AXW Travels

After decades of travel across the world, my relationship with travel has changed. A reflection on confidence, curiosity, standout moments, and what makes travel meaningful now.

This was one of those trips that felt big before it even started. A cruise from Valparaíso, Chile through the Chilean fjords, around Cape Horn, over to the Falkland Islands, and back via Uruguay and Argentina isn’t exactly a casual getaway. It’s long. It’s weather-dependent. There are a lot of sea days. And if you’re anything like me, you spend weeks wondering if it’ll all come together the way you imagine. Spoiler: it mostly did, just not always in the ways I expected. Getti

One of the advantages of working for a global company is the opportunity to travel to offices in other locations… and tack on personal travel to those trips. I was planning a trip to the London office in February 2017. I’ve never been anywhere with tons of snow in the winter so I decided to tack on a trip to northern Finland to see the northern lights!

Flying first class was way too expensive, but we still wanted to be comfortable for an overnight flight so we purchased the middle seat between us. That way we had an entire row to ourselves. On a completely booked flight, we got a lot of angry looks when we started to spread out in our row. Totally worth it!

Sometimes, when the weather is bad and flights are delayed and canceled, things seem to work out. I was at a customer site in Columbia, SC for a few days. On the third day, there was snow in the forecast. As you can probably guess, Columbia doesn’t get much snow so they don’t handle it very well. Around noon, the customer told me we should cancel the class for the rest of the day and I should try to get out of town asap.

Travel with me through Cape Town, Namibia’s dunes, Botswana’s safaris, and Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls — a wild mix of adventure, beauty, and surprises.

When I moved from Seattle to Cleveland in November 2003, I was very clever (or thought I was!) by donating all of my furnishings and shipping about 30 boxes to Ohio with all of my personal stuff. I didn’t have a place to live yet so I shipped all 30 boxes to my friend’s home. I think I still owe her a good dinner since the boxes showed up on her doorstep on a snowy, cold evening and she moved them all into her dining room that night.

People always ask what my favorite destination is. When it comes to the most eye-opening experience and the one that made me grateful for all my experiences, Peru is at the top of the list.

In 2004, I was getting more adventurous and confident about traveling by myself. I decided to take my first solo trip to a country where English was not the first language, but hopefully enough people spoke English. Tapping into my success with REI, I booked a trip to Greece to do some hiking in the Greek Islands. To extend my vacation a bit, I added a few days in Amsterdam before starting the hiking trip.

After returning from New Zealand in 2002, I convinced my brother to visit New Zealand with me in 2003. I also took the opportunity to visit another part of Australia, Melbourne. Why Melbourne? I stayed in touch with the two guys I met in 2001, Adam and Anthony, and lived in that area.

In the summer of 2003, I flew to St George, UT for a short hiking trip with some friends. I didn’t know what to expect but the area was stunning. The pictures don’t do it justice. This post has no story… just pictures of my experience.

Whenever people ask me, “What’s your favorite country?” I always reply that it depends. It depends on whether people are asking about favorite people, favorite food, favorite scenery, etc. When it comes to favorite scenery, New Zealand wins… by far. New Zealand reminds me a lot of western Washington, but there’s something more magical about it.

In the summer of 2002, I took a few weekends to visit various parts in Washington. This post just has some pictures from this trip around Washington.

In 2002, a couple of colleagues and I wanted to escape from work so we decided on a long weekend trip to Kona, Hawaii.

In 2001, I decided to take my biggest vacation ever… to Australia! I had been traveling for work for a few years at this point and had saved up enough points to help pay for such a big trip.

After my success in traveling to England on my own in 1999, I decided to do it again in 2000. This time, my mom came with me. The trip started a bit rough. We were flying from Seattle to London via Washington Dulles. The trick was that we would catch a train in London up to Scotland for the first few days of our trip. But that, of course, depended on getting to London in time.

At a previous company, we had customers in some pretty remote locations across the United States. One that sticks out in my mind is Troy, Alabama. Troy is about an hour south of Montgomery and feels like a world away.

This story is from one of my business trips. It was early on in my traveling career when I still checked luggage rather than carried it on. This trip to South Dakota changed my mind and I started carrying my bags on.

In 1999, I guess I was starting a tradition of a big annual trip. Where was my next one to be? I was still in my early days of traveling internationally, so I wanted to travel to someplace safe and easily navigate. England! They even speak the same language!

I’ve learned a lot about traveling over the past 20 years of business travel. One that sticks out in my mind is the difference between “hotel” and “motel.”