033: Socks✓ Underwear✓ Bluetoothbrush ?

All right, everybody welcome back to it doesn't mean you do long awkward pause and then say okay, you just start talking Yeah, I mean, you know, I figured I would just give you like a half second to finish That's how I had a nice clean place edit from but you know, but it wasn't me and then you're like hi everybody Oh, we get a nice clean place to edit I see I see now. I know where the intentions are got it You act like I didn't do this before yeah, I know you did but that's when I was editing so it really didn't matter It wasn't really for me. I guess I should have like always when you edited just constantly like spoken long sentences I never taken a breath that way. You're like god.

Where do I cut the episode? He never takes a breath. I feel like you just would have interrupted Yeah, I just interrupt every every sentence. We're start talking and stop talking and then say the same thing over again That would have been fun.

Anyway, it's it's been a while since we last talked, huh? Yeah Peaking behind the curtain. It's been a whole 48 hours. Well less than that, right?

Yeah, actually it's been just under 48 hours So did you miss me? Nope? The quickest answer ever. Nope.

Yeah, that was those quick on the draw I have to say yeah, Lou I totally miss you. Uh, I don't know man I'm just kind of getting overwhelmed with all the stuff that he's done before going on vacation It's like that week before where your mind is is only half focused on what you're doing today And half focused on what you're going to be doing when you want vacation So I'm kind of living in vacation brain mode Trying to basically make it until Friday when I officially check out awesome So when do you check out on Friday is Friday like an early call or is it a whatever midnight on Thursday, right? As soon as the clock ticks and the date updates and it says zero zero, you know zero zero or Friday whatever date Friday is gonna be That's it dead to the world. No, I'm more curious when is when is your flight Friday?

Oh, I don't leave Friday I leave Saturday. Oh, even better. I love this like this is like definitely pro travel tips here You you had your vacation with a day before and a day after is that you're a tactic. Yeah, so normally what I'll do is Especially if I'm taking off like a weekend.

Oh, yeah I'll pad the day before so I'll do that at the Friday and then I'll do the Monday, you know if I'm coming back on Sunday So if we take a week, I'll usually pad it by, you know, a day to give me time to get everything together Especially with all the kids, right? That's worked out really well Just getting set up and then using the Monday after getting back from traveling to just completely like get back into the groove Right get a full days rest, you know get everything in the house straightened up before just like jumping back into daily routine So I definitely pad them, you know, like I said a little bit of fat on both ends of the vacation But this this time is a little different because the kids are still in school and since they're not going with us It's kind of more just a lot of setup and then my mom flies in so we have to you know pick her up and then our flight leaves Saturday So it gives us at least a little bit time to figure everything out before jetting got it So your mom gets to be the lucky one to watch the kids for a week. Yeah, so my mom and my sister are coming up So both of them will be watching the three kids. Well, why can't I just relax and not worry about it?

I'll tell you what so today I was like I have a bunch of stuff I need to do and normally like on my commute I'll read a bunch of articles I kind of do that so when I kind of get up in the morning take the kids to school You know, we still have the youngest with us So there's really not that kind of downtime to read an article so I was like, you know what I'm gonna read an article I'm gonna find some time and just sit down. I'm gonna read an article So I went out on the back patio, you know after we got home from something and I'm just gonna take 30 minutes I'm gonna read some stuff and I start reading article and then like not I swear like two minutes into the article when I get So I was like dad and I'm like, yes. Yes, what like I love you. I love you too.

That's great And then I walk away and then another minute goes by and it's like dad. Yes Hi, oh my gosh, like it's real, you know kids just bug you every minute But I was like all I want to do is read this seven-minute article That's all I want to do is just get through this and I was like five more days And I'll be able to read every single article it's in my insta paper queue with all the quiet You know cuz we are going on a cruise I don't know if I mention that but on the cruise I have the adults only deck right which is like no kids and I'm planning on spending a good amount of time up there with a candle Just like tearing through tons of stuff while we're at sea because oh just the quiet quiet will be so nice So now I know the way to just like make your nightmares come true I can just like record your children saying dad and I'll just like loop it you know through a track that plays like all night long or Something like it just at some interval though like you know every five minutes. It's as dad You can get good as a parent tuning out things right you can you can tune out like the screaming and the constant You know cheddar this and that right it's easy to now But when you're focusing on something and you want to dedicate you know most of your attention to that it's tough And in all honesty like if you put in the recording it'd be funny if you had it like just once every like Seven minutes or some arbitrary number because then I'd feel like one of the kids was actually talking to me And I probably look up from wherever I was like listening to the show I'd be like what with oh no the kids aren't here I'm on a bus. There's no way they're here.

So who knows well at least I know I have a secret weapon now so So I feel like I should take a moment to give you a little update on my movie watching It is the ending days of March and I I do have the movie scheduled to watch and I'm planning to watch it actually tomorrow night Which means they will have watched it in March however, I have a special guest next week and That special guest happens to be the yes that you recorded the original movie episode with so I have planned to hold off I'm talking about it until I get with that special guest because I feel like it's kind of cool They're like share share at least one of my reviews with that individual So John will be back next week and I plan on sharing my highlights of Batman with him So Adam you are going to have to sit back and listen to that episode actually to hear what I thought about Batman That's disappointing because this was March. This was my birthday month This was my movie that I got to pick and put in this month slot for you So I'm a little disappointed. Well the anticipation builds No, I'm just a little disappointed that I won't be able to you know tear you a new one for you know I'm not getting all the Batman references. Ah Sorry, I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to share this with you until you put this in here and start talking about like That's right.

Wait. This is my movie. Oh, I feel so so betrayed on a personal level. Do yeah So I definitely thought about it But when I secured John for sure that we were gonna be able to record together I kind of made this master plan and I thought about last week actually knew I was going to do this Before we recorded a couple days ago But I held it back from me.

I didn't want you to get too too crazy about it And so I was like, oh, this is gonna be fun Adam to love me. Well, yeah Less than I already do now, which is already dipping onto the negative end of that number of life less than you love the dirt on your shoes Thanks, I got new shoes today So there's no dirt under them. You should feel pretty good about that What kind of shoes did you get Adam? Did you get the Costco brand?

Did I get Kirkland signature court classics? No? So I tried something new and I got some nikis just from online sale. So nice.

Do you know what kind of nikis they are? Well, one of them is a skateboarding shoe. So just a casual shoe and the other one is one of their flex RN I want to say it's one of the flex 2017 models, but I don't like it So I'm sending it back. So it's like a free run shoe kind of thing.

I don't think it's a free run I think it's a flex run. It's different. I don't know man I went to Nike and I was like show me shoes and they're like shit We got shoes like here. You want to see shoes like your shoes I don't like all fuck there's somebody shoes There really is and it's kind of scary with thank you because there's like there's like, you know They're premium shoes that you find if you actually go to like I don't know the foot lockers in the world There's something like that and then there's kind of like the shoe beneath that that often times just found out like I don't know like a DSW or something like that is that is kind of like Modeled after the current premium shoe But it's like the two or three year old technology version of that shoe and so it's it's very similar in a lot of ways But it doesn't have quite all the like cushion bells whistles, whatever you want to call it and it's you know 50% of the cost or whatever So it's very interesting to see that you you can very quickly look at two pair of Nike's and say these are exactly the same And to any lay person they look exactly the same But when you actually look at like model or or exact like a skew that shoe, it's totally different shoe and the materials I've made it's nuts.

It's kind of crazy. Yeah, I just went for the sale items. I'm not in it to win it I'm not running any marathons. I'm not trying to go as fast as I can.

I don't need comfort I'm I'm lucky enough to have decent arches on my feet, you know, and basically she was I've never been a problem for me Fins on the other hand or you know scuba diving body surfing anything like that Yeah, things have been a problem, but she was never a problem So I just went to Nike and said hey show me the sale items and it's like here you go And I'm like yep, here's two cheap things Let's do that also price protection and free returns. I'm like, okay, what have I got to lose? basically Going back to the post office say I don't want these send it back or carrying, you know opening a chat window So hey, good news. My pages finally updated.

So I know what's going on now Exciting I'm glad to hear your pages updated and I'm glad to hear you're in the shoe department You're more built for comfort not for speed. Yeah, I don't yeah I don't care shoes or shoes shoes are the one thing that are like I don't know They say like this is the one thing that's going to go out because it's consumable and it's like shoes are definitely consumables They are going to go out. I mean clothes you can make clothes last a long time shoes No, man shoes got a limited life. They're like tires, you know, they they are going to go out So so anyway moving on to some follow up.

It's only been two days So there's not much but it seems like this facebook cambridge and look a thing is not going away anytime soon and Just every day there's something new and looks like I have a long year ahead of them. Hallelu. Yeah It's it's kind of doesn't look like this is going to be one that's just swept under the rug real quick Sometimes you get the companies that issue a PR statement and it's in the news for a day or two and it goes away But I was just looking at their stock today and I don't know it was up around like 190 about a week ago And it's now at like 150. It's like ouch.

It's like 25% of your company's value that hurts, you know Like they're down to like 440 billion dollars is their market cap So I don't know man. This is one that I think being that it's another election year and everything They're gonna feel the heat for quite some time on this one So I agree with you right they've kind of felt like this pressure and their stock has definitely felt it But I was looking at something um it was on twitter just kind of came up is like you know the hashtag delete facebook trend is you know It's it's big but it's not near as big as the hashtag delete uber trend right and uber survived their whole you know Privacy weird weirdness than going on there. So I'm curious to see if you know facebook will eventually jump back after you know Changing some things, you know running some pr, you know, recovery or stopping the bleeding and then trying to you know recoup themselves So I guess it'll be interesting to see because the last time I looked the hashtag delete facebook was about half of what the uh hashtag delete uber was just in terms of Number of tweets and retweets and this and that and granted facebook, you know I guess the hashtag delete facebook would be on facebook not on twitter So maybe that's something to consider but it's it's interesting to see like How people get behind this and who's getting behind this like I can tell you I still see people every day checking their facebook So not a lot has changed in terms of the public perception. I feel but it's like like you said There's a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot of heads are going to quote unquote role I mean you can already see like shakeups and procedures changing and you know CEO, you know zuckerberg doing damage control So it's uh, it's pretty crazy.

Yeah, I think it's um, it's something that's it's the follow through on these sort of hashtag delete whatever insert uber delete insert facebook and i'm sure there'll be more to come Is probably extremely low. So I I don't really look at this and say oh my gosh, you know I see a lot of fall through happening that way and The stickiness that a lot of these platforms provide is something that is Tough to get people to move away from so, you know, I totally agree that it doesn't have enough Behind it enough weight to really kind of get a momentum ball moving in any direction I think to where we're gonna see lasting impact in terms of facebook's business But I think it might bring more regulation than anything Yeah, and it's funny that you know zuckerberg is even saying like i'm open to regulation just has to be the right kind of regulation I'm like, okay, so like i'm never he's always said i've never been opposed to regulating facebook It's just how do we regulate facebook? I'm like, well, yeah, that's a big question. Like how do you regulate something?

So uh somebody somebody promises off and for those who aren't aware of this whole facebook and camry gentelica and data privacy Um, I found a really nice like tldr with lots of charts and flow like flow charts Which kind of you know gives you a 50,000 for view of what's actually happened Um, and why this is you know been in the news and why people are talking about it why people are kind of up in arms So i'll throw that link in the the show notes because I found it just nice to have a reference So when people ask you like hey, what's going on with this you just send them this and like hey like look at all the pretty pictures You know read the article. It's it's good very cool I'm gonna have to check that out. Do you remember a couple of years ago? There was kind of a social network that came on really fast and died really fast Um, I think it was called elo if I recall correctly.

Um, and like everybody was kind of like quickly trying to secure um You know their username quote unquote get that uh speaking of brand loyalty, you know or brand You know everyone wants their their brand but um elo came on and it was all about privacy It was like you know the owners of it said you know, hey, they will never sell your data We'll never do this. We'll never you know, there's like this giant list and when it came on it came on so Bare bones if I recall correctly, it was like black and gray and white there was like no color to the site and you could post photos and stuff like that But it was pretty trivial compared to something like facebook and twitter and it it died just about as fast as it came on Within two weeks or three weeks. I mean nobody was on it again It seems like but I'm interested to see if really these sort of events that continue to happen Will spark new interest and you know, uh Social networks like this that are you know a little bit more focused um around privacy And if so, you know, how is the monetization changed because it's kind of need to change, you know Facebook makes its money They gotta make its money. It's money somehow and adds to the way they do it But you know if you do something else if people are gonna have to pay or it's gonna have to cover somewhere else because it certainly isn't free Yeah, so we talked about this last time just with brand loyalty even right where you know When a company kind of reaches critical mass and has a sticky platform.

How do you get away from it? How do you foster competition in Environment where there's one person who kind of has the lion's share of the market So people have to offer, you know, a different experience They can't just offer the same experience, you know, and with social there's a unique problem there where there has to be people there There has to be content there So for something to get off the ground you have to have a decent amount of people who actually launch a service like that It's hard to launch, you know without creating a bunch of hype first to get people to sign up So I think it'll be interesting to see like you said if anything comes from the fallout of this facebook kind of You know data privacy shenanigans, but I I'm kind of more on the side of I think this is going to eventually blow over In terms of facebook will revamp some of their data privacy They'll make sure that you know exactly what you're signing up for they'll make sure you know what they can actually send to other people They'll make sure that your data is handled the right way based on your privacy settings and that no one else can you know Get access to that data I think they'll we'll do what they need to on their end But already you kind of see sometimes where they'll say like facebook's defense will be like well You signed up for this like you click the agree box and which is true you did click the agree box So, you know, I think if they stay away from that which is you know painting them in kind of the negative light If they stay away from that this will this will kind of fade away You know it'll be just another day until the next candle comes up and then we can revisit and talk about this all over again But I think this is just you know A cyclical thing where we're gonna see it happen every time there's a new anytime someone finds out about something like this because you know It's going to happen. I mean facebook, you know, it's it's no secret that companies You know where you are the products We talked about that too where they love the data and they have the data and they're going to use that data For monetary gain and it's whether you are okay with that or not okay with that that you decide to support that So So this week's topic is a little self-serving Just because I am going on vacation and when I realized that oh crap we have to record another episode in two days It kind of came out to like well, what are we talking about like well? I don't really know and you know, I don't want to spend a bunch of time looking for something So let's do some travel tips and like I said, this will be self-serving for me because I don't travel very often So this will be a great way for me to kind of get some insight as to like pro travel tips from mr Mr.

Liu over there The only the downside is I don't think I'll be able to act on any of your suggestions Especially if they're like products that I have to buy because fuck man I leave in like, you know a couple days, so I won't be able to do that but hey, why not? So with that, I guess we can start with booking right because that was something that's already been done on my end but When we booked our travel we kind of looked at a bunch of different apps for Especially for airline if for airfare and in like rental cars things like that But we went through like a travel agent for most of the other stuff just because we didn't want to have to plan too much We just had to plan getting there and then once we got there it was gonna be great But as far as like apps go We mainly used hopper for our airfare which hopper is great because it'll let you say like I'm going on a trip this week And it'll just kind of monitor flights and tell you when a good time to buy might be We'll say like hey, you know like flights round trip from this airport to this airport or about this much and You know, this is probably good time to buy or they're going to go up or go down So I guess that's the one that I've used but I'm curious lude like are there any other apps that you use for for booking Uh, and especially like airfare rental cars things like that So when it comes to travel and it I tend to not use too much in the way of actual apps I actually use twitter a lot. I follow um specifically one major twitter account that I am kind of a big fan of called the flight deal Um, and they have a website too, which I I don't know I I just don't want to be a slave to it to like go to the website on a daily basis and see what's new and um and out there But I just follow the twitter account and they have I don't know like 15 or 10 or 15 major u.s airports that they monitor deals out of essentially, so They do both domestic and international travel and always round trip and sometimes they focus on non-stop flights too Which is pretty cool. Um, so a lot of what I I use is is their website.

They do have a nice like handy dandy Like price line integration where essentially when you when they find their deal they can essentially click you click a link And you drop right into price line to book that actual um flight, but they also you integrate with a Sort of an archaic system that I think travel agents use called like the ita software matrix or something So it's some crazy like backend system that you can use on their website to search for Flights do because a lot of times the flights that they find are like, hey, you know This flight is from san francisco to new york city and is 205 dollars round trip and it operates on jet blue every monday through Wednesday, um, you know for the next six weeks, um, you know and usually it's it's not like immediately It's something that would be like a month out starting in a month, you know for six weeks These are the these are the times you can fly. Um, so you know that is something that can kind of be useful that if you Take the time to just learn the matrix that the ita software matrix real quick It's not too hard to win there's instructions on their site You can actually see it a lot more easily than you can if you select the price line honestly, but um, so yeah I've used their their site a couple times and um, you know, I'm like four or five times now maybe and I've I did like a hundred dollars round trip to portland from san diego last year. That was that was a pretty good buy and i've seen like From southern california to um, florida round trip for like 130 Um on like big name airlines. They only have another thing to point out.

They only do like united american delta. They're not like Usually it's not like some like you've never heard of a mare line It's like the big guys. So, um, if you get into europe and stuff like that, you might want to look at some of theirs I'm not 100 certain if they go to the ryan air and iberia and some of the small tiny little airlines Okay, cool So, uh, you put in here that you don't like travel agents you said you so we use the travel agent and it came as a recommendation to use them Um, just from someone that we knew so i'm curious why you say you is it because of the commission and because the package deals or what is it? Yeah, so I don't know.

There's a couple reasons that I have a disdain or you know for travel agents one the commission part of it I mean, I understand they need to take their cut right that's that's that's how they, you know, put food on their table So I get that and i'm okay with that to a degree. That's fine. Um, the The big I think piece of it that I don't like is the often I feel like upsell now It's been a while since I've used the travel agent so this could have changed or provided I had maybe a better travel agent less upsell I'm not sure but it almost feels a little car salesman esque or something like that They they oftentimes are all about the you know, um The little expeditions and do this and do that you need to go zip lining and you need to have a snorkeling, you know You need to go here you need to go there and there's a degree event that is I think nice to know about but oftentimes when I travel I I definitely want to have like a one or two days that I have something major planned and you know That's the goal of that day But then a lot of times I like to just kind of let it flow a little bit I like to have a major list of stuff that I want to do and and that just doesn't usually can do so but travel agents Usually they're kind of out the whole uh looking thing So I think that's the big thing the other thing I think about it is it's just it seems old world if you if that makes sense It seems like something my parents did and um, we live in a different day and generation And I do a lot more online research about a destination before I go there I often times like you know Have a working calendar to a degree of like this they were doing this and this they were doing that And then I'll just have a backup list of a bunch of restaurants I want to go do and a bunch of which attractions that might be cool to check out and I'll just beg for those When the time comes so I'm surprised you don't like travel agents because for a person who loves to throw money up problems until they go away I feel like this is a really easy thing to throw money at they have it go away Especially when you're like, hey, I just want to go somewhere now that here's money like get me there And I feel like that was I don't want to say motivation for us but it was definitely kind of like a little last minute in terms of our planning and You know with with my work schedule things like that. I told Alex.

I was like, hey, you know what like just figure it out I'll give you you know the recommendation for the travel agent that we get and just go ahead and book it and You know my wife is great Like she went she booked everything and she got all you know the airline and airfare figured out And then she actually went and looked at each because we're going on a cruise So she looked at each port and what the excursions would be like what we could do through the company and outside of the company So she kind of looked at and both ends of the spectrum I was kind of like, okay, well, you know, we know we want to do hiking one day Or we know we're gonna want to go to like a market another day and we know we want to you know Just relax on on the first day So we were able to kind of plan all of that and the travel agent definitely like it was like Hey, you know, we have all these packages and you can book through us Well, but we're like hey, you know, it's just get us the tickets You know get us onto the boat and we'll get to the boat and then we're good right because I think that was the one place where I don't know how And I guess it's just you know pure naiveties like I don't know how we could have shopped around for cruise tickets I know we can definitely shop around for flight tickets, but maybe there's like a cruise line kind of like a press line type thing But so I'm curious why I guess I'm not curious But I think it's funny a little ironic that you'll throw money at everything to make a go away But you won't throw money at a travel agent to make your vacation playing go away So I have a question for you Would you have used a travel agent had you just been flying somewhere else like say you say you went to a trip to New York city Would you have still used the travel agent to book the travel or is it more because you're going on the cruise that used the travel agent? Absolutely It's just the cruise that that put it over the edge for us Because like if I go to San Diego for the week or if I go to another you know domestic city for a week Or even if I fly international for the week, right? If I know where I'm going and I have an idea beforehand, I would love to plan it all out myself I'm very much kind of the same way where I was like yeah I want to plan this out, but when it gets into territory that I'm unfamiliar with I'd rather consult an expert and that's what we did in this case Okay, so I think that's 100% fair then because I would probably be on a very similar page to you I wouldn't want to worry about all that planning should I go on a cruise? I don't often go on cruises.

So that's something that it should be you know taken as well. Um, so The main reason I don't is because most of the time I when I do travel I'm traveling to a city and that's it You know, I'm there and I'm I want to plan and do my own thing and I don't feel the need to have a travel agent But that's where my parents definitely differ My dad's always been that person that was like hey, you know, even if we're just going to a destination I'm in a book through a travel agent and you know, that's why I say it's a little old world for me Yeah, little old school. You want to be rebellious. Don't want to be like your parents.

I get it Yeah, it's it's something that like I'm traveling twice this summer for two weddings and we're already talking about One of the weddings, um, turning it into a trip to Canada Just because we'll be like a couple hours away in Seattle So it's but that's all going to be planned by by me not by a travel agent Like I said, when you have the time to do it, it's great And when you only have like two months to do it or not even two months, right? I think I forgot exactly how little time we had we're just kind of like hey We have you know spring break off or the kids that spring break off and I can get the time off So let's take the time off and I just by not hanging out at home. She's like, I want to go somewhere This is my Alex my wife. She's like, I want to go somewhere like okay, like where It's really important to stress too.

I think like you said like when you have the time to plan it because Our lives, you know, although we're similar in age our lives differ very differently in in terms of what we got going on at home You know and so you've got three kids and a wife and and so I can understand being like, hey I don't have time for this. Let's throw some money at this and make this problem go away And I'm just hoping I didn't throw too much money at the problem Like because if I realized like if I would have booked myself and saved this much, I would have been beating myself up over it So but I guess like the consensus we've come to is booking your own travel is great If you have the time and like there's tons of apps out there and websites like to help you with that I didn't know about the slight deal one. So that's encouraging. I'm bookmarking this for later It's going right to insta paper right now And like I said hopper was the other one that we use but that will probably quickly go to the wayside Because one thing I don't like about hopper is we fly southwest like we we have always had, you know Like some form of brain boils to the southwest right just because like in california You can get a $49 round trip, you know, like flight, you know during the special deal days, right?

To go from you know, northern california to southern california So we would always wait for those and they would always be on southwest and it was you know just kind of a no-nonsense flight So it's good to see that there are other options out there that are probably a little more techy for for my taste And get more into the mid-degree. So travels all books like we're all good there Now the next thing and this is something I haven't thought about yet and I'm already like getting like anxious Just thinking about it is packing So when it comes to packing um in terms of packing technology What electronics do you take with you? Like what will you carry on? What will you pack?

Because I know we've discussed like I'm a pretty light, you know traveler. I I won't carry a laptop with me I will sometimes carry an iPad with me this trip The only thing I'm planning on taking is my phone and uh my Kindle and those are the only electronics that I really plan on Kind of having on me at any time, but I'm curious a little because I know you have a lot more tech than I do Especially more stuff geared towards travel in terms of like photography things like that I'm curious what goes in your carry-on and what goes in your check bag. What do you take with you? Okay, so first of all if I'm nothing electronics goes in the checked bag Absolutely, never that that's just a horror story waiting to happen When I when I said that I was like how I mean like what would he put in a check bag?

It's like that's just asking for trouble But I just figured I'd ask it just to see if there was anything that was so through the cracks Yeah, there's the sonic air toothbrush and I think that's about it. There you go. That's technology. That's electronic, you know Yeah, my Bluetooth toothbrush that tells me that does have an app that tells me how good I should I uh brush my teeth I'm like, oh god, you're shitting me.

You don't have a Bluetooth toothbrush Yeah, I mean like all the sonic hairs have come out in the last like three years all have bluetooth like standard on them now I'm like wait, are you kidding me? Like I mean it was a joke like I totally downloaded the app one time and was like Okay, cool. I've seen this but yeah, if you go to the app store and take a look at the sonic air app You're gonna be like you're kidding me and it has like 4.9 stars like you know 50,000 reviews or some ridiculous number. It's it's it's a joke.

Um, but yeah, uh, yeah, so my sonic air toothbrush That's the only electronics that goes in there. Um the So there's a backpack that goes with me. I'm a backpack fan. That's just my thing And the backpack is some of my family jokes about it and calls it the football because it pretty much goes with me everywhere Like some some like the president goes with his briefcase Um, it has at all times guaranteed in it my laptop my ipad and you know various chargers for everything I usually have somewhere between two and four pair of headphones in it both the 3.5 millimeter and lightning And wireless so I have like you know options.

Um, I have Usually some small flash drive or something like that and some um some way to get to a external display Those are the sort of basics that are with me pens pencils and you know Um, there's a small calculator in there just in case I need to do any like math That's that's just the old me engineering degree in me that hangs on to that in there But other than that, I don't think there's a whole lot that's in the bag that goes to me Um, sometimes like I found the calls at the squid. I carry one of the anchor chargers in there with like four, you know Lightning cables on the end of it just so I can charge everything back up if I get somewhere I can just plug one in and off I go but that's about it That is actually the physical carry-on Okay, so I'm very much a backpacks and as well and like I said, but I put all this stuff into this backpack You know, we'll get into headphones and all that stuff in a little bit Um, because I'll put that as part of our traveling section But in terms of like cables because I think you bring up a good point really like you said you have a squid of an anchor charger Which we also have so I also plan to take I have like a think it's a six port USB charger that we have and that at any given time has an apple watch charger a lightning charger a Micro USB and there's one more that I'm forgetting Well, there's one more. We'll just say we'll just say it's another connector But when my wife and I go, we only take one of those So, you know, we'll just basically take an extra lightning cable in this and that but I'm curious Uh, because it's something new that I got is I got one of the scuba's Uh, I don't know if you ever heard this but it looks like a giant like CD case that used to have like back in the day When you would have all the mixed CDs in your car, right the big kind of I don't want to say leather some of them are leather if you're really fancy But the big just like neoprene like zippered folio that you could open up and it would have just all the cd contents in there So I got something similar that has like the elastic bands It's called a scuba and it's just a way to like hold everything electronically like cables little gadgets the anchor charger or things Like that do you have anything like that to organize all this stuff or you just kind of like toss it all in there? I don't really have a way to organize it all.

I mean all the cables are tied So they're not like just hanging everywhere like a rat's nest They you know, I do the whole like fold in half fold in half again and then wrap through and tie all my cables And so, you know, they're they're all like just two or three inches long hanging off and plugged in But yeah, it is, you know, quite a big thick amount of cables at the bottom of the backpack I'm always most worried when I'm going through security like oh dude the poor security guy's gonna be like this dude has a bomb because there's like five cables At the bottom of his backpack and like they never seem to really question it But I always every time I go through I'm like, you know, I know I'm the electronics guy So I know If anyone's gonna get pulled aside, it's probably gonna be me and surprisingly I don't get it too often So um, but yeah, I have seen these scuba things you were talking about I didn't know that was exactly the name of them, but that's uh, that's a pretty cool idea and something that um, you know I guess I would say I'm not opposed to looking for one even just for maybe every day use because I try to have a couple um cables with me just in case um at all times um and I guess I should say the one other thing I travel with and I mentioned this I think in the last episode is a 10,000 milliamp hour or 20,000 milliamp hour battery Um and under some conditions, um, if I'm bringing the drone with me, I'll bring a drone So you know that that requires all a whole different back and a whole lot more stuff to bring Yeah, so you bring up a good point like we do have an external battery Ours isn't 20,000 milliamp hours. I think ours is a very very very very modest like 3,000 or something is very tiny and we we've had it for years So I know that like anything they just keep getting more and more power hungry and they just keep making these batteries making bigger So it's been fine for us and I mean since we're not heavy phone users Uh, especially like seeing as mostly as phones will be in airplane mode most of the day and when we're off of the boat I don't plan on taking you know An expensive phone with me when I'm gonna go like hiking for the day or whatever, you know I don't plan to have as much stuff on me So I don't think I'm gonna be using as much battery, but Alex on the other hand she choose the batteries like no other I swear like I could give her two devices and she would run both of them out of battery before the days over And I know that because it's fact She has her iPhone 10 that she'll use for most of the day and then when that runs out of battery She still has her old success in a battery case that she'll use for the rest of the evening And those things will you know be running on low battery by the end of the day So it's kind of crazy So maybe I should like look into a bigger battery because it seems like she's not getting enough juice throughout the day Yeah, hook a girl up and I just recently upgraded to the anchor charger that has like I think it's four traditional USBs and then one USB C that charges at the 29 watt and with my iPhone 10 supporting Fast charging and the iPad Pro is supporting fast charging I you know, I'm starting to get see the benefits of that world and it's really nice to I mean It's amazing on the iPad Pro especially like I don't use my iPad I mean the iPad is so good with battery life It doesn't really need fast charging that often but with the iPhone even it's just super nice man to just come back plug it in And I mean it's it's literally going up more than a percent a minute usually and so it's so fast To you know drop back in you know for a few minutes change shirt or whatever And then like you know 10 15 minutes later you come to that and change shirt You know kind of freshened up and you're ready to go to your next thing But you've got 25 or 30 percent more battery than you walk in with, you know Oh, the world we live in where things just charge, you know almost instantaneously Yeah fast charging is great. It's one of the things where I've I've used fast chargers And I've used the USB C to lighting cable to charge my phone a couple times And yeah, it's pretty amazing how quick, you know, they charge but I don't know I need to upgrade all my anchor stuff And that's you know more money to throw something that when I'm only charging my device is overnight like big whoop, you know It doesn't really mean too much. So here's another question is Since we have wireless charging now or you know, let's say inductive charging I I do have two inductive chargers right that we use for the iPhone 10s And I don't think I'm going to take those with me I think I'm just gonna rely on wired and do you see a good reason for me to take wireless chargers with me where I'm going?

No, I mean wireless chargers to me are a Only really a major benefit when when I'm going to be sitting somewhere a lot So the wireless charger I have right now is is really moved from my nightstand to My desk it started on my nightstand when I first got it and I was like, oh, this is kind of what I can kind of toss this here And the more and more I realized that when I'm at my nightstand Who's that cares whether it's laying on something or plugged in at one of my desk It seems to make a lot more sense that it's always laying flat on the desk And if some notification comes in I can still see it if it's on the wireless charger Because I'm sitting in a vertical upright position as opposed to my nightstand I'm usually laying, you know, next to the phone or whatever And so yeah, I don't really see a need to bring it with you I don't travel with mine personally and I don't really see a major reason too Good to know I figured I was on the same page I was like, you know, they're bulky this is gonna take a more space and since I have you know All the cables already plugged in anyway to charge things like iPads and you know the Kindle all that kind of stuff like there are Like what's the harm in adding one more cable versus adding a whole contact, you know, list Or not contact us, but a whole inductive setup or wireless setup So good to know good to know So Lou I know you take a lot of stuff with you I guess the next question I have is like is there anything you leave at home because I leave a ton of stuff at home Like I I'm very minimal when it comes to packing so a lot of stuff stays home So is there anything tech-wise that you don't take with you? I mean excluding like a desktop computer like we won't we won't go there But is there any tech that you leave at home? Yeah, so I definitely don't bring hard drives for backup purposes or anything like that So that's something I definitely leave at home So sometimes like time machine backup stuff like that that would be used on a daily basis is not coming with me The other thing I think it has changed in the last couple of years And I'm gonna say it's probably been for now. I guess I would say Is the last time I actually brought anything other than a cell phone for use as a camera So I actually do not bring a point and shoot.

I don't bring into JLSLR I don't do anything like that. I know I'm kind of giving away something we're gonna talk about a little later But I don't bring any of those any longer The other things is there anything else tech-wise I don't bring I don't really think so I think you know most of the rest of the stuff I don't bring an Apple TV. I know some people may go as far as that I don't bring networking equipment or anything like that I've heard of people you know traveling to make their own networks and stuff. I leave all that at home Yeah, the Apple TV is great for you know watching I guess Netflix and stuff like that just if you want to not worry about You want to watch on a big screen and let's say the place of grand has a TV But it doesn't have you know an Netflix subscription or you don't want to you can't ever play to anything right?

So I'm people taking Apple TV just for that Which I can see being great, you know if you know where you're going to be and what connections are in you know the hotel slash place You're saying that but yeah Apple TV can stay at home And I think it's funny like you live a life It sounds like where basically your backpack or your football like you said is it's packed to the brain with everything you could ever want in need and It never there's never a lot of change it seems when you go on vacation with this It's like it's already packed full of stuff like all we have to do is make sure things are charged and ready to go Yeah pretty much I mean that's the idea right like I can I can walk out of the house right now with The backpack and I mean it really wouldn't matter how long we were going away for I would have the charges for everything I would have you know a pretty decent way to do anything I needed to do capture wise and everything like that So, um, you know I think that's kind of my always been my game plan is to be ready And then I have the luxury you know currently of coming home and having a nice big display to plug everything into and and you know Convert my laptop into a more desktop like setup man We'll have to do another show on that because I live that life for a while The whole you know living on a laptop and then plug it into an extra display And now I'm back living on just an iMac and a laptop separately and I love it so much more It's just so great. I mean there are so many benefits I guess they're having it and I would love to go back because of simplicity, but the amount of money you spend is It's just atrocious when he comes to you know buying the display especially on a nice display And then you can use it with that computer and I guess it's great for multiple people But having a computer that someone can use anytime is fantastic too. That's topic for another day Yeah, we definitely need to have this conversation because it's um something I'm Slowly warming up too, but you know, I've always been a computer user of one So I mean there's I'm not sharing the computer with anybody else. So um the portability of laptops have been very nice Obviously, I'm college and all that good jazz.

So we'll definitely have to do an episode Yeah, you'll be living that you know desktop life with an iPad full-time You'll you'll consolidate basically whatever your couple of your devices into one and then migrate your lifestyle I know that'll happen, but we'll talk about that later. So uh fact booked. We got those taken care of So the next thing is like uh the itinerary and this is something I think that At least has changed a lot recently in terms of how you travel and itinerary used to be like a huge thing Right like you get your itinerary before you leave It'll be you know paper tickets paper this paper everything's like god forbid you lose anything in your itinerary and you have all your reservation numbers and phone numbers and all that stuff and now with the beauty of technology all that stuff is digitized and I can tell you I was very excited when you know airlines started accepting passbook uh passes for your ticket your boarding pass So that was that has been great and now you know we talked about last time You know google being able to scrape you know your email for searching for things is we set up a google trips for For this and google trips basically We'll just look at all the reservation emails you have in your Gmail and basically pull and you know kind of categorize all the information Into one place which you can share with other people but the great thing there is right You know we have Gmail and that's where most of our email goes through for you know spam filtering And you know we keep our personal email separate out of that This is more like anything that we have in terms of like shopping receipts this and that right Google knows all about my shopping Like and they can like go ahead fine But it's been great because we have all the itinerary right there and it's like I can go to my mom's like hey mom like just share Here's all our stuff like here's where we are in any given day Here's a reservation number if you ever need to call in and like get a hold of us You know here's the boat that we're on here's all that kind of stuff So those are the things that that I'm using so I'm just using passbook for my boarding passes And I'm using Google trips kind of for consolidating the rest of our itinerary our tickets and reservation numbers And that's what I'm kind of using to share with with the rest of the family while we're gone So I'm curious if there is anything else that you use I see you ask here if I use it on the watch and absolutely I do It it's a little slower than using it on the phone But if you have it ready to go especially with like location-aware like passes Basically you're you're in the airport so it's already there So all you do is kind of like lift your wrist and then tap on or swipe I forget which exactly gesture was and then yes right there and they scan it and it's been awesome And the first couple times I did it like people looked at me funny But this was you know years ago and now just commonplace that everyone has them on their phones or their watches or screen of choice I do use Passbook for most of my tickets and so I also I don't know why but you're gonna claim like digital hoarder stuff But I don't delete them either I just let them kind of build in there It's kind of nice to look back on them sometimes and be like oh I remember that trip or whatever It's just reminiscing But I I have you know a bunch in here. I also have a couple hotel reservations the Hyatt allows you to do Passbook reservations.

It's not really that there's like some barcode that gets scanned or anything like that It's just a confirmation number and it tells you the exact hotel and the guest name and the days of your travel and so forth So that's kind of nice sometimes I go tell you know like way in advance or whatever and I just throw in a passbook So I have it you know ready when I get there But the long and short of that is yeah, I do use passbook the only other thing I do use for sort of itinerary or like planning purposes I guess I would say is um I honestly just use notes. It sounds very rudimentary But like in terms of like just where we're going and when we're gonna be there I usually create a shared note and or just like when we couldn't share notes I just had a note that existed with kind of confirmation numbers and everything I needed And I do so the people can keep an eye on where I am I do usually share my location with some family I'm just like I'm just literally see where I am most of the time when I travel I have service It's a little different for you going on a cruise where you're not gonna probably have service I will 99 percent of the time while I'm traveling have some form of cell phone reception that would then deem me You know trackable that way. So that's kind of my my go to this is kind of my area where I don't really have a whole lot to say because I don't know a whole lot different than you I guess I would say. Okay.

Yeah, and that makes sense Right. I I used to do the same thing with the kind of like this old school just sharing a note with somebody Right and that would usually have like our house instructions and emergency contacts and all that and I still have all of that stuff listed in a shared note right the emergency contacts and you know Insurance information medical information things like that house instructions dog feeding schedule those types of things But um, this is the first year that we kind of used one of these these trip consolidation apps Right and google trips is kind of the one I settled on just because it seemed like the one with the least amount of Set up time just because like hey, you know, we're google We'll just scrape your email for everything and put it together one place. I'm like, yeah, okay That works for me because that's where conveniently all of my stuff is But I know there are other apps out there like trip it and trip cases another one and I know they kind of tell like more enterprise features Like they'll they'll integrate with corporate, you know travel systems and work there But it doesn't sound like you've used any of those but I don't know like google trips I'll see how it works this time And maybe that'll be some follow up for how often I use it like my hope is I only have to use it like when I get there And when I check something and you can download it for offline too So that's that's a really nice thing of google trips is you can say like download all this So it will download the emails for the reservations and the emails for your Confirmations and things like that So that way when you go to pull it up if you pull up google trips and you're offline It'll have it all there You don't have to worry about not having internet because yes, you're right I will be out in the middle of the ocean and I will not likely have cell phone signal Yeah, I guess the only other thing I point out is I don't know that I would 100% loop this into itinerary but I'm a big food person and so usually most of my work in terms of you know researching food or cuisine where we're going is done in Yelp and It's a TripAdvisor is the big one in Europe There's also a couple smaller like versions of Yelp if you will in Europe like country by country And I know some of those are all with them up occasionally before I go and just see what's big And so sometimes I will just you know most of the time I'll do is I'll just copy paste You know I'll find the name of the the restaurant that I liked or create a small list and notes of like hey These are like my top 10 want to try while we're there and most of the time I won't even get through 10 Like I mean there's just there's enough time or they're all the way across town and you know or whatever But if I can even cross like four of them off, you know, that's my goal goal And so sometimes I'll just use some some of those apps to kind of keep an eye on on planning out food options So what I used to do whenever we were going somewhere is like places I would want to eat I would have like an omnifocus project basically for planning the trip and in there would be a separate kind of like section for Places to eat and basically whenever I would find something good on Yelp I would just send that to omnifocus and it would get thrown into kind of this little group of tasks And that's what I would kind of reference as we go and then we pick one from from that list So it's funny because I used to do the same thing, you know, just throw it in a place and I guess this time around right There's there's not much because we're gonna be on a floating buffet So it's like okay. Don't really have to worry too much about that But it's definitely something that I've also done is like gone to Yelp I've looked at trip advisor for I mean even booking, you know activities or something like that When we went to San Diego last time like we grew up in San Diego So how do you be a tourist in your own town?

Well, the answer is you just go on trip advisor and look at you know what they say to do in your town Like I've done that. I've done that. Oh, I actually haven't done this like I've never been kayaking in La Jolla You know, I've been to La Jolla. We've you know driven all around La Jolla.

We've been at the beach in La Jolla But we've never gone kayaking there. Maybe we should do that sometime. So I think that falls under itinerary I'm not gonna let you slide. Yeah, you are a hoarder for keeping all of your past books In there like you just screenshot it like file it away somewhere, but get it off your phone Like you don't need it just taking up unneeded space.

I know it's not a lot of space screenshots really like you've screenshots I don't ever have screenshots. That's nasty No, I'm saying if you want to keep them and take a screenshot and delete it because then when you open your past book Why do you want to go through a bunch of shit to find what you actually want to do? Hope why it's removed friction from your life And when you actually have to scroll through and try to find the passes that you want to because your wallet is full of just like Shit that you didn't like clean out like I feel the same way for people who it organizes it by date It organizes all the top passes the ones you that's fine. It organizes it by date But why do you why was the other stuff even in there if you live in inbox zero life?

Why is your wallet in box like 500? Oh, it's not a 500. Don't even close. It's like, I don't know 15.

That was an exaggeration You know what I meant. It's not that bad. Um, yeah said every order ever. It's not that bad.

It's not that bad It's something that like I will uh, I will get to a point where I probably will leave them I mean, I'm not holding on to them forever. Um, but there is a degree of like, oh, it's kind of cool to be like Where was I on March 11th of last year? Oh, I was actually taking a flight to you know, this place You know, it's just cool to see that. So that's that's my thing It's like a memory if you want the memory take a picture it'll last longer because The picture will get saved in another place and it's a flat format So it's not gonna get updated with the time because imagine if you would screenshot it and had like free iOS 7 design You know like an actual like ripping of a pass and oh man You got to experience all the school like animations like I think a screenshot would be more of a snapshot in time If you really wanted that and then you could delete your passes But then you still have the memory and that would just be part of you know Your collection of the trip, you know, it for when you go back to let's say editor put together now Well, you'd have the passes there too.

So maybe maybe that's what you should do next time So, uh, in terms of let's say where we have right now. So we did the booking we did the packing we have itinerary So now the next thing is getting there and by getting there I mean the actual travel or getting to where you're going to go in that being either flying in an airplane or riding on a train or driving across god knows where How do we go about that? So my my main concerns here are entertainment and comfort So entertainment wise in terms of like books movies and music How do I go about that? So my workflow kind of looks like all right?

I'll take you know the last 10 albums that I've listened to you know that are pretty fresh pretty new and I'll download all of those to local storage from Set streaming service. So I use apple music. So I'll download all those albums and I'll download, you know the books that I'm reading and I'll download a couple movies Just you know anything that's gonna kind of like peak my fancy or what have you so I'll download all those and then I I plan to carry with me a pair of exercise headphones So I have a pair of those sound sports that are Bluetooth So I have a pair of those and then I have a pair of beat studio wireless just over your headphones So that's what I plan on taking with me So I plan on using the bows basically from the moment that I get on the plane with all the crazy people All the loud people and all that horrible horrible airplane noise and just turning on that noise cancellation and letting my flight You know pass as quickly as possible And then I plan on using the bows down sport when I'm at the gym on the boat or if I'm out and about because they are you know Kind of more weatherproof than the bows are and then just kind of listening to offline content I should probably throw in there that I'll probably have a bunch of podcasts at least all of the podcasts in my queue I'll probably download all those I'll probably go browse through that TLDR station I have to you which has like the four-hour long podcast episodes of hardcore history and I'll probably listen to one of those But I guess the question goes to you then Lou is I feel like I'm pretty standard Right, that's what most people do is they download content, you know And they listen on headphones and they just do it all offline But is there anything you do that special or do you kind of run through the same workflow or what's what does it look like? So my workflow is fairly similar to yours one.

Yes, I need a good pair of noise canceling headphones to get through any flight I used to be a huge huge fan of bows and and I still have my bows But I you know as studio wireless and other beats products are you know coming on I'm just using those a little bit more as seems like As far as entertainment like what I'm physically taking it's mostly podcasts I look at you know that unconnected time because I don't usually pay for internet or anything on a plane As like sacred time to just blow through podcasts that you know full 2x speed You know and so I will take a time where I have like a five hour flight Oh man, I am going to be able to get through so much right now and so I'll queue up a pretty good list of stuff I want to get through but I don't usually do any books with me on planes and I'm not a general movie watcher on a plane There's always music on my phone if I want it But sometimes I'll listen to a little bit just to break up you know content listening to podcasts But for the most part it is headphones and podcasts Gotcha. Yeah, so I used to be a big earbuds guy and I think one of the things I've never mentioned is I probably have Way more headphones than you do laying around. I'm kind of that's my downfall as headphones I'm looking right now and I see one two three four five six birds of headphones just within eyesight so I think headphones are kind of like my guilty pleasure. That's the thing that I love trying out.

I know right You are a headphone whore. Yeah, I have a bunch of them Hey, don't slut shame me for having a bunch of headphones Fuck you So but I think the big thing for me is always over ear whenever I'm traveling because I want to block out as much noise as possible And the noise canceling is especially on any headphones seems very much tuned for Just the constant hum you get on airplane So when you put those on and you power them up for the first time on an airplane and everything gets really quiet And you know you hear that like that static but you're like is that static and it's just a sound of actual quiet It's it's kind of surreal. So I definitely say that headphones are my go-to and I will listen to music while I read books And I should say that's acoustic music. So I'll put on like I have a couple of symphonies or like a playlist full of um symphonies that I that I like to download before I get on a plane and that'll kind of be like if I'm gonna read something I don't want to have that hiss in my ear the whole time So I'll turn on that just at a really low volume enough to kind of just be like background noise And that's what I use to kind of like set the tone for reading and sometimes depending on the book that I'm reading I'll change it up.

So like when I was reading Game of Thrones, I wouldn't have like all this classical music playing I found some like kind of like older style, you know, kind of medieval almost sounding music I forget exactly what it was. I'll have to go dig through my place and find it But I definitely kind of use that to set the tone when I was when I was flying So I mean there's tons of stuff that you can do to entertain yourself But sometimes when you're on a really long flight, I feel like you do have to just try to sleep or relax So I mentioned earlier the other thing for me is comfort So I think of like neck pillows and shoes. I'm curious what you use because I'm pretty lean in this department Um, so what do you use in terms of comfort? Yeah, so not much of a surprise here.

I'm also pretty lean here. I don't bring any neck pillows I don't bring Any real like I don't often take off my shoes. I should kind of put some caveat here If I'm flying international, yes This this actually greatly changes how I prep for what I'm going to bring with me If I'm flying international, I usually bring a pair of pajamas on the plane And we'll at some point actually change out of what I've worn onto the plane to kind of half sleep for four to six hours And then change back into what I was wearing in the morning And that's because I'm going to lay Roughly on some version of a full flatbed and it's not quite full flat But I'm gonna roll over and be under covers quote-unquote and you know, it's just it's not really good to do that in like jeans and t-shirts and all that Good jazz, um, when I fly business I tend to also Do a little bit of like dressier So I don't like say I'm in like, you know, a suit flying business but I often will wear like a sport coat and Maybe some sort of, you know, like business shirt and some jeans and then some like comfort, you know drivers or something like that Shoes and so I usually will bring a second dress shirt that I can change into just before I land So I essentially have like a fresh pressed shirt that is in my carry-on bag to just change into right before we land So that you know after 13 hours of flying I don't look like an entire mess even though I feel like an entire mess, maybe but when I get to the hotel I usually will then shower and you know be kind of freshen up But I can you know easily go to dinner which oftentimes if I flown overnight to Europe It is three in the afternoon or something like that when you get there so So it's something that it makes it nice and easy that way but as far as like just domestic travel No, I don't really bring a whole lot with me. I don't even take my shoes off I think the most thing I'm concerned about when it comes to comfort is legroom I'm a pretty big guy So I will do all that I can to make sure I'm on an aisle or in an exit row Gotcha.

You got to get in that emergency exit and just volunteer to actually help when something happens on the plane It gives you all that legroom and all that responsibility Yep, I got to give them the verbal yes and and tell them Yeah, I will happily turn the giant red knob or break the plastic and join the giant right now I've been pushed the door out and tell people to get their ass out of the plane because FAA regulations mandate that everybody has to be out of all six emergency exits in under 90 seconds So get your asses moving people. I will pull the big red letter gladly and tell people to GTFO I will gladly do that exchange for a little bit more legroom So it's really funny because you mentioned you don't really carry like neck pillows or anything like that So in terms of me, I actually bought a turtle pillow and I put a link in our outline I'll throw something in the show notes too And this turtle pillow is it's kind of like the reimagining of what a neck pillow would be So basically what it is is like this this plastic frame that's covered in fleece and it wraps around your neck And velcro's to the other side and basically what it does is kind of just supports your head leaning kind of at a natural angle Against this plastic frame that's resting on your shoulder and then your your forehead or like the side of your head So I've used this a couple times on my commute like especially when we had the mudslides and my commute was three hours This is when I decided to get this because it's like, you know what three hours like I just have to fall asleep I need to find a way to sleep better on a bus or any other, you know Kind of see where you're kind of cramps and you can't recline too much because you know seats don't recline that well in buses or airplanes For good reason, but this is something that I've used and I've actually found it really helpful to fall asleep and actually kind of stay comfortable The only problem is start for me to fall asleep when it's daytime so When we're flying in the middle of the day it's really tough for me to actually like fall asleep and Alex she has these eye masks that she uses to fall sleep So one of them is it's called I think Alaska bear and that one's like really really big really soft really silky So I might try to combine like this turtle pillow with this Alaska bear Mix this turtle with this bear and see if I can get some good night's sleep And then the other thing I do is like shoes wise right since you're taking off shoes And I don't want to be like the the asshole that's on the plane like taking off my shoes and just letting my feet stink You know like fill the entire plane So uh zubits have really come in handy for that because the nice thing about the zubits is you can sense their magnetic shoe closures You can just un-magnet them keep your shoes on but now they're like loafers So I definitely kind of take advantage of of that So I think in this section like I'm a little more geared for comfort than you are I think I'm kind of more pressed for that, especially since I'm always in coach. I'm never in that business class, you know That posh setting so I gotta you know do what I can to stay comfortable No, that totally makes sense and uh, I mean, I think you know It's the only time I really get super comfortable is anytime I'm going somewhere for more than like five hours on a plane I'm like, no, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure I'm well prepared for this and bring bring the PJs and be ready for a long haul But uh, yeah, those five or six hour ones, man I am less inclined to be super prepared for but this turtle pillow thing looks pretty cool I'm uh, I am slightly interested because I'm not one to I didn't use to sleep on planes at all But I'm getting better at it. I guess I would say yeah I'll tell you this this turtle pillow has my recommendation and you can see by the seven thousand plus Amazon reviews Like it's actually like worked pretty well for people The only thing that I was a little turned off I was the price but in all honesty if you use it twice and you can actually fall asleep I mean, that's worth ten dollars, you know in my book, you know ten dollars each flight, so it's pretty cool Uh, so I think that kind of covers the at least a travel part unless there's anything else you want to add No, I think we did a pretty decent job there.

Cool. So the next thing is getting around when you're at your destination and I put this in here just because I didn't want to tailor it just to my My vacation because I would seem a little too self-serving But since we're not planning to drive around right most of the time We're gonna be on a cruise and we're going to land a port and then we're gonna have an excursion Or we're going to just get around walk somewhere But what do you do when you go on vacation? Who are you more of a car rental person? Are you more of a taxi?

Just look around person, uh, or does it just depend on where you're going what you're doing? Yeah, I'd say it really depends quite a lot on where I'm going what I'm doing and how much travel I need to do when I'm there Um, so there was a good example was last year I did go to another wedding in portland and we had to drive a pretty significant distance out of portland to the wedding Um, and so, you know totally kind of calls for a car rental It just wouldn't have been feasible to pay, you know Car service fees and and so on and so forth to to go everywhere So, um, it really depends on the the landscape I would say I'm kind of in this like honeymoon phase where I'm only a couple years past the I can rent a car actually Um, and so I'm leaning a little bit more towards renting cars as of now But there certainly is a time and a place where I get somewhere and I know I'm you know, um, I mean Like I'm a good example be like Las Vegas. Um, first of all you're drinking in Vegas So there's another reason that's not why but when you're in Vegas You kind of plant yourself on the strip and you're not going to be going too far away from the strip probably So, you know, these sort of car services are huge for me, um, you know, or um, there's been a couple other cities I've been to you know that I can think of that I've used them, but it I use them honestly more sparingly and only um, you know Or like say if it's just go I use it in so um, I'm kind of 50-50 on this but leaning a little bit more maybe just slightly towards car rental Yeah, so we usually rent a car whenever we go somewhere as well Just because we have so many people with us most of the time So it's just a wife and I this this time around I figure if we need to go anywhere, we'll just take a lift We are taking like a hotel shuttle from the hotel to the port where we're actually going to get on the boat So we booked one of those kind of in advance But I mean the best thing about like a lift is or uber is like you can just take one of those in a pinch usually and it It's much more convenient than like having a taxi summon or like trying to find a taxi like I'm sure you've used uber lift You know, it's it's nice to be able to summon a car from anywhere and maybe you believe in a future someday where they're driving cars like self-driving cars But until then I'm I'm with you like car rentals are great because it gives you that freedom, right? I mean having the ability to go anywhere is also liberating, right?

Like it is still a form of freedom But when you have a car rental you can go where you want on your own time You don't have to worry about any extra cost that would be associated with that and I don't know It just let you be the driver, huh go figure so I'm with you on that one So in terms of recording the trip I think that's kind of a big thing is you're going on the strip You're going to have a lot of memories and you're gonna fill your past work with a bunch of reservations is how do you basically? Document this trip so the first question I have is I know a lot of people will keep a journal when they're on vacation Or they'll write in a journal every day that they're on vacation. Have you ever done this Lou? Yes The one thing I have done Which I guess is along the lines of journaling is I'm kind of a big wine fan And so as I've gone around the world and tasted different wines from different regions of the world I have a app that I use to essentially I just snap a picture of the actual wine itself and the app is called delectable and it essentially lets me kind of Get an idea what others think of of the wine and what you know If there's any like a professional wine, you know tasters have rated it as well as write my thoughts down about the wine itself And so that's been kind of cool and I guess it's semi-away of journaling things I've done on on vacation But no, I don't really formally sit down and write like here's what I did on this day and here was my thoughts and reflections Do you uh no oh please there's so much stuff going on during vacations usually that the last thing on my mind is actually writing down What we were doing so I can honestly I don't journal I think it's an interesting idea And I think it's something that I I wish I would have the patience to do and I wish I would have kind of I guess the determination to do because I feel like as we go on vacations with kids like there's definitely something you want to remember And people will say you know pictures are worth a thousand words But there's something to be said for you know what you did one day because you might forget those details later And let's say something you didn't take a picture of but something you remembered or like I said something you felt Um, so I think it would be a cool idea to try and I know there's a bunch of journal Uh apps out there day one is definitely I think one of the more popular ones and I do have day one It's just I've never I've never gone in and actually journaled anything so I'll tell you this is that this trip I'm definitely not doing this at all because my brain is going to be shutting off and it is going to be in full relax mode And if anything I'll meditate right I'll do my mindful minutes in my breathing I'll do that but I will not be writing down what I'm doing because Hopefully I'm not doing much of anything and I'm just lounging and enjoying like I said the silence So I think it'd be cool, but there has to be time and place and right now like we said my schedule is We'll do hectic to accommodate that and this one.

I am piecing man. I am. I'm just oh man I'm so ready to be dead to the world. You have no idea.

Yeah, man. You seem pretty stoked on this one Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I'm I'm ready When uh when Alex said after listening to the last uh last time we recorded she was saying it's been nine years since we had vacation without kids So nine years is a long time and definitely overdue for vacation So in terms of recording the trip we mentioned photos and videos We know this is something that you know, we're going to do we're going to take pictures like we're going to have our phones with us And thank god, you know phones these days have decent cameras and decent, you know video capture You know sensors everything which is great and I know we'll get into your drone a little bit Which is also something that I've considered you know bringing on vacation But in terms of photos and videos and the sheer amount of photos and videos that you're going to take at any point in time Do you have to offload them at any point? And I know I think I'm probably going to know the answer to this just because of how you are but Is there ever any need for you to offload anything? I know you have your computer and everything with you Um, the way i'm going to live is just hey whenever this stuff, you know Back's up to hopefully the cloud whenever i'm back home rates If not these memories will be lost forever because i'm not putting them anywhere else in the meantime Yeah, I'm in that boat.

Uh, I I've always been the fan of making sure my device has ample storage that you know, essentially I could take as much as I needed to while on vacation and then i'm not going to for what is you know feasible Run out of storage or what what I think I could ever shoot you know during the frame of time that i'm gone You know, i'm gonna run out of storage. So I mean to be honest my advice take a million photos you can delete them later You're not going to get a chance to go back and take that photo so take as much as you can And then delete from it and I do pare down and delete quite a lot a lot of times I'll go to europe and take something like i don't know 1500 to 2000 photos over You know a week or two weeks or something like that And it'll start with 1500 to 2000 and get down to like five or 600 Maybe like a considerable amount of them will be tossed And i'll get down to an amount that I think is you know when good photos into you know adequately highlights You know each destination so that's kind of my go-to and you're right. I don't back them up long gone I usually have Wi-Fi where i'm going again. So cruises I understand unique You know options and concerns when it comes to networking but you know hotel Wi-Fi in europe Back up overnight.

There you go. All right I didn't know if you were like one of the paranoid ones because we will have you know Wi-Fi access That we could pay for on the on the boat if we wanted to but I feel like that's gonna be kind of a Something that we're not gonna do So i'm gonna basically be living on the edge while I take all these photos and videos and just give my fingers crossed until we get back to the United States and get onto a Wi-Fi network to let them all back up But since and I think this will kind of tie in what we talk about in a little bit too, which is staying in touch Right, so we'll talk about that a little bit And you mentioned earlier that you don't take a DSLR anymore or a point shoot So do you want to kind of expand on that more? I know you take the drone in certain scenarios, but you kind of stop taking the the heavy-duty cameras for what you need Yeah, so I think it was somewhere probably about four years ago or so that I just started to think man leave these You know phones that we put in our pocket are getting Close enough that as long as I don't need to do any major zoom Is you know take to get into what I need to shoot which for me most vacation shots. I'm not doing a great amount of zoom I can probably get by with just the phone in my pocket and how great is it to not have to worry about one more thing and to just you know go ahead and You know carry just the phone and I'm already uniquely kind of trained on it.

I understand how it shoots I understand you know how to use filters or exposure or or you know I can shoot in raw with a third party app and you know There's just so much that has come a long way that way that I said, you know what? I think I don't need the point and shoot anymore and there was a time I even brought the DSLR You know further back than than that when you know the point shoots were kind of still and I had a full DSLR And and so I don't know man It's something I put down and I actually don't even own a point and shoot or a DSLR at the moment So I don't know where you're at with that Adam But and then I know you mentioned my drone too Which in unique vacation settings that will bring a drone with me oftentimes kind of calls for advanced research ahead of time and Considerations of you know laws and how laws change and you know flying with it is tough So there's a lot of advance planning that goes into whether the drone comes or doesn't come Gotcha. Yeah, I feel like when I wanted to get a drone and I still want to get a drone I still believe it or not have a budget, you know for the money to get a drone and that money is just kind of sitting there Not doing anything which is a poor reason for a budget But it was reasons like going on vacation that I would want to use it and especially going to a place where we're going on our own terms Right being on a cruise and kind of being shackled to you know, day-to-day activities, you know at a port Kind of hinders the fact of me wanting to take one But I feel like for the next vacation it'll be something that I want to pack And I know you have kind of like the high class like higher end drone Right like where it takes up a lot more space and the one I would plan on getting is like the one that folds up into you know Water bottle size that you can just toss in a backpack But I feel like it might be a little different in terms of like when I carry a drone versus when you carry a drone and our goals I guess is what we're looking for what we're looking to accomplish with those And I mean I think it's really important to point out. I mean, this is kind of some like super You know, we'll follow up, but the industry of drones is changing so much It's still very early days and there's some rumors about TGI bringing out, you know a refreshed version of their mavic drone, which was my first drone and You know, the rumors are that battery life is like seven to eight minutes longer And it still folds up and the same you know side that it did and seven or eight minutes I mean for most people doesn't sound like a lot But when you've got a little object in the sky that is moving, you know roughly 25 to 30 miles an hour at full cruise Seven to eight minutes is a lifetime I think you could fly that thing a lot further in seven to eight minutes, you know at that speed So they're coming a long way.

They're only gonna get better. You know, this is sort of If it if it to give anybody just some some idea of when I bought in I bought in to the drone market when It was the equivalent of like iPhone 3g, you know, and we're starting to get to the you know, iPhone 4 iPhone 5 days I think where it's it's starting to hit more mass market But keep in mind there's still a lot of runway there in that market and we're gonna see a ton of stuff happen over the next four or five years I think yeah kind of one of the burdens of technology is things are ever changing One of the great things and one of the horrible things Definitely is and uh, we had to start the deal with it Yep, just just deal with it man like quit complaining and just live with it what everyone else is doing But I guess we should take a take a lesson or learn something from their book Uh in terms of staying in touch because I guess this is a another thing that I I don't really do as much because we don't travel outside of the country as much But since we are traveling out of the country this time What do we do in terms of data? So I do have an unlocked phone and I'm looking at getting just kind of a local data sim only Just for a day-to-day usage, but the self-on-career have also offers international plans for $10 a day I believe for basically self-service, you know phone calls and using your existing data wherever you are for a certain amount of countries So Lou, I'm curious what you use because I'm sort of trying to wait the options and I have until tomorrow to figure it out So hopefully you can give me some insight here. Well, this has changed a lot in the last few years When when I really first started traveling internationally I did the whole original approach of just adding my cell phone to the plan and just pay whatever the fee was And there wasn't this idea of like, you know, you pay just $10 a day It was like you pay a hundred dollars per megapar per like hundred megabytes or something ridiculous like that And let's just say I went to france and I came back for france and I never did that again because I self-on-bill in like 2006 was like $400 So that was a like lesson learned quote-unquote So that burned me once and from then on I always did unlocked phone by a sim card when I'm there I didn't always buy data only sim card I would oftentimes just buy a number because you can buy just a prepaid sim with a number on it there One caveat is that at least in some countries in Europe or I think this is maybe an EU regulation They require that you provide your passport number So they need to take a copy of your passport at any local like cell phone carrier store When they issue you a phone number And that's I think just for concerns of attacks and terrorism and like burner phones and all that good jazz So you do have to take your passport out, which is something I would say just be careful Obviously you don't want to in general when I get to a hotel in Europe I use the safe in the room and the passport goes in the safe and I don't walk around with the Passport so the only time it usually comes out is for the trip to the cell phone store to just really quickly grab a sim and then be back The good news is they're pretty cheap and usually I pay less than 20 to 30 euro for like one week And I have some ridiculous amount of data You know like 15 gigs of data that I won't go through in a week, you know So it's pretty inexpensive usually but I don't know more and more of these international phone plants coming on for $10 a day They just pull from your same bucket of data It's making me less likely to use those options because I have concerns a lot of times when I travel in nationally about I have a different phone number you put that phone number in your phone And then your iMessage gets all like whacked out because now there's a new number on it and I understand that's why you might do data only sim So there's a lot of like Jump at their hoops and then you land back in the United States and sometimes your carrier your phone You put your sim card back in your phone your phone's like doesn't immediately pick up service It takes a couple minutes and or you know even sometimes like 20 minutes and it's just like reprovisioning or doing something So there's a lot of like woes with this that I think could come up And so the other way is starting to look lucrative once again and I haven't been back But I would say We're planning this trip to possibly Canada later this year and I I I'm definitely probably going to give it a try because it's a short trip It's only a couple days.

So it doesn't work out. It's not the end of the world Yeah, and that's how I feel too is there's a whole lot of like once you go through Getting a whole different identity basically for your phone for the time of your way It's like man, that's a lot of hassle and there's a lot of like caveats and you know In the last 10 years so much has changed and I think a lot of carriers caught onto the facts It's like well They're basically just like letting this money fall through the cracks because people will you know get a phone that's unlocked and they'll just use the sim card If we can just offer some attractive pricing then maybe people will start to use the existing You know plan that they have and we can just charge a little bit more to provide service wherever they are So hopefully that changes that's kind of where I was leaning So I think I'll try that out and then maybe I'll report back to you on how it worked that way When you go for your trip in Canada, I can be like, hey, man, it was great or hey never do it again because it was a nightmare So maybe I can give you some insight there that would be much appreciated Anything for you Lou anything for you but that So is there anything else you wanted to talk about anything else we missed I know there's tons that you can talk about in terms of travel But these are just kind of the the big bullet points that I wanted to cover But is there anything notable that you think we should add that I omitted for some reason? No, I don't think there's anything super Pertinent the only other thing I would say is I in terms of Traveling with with monies. I try to not travel too much with much physical cash on me I usually do have some amount of cash on me that could you know get me through a couple days in physical cash But I don't like to travel with just bonkers amounts of cash There's definitely members in my family that For reasons that are probably still old-school travel with you know to me what seems like absurd amounts of cash But credit cards are great.

They're pretty much accepted and the one thing I try to remember is that you know They they take money wherever I go. They usually take credit cards or money. So it's not usually that big of a deal The one big card that I've been very very happy to have is in America Express If if I could impart any advice on anybody they seem to be really really generous to card members who travel internationally They let you know before you travel about your you know coverage for like Lost you know suitcases and and that you can go buy clothes with your card and they'll reimburse you if something happens The other big perk that is huge with American Express is if you lose your passport They will get you to an embassy and rush the passport renewal so that you can get back into the US should something happen Which I know I remember my family who had that happen And it was a huge part to have the American Express team working on that and within 48 hours have a replacement passport in hand So that he could get back into the United States. So I mean there are huge wins that way.

So You know, I think their credit cards can be really good. Not only just for the points, especially when you're traveling It's it's really nice. They don't want you to not be able to spend their money and you get benefits for that So, you know, that's the only other thing I guess I would say Yeah, and that's that's what we have plans. So we have enough cash to basically cover us in terms of Anyplace that wouldn't accept, you know, let's say a credit card and then we have our credit card They're already notified like hey, we're gonna be out of the country on the estates This is where we're going Yeah, yada yada yada and yeah, same thing has all the travel insurance and all sorts of stuff baked into just the the benefits and You know, I didn't realize this and this is something that I think Something I just kind of stumbled upon that I was pretty stupid for not knowing But yeah, there are a lot of benefits that some credit cards don't really advertise That are kind of hidden in the fine print in terms of like price protection and like you said with american express with All of their expedited, you know passport renewal this and that like there's a lot of purse that They don't list as like the big bullet points But there's tons of stuff once you start getting down into the agreement and stuff that they don't like It feels like they don't tell you upfront, but stuff That's pretty amazing like in terms of I think even just like price guarantees are awesome or you know warranties, right?

Like hey, I bought this and stopped working like oh, yeah, cool. We'll refund it. You know, it's like whoa, but really that's awesome So yeah credit cards are great. I mean don't rack up a bunch of credit cards.

I'm not saying that but yeah Your credit card probably offers more benefits than you realize yeah I've actually the only one I've used is I guess I would say lost their theft of an item My credit card offers it for 90 days and so I gifted somebody something I bought on my credit card And they had sold just like 20 days afterwards and you know, it was no big deal So that was kind of cool. I mean, I guess I would say it wasn't as easy as just like call them up telling it was stolen Had to have been a police report filed But it really wasn't that much hassle because police reports today can actually be filed just by like going to the police's website Usually I'm filling out a report and then it just gives you a report number automatically It's just essentially a formal document that says yes Something was stolen here was the place it was stolen at and so on and so forth Um, so yeah, we submitted that to them and then my next blank statement, you know charge reverse So there's a lot of benefits there looking to them, you know American Express's other benefit is that they add the one year to any of your warranties Um for anything you bought and that includes one year on the end of a extended warranty So at least for my card it is that way. So, you know, something like my Apple products, my Apple Pro I bought Apple Caron that Apple Pro so it was three years, which is now four years So that's that's huge, you know, just that that one extra year of protection Well, hopefully I don't have to use anything about like stolen stuff. Hopefully no one steals anything Like I said, I travel light so there's nothing really to steal and I'm a front pocket wallet guy anyway So what harder to get into my pants?

Yeah, I don't um, uh, when I travel in Europe, I definitely go front pocket But I uh, I usually only have like one or two cards on me Um, it's not like I'm walking out the hotel with my whole wallet even usually Cool, man. Well, since I'm on next week and I said we'll have a returning special guest So john will be coming back to join you Uh to talk about text stuff while I'm gone while I'm out relaxing on the deck of a boat in the sun Drinking an alcoholic beverage and enjoying myself. You will be recording a podcast and I won't be here So I'm sure you'll have an awesome time because I know you don't really like when I'm around because I'm a little abrasive at times Yeah, I expect uh photos in your seven-inch little lemon shorts. Okay.

Oh, I didn't get a pair of sevens You gotta ship me a pair of sevens like I'll put them on for you But I am not going to a lululemo outlet anywhere in the next couple days to get some seven-inch shorts But I'll hike up my patagonias, you know to simulate it for you I'm excited for this So, uh, I don't think I've ever mentioned where I'm actually going At least I don't recall doing so so the the cruise that we're gonna take is we're going out of florida And we're going to go to the Bahamas for believe it's five days. Alex will correct me if I'm wrong I don't know But it will be gone for a little while so yeah, we're gonna take a cruise to the Bahamas I believe you stop at three ports and then come back and then fly back from florida to Nice sunny Santa Cruz. Have you been to the Bahamas before? Never Oh, man, you're in for a treat.

It's a beautiful place. So, um, I hope you have last it is um You'll have to tell me when I was there last um one of the funniest parts of the Bahamas to me Was that a lot of the taxis in the Bahamas, which again, I'm not too sure how common place they are anymore because Taxis and uber and lift and all that, you know, that's changed a lot. I'm not sure what they have there but Taxis in the Bahamas were limousines from the United States They were just essentially like shipped over and they were like old limousines So, you know, I was in the Bahamas in like, I don't know 2000 probably about 2000 actually maybe 2005 somewhere there um and The taxis were all from like the 80s. So they were like 25 year old taxis.

They were just like kind of busted up But it's still working and so which every taxi driver is just this just giant, you know, like Cadillac from the 80s that Is there so it was really funny. We got you know, we're at the airport and we had no idea. Nobody had brought us for that and we're like At least taxi so I remember we took a taxi to like dominoes to pick up a pizza the first night So we could go to the hotel because we were tired We're traveling and we uh, we just you know parked it By the pool for the last couple hours of the sun and then and ate a pizza for dinner and we took a limo to dominoes So it is quite funny. So you'll have to tell me if that's the case and I do remember motor shooters were pretty big too So you'll have to let me know if you do one of those but I would say the Reefs and all that like snorkeling stuff is just gorgeous Yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to was just the the crystal clear water.

We are doing snorkeling I think we at one point had an option to do like the the motor scooter thing But I don't know if we did that like I said, I I kind of stayed out of the planning of this one And just was like, hey, let's just go. I'll just tag along so that'll be fun Just along for the ride. Yep. That's that's how I like it.

I like being in the backseat and just trying to drive I don't like actually driving. That's bullshit. That is absolutely bullshit Don't call me out on bullshit. Uh, yeah, but it's true.

I love I love driving. I don't like being in the backseat Uh speaking of backseat, uh, so I think that does it for this So you can find all of our info at creative genius cast calm Uh, please rate and review us on apple podcast or like lu says hit the recommend button and overcast Just helps us get to more people and keep doing what we love to do And I will see you lu in man what like two two and a half weeks. Yep about two and a half weeks now Just music to my ears All right, man. Well, have a good trip.

We'll do Uh, the woo is your is your cue huh? Let's say what what's this cue gonna be? It's gonna be a woo Uh, so recording this early is nice except for the fact that I have to like really struggle to get my workout done beforehand Because like if I ended let's say I wasn't finished with my move goal And I ended right now like I have to work my ass off to get my move bill done in like 30 minutes That was good man. It was a good trip We did one of those motor scooters and totally drove it up on a runway had no idea.

That was a runway whoops Yeah, there wasn't a fence around the airport and we were just like oh nice big concrete road. Hey Wait, we got to the end of the road and why is there numbers? Ah