Modern Nomad - Reclaiming My Zone

Virtual guest, I'm sharing a look into my hotel room: specifically the bathroom counter and my corresponding posse of toiletry supplies, which take up a fifth of my suitcase and are typically the first things I care to unpack.

Here on the right, you can see a life-sized replica of my setup at home, engineered for optimal hotel-living convenience. You may not think of it, but a primary concern with hotel rooms is finding a mirror with good lighting. That's why, once I've figured out my mirror arrangement, I tend to stay at the same hotel week to week. Of course, I also like to do this because the hotel staff start to recognize me, but even more than that, I start to recognize them.

I'm pondering whether it's more objectionable or less that I use almost every one of these items in the picture on the daily, albeit in quick succession in the mornings. Things aren't always laid out this way (remotely neatly), especially since I'm rarely blessed with this many drinking glasses to be repurposed as containers. However, I do consistently pack everything that I use when I’m at home, so there’s no living simple on the road for me.

This is all too true when I start to bring duplicate items like face wash – one for the main trip and another for trips within trips. Would these then be called travel-travel products? Products for travel when you're already on travel? I am aware that all of this is considerably high maintenance. In my very feeble defense, maintaining my ideal personal care process helps me feel normal and well-functioning wherever I go.

Speaking of heavy packing, there was a period of time recently when I was travelling so much that it became necessary to bring an extra suitcase of clothing to keep at the hotel. The two suitcases together essentially became my rolling closet. Given that 70% of my usual wardrobe was with me in those suitcases, I was functionally dumping out my entire closet every single week when I unpacked at the hotel and three days later, reorganized and placed everything back in. The interesting thing was that I needed clothing for very different climates, so I simultaneously had heavy gloves and spring dresses in my suitcases. Anyone looking inside them may be led to believe that I was running away from home and that I grabbed everything I could in a mad dash, including an electric blanket. I’m surprised it all fit, to be honest.

Even without varying climate considerations, my packing mentality should explain why I always have a full carry-on regardless of whether it’s for one night or four – and goodness knows that we're checking a bag if it's longer.

Like a Camel - Tucson, AZ (Part 1)

On the penultimate weekend of my project out West, I went on another solo travel trip – this time to the great state of the cactus. Actually, that title may be a toss-up between Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, and Texas, so to clarify, I did indeed go to Arizona.

Though Tucson seems like a random choice and also difficult to spell, it was selected based on the reasonable points conversion rates for free hotel nights. Who would guess that the points required for hotels in Phoenix and Seattle are outrageously exorbitant, on par with some resort spas in Hawaii.

Tucson is a great option, but perhaps not shockingly, it's even more dry than Salt Lake City which seems almost impossible to my East coast self. Otherwise, it was a delightful, relaxing place to spend a weekend and according to my Uber driver, elderly people agree with me as they regularly move from neighboring states to Tucson upon retirement to treat every day like a Saturday for the rest of their lives.

As it happened, I spent much of my weekend working remotely but managed to dedicate one full day to exploring and necessarily drinking water in equal measure.

In the late morning on my day off, I visited a popular zoo that contained an impressive array of animals, several of which I had never seen before which was quite cool. I know I’m not alone in my reservations and uncertainty about the concept of zoos – in my case, it’s no doubt due to ignorance in both directions, both on considerations supporting and against it. However for now, I'll defer further discussion and just recognize that I appreciate all kinds of amazing animals.

Roll film.

Feeding a giraffe and finding peacocks that roam the grounds freely. Both creatures disproportionately long.

Saw these inhabitants among others like capybaras, anteaters, panthers, and some unknown thing in the water that everyone was inexplicably trying to spot. I also just realized that the ring around the rhino's eye was possibly applied to protect the little dude from the sun. A gigantic creature.

Animals – very awesome.

(continued in Desert Stop)

Desert Stop - Tucson, AZ (Part 2)

(continued from Like a Camel)

Then, in the late afternoon, I took a short hike through a national park desert in search for attractive cacti and perhaps also a stroke of creative inspiration as one does in deserts. I didn’t make much headway on either front, but I did observe that saguaro cacti are often misshapen and rather deviant from the classic image. (Also, it’s pronounced sa-wa-ro, with a silent g.)

I ended up spotting a good one on the drive-through portion of the park – a single good one out of hundreds of saguaros, collectively summing up to thousands of years of growth. One lone shoot matches the archetypal shape that is supposed to represent them all. Alternately, Arizona produces wonky cacti and other deserts around the globe are more consistent with the aesthetics. The jury's still out on that.

On this drive-through trail, I also encountered a fellow solo traveler, a middle-aged man on a motorcycle. He asked me to take a picture of him sitting on his bike in front of a sunset and then offered to take my picture in return.

The Good Saguaro

The exchange is unassuming and brief but I react internally a bit. This man, by making this request, indicates a relinquishment of the guise of self-sufficiency, which is very much not in the spirit of embracing aloneness, my diehard modus operandi and foundational assumption when I travel on my own. Still, this part of the matter is not so bad. It's minorly uncouth but not objectionable to go around asking people to take your photo as I certainly rely on strangers for directions and recommendations sometimes. I find that picture-taking is one step more personal, in that a level of openness is required to be the subject of a one-person shot. However, I also realize that I may not have the best gauge for interpersonal distance as I sometimes don't even ask friends to hold my belongings for me when I need more than two hands.

The further issue, when my dismay really starts to heighten, is that I was also companionless in this situation so the random tourist and I had this characteristic in common, which is in fact the likely reason why I was asked for the favor. Now you see that I have been identified as a compatriot against my will and feel that without much intent, I have tacitly agreed to the presumption that solo travelers have an automatic bond based on being solo and that we should implicitly help each other – a perspective that continues to violate the premise of being alone.

Then, when you think that it couldn't possibly get worse, this person offered to return the favor to take a picture for me, which I certainly didn’t request. Interpreted generously, this compounds all of the aforementioned offenses and then some.

Of course my response is to take some great pictures of what he wanted and then politely decline the return offer, before, on second thought, changing my mind and agreeing because after all, it was free. So now I have pictures of myself taken from farther than an arm’s length away, to show for this five minute ordeal and the more significant reverberating introspection. Thus concludes my current, slightly exaggerated thoughts on independence, companionship, and coexistence with fellow mankind, vaguely.

In a thinly-related side story, I was in Central Park with a friend last month and was stopped by a tourist who appeared to be European, requesting to have his picture taken. There he stood, in front of the lake with a panel of downtown skyscrapers in the background and to my intrigue, started posing like a classic hero on a magazine cover, back straight, slightly angled, and looking into the distance. It was delightfully on point and shamelessly distingué.

At any rate, to round out my day in Arizona, I took a stroll through downtown for dinner, and this approximately covered all there was left to see in Tucson (with the exception of a museum that housed live desert animals, which I unfortunately had no time for). Tucson is and feels like quite a small town as even the hub tended on the quiet side. However, I found the place to be intuitively comfortable (abstractly, not physically) in the short time that I spent there and my only two mild complaints are the small airport and the muchas ubiquitous Mexican-themed food.

    

Destination ice cream is becoming a theme on this blog. I don’t know why, as it's not a theme for me at home. However, when presented with flavors like carrot cake and banana nut, how could you not.

Itinerary items referenced: Reid Park Zoo, Saguaro National Park Rincon Mountain District, HUB Ice Cream Factory
Additional recommended restaurant: The B-Line

Downhill from Here - Park City, UT

When someone tells you they are going to Utah or a similar mountainous state, the default is to ask whether they ski. In turn, on the receiving end of this question, if you have exclusively skied on the East coast at a moderate dabbler level, I recommend your answer to be a regretful but sound no. I speak from personal experience.

The only thing I have to say is that the mountains of the Basin and Range region – they ain’t playin. A casual terminology drop from the 4^th grade US geography curriculum – and briefly we reflect on all the elementary school information that we never really needed to know.

The slopes on the West side of our country are steeper, longer, and way more beautiful, to the point that photos can’t begin to capture. But let's not gloss over the emphasis on steeper. The weekend I was there also happened to be a fairly warm and slightly slushy winter lull which translates to added challenge for the amateur skier. Or maybe that's just my excuse – you can decide.

As someone who gravitates away from rollercoasters and similar thrill-seeking activities, I can safely say that I overcame adversity those couple days on the mountains. In spite of this or maybe because of it, I regard the entire experience to be super fun and I did manage to sharpen some skiing skills when I wasn't inching down sideways trying not to fall. Final words for those with a similar threshold to mine, if you ever visit the same resort, I recommend starting on the Base Area side of Park City and save Canyons Village for day two.

Marked Tentative

Do layovers count towards the places I’ve visited? I physically saw with my own eyes the plots of land in Minneapolis albeit from a few thousand feet up in the plane. However I could tell from that height, it was a good place for moose to wander and people to hum Home on the Range. I’m about 15% sure that this counts as having visited.

I've laid over in Seattle as well. On that occasion, I did leave the airport and stay overnight, but the hotel was within a ten minute radius and well outside of downtown. Still, I did experience that it wasn't raining and that the metropolitan gave off a good vibe. I’m hovering around 35% that this one counts towards the universal log of places I’ve been. I'm going to table this and mark the states of Minnesota and Washington down with an *asterisk for now.

An Immersive Transport Experience - San Francisco, CA (Part 2)

In tandem with the unique character of the neighborhoods, San Francisco also carries the undertones of a technological hub. Along with the rest of the tech echelon, Uber and Lyft headquarters are both located in San Francisco, which is something I wish I knew before my unsuccessful attempt to coordinate recovery of a peacoat left in an Uber. (Frankly, it's almost a given that I forget about the coat all weekend because I didn't need it in the warmth of San Francisco February.)

At any rate, while rider apps and the SF public transportation system are generally convenient, my friend and I wanted to rent a car for Saturday to cross the Golden Gate and Bay bridges (the view was totally worth it). And thus so, we chanced upon a bright red Mustang rental car, costing me a minimal upgrade fee because the rental service had no other available cars left on the lot.

Perfectly honestly and probably predictably, this "fortuitous" change of events tripped my instinctive risk averseness and instantly induced a wariness towards assuming responsibility for this next-level, very-valuable species of car. Not your stock rental Ford Focus.

The investigative questions to the counter agent and the ensuing cost-benefit analysis went like this: No, it doesn’t use substantially more gas. No, it’s not manual. Yes, sports cars are not as fully covered under insurance as regular cars. Yes, I’ve read studies on flashy cars being pulled over more often. However, this would make a great story to my coworkers next week and I'll take every opportunity to reinforce my identity as a cautiously adventurous person.

Thus I came to rent a sportscar in sunny California and was pleasantly surprised to find that driving it doesn't take much of an adjustment curve. The acceleration is impressively effortless. Turn radius is a little poor, exacerbating my fear of scratching it against parking garage polse, coupled with the fact that its gigantically wide in general. On the other hand, not only are there seat warmers but also seat coolers. After some curious inspection, we also realized that the Mustang logo light projection on the ground aside the car was coming from under the side mirrors which lit up every time we entered and exited this machine of modern invention.

I do think that I’m more wary now of driving nicer cars, after taking a good spin and realizing correspondingly that you pay for Amazing in dollars and also in elevated stress levels. I felt that throughout the rental period, I half loved the drive and half held my breath with paranoia over the possibility of damage or trouble. This is a particularly counterintuitive state of mind for me given my inherent flippancy towards caring for belongs, which after all, exist to serve me and not the other way around.

Even so, it was pretty cool and I find that San Francisco is an undeniable force of a metropolis: encompassing the intersections of aggressive variety, creative flourish, technological genius, active outdoors haven, and West Coast city feel. I've already started a going checklist of unexplored activities for the next time I return, which come to think of it, I’ve also compiled for every other location I've visited lately.

In Pursuit of Interesting - San Francisco, CA (Part 1)

Sharing and describing places I've visited is fine to a point, until straight summaries get dry and devoid of connection. In the same way, it's mildly unsatisfying to visit cities only to see but not learn from having seen the buildings, streets, and people in these places, which are all neutrally different from those in my hometown objectively speaking (generally). I note the surroundings, I appreciate the existence of the city, but after walking through street after street, can the visit resonate with me beyond my acknowledgement of it's shape?

I think people find interest in traveling through a plethora of ways. If you’re interested in a subject, like architecture, history, or food, coming into contact with these things are per se interesting. Obviously, spending time with travel companions – to process new adventures together, enjoy their company, and know them better – is no doubt engaging. New places can create unusual and funny situations that add to your personal stock of memorable experiences. Inhaling mental and physiological calm from viewing striking landscape is categorically valuable on the human level. Simply escaping regular life by traveling is a plus. Or maybe you’re more easygoing than I am and seeing anything for the first time that you haven't exactly seen before is good enough. However, if none of these apply as they sometimes don't, the dilemma of locational apathy reemerges.

    

What I’ve always wanted to do but never understood how to accomplish was to make travel fascinating by engaging with the culture of the city. I was in San Francisco recently, and the greater San Francisco area is known to have many “neighborhoods” all right next to each other – the Hispanic part of town (Mission), the hipster area (Hayes Valley), the expensive area (Pacific Heights), the Italian area (North Beach); the list continues but you get the point. For each of the neighborhoods that a person doesn't personally identify with, I wonder if the key to an enriching visit is to notice something about the worldview (and value set) of a different culture that reveals and explains fundamental differences from your own. Experiencing how people can perceive and interact with our world differently from oneself, and seeing the precipitation of root similarities as well as differences through all the small habitual divergences in daily life on a first hand basis - that's definitely interesting, I'd say.

For the time in my life that I have the pleasure and opportunity to travel often, finding what makes travel meaningful to me is not only fruitful but in a way, necessary in establishing the value of how I spend my time.

Physiological Component of Emotions - Kona, HI (Part 3)

To the extent that I still retain information from AP Psychology, it remains among the high school classes that are still most applicable and often-referenced in my life today. As per psychological theory, the source of emotions includes both mental and physiological components. Recently, I've found the physiological component to be more tangible to me through a particularly vivid experience.

The first time I went snorkeling was with my family on vacation. I remember my sisters and I were quite young, maybe around 10. It was a pretty gloomy day and the parents took us to a random nook by the edge of a gulf, sea, or ocean to snorkel. My dad had two snorkeling masks he bought from Costco – and one of them leaked off the bat. We all took turns with the other, cautiously stepping into the water, stopping at two feet depth and dunking in. My youngest sister immediately gave up, because the water was too salty and humans aren’t meant to breathe that. My other sister and I stood there for a while, alternatingly putting an inch of our faces below water, thinking it was so cool that we could see the pebbles and moss so close up in the water.

That was my first snorkeling trip and the story is fairly unrelated to the main point here. Basically, I’ve gone snorkeling or semi-snorkeling a few times prior to the most recent excursion in Hawaii. On this latest occasion, I went with a snorkeling boat tour and that, my friend, was a totally different ballgame.

I, along with a boat captain and a handful of other tourists, arrived at the first snorkel destination which was an inlet area by the coast. When we stabilized, I dropped myself from the boat into the midst of the expansive water. I submerge myself and look below the surface to be taken aback that the ocean floor was at least a hundred feet down. I’m not sure what I thought would happen. Maybe I thought that if I didn’t keep treading water rapidly, I would fall all the way down to the bottom. Maybe it looked like a completely different universe and I felt wholly exposed to unpredictable creatures that might dart at me from any angle. In the event of impending danger, my instinct to crouch down would do nothing to protect me, since that position is meaningless as I bob in the water and am mostly defenseless in an unfamiliar undersea world.

The visual here is that I freaked out a little bit, swam back to the boat, and linked onto the boat ladder while trying to take baby steps, attempting to peek below the water for progressively longer periods without panicking and reflexively popping back up. The snorkel mask seals your nose, so it’s an unnatural feeling to begin with, especially because you must focus on breathing only from your mouth. More than that, the ocean is gigantic, even just the part that I could see, and the sheer unknown induces fear. What is down there?

I took the swimming noodle they offered me and put it under my arms as I swam out a second time. This is what I found surprising: the fact that it helped massively. With the noodle, I physically floated exactly the same as without it. However, it made me feel instantly more protected and supported. More specifically, my body told me that I was now protected and supported. Relief notch 1. I also had my phone with me in a waterproof case around my neck so I tried to take pictures or to check that it was still there and fine. I couldn't even unlock it yet, because sea water interferes with the touchscreen and makes it poorly responsive. However, even just looking at the lock screen that I look at every day and holding my phone like I do every morning when I read daily news, behold, relief notch 2. The effect was striking, how instantaneous it was that I calmed way down.

Underwater photography is a passion hobby, I've learned.

Physically interacting with the world matters, on a level more than just out of necessity. My physiological response system won't always listen to my logical self so I have to consider communicating with my physiology on a physical level, especially in more extreme situations. As for the phone, I fleetingly felt a little Millennial in that moment, relying on my device to cope with experiencing the world. However, I think I can extrapolate a little to realize that sometimes it works great to equip myself with familiarity if it enables me to better take on challenges and unfamiliarity.

I might not even go deep with that latter one – just take it and run as justification for packing a quarter-suitcase's-worth of toiletries each week when I travel for work.

It's possible I already knew some of these things previously, like that my physical self has a real say in my life, but were things that I didn't realize from this angle. Well, consider them rediscovered and slotted among all the other correct, incorrect, and in between ways of looking at and thinking about the world in existence.

Back to the Basics - Kona, HI (Part 2)

Apparently, people notice when other people travel alone. I got asked whether I was "here by myself" almost as frequently as I was asked where I come from during my short trip to Hawaii. I could be overlaying my own perceptions here, but being asked whether I'm traveling alone feels uncannily similar to being asked whether I still live at home. A yes to either question elicits a “Oh… Well, good for you! *overcompensatingly brightly*”

???

Fair enough. Hawaii is first and foremost a scenic spot, so you have an absurd amount of quiet time if you’re not traveling with someone else.

There’s a lot of freedom in being independent. I can wind down from my high-interaction work week at my own pace in my own way, which took about a solid day actually, to remember how to take it easy. But it also means I need to entertain myself and stack up the weekend with good planning. Say for lunch, I can easily spend two hours if I'm with someone else, chatting, but I don’t eat two-hour lunches on my own. Given that the concept applies to every other part of my day, my plans become that much more event-focused as I move rapidly from activity to activity. Coffee plantation tour > Hike by a historic beach > Drive to another beach for the sunset. Bam bam bam.

The sense of staying active and not fully relaxing is rather accurate and actually necessary for another reason, which is that I am the only one looking out for my safety and well-being. There won’t be anyone to brainstorm solutions if I drive myself into a ditch, wander into a bad area, or run out of battery on my phone. No one is going to watch my stuff from getting stolen or remind me to pack my water before I leave the hotel. I have to keep a portion of my brain aware at all times just to maintain the baseline preventative measures, and that's a permanent feature of traveling alone.

Hawaii was really beautiful; it was an amazing trip and concurrently a concentrated weekend on the considerations of being on my own.

I like it. It was good. I exclaim these things with some vigor, overcompensatingly brightly, you might suspect – especially when we consider my sunburned back, with a windshield wiper-shaped crescent of un-tan in the only spot on my back that I was able to reach any smidgen of sunscreen. *Slow quiet exhale out.*

Just kidding. :)

The sunset is worth it.

A Primer on Booking Adventures - Kona, HI (Part 1)

Booking adventures – where booking can be either a verb or part of a compound noun.

As a frequent flyer and also a lifelong Econ major, I can tell you that prices of flights can be really weird in a good way sometimes.
       For example, a trip from Boston to DC can cost around $450 which is equivalent to going from Boston to Iceland or to Puerto Rico if you book about a month ahead.
       DC to Austin and DC to Seattle are about the same price, even though one is almost double the distance.
       Portland to Atlanta on some flights can cost more than one grand and you might spend less going from Portland to Seoul, South Korea instead.

Economists love studying airlines because each flight route is a "market" that can be priced almost independently, so prices for different routes don’t always relate in an intuitive way as demonstrated.

Okay fine, flight prices are weird and separately, Hawaii is exotic, so you want to go, sure why not. Well you know what else is not intuitive – the Hawaiian islands. In fact there are several popular islands, and unlike most of the United States, you can’t drive between some of these cities, so booking a hotel on one island and a flight to another is a major no-go unless you have a way of being in two places at once or plan on swimming through the Pacific to get to your hotel for the night.

I am obviously speaking from experience here and had a panic attack over the fact that both bookings were non-refundable, yet useless to me if they weren't on the same island. It ended up working out, but just remember that Maui is not the same island as Honolulu is not the same as the Big Island.

On a random note, the airport in Kona is completely outdoors (and the terminal looks like the gift shop area right after you check into a theme park). They can do that, I guess.

These people look like they wanted to be in this picture.

PSA on New Blog Subscription Feature

As per requests and in consideration of the fact that I, *whisper*, backdate many posts such that I actually post less regularly than it appears (don't you dare tell me I'm overthinking things, again), I have developed an email subscription feature.

The account that collects the email addresses is mine, so no worries about spam. Everything is set up so that subscribing and unsubscribing works like every other email list.

Use the "Subscribe" box on the sidebar to sign up. You'll get an email ping on the day that I post and nothing else, simple as that.

If you subscribe, welcome, if you unsubscribe, it's fine - this is for you not me!