Travelin' Man

When this goes live, Patrick will, god willing, be in a pub in London.

Vacations are odd. Are you going somewhere to relax, or are you going somewhere for experiences? Arguably, the path is in-between, because if you were to live in such a place, would you be chasing every tourist trip?

Maybe a trip is, instead, to hang with family or friends. The goal isn't to do much of anything at all except to soak up time with loved ones and be in proximity. Where you do that means less than the being off it all.

Either way, it's important to get out the house.

You don't need to travel halfway across the world to do something new and different. This week, though, Rob and Patrick unpack the travel they've done over the years, what it means to travel when it's really in service of work, and how long you need to be in a place to "be" there.

Patrick: It’s strange. Over my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel across the world a few times, landing up in Iceland, Japan, and Germany. Sometimes a few days, sometimes a week.

The one thing those trips have in common, though, was work. Iceland was to attend an EVE Online convention. Japan was, of course, Tokyo Game Show. Germany was the show that would become Gamescom. It’s hard to complain about a “free” international trip, but in every case, I was doing interviews, writing blog posts, and doing lots of work. Plus, it was a little bit like how I can say I’ve been to Seattle a dozen times. But have you really been to Seattle if you’re just going to PAX to walk around a convention center, before you hang out at a bar?

It wasn’t until I went to PAX with my family a few years back where we stayed long enough to actually do touristy stuff in Seattle. I finally went on the damn Space Needle. That’s ridiculous.

Are you really visiting a place if you’re just doing the same things you’d do somewhere else? But when I went to those other places for work, I didn’t have the money to stay an extra week!

It’s only in recent years that my wife and I have mulled a “real” vacation. Even then, we do not have the kind of family support that would let us drop off the kids for a week and jet off. I’m grateful for having my mom around in a pinch, but my mom couldn’t handle a week on her own.

So in reality, the cost of the vacation inflates and what you can do on it changes radically. We considered doing something closer, more explicitly centered around the kids. But fuck it, man.

A few years back, as we considered breaking the seal on Disney, my wife wondered aloud if the kids would be old enough in a few years for something more ambitious. She had never left the confines of North America, venturing only to Canada and Mexico over the years, and had always dreamed of visiting Paris. Worried it wouldn't be the “best” destination for young children, I told her we should go to Paris anyway. We’d figure out a way to make it really fun with the kids.

(Everything we’ve read since makes it sounds like it’ll actually be delightful for the kids. We’re even sneaking two nights and one day at Disneyland Paris, to bring things entirely full circle.)

Still, in some ways, I’m in the same place I was last time. I’m about to attend a cool place with a caveat. Now, it’s kids instead of work. I’ll happily take one over the other, obviously, but we spent decades clawing our way into a place where we could consider travelling and now, once again, it’s probably another decade until we could reasonably consider doing it only as a couple. 

The reality is very few of us will ever have the means to pull off the idealized vacation. I still expect we’re going to have a wonderful time. And if I’m being honest, I’m delighted, proud, and jealous my kids are having a trip like this at their age. That wasn’t in the cards for my family at that age, and it’s a testament to all the support my family gave me that I’m now in this position.

Yet…I wish I could sneak off to the catacombs with my wife without jumping through hoops lol

Anyway. What have your vacations been like over the decades? What’s your Paris?

Rob: We haven’t really had vacations until a couple years ago when we went on our big Disney World vacation. Which was, warts-and-all, a really special trip. The Animal Kingdom Lodge legitimately changed how we understood lighting, and how much it shapes a place. It’s an expensive hotel but it’s an experience MK and I refer back to constantly when we think about how to design and light an interior space.

I think the best (only?) real vacation prior to that was a tiny house on Lake Michigan. It was probably the most MK and I have ever had to ourselves to just hang out in our entire relationship. My entire memory of the days in that cabin is just the two of us sitting by a roaring bonfire watching the sun slide across the sky and the stars come out. It was a little early in the season so the lake was quite cold but it also made that fire feel like heaven on earth. It’s another thing we refer back to a lot and now I think of it, the place we’re buying has elements of both those vacations! It’s a cozy, sleek wood home with lots of private outdoor space. Hopefully it facilitates the making of those kinds of happy memories on a more regular basis.

As for what’s my Paris… I think it’s probably Paris or… Tokyo. I have never been to Japan but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t love their time there. It intimidates the hell out of me: I don’t speak or read any of the language and long flights are a struggle. But the idea of spending a few weeks or a month in Japan is captivating.

That’s the other thing: I don’t tend to do well with short trips. I like to live in a place more than I like to visit it. My ideal vacation is not a weekend or even a couple weeks, it’s spending a season somewhere. Long enough to find my own rhythms and relationship with it, to not feel like I need to go see a museum or a heritage site but can instead spend the day watching sports before going out for dinner at a restaurant or meeting up with friends in the area.