Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1164: How to Keep Adventuring with Kids (Or Any Major Responsibility) with Heidi Dusek - Revisited

Transcript

Ep. 1164: How to Keep Adventuring with Kids (Or Any Major Responsibility) with Heidi Dusek - Revisited · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Hello everyone and welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast, this is Caleb.
0:23
[SPEAKER_03]: In this revisited episode we have Mason interviewing Heidi DuSec.
0:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Before having kids, Heidi was an avid adventure traveling all around the world.
0:35
[SPEAKER_03]: She loves the outdoor, she loves epic adventures.
0:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And so as you can imagine, the prospect of having kids, she was a bit apprehensive about how it would affect her adventurous lifestyle.
0:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And once she became a mom, she felt like she had to give up a lot of that, but through this process, Heidi has made it a priority in her life to continue adventuring with her family and to pass on the love for adventure to her kids.
1:05
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a great episode.
1:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope you enjoy it.
1:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's Mason.
1:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey folks, Mason here.
1:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You might see this title of this episode and thinking, I'm never going to have kids or I'm never planning to start a family.
1:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So does this episode even apply to me?
1:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say, yes, it does.
1:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you don't plan on having kids, there may be a time where your responsibility
1:28
[SPEAKER_01]: gets in the way of your plans to be an adventure or plans to do big long-term trips, whether that's a job or taking care of someone, maybe an aging parent or a partner, or even animals, you get a pet, for instance.
1:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Personally, I feel like our dogs
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: were more of an adjustment from no dogs to dogs.
1:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Were more of an adjustment to my adventure plans, than no kids to kids were because of the dogs.
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, all total freedom, you can go wherever you want.
2:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Then dogs that's all the sudden, oh, you got to think about feeding them, letting them out.
2:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't be gone all that long, and you can't just throw that responsibility on anyone.
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It was actually a really great primer to have in kids.
2:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm only two years into being a parent,
2:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But all that to say is there are plenty of other things in life that can get in the way of adventure plans or as we're going to talk about with Heidi not get in the way of but become an addition to your adventure plans.
2:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, personally we've been in parents for two years.
2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Have two kids and I was, you know, pretty apprehensive at first about what this was going to do to my adventure plans.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And now be honest.
2:43
[SPEAKER_01]: hasn't really changed anything you know there are times I need to think through more planning and think through how I'm going to be gone when I'm going to be gone and communicate with my wife really clearly and make sure the kids are taking care of but frankly I feel like I'm able to do the same things I was always able to do it's really the job.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: and there's other things in the way besides kids.
3:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of crazy how it really didn't feel like it's changed all that much and Heidi's going to tell us more about that.
3:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, she hosts a show called Ordinary Sherpo where she talks to people about how to do this, how to travel with kids, how to travel on a budget, how to do adventures as a family.
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: How to make it all happen because if there's anything you've learned from this show is that yes, it's possible.
3:28
[SPEAKER_01]: If you just choose to start making it happen.
3:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So without further ado, here is Heidi and again, you can find out more about her at ordinarysherpa.com as well as the podcast
3:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, thank you.
3:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's so exciting to be on the show.
3:55
[SPEAKER_04]: I've listened for a long time in their days where I'm like, oh, but I'm a parent now.
3:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So I can even relate to some of your listeners too, because there are days where I'm like, I just want to do the epic things again.
4:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, absolutely.
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And you say epic things again, because you've done tons of epic things.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we get started, I always ask this first, where are you coming from and where's home for you?
4:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
4:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I live in Northeast Wisconsin about an hour from Green Bay.
4:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I am a mom of three kids.
4:21
[SPEAKER_04]: My husband and I both work full-time and we live out in the country.
4:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's kind of fun just to play outside.
4:26
[SPEAKER_04]: We do a lot of adventure stuff, but life is a lot different now that I'm a mom and I just never really wanted to leave adventure behind.
4:34
[SPEAKER_04]: So we still try to figure out how to do that here.
4:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and that's awesome now.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Now tell me about where do you live?
4:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you, are is an adventurous community?
4:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you kind of the black sheep of the community or your family?
4:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there a lot of adventures in that area?
4:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Not really.
4:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, Wisconsin's pretty flat.
4:53
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of rolling hills and a lot of farms, but I am in a small town.
4:57
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's a lot of green space.
5:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I actually live on a fourth generation farmhouse.
5:03
[SPEAKER_04]: My grandfather,
5:05
[SPEAKER_04]: bought this when he was actually retiring from another farmer and decided not to keep it as an agricate cultural farm.
5:12
[SPEAKER_04]: But found that there's a lot of natural springs on the property.
5:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we actually have a trout farm, which is a little bit different than what most people have.
5:21
[SPEAKER_04]: In terms of the area, are we black sheep?
5:25
[SPEAKER_04]: No, but it's not like we're in Colorado, where there's just adventurous people everywhere.
5:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're kind of these
5:31
[SPEAKER_04]: In part, I'm just like an ordinary person trying to blend in, but on the same side, I don't really blend into that normal culture, I guess.
5:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what normal is, but, you know, it's a small town.
5:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's not a lot of really, I don't think people know what is even available to them here.
5:45
[SPEAKER_04]: So for us, I feel like I'm always having to uncover hidden gems in our area so that we don't have to travel to adventure.
5:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, I'm living in the house that I was raised in as a child, which is really weird.
5:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, my grandfather founded or bought this house from a farmer and we've just slowly having more of us in it, you know, we just grow in the family and no one can give it up.
6:09
[SPEAKER_04]: My parents wanted to downsize and I was like, well, you're not selling it.
6:12
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're like, well, someone needs to take it over.
6:14
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's not really easy to age in an old farmhouse.
6:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So we decided, oh, like, okay, I guess we're doing this.
6:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's awesome.
6:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, so I,
6:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry.
6:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember what your question was, but Well, I didn't ask was I was going to say, you know, growing up in that area, you know, you mentioned now you're kind of, you know, an adventure.
6:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You've done a lot of adventuring.
6:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you encourage do that stuff growing up or did you have to discover it on your own?
6:40
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's interesting.
6:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So I am on I'm kind of a gen X or kind of a millennial.
6:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm 41.
6:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm on that like weird cost era.
6:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was the only girl in my family.
6:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I just felt like so much of my childhood was still this open door policy where I could go explore.
6:58
[SPEAKER_04]: We were given a lot of freedom as kids.
7:01
[SPEAKER_04]: My parents were both pretty hardcore working class.
7:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So it wasn't like we went around and did all these different things.
7:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Both come from really large families, both my parents do.
7:11
[SPEAKER_04]: So we were fortunate that we had exposure to a lot of different people,
7:17
[SPEAKER_04]: hobbies, like adventure hobbies, like I think about now, like we'd never rock climbed as a family.
7:24
[SPEAKER_04]: We would do road trips and visit family around the country.
7:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So most of my adventure was either I was seeing it somewhere else and just curious or I would just want to know, I'm like, well, what is this thing?
7:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know about it.
7:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And once I saw it, it was like, oh, here's an opportunity.
7:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me just kind of figure this out.
7:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But at the same time,
7:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I wasn't pressured to do all the things either.
7:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I did a lot as a high schooler and in college, but it wasn't like I had to take all the AP courses and I had to do travel sports.
7:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, that wasn't a thing yet.
7:55
[SPEAKER_04]: So I feel in some ways, I was blessed because I had this freedom built into the culture of who I was and I didn't have the pressure that we see so much now when younger kids and parents that
8:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, it just gave me a lot more opportunity, I think I didn't have to look for permission to do whatever I wanted to do.
8:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I could just kind of explore and go, oh, this is interesting.
8:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's let's see where this goes.
8:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So some of that is just baked into who I was and how I grew up.
8:22
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was fortunate to that living in the country.
8:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I can look out my door a mile away and still not have a neighbor.
8:29
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we're surrounded by trees and wildlife.
8:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It's almost like we live in a nature preserve.
8:33
[SPEAKER_04]: So I always had something.
8:36
[SPEAKER_04]: to explore.
8:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I never felt I was bored.
8:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And if I was, we were kind of scolded.
8:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you've got all these things around you.
8:42
[SPEAKER_04]: You need to just go out and explore.
8:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So from that lens, I felt like I had a pretty privileged childhood in terms of like the exposure to adventure and opportunities in a way that I don't know that parents have today or kids have today.
8:59
[SPEAKER_01]: gosh, it just everything you're saying so relatable.
9:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we live the same childhood out on a fourth generation farm out in the country.
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of exploration opportunities, and I feel like that definitely led to being adventurous while you grew up.
9:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So as you grew up, what were some of those earlier experiences where you were branching out like beyond the family farm, beyond Wisconsin, and exploring the world?
9:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was taking German as a second language,
9:29
[SPEAKER_04]: My grandfather spoke German and I really just wanted to be able to speak to him and so I took German as just more again out of a place of curiosity and that led me down to I guess even starting middle school there were there were some opportunities to start traveling.
9:44
[SPEAKER_04]: through different, I don't know, just different things that would land in my lap.
9:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And I learned pretty early.
9:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I should give it a little bit of backstory.
9:51
[SPEAKER_04]: My dad has family all over the country.
9:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And he worked for an airline company at one point.
9:55
[SPEAKER_04]: So we could get really cheap airfare for like $20.
9:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Stand by a person, it was really cheap.
10:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So we could do that once a year.
10:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And that started when I was in fourth grade.
10:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So we didn't have a lot of means, but we had this like one trip that we could take.
10:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And that just opened my eyes like how different people were and what the opportunities were.
10:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, so that was the beginning, I think of travel.
10:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So that started in fourth grade.
10:19
[SPEAKER_04]: And then in middle school, I had a couple of things through my church and just through local, Kuanus clubs, there was a 16th program that was happening and then in high school, there was a German exchange student program that I could do.
10:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So we hosted a German exchange student and then I went to Germany and that was fascinating because
10:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It was really the first time I was ever alone.
10:38
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, my parents weren't with me.
10:39
[SPEAKER_04]: This wasn't like a family trip, where we were all traveling together.
10:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And I didn't really speak the language that well.
10:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I was 15 years old.
10:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I knew a couple of things.
10:48
[SPEAKER_04]: So that just opened my eyes to it.
10:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I was fascinated by this, how big this world is and how many things I didn't know.
10:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would say that trend of just curiosity and trying to find the unconscious things.
11:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, oh wait, I don't know what that is.
11:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I should learn about that.
11:05
[SPEAKER_04]: That's probably what continued through college and I guess my transition from high school out of high school was a little bit interesting we don't have to go all the way down that but I think what ended up showing me was that there were a lot of things I didn't know and if I really wanted to explore the world I needed to get out of the small town and just be open to something completely different.
11:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And I went into teaching and then from there intentionally went to a really large urban setting on purpose so that I would get a little uncomfortable and try something different just because I didn't want to stay with my whole life kind of being wrapped up in Wisconsin so I did intentionally choose a path towards so I taught in Chicago public schools on purpose and loved it by the way, and that just gave me a different sense of like, oh my gosh.
11:53
[SPEAKER_04]: This is what city life is like and how do people sleep with all these sirens that you know, like it was so interesting what showed up in my life during that time as well.
12:03
[SPEAKER_01]: not the standard route of adventures that we think of, but adventurous to the definition of trying new things and being uncomfortable and putting yourself out there.
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So from there, going to Chicago was did it encourage you to test that out even further and to go even more, or was that plenty of experience for you?
12:25
[SPEAKER_04]: No, so...
12:26
[SPEAKER_04]: it was not enough.
12:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I became a teacher and one thing I think that's really fascinating when people choose your career, you always are kind of drawn to the positive of it and you don't always know what the flip side of that is.
12:40
[SPEAKER_04]: So I went into teaching, I love kids, I love making a difference, you know, I'm actually really good at teaching and educating.
12:46
[SPEAKER_04]: So all of those things that I was, I knew about and I was interested in and I had practice for those for all great.
12:56
[SPEAKER_04]: structure, the system, that I don't know how to describe it in a really positive light.
13:01
[SPEAKER_04]: But it became really stifling.
13:03
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, my my entire calendar was scheduled for me.
13:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And it might seem like I'm complaining because teachers have three months off in the summer.
13:10
[SPEAKER_04]: But I really did it.
13:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I couldn't take a personal day until there was a holiday.
13:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just didn't have the flexibility to do what I wanted to do.
13:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And I started to question, I was by far the youngest teacher in all of the school districts that I was teaching in.
13:25
[SPEAKER_04]: at least 15 to 20 years older than me.
13:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just found that we were seeing shifts in the educational system at that point.
13:31
[SPEAKER_04]: That's when all the standardized testing started coming around and being enforced.
13:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just was like, I don't know that this is what I signed up for.
13:38
[SPEAKER_04]: So that was a hard point in my life where I kind of I called it my year of my best worst year because at 25, I decided to leave teaching and I had no idea what I was gonna do with my life.
13:48
[SPEAKER_04]: But I didn't know really what my options were.
13:50
[SPEAKER_04]: So I called it my year of yes
13:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just going to look for different opportunities, not even workwise, but just lifestyle wise.
13:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I was going through a challenging relationship, so I was like, I don't even know who my friends are.
14:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know what's out there.
14:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was kind of a dark period, but it also ended up being a really enlightening period because I did everything from, again, I was traveling a lot, but I signed up randomly for trapeze lessons and I signed up to run my first marathon and I was
14:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, allowed to go rock climbing and I went to Warner Brothers on a field trip with, I mean, there were so many things that were happening and it was like, whoa, I had no idea.
14:26
[SPEAKER_04]: So it forced me then to think about how, you know, all this time, I had been thinking about my life in terms of a career so that it could support my life.
14:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And that year actually flipped it and I said, what do I want my life to look like?
14:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'll figure out the career to go behind it.
14:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I was a hustler.
14:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I could make it work.
14:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I'd figure out how to make money.
14:46
[SPEAKER_04]: do that thing I figured out after that year of taking off, I didn't actually take off a whole year, but I took off, I resigned from my job really without another plan, and I know that might sound irresponsible, but that really gave me the space to go, okay, now I have to figure this out, and that just opened up the world to what was available to me, and I know I don't teach anymore.
15:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I am married to a teacher, but it showed me that there were so many other opportunities
15:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't know.
15:14
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, there was just this sense of you go through life and you think, oh, I'm going to check these boxes and that's going to get me to college and then college is going to get me to a career and then I'm going to settle down and have kids.
15:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And I thought that was the path I had to take and I did.
15:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I did get married and have children.
15:28
[SPEAKER_04]: But at the same time, I flipped it instead of focusing on my career, I switched it to focus on my life and design my life and then fit everything else to fit the way I wanted it to.
15:39
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15:43
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15:54
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16:09
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16:18
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16:44
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16:56
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17:02
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17:08
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17:12
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17:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I had to say, I'm also married to a teacher.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, you get three months off, but you don't get three months off.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You get holidays, you get weekends, but you don't.
17:32
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, it's around the clock.
17:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So you decided to flip that.
17:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And you were traveling a lot more.
17:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You were seeing a lot of cool things.
17:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Doing all these really unique experiences for yourself.
17:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us about some of the changes that started happening when you started having kids.
17:50
[SPEAKER_01]: How are your kids, by the way?
17:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, my kids now are 11, 9 and 5.
17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, okay, so you went, you went through it while three times.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that a lot of people that listen to the show are in that situation, if they're not, they will be at some point potentially.
18:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the biggest concerns for me, as well as I know it is for you is like, what is this going to do to the adventurous side of me, the person that I feel like I identify with the most, might my adventurous self, there was a lot of hesitancy, a lot of apprehension around that, a lot of fear about what would happen,
18:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I had very similar feelings where I felt like I was going to have to give up a part of who I was in order to be a mom and that is I mean there is a part of that you do have to give up some of it but I didn't want to have to choose between and even at that point who I was having to decide do I want to be a stand home mom and give up my career to and all of those things I was like wait a minute I don't understand why I have to choose like why can't we do this why can't we figure this out.
18:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I chose to become a mom and I chose to maintain my career and I really chose to keep adventure in our life.
19:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it was, there's a lot of seasons in being a parent and your kids will go through seasons and some of them are harder than others and then just when you think you master it, there's like a new season that comes at you out of nowhere.
19:13
[SPEAKER_04]: But all of that, all of that really taught us like, what are we afraid of?
19:21
[SPEAKER_04]: So the first adventures we really started doing were just things around our house, you know, things like going on bike rides and hikes those were probably the least restrictive where we could just throw a kid on our back, throw a kid in the bike trailer.
19:34
[SPEAKER_04]: It was really no big deal.
19:35
[SPEAKER_04]: My husband is much more adventurous in that space where he likes mountain biking and more extreme riding.
19:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that would have to wait for a little bit or we just made
19:46
[SPEAKER_04]: A pact.
19:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if it's, I mean, it's not that formal.
19:49
[SPEAKER_04]: It sounds really formal, but really we just created agreements with each other to say, all right, I need some alone time and we're going to kind of create that into our system so that one parent gets to do the epic adventure time and the other parent gets that too, but at a different time.
20:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So we just kind of alternate on and off, who gets adventure time, the epic adventure time and then the other thing we did was we took everything back like, okay, so if.
20:13
[SPEAKER_04]: We were really big into downhill skiing as one example and my husband was leading a bunch of kids to go on these cool ski trips up north and I was like, okay, well, why don't we come as shaperones and we'll just see we'll just see what does that look like with the little guy all of our kids started skiing at age two.
20:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So that was a good season for us and there was a lot, you know, it's, it feels like I was either pregnant or having a baby every every couple years there.
20:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was like an entire, you know, seven years of one of those things with very little gap time in between.
20:46
[SPEAKER_04]: So for us, it was like, well, I'm not willing to give up seven years of skiing.
20:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So what am I comfortable with?
20:51
[SPEAKER_04]: What was kind of our, I guess I would say we like looked at it from a risk tolerance perspective.
20:56
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the level of risk I was willing to take with both the kids and myself as a pregnant mom at that time.
21:01
[SPEAKER_04]: with a little one and we just started to test it and realize, wow, this isn't as hard as I thought it was.
21:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I think every single time.
21:08
[SPEAKER_04]: We imagined it to be worse than what it actually was when we started testing it we were like, oh, well, let's just learn from this.
21:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's keep what's working and leave behind what's not working.
21:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And that just continued to show up.
21:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And we were like, this, we can do this.
21:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We can keep moving this idea of, and again, I'll keep using the skiing idea of, we can keep moving this forward.
21:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And now we have three kids, age 11, nine and five, and darn it if they aren't all better skiers than I am because they've been skiing since they're two.
21:40
[SPEAKER_04]: They know how to be responsible.
21:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's just taught us that we often are,
21:46
[SPEAKER_04]: preventing them from having an opportunity because we're too scared.
21:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And I didn't want my decisions to really impact the opportunities that my kids had.
21:55
[SPEAKER_04]: So from that lens, it showed us that adventure was the path that we really needed to lean into as opposed to kind of the safety, the perfection, the things that people's do when you have kids.
22:08
[SPEAKER_04]: We were like, yeah, I don't think that fits us.
22:10
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna challenge that mindset and just keep adventuring.
22:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Heidi, there's about 15 things you mentioned that I want to follow up on, so I don't even know like how to, how to bring all this back or what direction to go, but I love the, I will say this one thing, I love that you mentioned, like why do I have to choose between one, being adventurous or also being a mom,
22:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's beautiful in life when you realize that you don't have to choose those things that no one ever told you you those are the only choices You just pick up on the social cues and what everyone else is done and there's just such an amazing liberation when you realize like I don't have to actually choose between them I can I can do both
22:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just it's not that it no one's done that.
22:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it is harder a lot of the times, but it's not it's not an impossible thing to do and you start looking for examples of people who have done both and there's always plenty out there and and I just love that you mentioned that that's so true.
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I did want to follow up on is choosing between the epic adventures.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of people are a little afraid of you know, am I still going to be able to do these big adventures?
23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm happy with riding around my neighborhood for the time being.
23:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is, there comes a time where I want to do something big.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned a strategy and your husband's sick too, which is just allowing each other that personal time.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: What have you been able to do in that sense?
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Or do you still feel that need to do those, those real big adventures?
23:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I have backed off from them, but I made that choice.
23:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, I made everything into a choice.
23:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was a marathon runner prior to having children.
23:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And I had run five, I think by the time I had my first, and I've, I've only run three since then.
23:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, that was a choice after about six months after my son, my first son was born.
23:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I ran a half marathon and it was fun, but I just didn't love.
24:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I realized the reason I went into running marathons was for the camaraderie.
24:07
[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't always about the the race day experience anymore.
24:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I had done all of that.
24:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I didn't feel like that was still serving me as well.
24:15
[SPEAKER_04]: So I tried it three more times.
24:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I did some around the country and, you know, it just was one of those things where I was like, you know, I think I'm ready to be done with this and move on to another season of my life.
24:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was a good 10 years, you know, of running Marathons and all the training that goes into that, that's not just something you decide, like, oh yeah, next weekend, I'm gonna go run a Marathon.
24:36
[SPEAKER_04]: You, that's a six-month commitment just to get ready for the Marathon.
24:40
[SPEAKER_04]: So that definitely,
24:42
[SPEAKER_04]: kind of eventually went away.
24:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I did try it and just didn't enjoy it as much as I once did.
24:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Travel picked up even with kids.
24:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So I would say the craziest travel we did was we spent so when my kids were five, three and six months old we spent 16 days in California and we started in LA and then went to Yosemite and ended up in San Francisco and that
25:11
[SPEAKER_04]: was a trying experience where I don't really think, I realized how crazy I was.
25:15
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, for me, I was like, this is just a fun challenge.
25:18
[SPEAKER_04]: This wasn't, is it gonna be perfect?
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
25:22
[SPEAKER_04]: And there were stages in that where I was like, what the hell am I thinking?
25:27
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, in others where I was like, oh yeah, we got this.
25:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What something that made you say that?
25:33
[SPEAKER_01]: What's that experience?
25:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so climbing.
25:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's a lot of climbs in Yosemite.
25:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And we had been backpackers.
25:41
[SPEAKER_04]: through hikers where we would hike for days and days and days, we'd done just a couple camping trips and we would do kind of all day hikes though, you know, where we would go out and mostly out and backs or loops or things like that.
25:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So we had been a pretty adventurous family that way and we kept the kids engaged with us.
25:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we hadn't done it with three plus like packing to take three kids on this all day hike into Yosemite and it was
26:08
[SPEAKER_04]: It was, again, I just wasn't thinking, I don't think.
26:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I packed all the food and then I wasn't quite considering what the kids would need and then we didn't take enough breaks and we didn't pack, so packing was one issue.
26:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll just say, that was one thing.
26:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't really plan appropriately or I brought way too much stuff for what we needed of the wrong things.
26:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I was one adventure where you're just like, well, that was a bad idea.
26:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And then on the track, I realized, I'm carrying a six month old.
26:32
[SPEAKER_04]: My daughter couldn't make it at nine months.
26:35
[SPEAKER_04]: She was just like,
26:36
[SPEAKER_04]: not into it.
26:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So my husband was trying to carry her and a pack.
26:39
[SPEAKER_04]: That was really hard.
26:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a kid on and you know it's like why did we think this was a good idea.
26:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And we weren't really in our own neighborhood, you know, we were in California were from Wisconsin.
26:48
[SPEAKER_04]: So that one, what I think was just like what the heck Heidi, let's just, you know, recalibrate.
26:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So from there, we just said, okay, we're only going to do adventures like that, either when they're all can walk on their own or we only have one child that we need to carry, not thinking about the three year old's developmental abilities and what we would need, you know, like,
27:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's make sure at least both of them are potty trained or, you know, things like that.
27:10
[SPEAKER_04]: We're just all the things that come up and you're like, oh, it didn't plan for that.
27:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think planning can be overwhelming.
27:17
[SPEAKER_04]: So then we just decided we just didn't want to keep doing it to that extreme.
27:22
[SPEAKER_01]: some of them my wife always is telling me in fact yesterday and today is managing expectations you know I'll say hey let's go to the beach and do this thing you know snorkel or go playing the water or go down the the marina near our house and just kind of look at the boats
27:42
[SPEAKER_01]: and that's fine but that doesn't mean our two-year-old is is a green tall that and we'll go and he'll want to play in the sand or want to play in the park and literally win an empty spot with his cars.
27:56
[SPEAKER_01]: and I'll get all frustrated because I'm like this is not what we said we're going to go do.
28:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We're missing out what we wanted to do and really what it comes down to is what I wanted to do because the two-year-olds find do it playing on the curb, you know what I mean or sit on bench and just having a good time and my wife is so good about saying, you know, let's manage our expectations when we go out with the two-year-old.
28:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And a great way to reframe that for me would have been like, let's just go out and explore and see what we can see in a new setting.
28:25
[SPEAKER_01]: without setting all these expectations.
28:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, exactly.
28:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I like to, I think you learn this.
28:31
[SPEAKER_04]: This isn't something that they give you a manual on, but learning your kids' cues of what's too much adventure, what's not enough adventure, where can we push them, where do we need to pull back?
28:41
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's just a learned trait.
28:43
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you learn in relationships where you can push your partner.
28:46
[SPEAKER_04]: That's true with kids too.
28:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's genuinely, most kids are curious and they'll
28:52
[SPEAKER_04]: They'll join you for part of it, but when they're done, they're done, and you can't just keep pushing them or asking them to keep going in some cases, so having an out available is usually one of our best options.
29:04
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of times where my husband and I split up with because we have three.
29:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I think a lot of us, we decide are like, okay, this one's done.
29:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Does that mean we're all done?
29:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Or does that mean one of us has to go back and who's going to choose the short strut this time?
29:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So when it comes to, you know, setting a lifestyle up or planning for adventures together with kids, what kind of things do y'all set for each other having mine?
29:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause a lot of people on this show they'll hear a story about a six month bite tour around Africa
29:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or something like that, and they're like, oh my gosh, that sounds awesome.
29:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But what we don't always realize is that that's a decade long planning process for people, or at least getting their lives set up to where they can make that possible.
29:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Do y'all have any goals like that off in the future?
29:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do you talk about it?
29:53
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you planning for it?
29:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I would, so when we first started this life, my, there's a lot of, I'll tell, I'll get to where we are right now, because again, my kids are older.
30:04
[SPEAKER_04]: our journey with you is, we scaled all the way back and said, okay, almost like a matrix.
30:09
[SPEAKER_04]: If this is the epic thing that we used to do, what would be like a normal day of this?
30:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And then what's the minimum viable?
30:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Like what could we just do with that would get us out that would get us to get a flavor of this?
30:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And I called those little micro experiences.
30:23
[SPEAKER_04]: How could we just kind of get a flavor of this thing?
30:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, it could be pretty much whatever it was.
30:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So if it was initially I mentioned skiing before if skiing was the thing and we weren't quite ready for that what could we do in our backyard could we we bought our kids some use skis and we would just create little hills in the backyard now that's not ideal for me as the parent but at least it gives my son a little bit of exposure and if that wasn't possible could we go down play outside in the snow and just kind of like create the idea of what a ski environment would look like so we started to work through all of these if it was biking.
30:58
[SPEAKER_04]: what were those things we and and some tools I mean we started to learn what tools could help us bike easier so that everyone could be a participant my youngest we got a moisturizer and I don't know if everyone knows what that is it's a I think it's a name brand but it's a bike that doesn't have paddles and so my kids never use training wheels they just use these balance bikes and he was
31:18
[SPEAKER_04]: The bad side of that is I forgot that he didn't have breaks a couple of times, you know, and he's just like trailing along with us and we're like, Oh crap.
31:25
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a hell.
31:26
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like you kind of lose the the safety features when you allow those things happen.
31:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So there were times where I was like, yeah, we kind of screwed up there, but it allowed him to really keep up with us because he didn't want to be in the trailer anymore.
31:40
[SPEAKER_04]: He had been gotten he had gotten so independent that he was like, I want to ride.
31:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to be in the trailer and we didn't have a.
31:48
[SPEAKER_04]: The bike that attaches to ours.
31:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't remember what they're called.
31:50
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't have one of those at the moment.
31:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're like, well, let's just go right into a strider and he can figure out how to ride.
31:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we started to have these like phases of adventure and sometimes I just meant we're just going to change a location for a new, I don't know, new scenery or it might mean that we'd kind of experiment like I wonder if we could do this or I'd wonder if again, keeping your expectations low.
32:14
[SPEAKER_04]: So the first time.
32:15
[SPEAKER_04]: We went biking as a family was like, okay, we're only gonna plan for like a mile, right?
32:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Of just to see what people can manage or the first time we all went hiking.
32:24
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the backup plan?
32:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Who were we willing to carry?
32:26
[SPEAKER_04]: How far were we willing to go?
32:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And you just kind of keep pushing those boundaries.
32:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And we have just gotten into this habit now where you say yes, we're gonna do this.
32:37
[SPEAKER_04]: First of all, that's kind of our mantra is we say yes when an opportunity presents itself.
32:41
[SPEAKER_04]: We're like, okay, yes, let's, how could we figure this out?
32:44
[SPEAKER_04]: What's the minimum viable option for us?
32:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And if that works, what's the next step?
32:50
[SPEAKER_04]: So that we are continuing to progress.
32:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And for that, it's given us enough of a mindset where we have learned how to create the conditions for adventure to show up.
33:01
[SPEAKER_04]: We made it easier.
33:02
[SPEAKER_04]: We've made things a little more go ready.
33:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So if we want to go to the beach one day, it's not work to get everything ready to go to the beach.
33:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Now we're like, OK, we need goggles.
33:12
[SPEAKER_04]: We need swimsuits.
33:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Beach bags, we need snacks, we need floaties.
33:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Do we have all those things?
33:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And are they all ready to go?
33:19
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, so you start to create some systems to really make your life a little bit more go ready.
33:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So when a gorgeous day presents itself and you don't have anything planned, we can say yes.
33:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And we wanted our lives to be open enough, have enough white space in our calendar so that we could say yes to those opportunities.
33:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So it has been a progression and you learn what works and what doesn't work.
33:41
[SPEAKER_04]: try to leave behind the things that aren't working and get curious about the things that are and say, what's the next step?
33:46
[SPEAKER_04]: If I could be really honest for a second, you know, I think when we think of adventure, the icon is like a mountain or less like massive thing, but really an adventure is a new, kind of risky, uncomfortable experience.
34:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So when we started to even frame what is adventure to us, we had to get let go of what we thought it was,
34:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And just start to lean in like what could it be with kids you know what could adventure be for a two year old instead of a 35 year old that also was really helpful and just kind of setting the stage as well.
34:24
[SPEAKER_01]: The word adventure defined in the dictionary is literally an exciting or very unusual experience, something, you know, exciting to be undertaking a risk or hazardous experience.
34:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But so it literally is something out of your ordinary.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all it is.
34:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean, like you said, climbing Kilimanjaro with your family or something way out in the middle of the wilderness, I can speak to my own experience.
34:49
[SPEAKER_01]: The most exciting, my favorite stories from my adventures.
34:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Often times don't have to do with that stuff, it has to do with some random person I met at a grocery store or just, you know, some small experience in some city park somewhere, this interaction with somebody or some animal or something.
35:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not necessarily way out there.
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot more accessible than that.
35:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So for you, tell us what's been one of the most rewarding experiences adventures you and your family have been able to go on, bigger small.
35:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we're embarking on one right now, which is going to be a test of our patients, but we are thinking about a year off.
35:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And I am 41.
35:30
[SPEAKER_04]: My husband is 40.
35:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Our kids, I just mentioned their ages are 119 and 5.
35:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, that doesn't seem traditional in most senses of the word, but we have decided they are at the prime ages that
35:46
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, kids, I don't want to say kids have an expiration date.
35:48
[SPEAKER_04]: That sounds wrong.
35:48
[SPEAKER_04]: But there's a period.
35:50
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a season where in where the kids are an independent enough that they can do a lot of these fun adventurous things that they're not going to probably want to do in five years and in 10 years, they'll be off on their own.
36:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we realized.
36:09
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to cut back and all of the other life expectations where we were renovating a fortune-efficient farmhouse.
36:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And we kind of have just said, you know, is that really where we want to put our energy right now?
36:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Our time and our money?
36:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And we've decided to scale back that a little bit.
36:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And we also are talking about scaling back at work.
36:27
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we're both still working full time.
36:28
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're talking about what does that look like?
36:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And do we have enough of a runway in our savings that we've made that we can cover a year?
36:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Or what other revenue could we use?
36:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's a big adventure for us.
36:39
[SPEAKER_04]: In that space, both my son and daughters, both my sons and daughter have their own goals of things they love doing.
36:49
[SPEAKER_04]: My oldest, if he could choose as top three adventures, he would be surfing, skiing and mountain biking every weekend.
36:56
[SPEAKER_04]: My daughter would be reading, rock climbing and riding horses every day that she could.
37:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And my youngest would probably be fishing biking and I'm not sure, with the third thing might be.
37:09
[SPEAKER_04]: We've decided, like, okay, what if we designed a year based on all of our goals and just explored the country and not really know what that life is gonna be like or not have to feel like we have to plan every ounce of every detail, but have enough of a, you know, the boundary set to say, this is okay, it's okay if we're uncomfortable for a little bit.
37:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, and I think that's within probably a year or two that will be at that, like, okay, we're leaving by, it's been great.
37:38
[SPEAKER_04]: That's really uncomfortable place right now that I'm trying to lean into.
37:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So interesting.
37:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like the common ground between all of you right now.
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to take advantage of that opportunity.
37:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if everyone was left to do what they wanted to.
37:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like some very different.
37:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone would be on a very different path or your daughter would be on a horse.
37:59
[SPEAKER_01]: One of your friends would be on a kayak.
38:00
[SPEAKER_01]: The other stone would be on a mountain bike somewhere.
38:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It wouldn't work.
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It wouldn't work.
38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
38:05
[SPEAKER_01]: By the exactly the thing they wanted to do right now.
38:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is the common ground y'all share so what is this gap you're going to look like for y'all is it going to be you know living abroad or you're going to be an RV What what what what what what what look like?
38:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think it'll be traveling the United States or at least North America in an RV is what I'm envisioning at this point.
38:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So awesome.
38:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That's gonna be, that's gonna be cool.
38:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We've talked to some families doing that.
38:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you know, travel, especially where every location is kind of new, every experience, all the people you need to know, that one year is gonna feel like so much longer than a year.
38:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, it's going to feel like such a bigger part of your life than just, you know, actually one year.
38:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, to what a great way to spend a year.
38:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Good gracious.
38:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Was your family unforgettable?
38:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
38:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, and to be quite honest, that is, it's hard for us to even consider one of the things we've had to think about right now is one of our one of my core values is connection.
39:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So we've even said like, how are we going to connect with peers along the way?
39:06
[SPEAKER_04]: How do we build a network of,
39:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Just people we could meet up with, or, you know, so that doesn't feel so lonely on the road, because that, and you might start to sense this too, is when you're not the normal, and I hate that we're normal, but when you're not doing things the traditional way, you're kind of the outcast you're a little weird, it can be really lonely, and I know that we're gonna be a little off the beaten pass.
39:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So now it's, when the prep work for us is like, who's our tribe?
39:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Who do we wanna meet up with?
39:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Who's got kids, who adventures?
39:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And we've been fortunate that a lot of our friends,
39:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Most of my friends, you know, all those adventurous friends, a lot of them chose not to have kids.
39:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we were kind of faced with this idea of like, well, how do you feel about us bringing our kids?
39:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you okay with that?
39:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Cause we also want to respect your decision to not have kids and we don't want to, you know, thrust them on.
39:52
[SPEAKER_04]: You so to speak.
39:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's been a lot of really great conversations, but now the kids also are like, but we want to play with other kids too.
39:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So how do we find other kids that we can play with?
40:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's, that's a hard part for us.
40:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Is how do we find our tribe and all of this?
40:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And figure out where we're going to be able to meet up
40:07
[SPEAKER_04]: We just had a really unique experience.
40:10
[SPEAKER_04]: We're coming off of three weeks in Hawaii, which is the longest we've ever been together as a family in kind of one place.
40:17
[SPEAKER_04]: And part of our stay in Hawaii was at a home stay.
40:21
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was like a host family where they host other families who have kids.
40:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was designed to be so that we would interact.
40:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And that we found was one of the most nourishing experiences for all of us.
40:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I got to connect with another parent who has a similar philosophy to parenting, my kids did really adventurous things and could play with other kids so there's opportunities out there we just need to find them that's I think that's my mission right now to is how do I bring all of those things that are just not known to us to a place where I can explore them and connect with other people that are also interested in things like this.
40:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's it's important to know you're not crazy.
41:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not alone.
41:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great to be kind of, you know, that person doing things different.
41:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also, it's also good to know that you're not the only one out there doing things different.
41:09
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a whole network of folks doing doing this or thinking this way at least.
41:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'd love to also ask you talk about traveling to Hawaii for three weeks.
41:19
[SPEAKER_01]: That's incredible.
41:20
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like just, you know, a bucket list item for a lot of people out there with families, but you also
41:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Do it on quite a budget.
41:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you talk about how you and your family have been able to travel on $2,500 yearly budget?
41:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if Hawaii really blew that out of the water, but I just love to hear like, what does that look like?
41:39
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that $2,500 look like and how do you make that happen?
41:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thank you for that.
41:44
[SPEAKER_04]: That is true that our budget is $2,500.
41:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And just for the record, Hawaii ended up being all in $3,500.
41:52
[SPEAKER_04]: So we did blow it out of the water a little bit, but we still were able to look at things differently.
41:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to take you through a little bit of a growth trajectory on this one too because it wasn't always this, how I funded Hawaii is very different than what we were doing 10 years ago.
42:07
[SPEAKER_04]: My husband was not a traveler.
42:09
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, before he
42:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I knew that I couldn't just be all in on travel because I was like, Oh, boy, this is going to be tough.
42:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So for the very cup early couple years of our marriage, he had a motorcycle.
42:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And so all of our travel was done on a motorcycle, which does not require a lot of gas.
42:28
[SPEAKER_04]: It meant we were packing a tent on the back of the motorcycle and if we were lucky we'd stay at some trashy hotel for the night on our way to the next place so early on $2,500 was nothing and we probably traveled for less than $1,000 and some of those early days as we had kids they don't fit on motorcycles very well and we had to change our framework.
42:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So we did start doing more airline travel with the kids.
42:55
[SPEAKER_04]: All of our kids were on an airplane within Gash probably three months of age.
42:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And that I've just always let, this is just like the budget side of me.
43:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I've always let the fair sales decide our destination.
43:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't keep a bucket list, so to say, of where I wanna go.
43:10
[SPEAKER_04]: We do have some target areas.
43:13
[SPEAKER_04]: We're trying, my daughter wants to collect all the national parks and my son wants to hit all the major league baseball stadiums.
43:18
[SPEAKER_04]: We have enough options out there that when a fair sale would come up, you know, I'll be honest, one of my favorite places was Cleveland, Ohio and people look at me in the like what I'm like, it was so cool.
43:29
[SPEAKER_04]: We spent just four days, our fairs were fifty nine dollars round trip.
43:33
[SPEAKER_04]: So we just found some really cheap ways to travel.
43:36
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't stay in hotels most often.
43:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So we buy their camped or we've done Airbnb's and we do have some family that will sometimes stay with.
43:46
[SPEAKER_04]: So looking at your lodging differently, we will often only eat out once if possible on that trip partially because a partially is just because my kids don't eat very good food and it always feels like it's a waste of money, but my husband and I love really good local food.
44:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So we always try to find something local, a good local flavor or local dish or something that we can try.
44:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So we just, we've learned little tricks along the way.
44:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would say starting maybe in 2018,
44:14
[SPEAKER_04]: using travel rewards.
44:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's probably another whole topic for another day.
44:19
[SPEAKER_04]: But in large part, the last three to four years we've been traveling using a lot of travel rewards.
44:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're able to fly as a family of five for minimal expenses.
44:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's really used using credit card signups and you get these bonus points.
44:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I mean, there's a system behind it.
44:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a little bit more sophisticated.
44:37
[SPEAKER_04]: But that is how we've really started to expand our budget without really having
44:47
[SPEAKER_01]: learn in the tricks of the trade that that's definitely part of it part of it's the inspiration and just going forward and the others is getting educated on stuff like that.
44:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely love that.
44:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I love your your kind of your rules around traveling to just looking at things a little differently.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You can often find some really great deals or experience some of those places on such a so much cheaper.
45:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what you mentioned Ohio that's so funny.
45:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We did a cross-country
45:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd have to say, my absolute favorite experience was all of Ohio, and that's going from essentially Connecticut all the way to San Diego.
45:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, seeing the most incredible places, some incredible scenery, but something about like the people and just the combination of my expectations and the experiences and the stories of Ohio stands out to me.
45:40
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so funny, you mentioned.
45:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been telling people that for a year that my favorite state was Ohio.
45:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It had zero expectations going in, but I think that has to do something with how great it was.
45:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's cool to hear that it's not an anomaly.
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone else out there had a great time in Ohio too.
45:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, and there's something about the Midwest.
46:00
[SPEAKER_04]: There's something about the culture of the Midwest too.
46:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I just find people are easygoing and I don't know.
46:05
[SPEAKER_04]: There's something that's easy to fit.
46:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't wanna say fit in, but it's easy to like enjoy the experience without having the pressure of,
46:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't expectations or something.
46:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
46:15
[SPEAKER_04]: That's funny that you had that experience too.
46:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I tell you what, you've been sharing some incredible stuff and I'd love to just ask you a few more questions before we wrap up.
46:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We hear a lot of people say, you know, I want to stay adventurous as I have kids and it's a real pressure to still be really cool and adventurous and athletic even as you have kids.
46:39
[SPEAKER_01]: What are some resources you use to help just keep that motivation alive or help find ways to stay active with kids?
46:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I honestly, I had to create a lot of these because when I first started out 10 years ago, I wasn't finding what I was looking for.
46:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Certainly Pinterest wasn't what it is today and I felt like it was exhausting.
46:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So I found a couple people that I follow on Instagram just in the areas that I'm curious about.
47:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I've had a lot of really good luck.
47:16
[SPEAKER_04]: But we also started, I would find ideas to like 100 things you could do in your own backyard or every location around the country has, I don't want to say, every location, but a lot of places have, I always just Google search, free things to do with, or biking resources with kids, or any time I would travel, I would usually start to look in just a Google search initially and then start to connect with the locals.
47:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And even here in Wisconsin, it's amazing in 2020,
47:45
[SPEAKER_04]: kind of forced to stay home, there were so many things in our own backyard that we just didn't even know existed.
47:50
[SPEAKER_04]: So I would say, you know, just starting to search in the area like geographic area and then in the thing, the activity that you're most interested in and either do free or add with kids and that has helped us kind of hone in on some of those people that are ahead of us on the journey.
48:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I would also say not to put a plug in, but
48:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I would also say this is part of the reason and the motivation behind the brand ordinary Sharpa.
48:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't want families to feel like they had to choose between adventure and all of those other things.
48:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I was starting to feel the pull that my kids were being pulled in a hundred different directions.
48:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So ordinary Sharpa as a brand can also be a resource to people, whether it's just
48:30
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, adventures in your own backyard or it's traveling differently or even designing your life around adventure, there's resources and we're relatively young, but there's definitely resources and people that are attracted to the brand and mostly people are age, you know, I think that's the other thing people are age are really realizing that this doesn't exist, this isn't how our parents did it and so.
48:51
[SPEAKER_04]: are thirsty and it's just been great.
48:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I had someone post today on our Facebook group of like, I'm going to travel city Michigan and I think there's like 15 responses already of like, oh, you should try this or you should try this or here's what we did with our kids.
49:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's it's a really nurturing environment.
49:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would say that's another option for people as well.
49:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
49:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, tell us about ordinary ship.
49:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want what kind of things do you like to learn or can folks expect to learn on there and in an expect to get out of that?
49:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I wanted adventure to be simple enough that you could take the first step.
49:23
[SPEAKER_04]: So people who may not have been the epic adventures that are just, or people who are trying to get their spouses on board that may not have been epic adventures, those types of things.
49:32
[SPEAKER_04]: How do I take that next first step towards an adventurous life?
49:35
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of things just to kind of get out the door, tools and resources.
49:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I interview a lot of parents who have been adventurous and share their story.
49:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's a lot of just different inspiration.
49:45
[SPEAKER_04]: You can also find things to travel differently.
49:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I mentioned our little travel rewards, we have a couple episodes on that, but then also some content to help people with what I call untoerism.
49:57
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really traveling differently, connecting with locals, not always going to the touristy destinations.
50:03
[SPEAKER_04]: But I would say those are kind of, I would say authenticity, simplicity, and then the Sherpa concept is to really help people, other families reach their summits.
50:11
[SPEAKER_04]: If you know anything about mountain climbing,
50:13
[SPEAKER_04]: In Everest, in particular, the Sherpa tribe is extremely monumental for mountain climbers to actually reach the summit.
50:21
[SPEAKER_04]: There's something about the Sherpa's, and I could go on to another whole topic around that.
50:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So we kind of embrace that Sherpa philosophy that you're also contributing to help other people reach there summit.
50:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So it is genuinely a community designed to help other people connect and to help families connect both together and with other families.
50:41
[SPEAKER_01]: absolutely love it what you're doing the work you're doing helping families stay adventurous or start being adventurous and providing some resources on how to do that and living by example of course.
50:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there anything else you wanted to share on the adventurous sports podcast?
50:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I just really appreciate that all that you've done and I want to say thank you because I have been a listener to your podcast for I don't know years years I've listened to some of the rewinds the first time and I just appreciate you know as much as we can't always do the epic things it does keep these in the back of my mind of what's possible and it keeps reminding me that you know anything is really possible I just have to figure out how to do it now and when to do it next so I just thank you I would say for creating this space too and supporting
51:28
[SPEAKER_04]: others to even dream and be exposing me to adventure in different ways that's been a really helpful way.
51:34
[SPEAKER_04]: My son is fascinated with your coast to coast trip.
51:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just I probably need to take that conversation offline and learn like where to start.
51:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think the space that has been created around adventure is because of communities like yours and like mine that are really trying to nurture and support families and knowing that it's okay to take the first step
51:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It'll be okay.
52:00
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I think we're a society that's afraid of failure and while always wanting the epic thing, but that next first step is gonna be the best step for you.
52:09
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, thank you so much for listening and means the world to us that you choose a listen to this show.
52:14
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to help us further, you can leave a review on iTunes, share us with your friends or family, it goes a long way to grow in the show.
52:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also support us financially through patreon.com slash adventure sports podcast, link is in the show notes.
52:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, if you have an idea of who could be a good guest for the show, we're always looking for people to tell their story about the outdoors or adventure.
52:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you know someone, please reach out, email us at infoedadventuresportspodcast.com.
52:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And until then, get out there and have some fun.