're done. Yeah, I'm out. And apparently, I
mean the guys stayed in the guys stayed in touch,
(12:10):
and they did not get back together. So break up
on killing Garald. I want to write a romantic comedy
about that one day. When there's so many metaphors happening
on this mountain. Yeah, I feel like climbing a mountain
is the best metaphor you can have for a marriage, right,
full stop. Right, and then with all those costume changes,
(12:32):
the costume changes. So when when you were climbing in
there are these other people around, how much time are
you spending just the two of you walking? Because I've
heard from friends who have climbed it like you get
into this rhythm with your breath, for example, where you
you can't really talk anymore, and so you're just hearing
each other breathe, and maybe you kind of breathe in
a syncopated rhythm. Its interesting things happen. Were there times
(12:56):
when it was just you two and the group was
far ahead or behind? Were you always with other people
around you? It was mostly just the two of us.
Because there's a there's a guide in the front, and
there's a guide in the back, so you walk at
your own pace. You're not being forced to walk with
the group the entire time, So mostly it was really
just the two of us, and it was not that crowded,
and it felt like just the two of us climbing
(13:18):
this mountain together, which was a really beautiful thing. Can
you tell us a little bit about the kinds of
conversations you were having or not having during the course
of these twelve hour walks every day and then when
you were in your lean to sharing your sleeping bag
or in the pitch black what was going on there?
Was it learning about how to be silent together? Were
(13:40):
you finding that there are a lot of conversations coming up? Singing?
So I went into this trip thinking that we were
going to have all of these life changing conversations, right
I'm like, oh my gosh, we're gonna be walking together,
we're going to be climbing this mountain, We'll talk about everything.
And we didn't. And I think that that's a tremendous
(14:01):
blessing because I think that climbing your breath it does
become labored. You are going uphill while you're climbing. Killman
Daro after a while, after about the first hour of
climbing a day, and we just kind of learned to
walk in this beautiful silence together. And I think that
taught us how to be quiet together during the first
(14:22):
during the courtship period, in the first frenetic year of marriage,
you're talking all the time. You're talking about what you're
going to do the next day. You're making plans. When
are we gonna have a baby, or we're gonna buy
a house. Do we want to stay in San Francisco?
Do you want to live closer to your parents? And
it's just constant chatter. We live in a world of
constant chatter. So learning to not talk and learning to
be quiet together was this really amazing thing that I
(14:45):
think we've carried on into our marriage now five years later.
It did start to get grueling because I'm a terrible sleeper.
I mean, I'm like the worst sleeper. And they tell
you that because of the altitude, you can't take ambient,
which is my worst nightmare. And and so I didn't sleep,
and it gets freezing cold on the mountain at night.
So I was freezing cold, not sleeping. I cried myself
(15:08):
to sleep. I didn't. I didn't want to go out.
You have to leave your little lean to that you're
sleeping in to go outside to use the bathroom. There's
these monkeys shrieking as if they want to murder you.
I didn't want to leave, and it's pitch black out there,
so you know, essentially, I just held it all night long, awake,
freezing cold, and so not sleeping was driving me insane,
(15:30):
and I felt like I was slowly going insane going
up this mountain. But then you're walking all day long,
You're walking twelve miles a day, and you're like, all right,
these endorphins are helping me out. So you feel amazing
and terrible, and you have every range of emotions you
can possibly have. Oh my god, it's so concentrated because
all that you're doing is walking. You're not going out
to the restaurant, you're not going shopping, you're not going
(15:50):
to a gallery. It's like the travel experience stripped bear
down to one thing. Walking walking, that's it. That's it. Sorry,
Can you tell me, like what are you saying? Is
it rocky? Are their trees? Are their bushes? If you're
going through these different climates, so you're also going through
different geological and physical thing. Yeah, it changes every day.
So it starts. It starts in rainforests. So it starts
(16:14):
in rainforest with these beautiful Columbus monkeys. They're the black
monkeys that look as though they're wearing a long black cape.
They're gorgeous with these long, furry white tails. They're about
the size of Labrador retrievers. And so they're hopping from
branch to branch above your head. And these chameleons are
just skittering around the ground in all different colors, and
it's absolutely gorgeous. You're in the rainforest, and then you
(16:36):
emerge and you're kind of in this temperate forest with
these weird trees and plants, these trees called ground cells
that look like they belong on the set of a
Star Trek planet. And then you're climbing up into this
crazy arctic desert and and also there's rocks to climb
over all the time, and screen which is like gravel
where you walk three steps and you're pushed back two steps,
(16:58):
so you feel like sisiphus rolling a boulder up the
man the hill. So it's okay, all right, So you
are getting up the mountain. What happens. Did you make
it to the top of the mountain. Did you overcome
your physical challenge? This feels like a spoiler alert, but
I don't care because I've talked about it so many
times already. Like I said, I thought I was going
to be the weak link on this trap, but I
was nervous about it because I didn't want to fail
in front of my new husband. I wanted to be
(17:20):
this strong, empowered woman. But I was like, I also
know that the last day of the climb, it's very
very steep, the walking is very hard. It's below freezing temperatures,
and I was scared of it. We're approaching that last day,
we're walking through what's becoming kind of an arctic desert zone.
It's just this completely empty landscape. I wish we had visuals.
(17:41):
I wish we could show everybody what we're seeing right
now and where you were at which point of the journey.
Listeners just it looks a little like you're on the moon.
It really does. And all of a sudden, Nick started
slowing down, and that was weird because I've never seen
next slow down, and He's like, I don't feel good.
And I'd also never seen Nick admit that he didn't
feel good, and then he sits on the ground. And
(18:04):
he actually sat on the ground right next to this
like rusted out gurney that someone had just tossed behind
like a cactus or something. And I'm like, oh wow,
we could use that gurney if you need it, and
he's like, I'm not okay. And he, despite my husband
(18:24):
being in this tremendous shape, despite being the guy who
could drink a six pack and run a marathon, he
got the altitude sickness. And again, I hate being like
it's a perfect metaphor for marriage, but it is because
this is not what we expected to happen. So then
what happened. So he sits down, his head is spinning,
and if you've never gotten altitude sickness before, it's kind
(18:46):
of like the worst hangover you've ever had in your
entire life that just hits you out of nowhere. Massive
headaches and you just can't even head ache, you can't see,
you're dizzy, you can hardly stand up. His breathing got
really labored, really quickly, and you knew that this is
what it was, and what it was. He felt he
was going to pass out. The guy tries to give
him oxygen doesn't work, and we just realized it was
(19:11):
only going to get worse from there because you just
had hired to climb, Yeah and so and hired quickly.
That's the thing, like, this is the point where the
altitude goes up so quick. And are there other people
that you're seeing stopped on the side of the mountain. There, No,
we need to see other people because they're they're they're
very good at staggering these roots. So you don't feel
(19:34):
I've been I've been to places where I'm like, oh
my god, this is just crowded with tourist and I
hate this. This is not like you had to It's
just you guys, and you have to make a decision
of whether we We couldn't. We couldn't really stay put
because we had about half a day's worth of hiking
to get back down to the next camp um and
(19:56):
a few more hours to go up. But like I said,
it was a steep climb from there. So his outsitute
sickness was only going to get worse, and he told
me to keep going. He's like, you go and I
go back down, and you spend a lot of money
to climb kill him in jar. Oh right, So like
that's the financially sound decision. You climb the mountain. And
(20:16):
I didn't want to do it without him, and I
also didn't want him to go down alone. Again, I know,
to like send him alone, and I said no, and
we sat there. We're just like sitting in the dirt,
and you can see the peak this whole time too,
so it's taunting you. The peak is just like I'm here.
You could reach me if you if if you really
(20:36):
tried hard enough. And I was like, well, we're just
going back down. Did you have any moment where you
were like, oh, should I go up? Of course I did,
of course I did. I had that moment where I
was like, well, I do really want to do this,
and look at me. I'm doing so well, I'm countering
this mountain. And of course you're thinking of all the
pictures on the peak of a mountain today you're like,
(20:58):
you know, with your arms above your head and doing
star jump at the peak with the wooden sign and
all of that. And I ultimately decided I needed to
go down with him. I needed to take care of
him in a way that I'd also never ever taken
care of another human being and we went down and
it was kind of great too, because we're not going
(21:19):
to do it again. That was going to be my
next question. And now we talk about it a lot.
We're like, all right, how old do our kids have
to be before you can do it again? We can
do it again? And we've had when the kids or no,
or do you kids? We did? I mean we did
see families doing it with kids as young as seven.
I mean kids are also good hikers. Even two year
old is like a scrambler. Well, I have two questions. One,
(21:42):
do you have any advice that you give people who
are attempting to do this with a partner? And then too,
do you feel like it's always necessary to go into
the the whole story and kind of out your husband
as the guy who, oh my god, he hates that ome.
That would really, that would really get it. And I
was also writing this book, right, and so this book
chronicled our first year of marriage and all of our
(22:03):
travels during our first year of marriage, and I had
no idea how is it going to end? Because you
don't know how it's going to end. It's fiction. And
as soon as we're walking down and I'm like, well
this is great. I'm like it's just the perfect ending.
And he's like Jesus to San Joe too soon? Um,
and he was and he you know, he's got an ego,
he's a man, and he's embarrassed that he didn't climb it.
(22:26):
And so I do. I bring it up. I bring
it up every time. I'm going to counter this though,
I think that you did climate because you know the experience,
You've done the whole thing. It's almost like you go
to a restaurant and you have the seven courses, but
you skipped the dessert. You still had the meal at
the restaurant. It's not like you didn't climb kill him
and Jarro. You climbed a five kill him and Jaro.
(22:47):
We saw the peak, we could touch, We could pretty
much touch that. You climbed it. I'm saying that for
the record, for the record, we climbed it anyway. But
as Jarlyn said, for people who are listening and say
they want to go and kill him Andjaro with without
a partner, and he don't do the fast trip, that's
and Nick says this every time. He says, he says,
if he had one extra day, he would have been fine.
(23:10):
That's interesting, um, and I think that that's true. I
think that he needed one extra day to acclimate at
the third level, the final level, and he would have
been totally fine. And so a five day trip is
the way to do it, as opposed to even a
six just I say to slow down and take your time.
And you know, we're the people we were also cramming
(23:32):
in Safari's we were using this. It was late um,
in our first year marriage marriage, but we were using
it as our honeymoon, and so you know, we were
going to grow grow Crater and the Serengetti after that,
and then up to Kenya, and we're like, whatever, we
can do this, so let's do it quickly. And I
think since minutes, let's kim Since then, we're trying also
(23:54):
to embrace slow travel more and to really kind of
savor one experience as opposed to we used to be
people that were like, we can do an entire country
in five days, and now we're like, let's just spend
two weeks in ale city and not maybe a neighborhood
and not leave it. This is a reason why a
(24:14):
lot of people who planned this kill him and Jaro
Adventure will then pair it with a beach holiday in
Africa afterwards, so that you can you can relax, relax
and decompressed from this incredibly intensive, metaphorical thing that you've
just done. Yeah, exactly exactly, So I would say slow down,
slow it down, and also make sure that both of you,
(24:36):
both you and your partner on the same page going
into it. I think talking about the things that I've
just talked about. You know, if I'm slow and you're fast,
do you care if we don't walk together? Do you
care if you're up in the lead, do you will
you feel abandoned? Is this something that a solo traveler
can do or is this something to do with It
such an easy trip for a solo traveler because the
group trips are so good, the guides are so experienced,
(24:58):
and you meet people. Half of our trip was Yeah,
so I think it's a wonderful thing to do as
a solo traveler. And also that time alone when you
have people you can talk to, of course, but it's
a really wonderful meditative experience in there with your head.
You're in there in your head and you're you really
are just walking, I mean, but walking for twelve hours
(25:19):
a day. Going uphill is hard, it's hard on your body,
but it is just working with this great, this great
end goal too. It's not just walking aimlessly. It's you know,
it has this very goal. But I think anyone can
do it. Like I said, we saw kids as young
as seven. And there was this one German Man in
the group ahead of us who had to be in
his seventies who wore like a half cut off sweater
(25:41):
and like these suspenders and shorts, and we kept time,
We just kept running into him and we loved him
so much. But yeah, and he was in his seventies.
Thank you so much for sharing that. Great stories. Yeah,
I feel like it sounds like such a beautiful journey
and it does play perfectly into a book. It does
sound like fiction a little bit. It totally sounds like fiction.
(26:02):
Have the movie rights been purchased, so the nonfiction television
rights have been purchased for How to Be Married? Wow,
we're working on turning it into a travel show right
now actually, where we send different couples around the world
to try to heal the things in their marriage through
working with different cultures. Well, that's awesome and we'll have
(26:24):
you back to talk about that. Um, Joe Piazza, thank
you so much. I also wait, I want to pause.
I want to thank Nick for letting us share his story. Nick,
you are a champion among men and you are a
model husband. Just take it from me who has never
been married to you. But that's what I think from
where I'm sitting. Tell our listeners where they can find you.
(26:45):
In addition to the committed podcast on my heart and
on every single bookshelf in the bookstore, I talk most
on Instagram of all the social platforms, I'm at Joe
Piazza author on Instagram, and that's where I talk about
all my new book releases and new podcast releases and
where we're trying going next, which is not a lot
of places because I'm giving birth in about seven weeks.
(27:05):
Well we're excited for that. And for those who are
not good on their Italian spelling, that is at j
O p I A z z A author A U
T h O R. Thank you so much, fun, thanks,
thank you. We will put in the show notes details
about Joe's trip, including photographs of the moment they decided
(27:26):
to go back down of the rusted out stretcher behind
the cactus, as well as other details about how you
can do this trip. If you are so inclined and
inspired to book a trip after hearing this episode, which
I am and that brings you to hate, Gerlyn, would
you like to climb out killuman? Jarry wasn't going to
ask you the same thing. No talking, We have to
be silent the whole time. I'm okay with that. Yeah,
(27:48):
do we seem like the talker? And that's our show.
Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, please subscribe,
and you know, leave us a five star review. Oh
Wait to Go is a production of I Heart Radio
and Fathom. You can find the details we talked about
in the show notes and on our website fathom away
dot com. Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter
(28:09):
when you're there. You can get in touch with us
anytime at podcast at fathom away dot com and follow
us on all social media at at fathom Way to Go.
Please tag your best travel photos hashtag travel with Fathom.
If you want to really go deep on the travel inspirations,
pick up a copy of our book, Travel Anywhere and
avoid being a tourist. I'm Jarrelyn Gerba and I'm Pabo Rosatti,
(28:30):
and we'd like to thank our producer, editor and mixer
Marcy to Peanut and our executive producer Christopher Hassiotis. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Kay
Every time you walk in it, you're creating an imprint
that will be there on your marriage for the rest
of your lives. So we wanted to create this huge imprint,
and to do that, we just we decided to do
this really hard thing, which was to climb a mountain.
Welcome to A Way to Go, a production of I
Heart Radio and Fathom. I'm Jerlyn Gerba and I'm Pavio Rosatti.
(00:33):
Our guest today is Joe Piazza, an award winning journalist
whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The
New York Times, and countless other publications, including our website Fathom.
She is a novelist of the political novel Charlotte Walsh
Likes to Win, and co author of the knockoff and
hilarious send up of women's magazines. I read both and
I loved both. She's the host if you are paying
(00:55):
attention to your I Heart podcasts. She's the host of Committed,
which elves into the hilarious, heartbreaking and inspiring stories of
couples who have soldiered through unimaginable circumstances and still want
to wake up next to each other, Which brings us
to what we're talking about Today. Joe met her husband
on a boat in the Galapagos while on assignment as
(01:15):
the managing editor for Yahoo Travel. Three months later, after
five dates in New York, San Francisco, Joshua Tree, Corsica,
and Paris, they got engaged. Terrified of failing at her
first year of marriage, Joe used her job as a
travel editor to crowdsource marriage advice from around the world.
The result is how to Be Married What I learned
from real women on five continents about surviving my first
(01:38):
really hard year of marriage, hilariously candid and raw account
of her newlywed year. Along the way, Joe lost her
dream job and learned she had a rare genetic form
of muscular dystrophy. As a way of testing her new
marriage and her physical abilities, she set out, to, of course,
climb Mount Kilimanjaro with her new husband as one Yeah, so, Joe,
(01:59):
can you tell us why you chose Kilimanjaro as the
test of the middle of your health and your new marriage. Well, first,
I have to say, hearing this whole story set out loud,
it sounds fake. It sounds like I made all of
that up, doesn't it. Yes. By the way, sometimes sometimes
when people ask me how I met my husband, I
just say Tinder because it's easier. So we chose to
(02:20):
climb out Kilimanjaro because we wanted to do something challenging
that neither of us had ever done before. And my
husband's a big traveler. I'm a big traveler. Combined between us,
we had been to something like fifty countries. He's climbed
mountains his entire life, and I wanted to do something
that would really test both of us, so test us
(02:40):
as individuals and then test our relationship too, because I'm
always looking for an out. I guess I love that
you're testing it, but after you get married, not like
as a prequel to Well, I kind of think that
a great thing about being married is that you you
can't just run away. So I wanted to do it
after we got married, and we did it at the
(03:00):
tail end of our first year of marriage, which people
kept telling us the first year of your marriage is
the hardest year. They called it the wet cement year
because it's the year where the cement is still kind
of icky and gloopy but everything. Every time you walk
in it, you're creating an imprint that will be there
on your marriage for the rest of your lives. So
we wanted to create this huge imprint and to do that,
(03:21):
we just we decided to do this really hard thing,
which was to climb a mountain. Had you already checked
off zip lining and bungee jumping, jumping off mountains and
things like that, Well, I studied abroad in Australia. You
do all that when you're eighteen years old. So I've
done the sky diving, the zip lining, the scuba diving.
So really it was it was the final frontier. This
(03:45):
was the frontry. It's hurdle for you to have to
do this together. Well, we couldn't get on the SpaceX
list Kilimanjaro. Was there something about getting physically away from
your home where you were living at the time, and
having this experience away from home that you thing added
to it? And was that one of the things that
you said, we have to get out of home and
get out of the routine as much as possible to
(04:08):
do this. Well, I think that the whole point of
the book was to really push ourselves out of the comfort,
out of our comfort zones. And pushing ourselves out of
our comfort zones meant getting away from home it meant
not just getting away from San Francisco, but getting away
from the United States, because I think that travel tests
the person in a way that nothing else does, because
you're vulnerable and in a way that you're not at
(04:30):
home and you have to get out of your comfort zone.
And when you do that, when you get there, you
can actually see a real person. I tell people all
the time, the amount of traveling we did for the
first year of our marriage, I think equaled ten years
of fights and getting to know someone, peeling back the
layers of the onion, because you just start to see
(04:50):
a person for who they really are when Because travel,
and it's I think it's best form, isn't easy. It's hard,
little things up that you don't expect, and so watching
a person navigate that you may see a person come
out that you wouldn't see for five years in your
marriage if you stayed at home. But then all of
a sudden they lose their job right or you can't
(05:14):
pay your mortgage one month, and then you're dealing with
these things. But when you're traveling and you miss flights,
or your hotel reservation falls through, or no one speaks
the language, and you get food poisoning. You're dealing with
that stuff right up front, right right. So how did
you go about planning the trip? Did you do it
together every step of the way. Were you doing like
(05:35):
a tip for tech and a thing like I want
to do this. I want to do this because you're
both season traveler, both season travelers. Yeah, so we planned
the trip together. We plan pretty much all of our
trips together, except for the fact that I let Nick,
my husband, do all of the airline booking. He is
a miles geek, a master of points, so I never
(05:56):
I never even touch our our airline accounts um and
he's so good. I mean, we haven't paid for a
domestic flight in years at this point. So I let
him take care of all of that. He did all
of our booking, and then I usually handle hotels and restaurants,
and I took care of finding the different um group
that was going to help lead us up the mountain.
(06:16):
What was that group in Trepid Travel? Okay, in Trepid Travel,
and they were they were great. It was a small group.
How many people were on the trip eight eight people total?
And is that a good number for doing Kilimanjaro? I mean,
is that with the standard. So what I learned is
that these Kilimanjar trips can really run the gamut from
group size too. You can pay a gazillion dollars to
(06:38):
do a private trip up the mountain. I didn't want
to do that. I think it's more fun when you
have more people to interact with. Or there's a thirty
person trip, which is just insane because everyone walks at
a different pace. Everyone climbs at a different pace, and
when you're trying to wait for thirty people to catch up,
it's like you're hurting, hungry, angry, sweaty kittens. Do they
(06:59):
ask you beforehand what your level of activity is to
pair you with people so that there are similar abilities
on the trip at a time, precisely so that there's
a more even pace to the trip. They do? They do?
They ask you what your physical activity is? I mean?
And so our group was mostly people that were like us,
people in their twenties, thirties and forties, who were relatively
(07:23):
physically active, but not marathon runners. Um. Meanwhile, Nick could
drink a six pack of beer and climb a mountain
the next day. I'm a person that's like slow and steady.
I can I can run a nice mile and then
I want to I want to want to do a
nice walk and have a cocktail. So we had we
had people that were pretty similar to we were, and
so even though you were fit, you had just discovered
(07:47):
that you were, in fact sick. I did. I did.
So right after we got married, I did a genetics
test because we knew that we wanted to have kids
relatively soon. I was thirty five, I'm like, why should
we wait? And we wanted to find out if I
was a carrier from muscular dystrophy, which my dad had
recently passed away from. And so we got the test
(08:08):
done and found out that I was. And it's this
rare form of muscular dystrophy that hits you later in age.
You have no symptoms, and all of a sudden you
do have symptoms. So far, I've had no symptoms, but
it was in that way. But it was another reason
we wanted to climb a mountain, that we wanted to
do this really physical thing, because what happens with this
(08:30):
disease is your muscles started degrade and you can ultimately
end up in a wheelchair. And I wanted to make
sure that we've done this big physical challenge together that
we had that kind of muscle memory in case it
was something we couldn't do later on. And and I
also wanted to challenge my body. I wanted to prove
that I could do this. And I thought I always
(08:53):
thought I was going to be the weink link on
this trip um because I'm in perfectly acceptable physical condition?
Am I in mountain climbing condition? We didn't really know?
So what was it like? We chose a four day
(09:14):
so four days? Is it? Two days up and two
days down? Is that how it works? It's really only
one day back down. It's really first to get back down.
It was one day of kind of acclamation and to
start the climb. And how far up the mountain do
you get on that first day? On that first day
you don't go that far. There are sherpas and guys
who are carrying your stuff or you're carrying your carrying
(09:36):
your stuff, but you do, just you and your back.
You've got a backpack and a water bottle. You how
cold is it hot? So this is Africa, but climbing
kilman Jar you go through about seven different climate systems.
So strike a layer. Oh, I mean, it's like living
in San Francisco. So you're wearing layers, you're peeling them off,
(09:57):
you're putting them back on. You're in a rainforest, jungle,
and then all of a sudden you're in a desert,
and by the time you're at the top, you're in
kind of an Arctic zone, which can be below freezing temperatures.
So you're packing for This is literally a test of
everything you would ever take on and travel because you're
packing for absolutely every ecosystem on the planet and trying
(10:20):
to fit it all into a carrier in to a tiny,
little beautiful bag. Um. Okay, so you're going up the mountain.
And then so day two, what was it like like
going to sleep at night? Was it climbing the mountain?
I was slow. What I realized is that I'm like
not a very good mountain climber, and it wasn't. That
(10:43):
was an interesting test for our marriage and relation. It
means like you can't put one ft in front of
the other, like no, I was. I was just I
got I got out of breath really easily. I found
that I was kind of in the back of the
group and Nick was in the front of the group.
And it's not it's not that I couldn't do it,
but I was. I was one of the slow were
people climbing this mountain? Uh? And it was really great
(11:04):
because he hung back with me. He chose to adjust
his pace to my pace, which looking back, is this
nice lesson because all of us are constantly going at
a different pace than our spouse and he chose to
match mine. Did you? Was this Uh? Okay, baby, thanks
so much. Where you're like, no, no, you go ahead.
I don't want to hold because I mean as like,
(11:27):
you know, a strong empowered feminist woman. I'm like, oh no,
I'm fine, go get away from me. Um. And he
didn't let me, which was also interesting to watch to
watch him be like you know what, no, I I what.
I want a beat? Can you just let me be
with you? And we'd heard stories going into this of
couples who had broken up on Kilimanjaro. In fact, our
guide had a couple on their honeymoon, maybe a year
(11:49):
before we did the trip who broke up on their
honeymoon and he went ahead of her. Her pace was slow,
he didn't want to match it, and he kept going.
He gets all the way to the top. She sees
him as he comes back down and she's no, and
she's like, we're done. Yeah, I'm out. And apparently, I
mean the guys stayed in the guys stayed in touch,
(12:10):
and they did not get back together. So break up
on killing Garald. I want to write a romantic comedy
about that one day. When there's so many metaphors happening
on this mountain. Yeah, I feel like climbing a mountain
is the best metaphor you can have for a marriage, right,
full stop. Right, and then with all those costume changes,
(12:32):
the costume changes. So when when you were climbing in
there are these other people around, how much time are
you spending just the two of you walking? Because I've
heard from friends who have climbed it like you get
into this rhythm with your breath, for example, where you
you can't really talk anymore, and so you're just hearing
each other breathe, and maybe you kind of breathe in
a syncopated rhythm. Its interesting things happen. Were there times
(12:56):
when it was just you two and the group was
far ahead or behind? Were you always with other people
around you? It was mostly just the two of us.
Because there's a there's a guide in the front, and
there's a guide in the back, so you walk at
your own pace. You're not being forced to walk with
the group the entire time, So mostly it was really
just the two of us, and it was not that crowded,
and it felt like just the two of us climbing
(13:18):
this mountain together, which was a really beautiful thing. Can
you tell us a little bit about the kinds of
conversations you were having or not having during the course
of these twelve hour walks every day and then when
you were in your lean to sharing your sleeping bag
or in the pitch black what was going on there?
Was it learning about how to be silent together? Were
(13:40):
you finding that there are a lot of conversations coming up? Singing?
So I went into this trip thinking that we were
going to have all of these life changing conversations, right
I'm like, oh my gosh, we're gonna be walking together,
we're going to be climbing this mountain, We'll talk about everything.
And we didn't. And I think that that's a tremendous
(14:01):
blessing because I think that climbing your breath it does
become labored. You are going uphill while you're climbing. Killman
Daro after a while, after about the first hour of
climbing a day, and we just kind of learned to
walk in this beautiful silence together. And I think that
taught us how to be quiet together during the first
(14:22):
during the courtship period, in the first frenetic year of marriage,
you're talking all the time. You're talking about what you're
going to do the next day. You're making plans. When
are we gonna have a baby, or we're gonna buy
a house. Do we want to stay in San Francisco?
Do you want to live closer to your parents? And
it's just constant chatter. We live in a world of
constant chatter. So learning to not talk and learning to
be quiet together was this really amazing thing that I
(14:45):
think we've carried on into our marriage now five years later.
It did start to get grueling because I'm a terrible sleeper.
I mean, I'm like the worst sleeper. And they tell
you that because of the altitude, you can't take ambient,
which is my worst nightmare. And and so I didn't sleep,
and it gets freezing cold on the mountain at night.
So I was freezing cold, not sleeping. I cried myself
(15:08):
to sleep. I didn't. I didn't want to go out.
You have to leave your little lean to that you're
sleeping in to go outside to use the bathroom. There's
these monkeys shrieking as if they want to murder you.
I didn't want to leave, and it's pitch black out there,
so you know, essentially, I just held it all night long, awake,
freezing cold, and so not sleeping was driving me insane,
(15:30):
and I felt like I was slowly going insane going
up this mountain. But then you're walking all day long,
You're walking twelve miles a day, and you're like, all right,
these endorphins are helping me out. So you feel amazing
and terrible, and you have every range of emotions you
can possibly have. Oh my god, it's so concentrated because
all that you're doing is walking. You're not going out
to the restaurant, you're not going shopping, you're not going
(15:50):
to a gallery. It's like the travel experience stripped bear
down to one thing. Walking walking, that's it. That's it. Sorry,
Can you tell me, like what are you saying? Is
it rocky? Are their trees? Are their bushes? If you're
going through these different climates, so you're also going through
different geological and physical thing. Yeah, it changes every day.
So it starts. It starts in rainforests. So it starts
(16:14):
in rainforest with these beautiful Columbus monkeys. They're the black
monkeys that look as though they're wearing a long black cape.
They're gorgeous with these long, furry white tails. They're about
the size of Labrador retrievers. And so they're hopping from
branch to branch above your head. And these chameleons are
just skittering around the ground in all different colors, and
it's absolutely gorgeous. You're in the rainforest, and then you
(16:36):
emerge and you're kind of in this temperate forest with
these weird trees and plants, these trees called ground cells
that look like they belong on the set of a
Star Trek planet. And then you're climbing up into this
crazy arctic desert and and also there's rocks to climb
over all the time, and screen which is like gravel
where you walk three steps and you're pushed back two steps,
(16:58):
so you feel like sisiphus rolling a boulder up the
man the hill. So it's okay, all right, So you
are getting up the mountain. What happens. Did you make
it to the top of the mountain. Did you overcome
your physical challenge? This feels like a spoiler alert, but
I don't care because I've talked about it so many
times already. Like I said, I thought I was going
to be the weak link on this trap, but I
was nervous about it because I didn't want to fail
in front of my new husband. I wanted to be
(17:20):
this strong, empowered woman. But I was like, I also
know that the last day of the climb, it's very
very steep, the walking is very hard. It's below freezing temperatures,
and I was scared of it. We're approaching that last day,
we're walking through what's becoming kind of an arctic desert zone.
It's just this completely empty landscape. I wish we had visuals.
(17:41):
I wish we could show everybody what we're seeing right
now and where you were at which point of the journey.
Listeners just it looks a little like you're on the moon.
It really does. And all of a sudden, Nick started
slowing down, and that was weird because I've never seen
next slow down, and He's like, I don't feel good.
And I'd also never seen Nick admit that he didn't
feel good, and then he sits on the ground. And
(18:04):
he actually sat on the ground right next to this
like rusted out gurney that someone had just tossed behind
like a cactus or something. And I'm like, oh wow,
we could use that gurney if you need it, and
he's like, I'm not okay. And he, despite my husband
(18:24):
being in this tremendous shape, despite being the guy who
could drink a six pack and run a marathon, he
got the altitude sickness. And again, I hate being like
it's a perfect metaphor for marriage, but it is because
this is not what we expected to happen. So then
what happened. So he sits down, his head is spinning,
and if you've never gotten altitude sickness before, it's kind
(18:46):
of like the worst hangover you've ever had in your
entire life that just hits you out of nowhere. Massive
headaches and you just can't even head ache, you can't see,
you're dizzy, you can hardly stand up. His breathing got
really labored, really quickly, and you knew that this is
what it was, and what it was. He felt he
was going to pass out. The guy tries to give
him oxygen doesn't work, and we just realized it was
(19:11):
only going to get worse from there because you just
had hired to climb, Yeah and so and hired quickly.
That's the thing, like, this is the point where the
altitude goes up so quick. And are there other people
that you're seeing stopped on the side of the mountain. There, No,
we need to see other people because they're they're they're
very good at staggering these roots. So you don't feel
(19:34):
I've been I've been to places where I'm like, oh
my god, this is just crowded with tourist and I
hate this. This is not like you had to It's
just you guys, and you have to make a decision
of whether we We couldn't. We couldn't really stay put
because we had about half a day's worth of hiking
to get back down to the next camp um and
(19:56):
a few more hours to go up. But like I said,
it was a steep climb from there. So his outsitute
sickness was only going to get worse, and he told
me to keep going. He's like, you go and I
go back down, and you spend a lot of money
to climb kill him in jar. Oh right, So like
that's the financially sound decision. You climb the mountain. And
(20:16):
I didn't want to do it without him, and I
also didn't want him to go down alone. Again, I know,
to like send him alone, and I said no, and
we sat there. We're just like sitting in the dirt,
and you can see the peak this whole time too,
so it's taunting you. The peak is just like I'm here.
You could reach me if you if if you really
(20:36):
tried hard enough. And I was like, well, we're just
going back down. Did you have any moment where you
were like, oh, should I go up? Of course I did,
of course I did. I had that moment where I
was like, well, I do really want to do this,
and look at me. I'm doing so well, I'm countering
this mountain. And of course you're thinking of all the
pictures on the peak of a mountain today you're like,
(20:58):
you know, with your arms above your head and doing
star jump at the peak with the wooden sign and
all of that. And I ultimately decided I needed to
go down with him. I needed to take care of
him in a way that I'd also never ever taken
care of another human being and we went down and
it was kind of great too, because we're not going
(21:19):
to do it again. That was going to be my
next question. And now we talk about it a lot.
We're like, all right, how old do our kids have
to be before you can do it again? We can
do it again? And we've had when the kids or no,
or do you kids? We did? I mean we did
see families doing it with kids as young as seven.
I mean kids are also good hikers. Even two year
old is like a scrambler. Well, I have two questions. One,
(21:42):
do you have any advice that you give people who
are attempting to do this with a partner? And then too,
do you feel like it's always necessary to go into
the the whole story and kind of out your husband
as the guy who, oh my god, he hates that ome.
That would really, that would really get it. And I
was also writing this book, right, and so this book
chronicled our first year of marriage and all of our
(22:03):
travels during our first year of marriage, and I had
no idea how is it going to end? Because you
don't know how it's going to end. It's fiction. And
as soon as we're walking down and I'm like, well
this is great. I'm like it's just the perfect ending.
And he's like Jesus to San Joe too soon? Um,
and he was and he you know, he's got an ego,
he's a man, and he's embarrassed that he didn't climb it.
(22:26):
And so I do. I bring it up. I bring
it up every time. I'm going to counter this though,
I think that you did climate because you know the experience,
You've done the whole thing. It's almost like you go
to a restaurant and you have the seven courses, but
you skipped the dessert. You still had the meal at
the restaurant. It's not like you didn't climb kill him
and Jarro. You climbed a five kill him and Jaro.
(22:47):
We saw the peak, we could touch, We could pretty
much touch that. You climbed it. I'm saying that for
the record, for the record, we climbed it anyway. But
as Jarlyn said, for people who are listening and say
they want to go and kill him Andjaro with without
a partner, and he don't do the fast trip, that's
and Nick says this every time. He says, he says,
if he had one extra day, he would have been fine.
(23:10):
That's interesting, um, and I think that that's true. I
think that he needed one extra day to acclimate at
the third level, the final level, and he would have
been totally fine. And so a five day trip is
the way to do it, as opposed to even a
six just I say to slow down and take your time.
And you know, we're the people we were also cramming
(23:32):
in Safari's we were using this. It was late um,
in our first year marriage marriage, but we were using
it as our honeymoon, and so you know, we were
going to grow grow Crater and the Serengetti after that,
and then up to Kenya, and we're like, whatever, we
can do this, so let's do it quickly. And I
think since minutes, let's kim Since then, we're trying also
(23:54):
to embrace slow travel more and to really kind of
savor one experience as opposed to we used to be
people that were like, we can do an entire country
in five days, and now we're like, let's just spend
two weeks in ale city and not maybe a neighborhood
and not leave it. This is a reason why a
(24:14):
lot of people who planned this kill him and Jaro
Adventure will then pair it with a beach holiday in
Africa afterwards, so that you can you can relax, relax
and decompressed from this incredibly intensive, metaphorical thing that you've
just done. Yeah, exactly exactly, So I would say slow down,
slow it down, and also make sure that both of you,
(24:36):
both you and your partner on the same page going
into it. I think talking about the things that I've
just talked about. You know, if I'm slow and you're fast,
do you care if we don't walk together? Do you
care if you're up in the lead, do you will
you feel abandoned? Is this something that a solo traveler
can do or is this something to do with It
such an easy trip for a solo traveler because the
group trips are so good, the guides are so experienced,
(24:58):
and you meet people. Half of our trip was Yeah,
so I think it's a wonderful thing to do as
a solo traveler. And also that time alone when you
have people you can talk to, of course, but it's
a really wonderful meditative experience in there with your head.
You're in there in your head and you're you really
are just walking, I mean, but walking for twelve hours
(25:19):
a day. Going uphill is hard, it's hard on your body,
but it is just working with this great, this great
end goal too. It's not just walking aimlessly. It's you know,
it has this very goal. But I think anyone can
do it. Like I said, we saw kids as young
as seven. And there was this one German Man in
the group ahead of us who had to be in
his seventies who wore like a half cut off sweater
(25:41):
and like these suspenders and shorts, and we kept time,
We just kept running into him and we loved him
so much. But yeah, and he was in his seventies.
Thank you so much for sharing that. Great stories. Yeah,
I feel like it sounds like such a beautiful journey
and it does play perfectly into a book. It does
sound like fiction a little bit. It totally sounds like fiction.
(26:02):
Have the movie rights been purchased, so the nonfiction television
rights have been purchased for How to Be Married? Wow,
we're working on turning it into a travel show right
now actually, where we send different couples around the world
to try to heal the things in their marriage through
working with different cultures. Well, that's awesome and we'll have
(26:24):
you back to talk about that. Um, Joe Piazza, thank
you so much. I also wait, I want to pause.
I want to thank Nick for letting us share his story. Nick,
you are a champion among men and you are a
model husband. Just take it from me who has never
been married to you. But that's what I think from
where I'm sitting. Tell our listeners where they can find you.
(26:45):
In addition to the committed podcast on my heart and
on every single bookshelf in the bookstore, I talk most
on Instagram of all the social platforms, I'm at Joe
Piazza author on Instagram, and that's where I talk about
all my new book releases and new podcast releases and
where we're trying going next, which is not a lot
of places because I'm giving birth in about seven weeks.
(27:05):
Well we're excited for that. And for those who are
not good on their Italian spelling, that is at j
O p I A z z A author A U
T h O R. Thank you so much, fun, thanks,
thank you. We will put in the show notes details
about Joe's trip, including photographs of the moment they decided
(27:26):
to go back down of the rusted out stretcher behind
the cactus, as well as other details about how you
can do this trip. If you are so inclined and
inspired to book a trip after hearing this episode, which
I am and that brings you to hate, Gerlyn, would
you like to climb out killuman? Jarry wasn't going to
ask you the same thing. No talking, We have to
be silent the whole time. I'm okay with that. Yeah,
(27:48):
do we seem like the talker? And that's our show.
Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, please subscribe,
and you know, leave us a five star review. Oh
Wait to Go is a production of I Heart Radio
and Fathom. You can find the details we talked about
in the show notes and on our website fathom away
dot com. Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter
(28:09):
when you're there. You can get in touch with us
anytime at podcast at fathom away dot com and follow
us on all social media at at fathom Way to Go.
Please tag your best travel photos hashtag travel with Fathom.
If you want to really go deep on the travel inspirations,
pick up a copy of our book, Travel Anywhere and
avoid being a tourist. I'm Jarrelyn Gerba and I'm Pabo Rosatti,
(28:30):
and we'd like to thank our producer, editor and mixer
Marcy to Peanut and our executive producer Christopher Hassiotis. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Kay
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