Unraveling Traveling

My seven stages of travel, the unity of the Olympic Games in person, and breaking prejudices with real-life experiences

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: the journeys from one place to another.

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Ingredient List

First off, apologies for the late dinner service this week! Didn’t have internet on the flight home from Paris and my time there was completely jam-packed. Hope the food isn’t too cold.

🎧 : This was actually an interview I did for our podcast at Believe in the Run (The Drop). I really enjoyed talking to Drew Petersen, a professional skier and ultrarunner who is also now a mental health advocate after going through some dark times and deep struggles. I really enjoyed talking to him and appreciated him being open about everything. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, or here.

🎥 : Since we had a long plane ride to Paris for the Olympics, I was finally able to watch a couple movies recommended to me after my post bemoaning the state of Hollywood.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” // I had been wanting to see this for awhile since I love most Tarantino films, and it did not disappoint. His attention to detail is, once again, so stunning and obsessive that it’s hard to imagine a human having such a depth of knowledge about one subject. Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt were both in their element. And I absolutely loved the redemptive path of the Manson-Tate murders at the end.

“Mad Max: Fury Road” // Again, just getting around to watching this, but plenty of people have recommended it and it was great. I’m not sure you can do much better for a pure action flick. To think the entire movie was just an out-and-back car drive where they never reached their destination and decided to just come back home.

Postcards for Paids

I’ve been creating and sending postcards to my paid subscribers, made from vintage postcards with custom artwork courtesy of the weed packaging I find on the ground in Baltimore. On the back, a handwritten thank you note, of course. Here’s one I sent to someone (sorry, forgot to record who), featuring an old car with flames coming out the exhaust.

And now, onto dinner service.

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Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Moroccan Spice

This week, I got to experience seeing the Olympic Games in Paris, France. It’s something I never thought I’d get to a chance to see, especially in another country.

There were many special moments over the last several days, but one of my favorite things was being in the stadium, hearing every country (especially France) cheer for their athletes or teams, seeing people from every nation all in one place to watch sport. There was an immense sense of pride, whether it was the full Belgian contingent surrounding us in our section on Friday, or the two girls next to me from Morocco on Thursday, who stood proudly and sang their national anthem when their countryman took the gold medal in the heptathlon.

But I think my favorite thing was that it seemed like we all forgot the troubles in the world, the current events, the elections, the wars, the cultural flashpoints. I always thought the spirit of unity at the Olympics was overblown, that it was just a sentiment to elevate the event. Lo and behold, it was all true. It was such a wonderful feeling of togetherness, from the incredibly fun vibes of beach volleyball to the sold-out nights at the Stade de France to just the general vibe in the city. 

Paris, known for its standoffishness and in the middle of political upheaval, even felt light and welcoming and alive, no matter where you stepped foot. 

We were so busy with events and group runs and seeing as much as we could that I barely had time to sleep or check my phone, and certainly didn’t have time to keep up on social media or the news. I just lived in the moment and paid no attention to the outside noise, that constant twitch to fill the gaps of boredom in my everyday life.

The weekly deluge of darkness was there, somewhere, but it wasn’t in my scope of reality for the past week. It was a refreshing break and a moment of light in a world that seems hell-bent on bringing the human spirit to its knees.

But I can assure you that the human spirit is alive and well,  that despite our differences, we are so much the same. It was nice to embrace that, especially through the spirit of sport. 

And for that, I am grateful.

Course 2

Appetizer: Shared Appetizers

Unless you’ve been to a place, you probably shouldn’t judge it. 

It’s something that perpetually bothers me when people talk about the deep South or Baltimore or any other place, really. So often, people’s opinions on places are based on stereotypes or a limited scope of experience in a certain place. 

It particularly bothers me in journalism or news media, the whole “trying to to figure out middle America” think-pieces that come out like clockwork at election time. Because most of them have never spent time in these places, or really took the time to see where people are at in life. And when they do, they’re typically trying get a story on a deadline to get clicks so the whole thing comes off as a self-serving venture anyway.

Because I think most people would be surprised to find that the South isn’t a bunch of hillbillies and racists just like Baltimore isn’t a bunch of drug dealers and murderers. All of those things exist in those places, but to write them off and put them under the umbrella of the transgressions of some is just not fair, and not truly representative of those places.

I remember the first few times we toured through the South, I was shocked at how different it was than what I had seen on TV and learned about growing up. It was much more culturally diverse than where I was from in Pennsylvania and everyone got along pretty fine. I heard far more racial slurs in the places I grew up and from upper-class kids than I ever did among all the people we hung out with night after night in Georgia and Tennessee and Mississippi. I’m not saying it didn’t exist and still doesn’t exist, but the stereotypes I always saw or heard growing up just weren’t true for the majority of people I met.

That was the first time I realized that most of what we see on TV or read in newspapers is just an exaggeration of a thing to get a story that gets eyes on it. If you really want the truth of someone or somewhere, you need to go and visit it yourself, and not with an agenda or a preconception about where you’re going. Go to understand and to learn and to experience what it’s like to live there and be there. Talk to people, for real.

I want my kids to go to college and get a good education, but I honestly want them to take some time, whether in a gap year or during breaks, to travel far and wide. To get lost, to rely on others for help, to share a drink and a meal with someone who your politicians want you to hate. It’s an education that pays dividends because it allows you to understand others, to be more sympathetic, and to get an unbiased view of the world.

That kind of thing will take you as far as you want to go, both figuratively and literally.

Course 3

The Main: Parisian Aperitif

I feel like after the past few years of travel and experiences, I’ve finally recognized my seven stages of travel, and how I settle into a place.

The first stage is the planning stage. Oddly enough, I’m really bad at planning, except when it comes to travel. If it’s a family vacation or a group trip with friends, I enjoy doing the research, reading the guides, and sifting through ratings. Finding all the interesting things and building the itinerary in an attempt to ‘wow.’ Those things are often derailed, but they looked great on a spreadsheet.

The second stage anxiety and nervousness. Whenever I’m going to a new country or culture, I feel an apprehension– that I won’t fit in, that I’ll do something wrong, that I’ll look like a typical American tourist asshole. Which, like, yeah– I’m a foreigner, of course. But I feel guilty that someone has to deal with me and my cultural incompetence, so the feeling gnaws at me in the weeks before a big trip.

For whatever reason (likely from reading Esquire for the past two decades), I feel like it’s incredibly important to dress appropriately, either for dinner or going out, or just generally existing on the streets in the city that I’m visiting. It stresses me out more than you care to know, and I inevitably overpack and at no point do I ever feel like I have what I need. Of course, in reality, nobody cares and this is one of the most trivial of all things. I assure you that neither you nor I will be the worst dressed American in that city, or even that street.

Flights are flights, I have no real issues with flying, other than every time I’m at the airport, I look around and think: “Really, this right here is the sampling of individuals that’s responsible for keeping the human race going forward? Are we sure we’re okay with that?” I mean, an airport is the best representation of what we’re working with as a society, and if you’ve been inside of one recently, you can’t tell me you’re a hundred percent confident we’re not gonna drive this delicate human experiment directly into a wall within the next decade.

The third phase is the arrival and the chaotic rush, like being dropped into the LZ in a rice paddy in Vietnam. Except, you know, way lower stakes. Being in a new place is always overwhelming and over-stimulating, especially somewhere like Tokyo or Paris. Everything looks kind of similar– streets and cars and people. But it’s all different– the language, the patterns, the movements of everything. It’s like regular life filtered through an entirely different lens, as if the field of vision/reality is just skewed a few degrees to the right.

For instance: is it cool to cross on red at a crosswalk? Tokyo: no. Paris: sometimes. Baltimore or New York: every chance you get. Honking your car horn? Tokyo: zero chance. Paris: only if it prevents an accident. New York: often, even though it’s not allowed. Me in Baltimore: one second after a red light changes to green.

Since we live in 2024, everything must be documented and shared, and since I’m in a new place, the capture of everything reaches critical levels. Even if I’m not sharing, you probably still feel the urge to take photos. So many of them, collecting digital dust somewhere in a cloud underground. Since my work requires content, there’s a whole other level of anxiety that I don’t want to miss something or forget something or not share something and do I take a landscape photo or a portrait or do I take a video for Instagram stories or should I make it landscape for a highlight in a YouTube video. It’s all just overwhelming. Of course, it’s also that I just don’t want to forget, because I know that what I’m seeing is legitimately beautiful and that my life is changing before my eyes. Wherever I am will leave a mark decades from now.

Phase four is the adjustment phase, or the perimeter phase: finding a place to eat, locating the nearest cafe or bar, walking around the vicinity of my hotel or Airbnb, attempting to defeat the time zone difference and the pushing and pulling of jet lag. It’s a bit of a limbo stage, mostly becasuse I’m sleep deprived. I have found that going on a run at this time, even if I feel like garbage, is a good pick-up and a great way to speed up the adjustment phase.

Around day two or three is the settling phase, which is by far my favorite phase of any travel. At this point, some of the stuff on the itinerary has been checked off, but I also start to winnow down what’s important and what’s not, and the realistic expectations for the trip. I start to let go of the stress and anxiety that had been spinning my brain in circles for the past week. Sleep comes easier. The rhythm of the locale starts to make a little more sense. I take fewer pictures or videos, and just soak up the surroundings, experiencing everything up close instead of thinking how I can document it. I finally feel relaxed and happy.

Everything seems to make a little more sense, the sediment of settling in, settling down. I start to see how it’s different at a more granular level. What time the city wakes up (or doesn’t go to sleep). How people linger and walk and wait for buses, how the bike lanes and public transportation work and what drinks or food are in the side pockets of backpacks. How Parisians make cigarettes look like the hottest health trend and I swear to god I’m one good book and one good apéritif at one good café away from firing one up for the first time in nine years. Don’t worry, I didn’t do it… but I really, really wanted to. I feel like “smoking only while in other countries” should be a good rule to live by.

On a walk or a run, I look at the windows on the third floor of an apartment building and think about the person who hung their clothes out to dry that morning. I think about how the sunlight is hitting the floor and the sound of me talking or running is coming through the window as they’re sitting there reading or writing or eating their breakfast, or maybe even still sleeping, but most likely looking at their phone. I think about how that person has a job they’re trying to leave and dreams they’re hoping to fulfill and family drama that’s unresolved. Their whole world is right there– the grocery store where they buy milk, the neighbor they pass on their walk every afternoon, the barber that cuts their hair each month. Their life’s play is folding out all around me and I’m just moving through it, a blip on a radar that soon moves off the screen and into another latitude. 

This is the most opportune time to see where the day takes me, to throw out the entire itinerary, to drive or bike or run or take the subway somewhere that I may never get to. It is the wander zone or wonder zone, both can be used interchangeably. It has the most potential for creating the best memories of the trip. Something may go terribly wrong or perfectly right, and I always seem to find some place that looks like it found me first and was just waiting for this whole time, centuries even, for me to sit down. Sometimes I think, “what if that architect or builder put that mark right there on the corner of that roof, hoping that someone standing right here would see it, and three hundred years later someone did, and they’ll never know?”

Of course, I always enjoy meeting someone new, and this is always the best time to do so. To strike up a conversation with the person next to me at a park or on the train or in a bar, to talk about anything, to see what common interests we share. Oftentimes, this can lead to a great adventure or a good tip about the next best thing to do or place to visit. 

The sixth phase, for me, is the “time go home” phase. As much as I love travel and the experiences it brings, I deeply miss home when I’m away, to the point that I really just have to block it out of my head so I don’t get depressed. I do love the structure of home, the rhythm of my own neighborhood, the schedule of getting up and going to work and going to bed. On trips without my family, the aching is real. I wish they could experience all of this with me, and that hopefully someday they will. Whether on their own, or together with me. I wish I could talk about what I’m seeing with my wife as I walk with her, not over the phone while she’s doing her best to keep the homefront operation somewhat functional. I miss playing catch with my boys or walking to school or just saying goodnight to them for real, all of which are better than any of the things I mentioned above. That right there is my cigarette on a summer night while sitting at an outdoor café in Paris. 

I mean, how do you not smoke in this city

The seventh and final phase is the gratitude phase. I’m eternally grateful and thankful I’ve been able to experience all of this, because the world really is a wonderful place. Looking back on some of my travels, it can often feel like a dream, like a movie, like how am I lucky enough that I could do that? 

I think we often see travel as a way to take: take a video, take a vacation, take a selfie. Even when we’re slowing down, we take our time by taking the back roads. I’ve taken a lot over the years, because the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met have given so much.

I hope I can give that back whenever someone else comes my way. Maybe someday that’ll be you, as you settle into your third day of travel, striking up a conversation in Baltimore with some mustachioed man who will inevitably write about the entire experience on his Substack.

Course 4

Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week

Well, recapping this past week would almost require an entirely different newsletter, and I’m sure I’ll write about it for Believe in the Run, but I’ll see if I can offer a short synopsis. Apologies to all my Instagram followers who have already read all of this.

As I mentioned above, I was able to go to Paris with ASICS and Believe in the Run. We’ve done a lot of events in partnership with ASICS over the last couple months and this was kind of a culmination of all of that. Of course, being in Paris meant we were there for the 2024 Olympic Games.

I can assure you that in all of my wildest dreams and fantasies and life projections, I never would have imagined that I’d be taking in Paris and the Olympic Games as part of a running journey. It’s hard to state how impossible that would have seemed a decade ago. Honestly, even five years ago.

I remember when I used to work at the Coast Guard in a cubicle and I’d get jealous that my team lead would get to go to Gulfport, Mississippi, once every six months and stay at a Comfort Inn and have dinner paid for in a strip mall. I still had that travel bug and it clawed at me and even that seemed cool to me.

That was 7 years ago.

On Wednesday night, I stood on a deck of a boat on the Seine at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and cordially chatted with discus gold medalist Valarie Allman, right before heading over to watch a beach volleyball match on the other side of the iconic landmark. The next day, I visited the Korea and Swiss houses before heading to the ASICS house where we talked with Clayton Young, ASICS athlete and marathon representative for the United States, about his upcoming race on Saturday. Then I sat at the 50-yard line of the Stade de France and watched Sydney McLaughlin break her own world record in the 400m hurdles. On Friday, we led a group run from The Louvre where over 150 people showed up, including Deena Kastor (bronze medalist at the 2004 Olympic Games). Fans came up to talk to me from Colombia, Argentina, Ireland, England, Indonesia, Italy, the United States and France (obviously). I talked to Zach for a little while, who told me how much he loves reading this newsletter each week, which meant more than he knows.

What a gold medal looks like in person

On Saturday, we watched the men’s marathon and then I headed out on a 7-mile run around Paris, seeing some friends along the way, including the legendary Italian runner Gelindo Bordin, still the only man to ever win gold in the Olympic Marathon and finish first in the Boston Marathon.

I’m not name-dropping or describing all of this to brag. I’m telling you this because it’s still so mind-blowing to myself. Like, how unreal is this? I sometimes feel like a found a backdoor hack or a cheat code or a Mario tunnel to this life.

Anyway, Paris was beautiful and the vibes were just perfect. I couldn’t get over the fact that every street in the city looks like a movie set, like the perfect backdrop for any photo you could take. That people spent whole lifetimes building some of the structures. That despite the state of the world and the hard lives they lived, they somehow created the most beautiful buildings that would stand the test of time and inspire humans from any time period and any culture. Also, that bike lane network just warmed my heart– if a city built and rebuilt in the 19th century can figure it out, then surely we can as well.

Also, against all odds, I somehow managed to run 46 miles last week, the most I’ve run since the first week of January. So that was cool.

Glad to be home, thanks for your patience on this one.

Some other things I wrote and/or edited this week:

• Hoka Mafate Speed 4 Lite STSFY Brings the Best Trail Vibes (first look– and photos by me!– of this always perfect partnership between Hoka and Satisfy Running)

• Running Gear We Love Right Now (gear roundup for Believe in the Run)

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round-up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. You can listen to this week’s episode here.

END OF MENU

Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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