WHEN IN DOUBT, CHOOSE ADVENTURE!

If you’re like us, then you love travel because that’s when we experience life at its most intense. That feeling of escaping the everyday and leaping into the unknown sharpens all of our senses, and the memories we create become the most valuable things we own. Just ask anyone who’s about to depart this life what they wish they had more of. The answer is almost always: less time working and more experiences together with the ones they love. That’s why our motto is “When in Doubt, Choose Adventure” (which we’ll discuss a bit more below). Life is too short not to go for it.

Great experiences are worth investing in – but they are an investment, and as such should be entered into with prudence and knowledge. So we’re here to help you to choose your adventures wisely, to avoid some of the dumb mistakes we’ve made, and to extract the maximum value from your travels, all the way from the planning stages to getting there, getting around and having the greatest time possible. Part of the fun of traveling is sharing stories and helping others, and that’s what we love to do.

Being Boomers ourselves, we have a special focus and awareness of Baby Boomer interests and needs (we hate that Senior word, except when we’re buying movie tickets, but let’s face it: everyone born before 1967 is a Senior in the eyes of the AARP).

We’re at an age where our kids are out of the house, we have more time to spend on trips and we’re really interested in adventure, new cultures, new people, new foods and all the other unexpected “new” stuff that makes travel the absorbing pursuit it is. But, we are way beyond the backpacking stage. Our aging backs need good beds to sleep in, fairly predictable transportation, good food, and the occasional tour guide. Unlike most travel blogs which focus on young couples selling everything and seeing the world on a dime (and more power to them), we know you, because you are us. We’ll answer the questions that it’s often hard to get straight answers to from travel agents or tourist brochures. Such as, is it safe? Can you drink the water? Of the many great destinations out there, which is going to suit me best?  So register here for our newsletter and let’s get GOING.

Let me, Elaine, start by assuring you that Derek and I do not hurl ourselves out of airplanes at 13,000 ft. Nor do we free dive 100 feet down a blue hole. We’re not bungee jumpers, cliff divers or abseilers. So, I hear you ask, why the motto?

For us, adventure means sometimes deciding to turn left to cross a border of a country we had not visited before, instead of continuing down the road we’d originally planned. It means agreeing to go on an overnight hike up the Grand Tetons with the full knowledge a bed at the Holiday Inn would be so much more comfy. It’s the spontaneity to decide to do a 2 day drive to a destination instead of a 2 hour plane trip. Why? Because we were eager to see what the road had to offer. For the two of us – and hopefully for you, too – adventure is being open to new experiences, to travel to places a bit out of our comfort zones, and being ready to make the most out of each day on the road.

You already know that stretching your body keeps you young and agile. So does stretching your horizons!

Our Romance: A guy walks into a bar.

No really. It’s true. The 14-year Elaine and Derek romance started in a bar, called….wait for it…The Bar, in Coral Gables FL.   I was there with a group of work friends. Derek had just moved to Miami and was there to listen to the live music.

It was Saturday night, May 7, 2005. The date is the key to our story, because it was Kentucky Derby Day. The time is important, too. It was about 11:20 in the evening. The TV’s mounted around the bar were tuned to the local news. As I waited for my pals to bring me a drink, I noticed the Derby was being replayed on the newscast. I love horses, and am always interested in the Derby results. Of course, in the noisy bar, you couldn’t hear the TV announcer, so I turned to the tall stranger next to me and asked, “Who won?” And, that was it – the beginning of it all. When I think back to that glorious Derby Day, I know who the real winner was….me.  Now every year, we celebrate the race. One year, we did it in person! Yep, that’s me below at Churchill Downs.

I get my love of travel from my folks, who, every Sunday, would throw my three siblings and me in the car and drive to some remote destination… hours and hours away from our home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sometimes we’d drive into the mountains of West Virginia just to collect fresh water from mountain waterfalls. Sometimes, we’d drive all the way to Ohio to eat dinner at my Dad’s favorite steakhouse.  Other times, we’d travel for 4 hours to check out a state park we’d never visited before. Wherever the destination, the Sunday drives were magic. In the car, we’d play word games, sing songs, have contests, and on the way home, fall asleep in the backseat while gazing at the stars.

From those days forward, traveling meant adventure, togetherness and moments to treasure. One summer during college, I was a counselor at a cross country camp that went coast to coast for 8 weeks. We slept out under the stars most nights – and visited the crown jewels of our National Parks system. After grad school, I was offered a job in the Middle East that promised travel all over Europe, and I lived there for a few years. As a young professional in Miami, I worked for an ad agency that sent me across the US each week. And, while working in marketing at The Miami Herald, far-flung vacations with my 2 growing kids was a highlight of the year.

Derek and I have made travel a major part of our lives together. We delight in exploring new places – sometimes doing the big splurge, but more often than not, getting to awesome places on a teeny budget most of our friends refuse to believe. Traveling is our passion; sharing it with you is our pleasure. Please come along on the adventure (oh, and sign up for our newsletter to get the latest tips and free stuff.)

I was born in South Africa, and came by my love of travel at an early age. Like Elaine, my Dad would throw us in the car (although I never needed to be asked twice) and we’d be on the way to safari in Kruger National Park – a wondrous land which is still the world’s greatest national park. I’ll never forget my first sighting of elephants staring us down, hippos fighting and all the other drama that plays out every day in the ever-changing bush. I thrilled to my Dad’s stories of other countries, even the grim few words he told about being a prisoner of war in WWII, and I couldn’t wait to strike out into the world. The first job I applied for during a high school vacation was as a GO at Club Med (which I regretfully didn’t get, being too young). I also applied for and was accepted to American Field Service, and was looking forward to a year in the US, but was instead drafted into the South African Air Force. At university, I became more disillusioned with the political situation in South Africa, and did what I could by working in our student fundraising organization, which as it turned out, was deep exposure to marketing! So, after law school, I went into advertising as a copywriter. But, like many of my peers, I couldn’t wait to leave the South Africa of that time. Despite my everlasting love of Africa, the oppressive apartheid regime, which practiced institutional racial discrimination and suppressed freedom of speech, made it intolerable to stay there.

I came to the US with $200 in my pocket knowing not a soul, and without a work visa. So mine is a fairly typical immigrant story. New York in the late 70’s was a scary place in terms of crime, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to live there. Sharing a room with highly suspicious characters at the $9 a night YMCA on 34th Street and 9th Avenue was a big wake up call for a naive kid from Johannesburg. But the first night in town, a beautiful summer evening, I wandered into Central Park and stumbled upon Sheep Meadow. There, over 250,000 people were sitting in rapturous silence listening to Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti sing “Rigoletto.” From that moment I was hooked on New York City. This is the power of travel: the memories you experience in the heightened state of awareness are indelible.

From below-the-radar jobs in New York while I struggled for a work visa, I managed to get myself into the ad agency world on Madison Avenue and began the climb. Behold, I found myself working on travel accounts, like Pan Am, that gave me the opportunity to travel all over the world in style! The travel bug bit really deep. I was also really lucky to handle the US advertising for South Africa Tourism and South African Airways, which meant I got to travel to my home country, and to meet really interesting people. Two of those were John and Dave Varty, founders of Londolozi Game Reserve, and real pioneers in wildlife conservation. We started a nonprofit in the US to raise money to relocate elephants in Africa, so my safari obsession goes pretty deep.

Fast forward to today. Elaine and I met 12 years ago when she picked me up in a bar (her version is only slightly different), fell in love and began the happiest, most fulfilling dozen years of our lives. Our friends call us hopeless romantics. We’re lucky. We each have two kids (4 in all), all out of the house (and hopefully soon off the payroll – don’t ask). We’ve had wonderfully fulfilling careers in advertising and marketing, both on the creative and business sides. For the past five years, Elaine hosted a radio show called the Book Report, on which she interviewed every major author with great skill and panache. It was fun, but it did cramp our travel activity a bit. So now we’re dedicating ourselves to travel while we can. Making it affordable is a continual challenge, but we’re up for it!

As you can see, it’s possible for our interests to intersect.

Listen, we all work towards a nice peaceful retirement. We all want to get away from the daily grind of the commute, the office politics, the paperwork, the HR seminars, the endless pointless meetings and all that full time employment stuff that is no longer fun. Then, the day arrives: you’re retired!

Now what? If you’re a Boomer, you’re part of the most active generation of all time. You eat healthier, exercise more, have more sex and basically live a way younger lifestyle than your parents did. So sitting at home in retirement is not on. RETIREMENT IS BORING AND IT CAN KILL YOU.

That’s why you need some of the stress you had in a job, but directed in an interesting way. That’s what travel gives you. Discovering new places gets you firing on all cylinders, and you need to be sharp and open. Getting out of the house and doing amazing things together is essential for you and your partner to avoid strangling each other. Some people try to fix the tedium of retirement with hobbies, small jobs and so on. That’s great, but not necessarily exciting. We think you’re here because you want to kick up your heels and see the world, but want to avoid costly mistakes. Good. You’ve come to the right place.

But wait, you say. All this exotic travel sounds great. But as we contemplate a fixed income, how can we afford more than an occasional trip? The rest of the time we’ll be sitting at home.  Aha, good question.

Clearly, you can’t travel all the time. But you can be planning your adventures, and half the fun is planning, organizing, and learning about the places you’re going. When your calendar is filled with adventures for the year or two ahead, suddenly your routine changes. There’s an urgency about life between trips. You have to get daily mundane things done quickly because you’re going away! There’s nothing like a deadline to get your ass in gear.

So when your dance card is full of projected trips, you’re excited. But also worried about how you’re going to pay for it. That’s where our planning tips and tricks come in. Not every trip has to be exotic. Rediscovering old friends on Facebook and going to stay with them is fun and cheap. And going overseas can be as cheap as staying home if you plan it right. We’ll discuss this in detail in other places.

But for now, please join us by signing up for our free newsletter so you get our VIP content, offers and other valuable stuff, especially the tips that will help you save thousands. You’ve taken a massive step towards that bucket list dream, and we hope to help you make it all come true for you.

Just remember, when in doubt, choose ADVENTURE!