Heading to Kansas City (The Long Way)

Hi guys! So I'm planning a road trip and I want your two cents!  Missouri isn't too far from New Jersey but I figured while I have the time I might as well make some stops. I'll be heading the long way back to KC so if you know any great places I should stop, comment below, and I may add it to my itinerary.

Heading Home! (The Long Way...)
West Orange, NJ - Kansas City, MO
August 2016

West Orange Trip on Roadtrippers

-O.T.

The Mentality of Selling Your Possessions

Maui, Hawaii: I actually packed too much.

How can you just get rid of all of your stuff like that?

I'm asked that question constantly. The answer is: because that's just what it is. Stuff. I find one of the bigger travel inhibitors (outside of children and relationships) is stuff. It's quite amazing actually. We as a species started out with nothing but the clothes (plants?) on our back and a few tools for obtaining food and a cave as a home. Then we started building huts and beds to keep ourselves minimally comfortable. We were mostly a nomadic species, hitching up our tents and yurts and heading wherever good weather or food was. With those motivations (and getting away from our crazy family) we spread across the planet.

Fast forward 2015...16. Most of the terrestrial Earth has been explored. We've settled. We can easily access our own food. Heck we can change our own weather in the form of heating and AC. We don't like someone? Forget crossing the mountain, we just put up fences. Problem solved. We became too comfortable. Stagnant. We pride ourselves in our permanence. We pride ourselves in our stuff. In fact, what have houses become but shelters not only for ourselves but our stuff. The more stuff you have, the bigger the house you need to accommodate it. Or sometimes vice versa. Do we really need two to three living spaces? Do we need to change our perfectly good furniture every year? According to LA Times, the average American has 300,000 items in their home. NPR wrote that the size of the American home tripled in the past 50 years.

No matter where I live, my room is still messy.

We all fall victim to what society tells us. We need more stuff. You have to update your electronics every year. Your car isn't cool anymore, you need this one instead. It's a never ending cycle.

Before you go longterm traveling, I find it best to adapt an ¡Olvidalo! spirit and free yourself of what can and will hold you back. You could definitely put your stuff in storage but then you are stuck with paying $50-$500 per month holding on to things you aren't even using. That $50-$500 could go towards an extra month or two of rent in a foreign country. It could drive you across the US. It could go toward four months of food. It can get you a month of partying; or even a entire cup of coffee at Starbucks ^_~. Before you leave for your travels take each individual item and think "what would I lose by keeping this? Or what would be gained from losing it?" I've sold most of my possessions three times. The only thing I've regretted selling were my CDs; and even then, I could just get them again.

When you've whittled down your stuff to what you need, don't think about it for a while. A week later look at the stuff again and follow the same process. "What would I lose by keeping this? Or what would be gained from losing it?" If you can, get your possessions down to one large box and leave it with your family or friends. While the ¡Olvidalo! spirit calls for adapting a new mentality and forgetting the unimportant things, you must seek remember the important things. I've lived a lot of different places, had a lot of roommates and met a lot of people. After a while it becomes a bit difficult to keep track of it all. I always recommend keeping pictures and tokens of the past or a memorable moment or trip and keeping them in the box. Even now when I look at them I am reminded about how fast life is and how easy it is to forget what's important or how some person made you feel.

Traveling -especially if you've never traveled outside of the vacation context- changes you. Without fail, you will come out of it a different person than you went in. Most times those things you've held on to don't seem so important any more. Sometimes they aren't important to anyone else, either. You could hold on to your electronics but by the time you get back they will be obsolete and unsellable. Those heels are way cute but when you've walked halfway through Germany in a pair of Toms carrying a backpack the size of your whole body, the urge to walk on stilts doesn't seem appealing anymore. That super amazing high pressure 15 setting, light up showerhead felt great but after having to bathe in a cold-ass river in October for a few days  you will be grateful for any warm water at any pressure.  Either way, that money would be better spent in your pocket than towards stuff in a storage unit, collecting dust.

For more facts about "stuff" check out 21 Surprising Statistics That Reveal How Much Stuff We Actually Own.

-O.T.

The Fear Of Traveling

Small Fish in a Big Pond

So after a great deal of thinking and research I've decided to buy a minivan, outfit it for living and road trip indefinitely around North America. When I was younger, my urge to see the US died sometime around elementary school (when we were no longer doing oral reports about each state). I mean New Jersey couldn't be THAT different from the rest of the states, right? And even if it was, who wants to hang out with country bumpkins?

That was the subconscious mentality of my youth for the longest time. One could be outraged by my ignorance but I'm pretty sure a great deal of the tri-state area thinks that there isn't anything worth a look between Philly and Cali...except maybe Denver and Chicago.

Shamefully, I escaped that mentality fairly late in life; I'd say the moment I came to Kansas City about a year a half ago. Even now I find it amazing that such a gem exists smack dab in the middle of the country. So with my teensy perspective once again shattered by travel, I am inspired to see more of the US. As The Great Curiosity that inspired my penchant for adventure tales such as "Fievel Goes West", "Tall Tale" and "On My Honor" takes over, I now begin to feel a bit of that fire rising in my gut.

Unfortunately, something else rose in my gut. At first it was a steady rational voice in the back of my head reminding me of the overwhelming lessons I had learned while backpacking in France and Maui. "You still suck at saving and traveling with no money is stressful.", "won't you get lonely from being alone for so long?", "You've finally started to make good friends and there are more people who want to be your friends, here. It took you so long to make them, what if you never get this chance again?" These are the biggest fears I have. But to counter these fears I have a few more. "You can't work another normal job again. No matter what you do you'll be miserable working for someone in the long term.", "You'll miss some important moment with your family because you HAVE to go to work.", "If you stay in the conventional work force you WILL go nuts.", "You're always the person you want to be when you are traveling."

The anti-travel fears started as a small voice until I watched a certain movie. "Into the Wild" is based on the true story of Christopher McCandless, a youngin' well-versed in Thoreau, Walden and other heroes of the transcendentalist movement. After graduating college he leaves his broken family -without a word- to travel around the US mostly via hitchhiking. Later he is inspired to rough it in the wilds of Alaska. (Spoiler Alert) After successfully surviving a season and getting lonely he decides it is time to move on. But to his misfortune, he is trapped where he is when the river he originally crossed by foot turns into full fledged rapids. After the wild game disappear, he attempts to eat plants. Unfortunately, he mixes up an edible plant with a poisonous plant, suffers paralysis and starvation then dies. The director did an excellent job of traumatizing me with McCandless' last week or so of life. But throughout all of that, the thing that resonated with me the most was the lesson I had learned in France.  In his last dying days McCandless' wrote in the margins of one his books "Happiness real when shared".

I've never met this man. We will never meet. And yet he found out what I found out. I don't plan on roughing it in Alaska (I hate the cold, honestly) or hitching myself up in an abandoned bus, hunting animals with little to no experience. I know that I will meet people on the road and I have the added advantage of being able to speak the language but I wonder if I leave Kansas City at 29 years old (going on 30) and travel around and end up who knows where (Mexico? Asia?) will I have thrown away my final chances of having a deep face-to-face relationship with another human being? When I am finally ready to settle down will everyone my age be married and babied with no time for socializing with anyone except with other couples? Will the adult cliques be formed with neon "no vacancy" signs flashing for those they didn't go to high school or college with? I know it's easy to think that I am being dramatic but I see the consequences of my travels not only in my life but some of my friends' lives. People get significant others and disappear. Parents are too tired to hold a conversation. Newbies are interesting for five seconds and then townies move on to the next new thing. It's all very real and right in our faces.

So after reflecting on it, I've managed to restrain these thoughts to a loud voice in my head rather than an infection of my whole being. But it's still there. The mental comforts I have are few but somehow they are working. I think about how God will take care of me if I focus on Him. I think about being able to see my family when I want. I think about all the ways my eyes will be opened beyond my feeble imagination. I think about the more loving, tolerant person I will become by traveling and somehow it keeps me going.


-O.T.

3 Folks Doing Crazy Sh*t For Travel

Pic from Askmen.com

She looks over the grand ravine winding into the horizon. A cool breeze pushes past her sunburned face. She whispers a thanks to God for this small token of mercy. Her skin is burned, her hair is a kinky mess, her feet are swollen and from what it feels like, that damn blister on the back of her ankle has finally busted. She's been eating canned food and crackers for days. She ran out of money about a week ago. Her family worries for her safety traveling alone. "What?! You travel alone? Aren't you scared?" she recalls the strangers on her journey who pry for answers. "So why are you here exactly?" She laughs to herself as she remembers the immigration woman questioning her.

Why not?

 She's come too far to stop, now. She's been "bitten by the travel bug" as they say. She picks up her life in the form of a giant, over-stuffed backpack and makes her way toward the falling sun. 

Whether it's selling all your possessions and hitting the road, moving for the 16th time or going on your fifth vacation in three years, you know you've felt it. It's an infection sparked by the curiosity of the human spirit. We ask ourselves questions like: Can I go farther? What's over there? What are those people like? 

And while "normal" more "stable" people look at you lopsided you know that what you're doing makes total sense in your head...maybe...at minimum it feels right. Why do we do what we do? Why do we leave our loved ones and comforts of home to see the big wide world? How many of us really know? Here are some folks doing crazy sh*t for the sake of who knows what...

Who Wants To Go For A Walk?

Pic from Refuga.com

Former British Paratrooper, Karl Bushby hit traveling "G" status after one day deciding to  walk around the world. Yep, walk. Around the world. I've witnessed a coworker drive across the street from his job to the local bodega to get a sandwich and this dude is walking around the globe.  In 1998, he started from Punta Arenas, Chile and planned to walk the 36,000(+) mile trip to his home Hull, England. He estimated he'd get home around 2012. But like all epic adventures, there was hiccup. After trekking the Bering Strait -on foot- with adventure badass Dimitri Kiefer (did I mention a good deal of the Bering Strait is melted?) he victoriously knocked on Russia's door...and was handed a five year ban from the country. Determined to continue on, he went on a second walking adventure. Anyway, I won't give it all away. 

Lemonade, Anyone?

Pic from Vimeo

Traveler, author, TV guy and now Lonely Planet Pathfinder Aric S. Queen decided to slip out of main stream media and pursue a humble life of single-handedly circumnavigating the globe via a  refurbished boat while selling lemonade. I mean who doesn't love lemonade? Terrorists, that's who. The problem is that his knowledge of boats may have been a bit subpar for buying one and now he's stuck in North Carolina with not much but fundraisers and Lonely Planet to help him fix his wreck of a boat. Why is he still trying? Why not just scrap the whole thing, sell the boat for parts and cash in on his travel celebrity status to get a professionally edited Bourdain-style travel show? Check out  Maritime Lemonade Stand.

Solo Female Hitchhiker's Guide To Earth

Pic from http://tomislavperko.com/

If you were born into a "normal" US middle class family like me you were taught a few things. Look both ways before crossing the street, don't take candy from strangers (except on Halloween?) and don't get into cars with strangers. While hitchhiking was more popular in the US in the 60s, the activity is currently frowned upon by most Americans. Even in Europe the thought of a young woman, hitchhiking alone brings about a certain stigma. Despite all of that, Ana Bakran has been hitchhiking alone across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. She even offers no holds barred advice, which is exactly what travelers need to hear. I mean how many people will tell you that while you travel "People will show you their penises"?  Check out her advice here.

-O.T.