Jake’s Take

Our Travel Journey (from my perspective)

For me, our real travel journey began not with a trip but a realization.  This must be a common experience, when I turned 35 I said to myself, “Wow, I cant believe it has been 15 years since I was 20, it feels like time went by just like that.”  I guess I thought that I would feel different as I got older, but honestly I don’t.  In my mind I’m pretty much the same person – of course I’m sure I’ve changed in 1,000 ways but my inner voice is still pretty similar.  It was at that point I realized that in another 15 years, aka another snap of your fingers, I would be 50 and in a few more snaps I’d be dead. 

We’ve all heard people older than us say it goes fast but like everything in life, I guess you kind of have to experience it for yourself.  Feels kind of morbid to think this way- but its true.  Like most people I had  day dreamt about traveling the world, diving the Great Barrier Reef, visiting the pyramids, or hiking through the Amazon Rainforest.  At my newly recognized advanced age of 35 I had done none of these things.  I, like everyone, had gotten caught up in my normal day to day life, going to school, building a career, and raising a family.  Nothing wrong with any of that, in fact, wouldn’t change a thing but what I did realize was that these day dreams were possible too, we would just need to be intentional. 

At this point in our lives, I think Kristi and I had both been to Mexico a hand full of times and for our 10 year anniversary we had done 3 days in Rome and a week in Santorini but otherwise had not left North America.  I discussed my epiphany with Kristi and we ambitiously decided we would start going on 2 international trips per year.  The next trip we took was with our daughters to China.  They were given an opportunity to travel with the adventure club from high school and we went with them and mirrored their trip but did not chaperone.  After 1 week in China, we met our daughters at the airport and took them on a separate trip from the school for an additional week in Japan.  We were hooked.  The cultures of China and Japan were so wildly different than anything we had experienced before, reinforcing our plans to intentionally travel. 

We went along with this plan for a few years doing our 2 trips per year when I came across the book Die with Zero. I’ve had several books that have permanently shifted my outlook on life and this book was one of them.  As I tend to do, I began to prostalatize it, telling everyone this was a must read and life changing.  Funny enough when I told my business partner he informed me he had already recommended it to me but I had dismissed the recommendation as I considered myself financially savvy and thought dying with zero was a terrible idea.  Spoiler alert, the book maybe 10% financial but the real take away was that the experiences you have when you are young can not be had when you are old, or better said the experience will not be the same when you’re 50 as it is would have been when you were 20 so do it now.  I told Kristi my renewed epiphany and she was onboard to increase our trips to 3 a year.  Currently with work and still having kids at home we are pretty content with our three trips per year plan for now (although this year we somehow are going to do four)! 

Every time we travel it renews my passion for discovering new cultures and having new experiences.  We often times, because we tend to do adventure trips, find ourselves with likeminded individuals from all over the world.  A lot of our great experiences aren’t necessarily even about the country we are in but the people we find ourselves with.  Compared to a lot of travelers I feel like we got a relatively late start and so we tend to go on trips that we feel we wouldn’t be able to do as we get older.  This tends to land us in less fortunate countries and one of the greatest gifts travel has given me is a sense of gratitude.  As someone born in the West I have already had so many experiences that have given me a greater depth of gratitude that we can raise our children in a safe environment, that we don’t want for food or other necessities that people in the West tend to take for granted.  I feel like traveling can become about the checking off lists, and getting that perfect photo for the ‘gram but under it all, for me anyways, this sense of gratitude has been the most rewarding feature that I keep coming back for again and again.