Gettin’ There with Mike and Amy
This is getting there with Mike and Amy and we are a travel podcast for the health minded nomads and entrepreneurs.
Traveling has always been a dream of Mike and a dream of Amy. Listen as these two friends explain how they met… traveling.
They each travel very differently, but both have some tips and tricks on ways to travel, travel and staying healthy and travel while conducting business.
Read the episode transcript
Intro 0:11
Hey, this is Gettin There with Mike and Amy and we are a travel podcast for the health minded nomads and entrepreneurs.
Mike Bruce 0:20
Hey, you’re listening to Gettin There with Mike and Amy This is a podcast about about travel about the businesses we do for this travel and and just traveling for fun and doing it in a healthy way. So this is just going to be an introduction, podcast and introduction episode to let you get to know us, Amy.
Yeah, so this is our first podcast that either one of us either Mike or I have ever done. So we just kind of wanted to introduce who we are and what we do and what allows us to travel.
Yeah, Amy, you go first because you have a fun one. Yours is like a dream of mine. I’m not to your point yet. My travels all just for, it’s stress reduction and for the love of seeing different cultures, but yours is that plus. So go ahead and let us know how you travel and also, like what your business is and how how it allows you to do this.
Yeah. So back in 2007 my husband Avery and I started our business. It’s a marketing company. And we just wanted to have fun, not work in corporations anymore and start you know, being able to have more freedoms. Well, what they don’t usually tell you is when you have a small business set, sometimes the freedom don’t come with it, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of groundwork.
And so sometimes second jobs
Exactly. Like why am I doing this comes to your mind several times. And throughout all the challenges that you know businesses can give you and all the benefits it can give you, we were afraid to try moving and around and traveling a bit because we’re like, well, what are our clients going to think? What are we going to do? How do we bring our computers with us? What was the technology going to be like?
Yeah, I can’t afford a $2,000 laptop just to travel.
Exactly, and I already have those machines because I gotta be able to do video and graphics anyways. So we just started like, every time our iMac just, you know, decided to poop out on us. We decided to get a laptop, you know, instead of an iMac. So we started making ourselves more mobile. We started training our clients to talk to us by phone or by zoom. Zoom has been an amazing tool for us to allow us to be a mobile business.
Yeah.
And we sold one of our cars. You know, we found where, it’s just the two of us, we work from home. Why do we need two cars?
Yeah
That was just an extra expense? We did not need and at times it’s stressful to figure out logistics of like, who’s going where and who has the car. But you know, that money that we save on a second car goes towards traveling, which is way better?
Yeah.
Amy Nubson 3:18
So those are things we just decided to make changes in our lives to allow us to travel and the freedom because what do you do with two cars just sitting there for three months?
Mike Bruce 3:28
Can we touch on that too? Because, I never even thought of how much you would save from one car. So, yeah, if you have a loan that’s anywhere, like at the low end, that’s $200 a month. But for most people, that’s three to $400 a month.
Amy Nubson 3:43
If not higher.
Mike Bruce 3:45
Yeah, yeah. So plus insurance, which is another hundred to $200 a month, depending on the state you live. That’s crazy. Holy cow. I never thought of that.
Amy Nubson 3:53
Yeah, and all the gas and oil changes and tires. I mean, I know I’m so lucky. I get to put tires on my car here.
Mike Bruce 4:00
Yeah, that’s a nice vacation every single year just based on, I mean that’s a really nice vacation every year just based on what you save in a car. Wow.
Exactly, so a little sacrifice, a little irritating throughout the year but it works, and then when travel we have one car anyways. That’s a big deal. And that car is well taken care of as we need it and it’s always hitting 200,000 miles and it’s it works perfectly and we love it. So we’re like, why spend money on a new car when this one works just fine.
Yep
Amy Nubson 4:33
Some of those things that just you realize don’t matter anymore. The, going, you know, getting out of the Minnesota winter, sun, you know, that does not really exist to sun in the winter is more important for our health. But we were still afraid to do it. So even though we’re making small changes, it was small and it was little steps. And then it was six years ago, Avery was in a car accident, that changed our world upside down. And he was in a lot of pain and he still is to this day. But he’s functional. It took him, you know, a year, two years to kind of get up and going again. And the cold just hurts his body so terribly. So we made the decision. And then got past that fear of traveling and moving because of his pain. It got so bad, He was like, Amy, I can’t walk. He goes, I’m so afraid of slipping on the ice. It is so painful. I need to, I don’t know what to do. And I’m like, well, we’re mobile. We’ve been working towards this. Why don’t we actually do it? Like, let’s find a house sitter, because we had a cat. What do you do with the cat? You can’t take her with. That’s just not gonna work. Yeah, kitties don’t like to travel. And so we got a house sitter and we dont want don’t want to leave our house empty. It’s winter. Things can happen.
Mike Bruce 5:56
You guys in Minnesota, you guys have some really, really cold winters so
Amy Nubson 6:02
Exactly and at that time I was living in Fargo which is even worse.
Mike Bruce 6:06
Oh man, yeah so you don’t want like the heat to run out, the oil to run out for like a day you’re in trouble you know
Exactly and last winter roofs were caving in from that much snow, so it was kind of an important thing for us to make sure our house was taken care of, and our cat was and on top of what we were doing, a construction project of putting in a new sewer so that was great to do while you’re gone. But we left and we took it, and we just put everything in the car and we went down to Alabama because it was our neighbors in Fargo told us that ,he was from Alabama and he’s telling us how beautiful it is and like, whatever you’re lying that does not exist. Really, I never considered that state, and it’s beautiful and the coastline of Alabama is gorgeous. And I loved it. And we stayed there for two, I think six weeks the first time. And every year, we’ve gone a little bit longer a little bit longer, because we budget for that.
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Wow. Yeah. And we still do our marketing clients. I am also a business coach. So I coach people around the world, actually. So, you know,, I can be in Florida or can be in Minnesota talking to my client in Spain, it doesn’t matter where I am. I just have to pay attention to time zones. And be very aware of that. I’m kinda terrible at the math on that part. But you know, there’s always tools to tell me what’s the correct time zone.
That’s right.
And so we just pack up and travel and we sold our house and now are living temporarily with family until we decide where we want to live. We’ve been slowly like exploring the United States or even, or hopefully in 2021, we will be going overseas for several months.
I’m so excited for you on that.
I know and seeing where we want to end up. Do we want to be here? Do we want to go overseas? Yeah.
Because here’s the truth of it with that. There’s so many, people call them digital nomads, that they, they can have a good living in the US. But when they take that same income and move, for instance, our friend of ours moved to the Czech Republic, who’s a blogger, and she is living like a queen in the Czech Republic. And it’s, you know, almost the difference in the value of money is almost so drastic that she has to kind of reserve themselves when they’re out to dinner with friends that live locally that are from you know, local wages, because they almost feel bad for like, ehh we’re just gonna buy this, this and this if we want. We’re gonna have these drinks, whatever we want. So that’s the kind of life you can live, if You have the ability to live mobile or to work mobile.
Exactly. And that’s the thing too. Like I have a friend that wants to get back up to, I want to say Thailand. And she’s like, you can live in Thailand. And it’s so beautiful and an amazing, welcoming culture. You know, and you get to meet all these different people too, from all over the United States, all over in different countries that introduce you to different places to live.
Yeah.
Amy Nubson 9:27
Things like, I would have never considered Thailand just because Asia kinda, I don’t know a lot about Asia and traveling there.
Mike Bruce 9:34
Yeah. difficult language. Yeah.
Amy Nubson 9:37
So there’s always that little bit of fear of going into that kind of a culture. where like, going to England sounds really easy because I can speak the language.
Mike Bruce 9:48
But it’s real expensive.
Amy Nubson 9:50
Exactly. So you’re like, does that help me but, we’re looking at you know, somewhere in Spain or places like that to go. It would be wonderful.
Mike Bruce 10:02
Yeah. And the best part about Spain I found, if you try speaking Spanish at all, I mean just speak like Tarzan. Like me, Mike, you know me want food. Do the best you can for like three lines, and they will immediately start speaking English to you because they realized they do it a lot better than your Spanish. That’s all they want is just you to try first and then they jump right in.
Yes. And that’s where that you know talking to people and finding cultures that are willing and able and welcoming to English just because yeah, again, I do not speak any other language. I have a father who came from Norway, and I can’t even speak Norwegian. Really sad, but I can’t. He was an eight year old boy, came over to America and he cannot switch back and forth between the languages. Yeah. So he couldn’t teach us but it’s one of my dreams to like be immersed in another culture. So I can learn what it’s like to be somewhere else, where I can learn another language by being immersed in it. I love people and I love going and seeing how others live.
Yeah.
Amy Nubson 11:15
Because it’s so different everywhere. And the other reason I do business coaching is I love business and business is kind of universal. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Spain, if you’re in the south, you’re here in the Midwest. You know, we’re all trying to create a product that benefits somebody else and allows you possibilities so you have freedoms as well.
Mike Bruce 11:39
Yeah. And and yeah, you have to spend less than you make.
Amy Nubson 11:45
Exactly
Mike Bruce 11:45
I mean, that’s business, you have to make something that people want. And then you have to spend less than you make. I mean, it’s, it’s not that simple, but it is that simple, and that’s where the universality of that comes from. Is that a word? Universality?
Amy Nubson 11:59
Sounds great. And that’s where some of those sacrifices matter, you know, matter and it’s not really a sacrifice like going down to one car when you gain so much more from it. And that’s where me and Avery are both, I’m so grateful we’re both on board with it and it’s something we both love doing.
Mike Bruce 12:21
Yeah, you kind of live the four hour workweek life aside from, not working the four hours, but the the travel side of that, because that’s what got me into travel was I always wanted to but I was always so scared. But hearing Tim Ferriss talk about his, you know, I read his book, The Four Hour Workweek, and hearing the way he described being in cultures and just learning the culture and just, you know, going there for three months, and having a standing, you know, Spanish lesson when you’re in Central America, you know, three days a week, a standing Spanish lesson. By time you’re gone, you’re going to know Spanish.
Amy Nubson 12:59
Yeah. That’s the beauty of it.
Mike Bruce 13:01
Yeah.
Amy Nubson 13:02
Yeah, I mean, I still work a ton. I mean, when we go down to Florida, Alabama area we wish we were not working as often as we do, we’re like the sun is out, I want to go outside.
Mike Bruce 13:15
That’s where the timezone could help right? The timezone could help because you might have to work in a different country, you might have to work, maybe 5am to like 1pm and then you could get a few hours of sunlight and daylight. Yeah.
Amy Nubson 13:29
Yeah. And that’s the thing. It’s like you start to realize, what do you really want? Is traveling what you want, is it emersing yourself? Or is it is it having that beautiful big home? Avery and I, when we bought our house in Fargot, it was our first home. We bought a small home because we knew specifically that we did not want to be tied to our house. We wanted to make sure that we had the freedoms to be able to travel and if something were to go wrong in our business, it wouldn’t put us under or it wouldn’t put a lot of stress on us. So we had to reduce our fun, our travels. So when you start thinking of these things, it’s just making different decisions that maybe other people in your family don’t understand. That was the biggest one. Our family, it was amazing how judgmental and aggressive some people got towards us.
Mike Bruce 14:37
Yeah, yeah, it’s just and there’s multiple reasons on that, right? Like, maybe they were jealous, but didn’t understand what that emotion actually felt like, in that sense. You know, everybody knows what jealousy is. But, but that way, is a weird feeling of jealousy.
Yeah, because you’re doing something outside of the norm. We weren’t able to have children. So everybody’s like, Well, I can’t do that because I have family and like you can. There’s, there’s ways of going around it. It’s just whatever makes the most sense to you and your family.
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Um, there’s a lot of things that we want to do in life people, for me, I’m a health coach and people say, well, I just can’t do this or that. Well, yeah, you can. I mean, it’s really simple. You just, you just decide how you’re going to do it. You make a game plan and you do it. And you decide is it worth doing? That’s it. That’s the big thing as well.
Amy Nubson 15:33
And are you ready for it is another one.
Mike Bruce 15:37
I’ve also dealt with a lot of those issues in my life in different areas, also with travel now that I think of it, which is odd. And my travels are far different from yours. Mine’s just, you know, vacations, but yeah, I’ve also dealt with that, in the sense of, people can’t figure out why I’ll spend $2,000 to go somewhere for 14 days, but they’re spending $5,000 to you know, where I live, their spending $5,000 on their trucks to jack them up and put roll bars on them and do all these other things. But that isn’t what I care about. I care about traveling and seeing culture.
Exactly. You spend money and you spend time on the things you love. And that’s what I think ultimately we all want to do is to find the things that we love to do or love to have. And enjoy them. I mean, that’s the whole point of, you know, working and having a life
We’re not, we’re not meant to be stuck in a place we don’t want to be our whole life. We’re not meant to be stuck behind a desk if we don’t want to be you know, you can, I know it’s gonna suck if you quit your really good job that you hate working at, but you can find another job that pays maybe not as well, but you can find another job. I know people can make a whole lot of money delivering pizza. It’s like, you can do that. It’s not that hard. You can do that in the evenings to make up, you know, a couple nights to make up extra money if you want and save money for your vacations. So
It’s however you choose that you want to live your life. And that’s how we decided, that’s how we got over the fear is we decided what we wanted. And like I said, it was a little challenging for some of our family members to accept that. And even now, after doing it for four years, they still have a challenge with that way of thinking because they never left the town they grew up in, or we didn’t have a family and we didn’t put the traditional roots down. And I’m like, yeah, that’s a question that’s very personal for people. And please, if you know people who don’t have children be very sensitive because you don’t know why. But they, like, share with you. And it did, you know for us, it took two years to be okay not having children. And that’s when we realized, okay, God gave us a different freedom, a different, different, not freedom per say, but different choices to make. Because of that, and with that decision of us traveling around, we got to meet amazing people who become almost like family and we never would have had that.
Yeah, you get to build a whole new family when you’re put in a situation that you think things are, are going for the worse. And usually with that, when you, people like you and Avery, you and your husband, you take those bad times and you figure out how to make them work and I’ve seen you do that a couple times now and it’s really cool. And, and yeah, it opens up life to another option. So and, and family and friends that you meet on the road. My goodness, they are there for forever and it’s so weird. You don’t talk to them for a year, you call them up and you say hey, I need a place to stay for three days when I’m in Germany. And they go, come on over, so…
Amy Nubson 18:56
Exactly, I mean, that’s how I met you. I mean, we met at a conference and through a mutual friend and hit it off right away and couldn’t stop talking, you know? And basically I called you up and said, I haven’t talked to you for like six months and I’m like, I’m driving through. How about I come? You know, I’d love you to meet Avery, I want to meet Kim and lets, you know, can we come and visit with you. I mean, that’s the greatest point of traveling is the people. And the whole purpose that we did this, that I’m excited that I did this podcast is I’ve always had a fear of having my voice heard. Growing up, being told, you know, hey, you have nothing to, you know, you’re being called stupid quite a bit when I was a kid. Love that…
Mike Bruce 19:46
the things we do to people and we don’t even realize, right? Geeze.
Amy Nubson 19:50
So I always felt like I never had a voice and I’m now in my 40s and finally learning my voice and that’s why I love coaching, and I love business, because I get to get out and meet people. And the same is true for travel. I can’t wait. I’m like, almost excited for the new people I get to meet next year or in my future.
Mike Bruce 20:16
Yeah, build that tribe, the new tribe coming along and they all pile together. And then you have a network that you build that you can reach out to one friend and say, hey, so and so’s coming to visit. I know you don’t know them. But, listen, I know them well, and they’re good people. You’re gonna like them. And you can just, you kind of build this web of, of all these friends all over the world and it’s just a fun thing. So
Amy Nubson 20:37
Yeah, and it’s so much fun. Like I have a friend right now in LA who’s creating a short film, and I’m so proud of him, and he sent me the soundtrack I didn’t even realize he’s saying in the soundtrack, and like, that was amazing. And cannot wait to be able to share the movie with the world. Yeah. But yeah, it’s just cool things that you get to be a part, that you never would have thought was possible. I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and never thought I’d have friends in LA, you know, it just did not. Like, that wasn’t a possibility to me when I was a child or young adult, um, but now it is.
Mike Bruce 21:18
Yeah, I agree. And so my story is, with the kind of insecurities and fear of traveling, it’s all really similar for me too. So, I grew up with a family who did not travel, partly because we didn’t have much money, but also my dad was raised that you know, you’re a homebody, you stay a homebody. So he took that same mentality and then kind of instilled in us. But when he instilled in us, he instilled it like it’s, he had fear of travel, his father didn’t but he did. And so that kind of passes on, you know, when we have a fear that passes on to our kids, and that’s, that’s something to be very aware of. I don’t have any yet, but I’m trying to just keep note of all these things that I have to work through as an adult, you know, from insecurities, all these different things, and then you wake up one day, you wake up one day and your hero, your dad, you’re like, oh, oh, he’s just like insecure about a lot of stuff, you know, and he doesn’t even realize it or for whatever reason, that’s just how he is too. So. So you try to work through these things by just, you know, paying attention, and to to how they were instilled. So, I grew up being scared to travel, but I always wanted to. I was always so jealous of people that were able to. Not bad, jealous, I just wanted to have that same courage, is what it was for me. So I’d see missionaries at church and I was so excited that you know, we’d have these guys from Jamaica come into our church and just the biggest smiles and the best stories and they were helping people all over the world and, and then you know, missionaries that we would send out to other cultures. We had a little church, but we were really blessed to be right next to a place that trained missionaries and it was really cool. So I got to be around that my whole life even though I never got the travel. So all that did was instill in me that I just wanted to travel. I just had to figure out a way to and thankfully my wife Kim, her family has always, they just go to Myrtle Beach every year. But to me that was huge. So I started out my travel pretty much going to Myrtle Beach with my wife. Another year I went to Canada with a friends family. Just a little trips that you jump in the car and go. As my wife and I were together longer, they invited me on a cruise one year for New Year’s and that was like, that was one of my first times going out of the country.
Amy Nubson 23:45
International, oooh.
Mike Bruce 23:46
Yeah, yeah. And thankfully we didn’t have to fly International. We just flew to Florida and jumped on a boat but it was still that, and then when we got married, we decided, Okay, we’re going to go, my sister in law was going to get married in the Bahamas, so we got married just a month before her. So we waited for our honeymoon to go to the Bahamas and then we just jumped on a plane and hit a couple different islands in the Caribbean.Well we went to St. Lucia, essentially, for like the main place we stayed and we were so nervous, and so scared. And I was, aw, it was so nerve wracking. Like, it was just amazing though. It changed everything about us. And from then on out, like we just would randomly pick a time to travel and just, we just wanted to so like, we have a friend that’s Spanish from, his family’s from outside of Madrid, and he was supposed to go on a trip with us. We planned a big 18 day trip, several years back and he couldn’t go. His green card expired or something. Something happened his green card, and he’s like, listen, if you’re gonna book it, just book it because I don’t know if I’ll be able to go. We spent 14 of those 18 days in Spain alone making our own way And that, that more than anything, literally changed our entire personalities and everything. It just made us better people. He was able to visit us for the last four days, and that was so much fun. But he was like, he actually was in tears the first day when he saw us just handling ourselves in a coffee shop, ordering food ordering drinks. And he actually looked at us spoke Spanish looked at the waiter and spoke English. He was so tired and so mixed up.
Amy Nubson 25:27
It is amazing how much you have to overcome when you have language barriers or you’re not, like, it’s like the first time you use Uber or something like that.
Mike Bruce 25:38
Yeah.!
Amy Nubson 25:39
It’s such a, like, you’re afraid of the unknown. And when you travel, there’s so many unknowns, and there’s so many unpredictable things that happen. some good, some bad and the ability to learn how to adapt is so much fun. It’s sometimes scary in the moment, but you’re like oh, I did that
Mike Bruce 26:00
But as soon as you adapt and as soon as you decide that you’re going to make that choice, the floodgates open, so for us the same day we booked that trip to Spain, the flights for Spain. First of all, it was an amazing time to to book. There was some, you know, worldwide, a bad event happened, the prices dropped tremendously, but we booked those flights for like $300 using points on a credit card. We also that same day, booked a trip to Israel for a 10 day trip to Israel for like, it was like a quarter of the price of what it should have been, or less, it might have been even less than that, and like, it just, the floodgates opened we just started booking vacations every chance we could. If we could go somewhere for for a few days we would. You know just drive somewhere to see friends, if we could jump on a plane to go to LA for for like four days for a conference, we used any excuse we could to go somewhere. And we started using Airbnb before we went to Spain. That was just one more step.
Amy Nubson 27:01
Man so much more affordable too
Mike Bruce 27:03
Aw man!
Amy Nubson 27:04
What experience to have.
Mike Bruce 27:06
Yeah, huge! And that was, so that’s like another morph, another adaptation of our travel abilities was, holy crap we’re gonna stay in some random person’s house. How do you do this? And then the next step was staying at an Airbnb out in LA, in Venice, that was literally some guy’s spare bedroom. You know, you walk out in the morning he’s smoking a joint on the couch because it’s California. And he’s like, you want some coffee? We’re like, yeah, and he wouldn’t even order, he wouldn’t even make coffee. He had like, he ordered it from Uber Eats which that’s a whole other thing, you know, like a new step. So funny, you know, and, and
Amy Nubson 27:44
It’s really interesting the people you can stay with in AirBNB’s.
Mike Bruce 27:46
Yeah, and that guy. That guy now is one of our friends. I was actually texting him after you told me you were going out to Venice or out to LA. And he said all you got to come back and visit. So we go to the same exact place in Venice, and now we stay for free. It was a guy we used to pay for to stay at and now we get to, you know, that’s traveling it does that for you.
Amy Nubson 28:05
It opens up different doors and, it really teaches you a lot about who you are as well.
Mike Bruce 28:12
Yeah. And, and you’ll hear a lot from me about the health side of travel because for my wife and I, we, she didn’t have as many health issues as I had but she, once we got married she started gaining weight and like, once she quit, she was a gymnast in high school, she quit that, she started putting on a little bit of weight. We got married, we both put on a lot of weight. Myself, I had all kinds of health issues that I didn’t realize were health issues, right until I got healthy enough that they went away. And, but I always had an eating problem. I always had different you know, weight issues, I’d go up 20 pounds and come back down. But then I started just climbing once I got to college climbing in weight and it just I fought and fought and fought and, I went to college for business and realized like, you know, they don’t actually teach you anything in college. That’s a podcast for another day. My goodness. Save your money and Go travel the world you’ll get a much better education.
Amy Nubson 29:02
I think college is for gaining weight. Honestly. I think I gained a lot of my weight in college too, crazy. And you don’t know how to cook for yourself. You’re like, yay pizza tonight? OK.
Mike Bruce 29:15
Nooo. They just give you the worst food too when you’re on those plans. It’s a buffet every single meal and like yeah, I’m not gonna stop eating are you kidding me? So like I grew up poor I didn’t get this much food at home. We got beef-a-roni and mac and cheese. So. Off brand at that. I went to college for business and I just realized I wanted nothing to do with being in an office for my work and I wanted nothing around that. So my whole life, my wife has had a really good job and has done really well. She right away found what she loves, in human resources. And for me, it never made sense to me. I didn’t think God put us on this planet to be in an office and work eight hours a day every day and commute to and from a job that, you know, half hour to an hour commute every day. It made no sense to me.
Amy Nubson 30:08
That’s why I work from home.
Mike Bruce 30:10
Yeah, yeah. So I’ve always had weird jobs that didn’t quite pay the bills, but got me closer to it and that, you know, thankfully my wife has a job that helps with that tremendously and she’s always wanted me to find something she loved as much as, that I would love as much as she does. So as I, as we progressed more in our health, and I learned more about health. I realized all I ever talked about was health. All I ever talked about was primal, paleo living and like out outdoors, lifestyle kind of stuff, minimalist workouts, you know, I’m not a big fan of being in the gym 20 hours a day. That’s ridiculous. I want to be as close to a natural state of human being as I can be. And one day my friend, one of my friends just said, Dude, did you ever think about being a health coach like, you’ve changed my life.You’ve changed so and so’s life, you know, your life’s totally different than what it used to be. You know, I’m 60 pounds lighter than I was and I maintain it with no trouble. And so he finally put that bug in my ear and I realized like, wow, that really is something I should be doing. And the whole Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss travel thing came back to me because the idea of being able to live in a culture and learn that culture makes so much more sense to me than anything else ever has to be able to go around and understand and learn people, learn about people and why cultures are, you know, why do Americans work 40 hour week minimums, and have two weeks of vacation when every other culture works 40 hour week Max and has minimum one month vacation? You know? What causes that? Why are they just as productive as we are? Or are they as productive? So all these things made, just made me think and want to improve and I just got hooked. So to back back up to the whole missionaries when I was a kid, that was another chance I got to travel was when my church started sending people to Honduras for mission trips. They were like, well, we can do one week or two week. And I said, Okay, what do you need? Do you need people for two weeks? And they just said, Yeah, you’re coming two weeks period. So talk about immersion. Oh, my goodness. I did that two different times. And there’s only a handful of you that first week and no one in Honduras speaks English. Not where we go. So you get to be lonely You get to feel actual loneliness for a week. It’s horrible and amazing. So all these things just, they make you who you are and travel, I think more than anything, travel can make you who you are. If you’re open to saying hi to someone, open to asking the waiters at restaurants, hey, what’s your favorite place to eat? Not just what’s on Yelp. What’s the most popular thing for tourist? You know? We’re going to have so many tips in the coming, in the coming podcast. I’m so excited for some of the stuff we’re going to talk about.
Amy Nubson 33:02
Well, and I do think that’s really true about traveling to is you’re not around the environment you’re used to. It forces you in a way to cut out of your comfort zone. And it’s amazing for me, I’m a big people person. I love talking to people, but I don’t know people. Sometimes i kind of withdraw a little bit. After a while, I’m like circling in the house and Avery is like, you need to get out and talk to people. You’re like a caged animal in here. You need to go out. He’s like, let’s go get a cup of coffee. And I’m like, great, you know, just to talk to the barista. And I remember one time, you know, we were in Pensacola, Florida, and she’s like, you were like the nicest snowbird. Thank you, you made my day. And we were talking about recycling because all I did was ask her like, Hey, where can I recycle? I can’t find a recycling bin anywhere here. And it led to a great conversation. And it’s great.
Mike Bruce 33:58
When I have a question, like, I’m not shy. And you know that.
Amy Nubson 34:01
No, not at all.
Mike Bruce 34:01
like, I’m definitely not shy. If I have a question, and I’m talking very specific questions, I ask a lot of people. Which is like one of the best ways for me to make friends when I travel places. So, I love mezcal. I think mezcal, it’s like a tequila, but more craft and more smoky and flavorful. I will make a friend, I mean, if I go somewhere, I’m just like, hey, do you guys have mezcal? Or do you know where there’s a mezcal bar, I’d love to do some tastings, and people, when they have a niche passion that they want to talk about, you just made a friend for life. And it’s just really cool. So, so if you have a question, when you travel, and you want to find friends, take whatever your hobby is, and try to find it in the place you’re traveling to. It’s really cool. I mean, it doesn’t matter what country you’re in. So
And that’s the great thing about being there for a while, like Avery and I, we love art. We love painting. We love crafts, you know, we were able to take some art classes of some techniques we’ve never done before. And it was just fun. You know, they were in there with kids, there was adults and it didn’t matter what the age was, but it was fun, like we were working with hot waxes. You never know what you can actually do. And experience. And yeah, they weren’t beautiful by any chance, but it was so much fun to do.
And a new technique, something new to try when you’re just bored at home, thats neat. And, so, guys, we have so many things we want to talk about. And you can tell it’s not hard for us to do that with each other.
Amy Nubson 35:37
Nope, not at all.
Mike Bruce 35:38
We’re going to have in the description, send us an email, you know, find us, find our website, find our email address in the description, and send us things that you want us to talk about when it comes to travel, whatever it is. We’ll research it if we don’t know it, and we’ll look for guests to have on. Different people to talk to that can really bring expertise to whatever the topics are so to wrap this up and just to say thank you for tuning in. Again, this is Gettin There with Mike and Amy. You guys have a great day and Amy, you want to say anything else before we go?
Amy Nubson 36:13
Nope. And just, I guess I do sorry.
Mike Bruce 36:16
Yeah
Amy Nubson 36:19
Don’t be afraid of travel or getting out there and experiencing something new.
Mike Bruce 36:25
Do the small things first. Make a little local buck bucket list and make sure on the weekend you go to a new restaurant or you go to a new park. Start from there. Start reaching out to further and further places. So, Alright guys, this is getting there with Mike and Amy. Have a great day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai