Travel on Repeat

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

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

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

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

At some point, I stopped rushing through airports and started paying attention to the spaces in between. Art, in its many forms, has a way of feeding you when travel finally stops feeling like work. Early on, travel itself felt like a second full-time job. I was not seeking beauty or inspiration. I was just trying to survive the logistics and push through. As I grew more comfortable, something shifted. Once the drudgery stopped demanding all my attention, I started noticing t

I'm typing this from seat 22E—middle seat, coach, somewhere over Tennessee. An hour ago I had seat 3D with the leg room and the extra width. No meal service on this flight (STL to ATL doesn't rate glassware), but still. First class is first class. Then I saw her at the gate. Young woman, late teens or early twenties, Army duffel at her feet. She was heading to Fort Benning to finish her training. When they called for pre-board upgrades, I walked over and asked if she wanted t