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Unaccompanied Miner — Houston, TX Houston is the fourth-largest city in the country, and I've seen maybe 10% of it. After dozens of weeks of healthcare consulting work, my geography runs from the Texas Medical Center north through Rice Village to the Galleria, a corridor you could drive end to end in twenty minutes without traffic, which in Houston means leaving forty-five. I know that stretch the way you know a neighborhood: where to eat alone on a Tuesday, which parks actua

Travel Unassigned - Unaccompanied Miner Link to Laluna Review The first night at Laluna Boutique Hotel and Villas, we were ready to eat like we were in Grenada. That was not in the plan. The food was good, but the menu leaned Italian, the owner is Italian and built the restaurant around it, which is his to decide. It was not what we had come to the table for. We got the local food we wanted during the day instead, oil down, roti, curried lambie, by way of the tours we had alr

Reviews - Unaccompanied Miner The bites from the bathroom did not stop itching until the Tuesday after we got home, and we got home on a Saturday. The bathroom was open air, which meant a shower with portholes looking out at the ocean and a swinging door onto a small private tub, and it also meant mosquitoes had the run of the place, more of them once the rain stopped on day two. The room itself was simple by design. A four-poster bed with canopy curtains that turned out to d

I was checking into a Courtyard in Florida, week eight of a stretch that has another twelve weeks to go. I don't drink the tap water in this part of the state. Much of Florida draws from underground limestone aquifers, and even at low parts-per-million, the sulfur comes through as that rotten-egg taste that makes you reconsider dehydration as the better option. So, I look forward to the two bottles of water that are supposed to be waiting in the room. They get forgotten more

When the House Lets You Fold A couple of weeks ago I sat in a room in Minneapolis and watched the Thrifty Traveler guys record their podcast live, a fellow wanderluster next to me, both of us leaning in like we were taking notes for an exam. I came out of that room in the honeymoon phase. I signed up for the deal alerts. All of them. Miles and cash, domestic and international, the full firehose. I want to publicly apologize to the friends and family who had to listen to me ta

If you are looking for the perfect travel credit card setup, I have bad news. It does not exist. Or at least it does not exist for any real period of time. By the time the newest card arrives in your mailbox, the math that justified adding it may already be shifting. The target is an honest wallet, and sometimes a fluid one. Every card earns its place, every tool captures value that is already being created. Like a family visit, a card should not stay past its welcome. How I

I was a month out from Grenada and had booked us in coach. Staying frugal. I looked at spending points to move up to first, the math did not hold, and I kept them. Then I sat on the reservation for a while, and somewhere in there I called Delta and put two Global Upgrade Certificates on the flight down. Not because the seat had gotten any more worth it, but because the certificates were going to expire at the end of the year, and a Global Upgrade is the most valuable Choice B

The queue outside Borough Market was fifteen to twenty people deep. We'd been walking most of the morning. We turned around and kept going. The content that sent us to Borough Market in the first place wasn't dishonest. Whoever filmed it captured something real. A market operating at its best, at a moment in time the camera couldn't date. It presented that moment as a place we could visit. The market was still there. The line just wasn't worth it for three people on tired leg

There were storage containers in the parking lot when I pulled in. A row of them, the kind that eliminate any hope of swinging in and finding a comfortable spot. I noted them the way you clock a delayed flight on the departures board. You already know how the day is going.

The breakfast attendant was seated in the corner just outside the serving area, scrolling her phone. I approached with my bowl of corn flakes and asked about milk. She looked up. "Waiting on the truck." No apology. No offer of an alternative. Just a statement of fact, delivered in a tone that told me she'd said this before. Then her eyes went back to her phone. My initial read: reasonable. Things run out. Deliveries get delayed. Grace is appropriate. But standing there holdin

What happens when a city offers you no obvious entry point, and the resistance you arrived with turns out to be less grounded than you thought.

I texted a colleague last night after finding out about their pregnancy. I smiled knowing what's coming, not the baby, but the advice. Sleep schedules, feeding routines, what worked in the car on long drives. All of it well-intentioned. Most of it worked for someone. Almost none of it will translate directly to them. They'll have to take it in, filter it, and figure out what actually fits their family. Travel advice works the same way. The first thing worth saying is that tra

Understanding the Rhythm of Travel Atlanta on a Monday morning is already bustling when you arrive. The terminal is packed, and it will remain so when you leave. No one is shopping. No one is browsing. The coffee lines move swiftly because the people in them know exactly what they want. Gates fill in sequence, not all at once, and the rhythm of it is almost mechanical. Check-in to security to concourse—the same choreography repeated by thousands of travelers who have done it

The check-in text arrives and the planning starts. Not packing. Not logistics. The other kind of planning, the kind that has nothing to do with getting there and everything to do with what happens after you land. Chicago is the fifth city in my consulting rotation, about a year and a half into doing this full time. The framework was still forming then, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. Thirteen years and eight to ten stints later, Chicago operates differently than anyw

The first night in a new city has a specific feeling. Unfamiliar. You've chosen a hotel off a booking site, cross-referenced reviews against the company per diem, and arrived somewhere that checks boxes without yet having a personality. You know your room number. You don't know much else. The plan from that moment forward is to correct that, one detail at a time. The first week is intentional. You pay attention to the route from the airport. You get your bearings between the

What I Learned Being On the Receiving End Garry mentioned the washcloths casually, maybe a day into the weekend. We had been talking about the blog, and he said he had made sure to check them before I arrived. Not new purchases from Bed Bath & Beyond, but not dollar store thin either. Good quality. The kind that signal someone thought about what respect looks like at the detail level. We both laughed immediately. He had read the washcloth post before it went live. He is one o

The airplane is not designed for sleep. That's not an oversight. It's the architecture. Seats recline just enough to feel like a gesture. The cabin temperature swings between too cold and not cold enough, depending on where you're sitting and how recently someone opened the overhead vent above your head. The drink cart comes through at intervals that bear no relationship to your sleep cycle. And the air itself, pressurized to simulate an altitude somewhere between six and eig

Part one of this series was about the system. This is the system's inventory. Over thirteen years I have spent more than I should chasing the perfect travel kit. Influenced by influencers, drawn to bright shiny things, and occasionally convinced that the right gear would make travel feel like something other than work. Some of those purchases earned their place. Most didn't survive a month. What follows is what's left after that sorting process, offered with one condition: th

The first year I traveled full-time, I brought everything. Two of most things, three of a few. My backpack was a contingency plan with shoulder straps. Somewhere around year four, I started pulling items out instead of adding them in and the trips got smoother, not worse. What began as overpacking slowly became a system, and the system turned out to be the thing that actually reduced the anxiety the overpacking was trying to solve. Most of us run the same check before leaving

The park was closed when I got there. I'd spent the day working at a West Palm Beach hospital and found a brown sign pointing toward Jupiter Lighthouse on my drive back to the hotel. By the time I arrived, the gates were locked for the evening. I parked anyway and found a trail running along the perimeter. It took me through scrub brush and palmettos, giving me glimpses of the lighthouse through the vegetation. Angles I wouldn't have seen if the park had been open and I'd wal