GenX and Group Travel (Ep. 6)

Transcript

Susan (00:00):
I'm Susan Dakota farrier, and you're listening to Travel Fuels Life.

Drew (00:16):
Hello everybody, and welcome to Travel Fuels Life, the show we share stories, tips, and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew Hanish, and we all know that millennials are the ones that are the driving force behind the digital nomadic revolution. And we also know that the baby boomers are retiring in droves, taking off in those RVs, or taking advantage of some amazing airfares and going off to see the world. But what about Gen Xers? Well, Susan Dakota Farrier is my guest today, and she just so happens to be a member of that often neglected generation, and she has decided to shine a spotlight on both group travel services for Gen Xers and the way that they travel. And she also has a travel blog out there that is devoted to Gen Xers. It is gen x traveler.com. So the MTV generation finally has a voice, and with me having planned a trip up to Philadelphia for the Christmas season, she was kind enough to drive up from her home in Maryland and meet me in the breakfast area of the Hampton Inn Convention Center located in Center City, Philadelphia. You may hear a little background noise, and that's the reason why. So we had a nice chat about Gen X traveler, and so we're going to pick up this conversation where I'm asking Susan about when she first started her blog.

Susan (01:45):
My blog went up the night before I went to my first Tex. I had heard about it a couple of weeks before. I guess it would've been 2015. I heard about it and I said, I think I need to do this. It also lit the fire under my butt to get the site up.

Drew (02:02):
So you were just starting out at that

Susan (02:04):
Point? Oh, I was. I was really, really just starting out.

Drew (02:07):
So how did you get started? Did you start doing, were you just waiting to get the blog up or were you already doing some social media kind of stuff or?

Susan (02:15):
No, actually, I wasn't doing much social media. I mean, I was on Facebook for my personal Facebook stuff, but I was a freelance writer for about 10 years at that point. So I was doing print and I started out doing just general, I wrote about women's issues. I wrote about a little bit of politics, a little bit of fashion, a little bit of health and lifestyle and things like that. And then I guess in 2011, I decided I wanted to start a travel blog. That's when it was after my trip to Egypt in 2011. And so I did that. I started the travel blog. It was just a WordPress site, and it didn't really go anywhere. I didn't really have any knowledge of how to promote it or any of that. And I quickly learned that you don't just start a blog and people will come. Right. So, so it wasn't that way. And so I shelved that for a while, and then in 2015, I decided I wanted to become more serious about it, and I guess, well, I had already started the blog. It wasn't live. I mean, I was building my site and I came across Alexa Meisler of Break into Travel Writing. She does a Travel writer's academy. And I got into the academy, and that's when I started to learn about social media and all of this other stuff that goes along with writing the content.

Drew (03:59):
Right? Yeah.

Susan (04:00):
And so you

Drew (04:01):
Really got to become a web expert after a while. Yeah. Just understanding how do I build a website? Yes. How do I succeed? And social media, where do I, yes. So did you spend a lot of time watching those videos that say how to get Instagram followers and all of that, or

Susan (04:19):
No, it's not really that because I've been part of this Travel Writers Academy since day one. I've had a mentor and I've had these mastermind groups that I go to with the other members of the academy, and we have monthly Google Hangouts and stuff like that. So we bounce things off of each other. And then of course, she has, each month she does a structured lesson, almost do it your own pace kind of thing. And so that's how I started learning is through all that. And then it just evolves from there.

Drew (04:57):
So it's kind of having mentors. I mean, you have your master mastermind group, you can contact anybody, and you're all helping each other.

Susan (05:04):
And people are at different levels. We're not all in the same spot. Yeah. Okay.

Drew (05:09):
So how, now of course, you focus on Gen X.

Susan (05:13):
Yep. Generation

Drew (05:13):
X. So how did you decide on the direction or the niche? Everybody tells you you need to find a niche, and how soon did it evolve into a niche? Was that right off the bat, or

Susan (05:26):
No? Well, with the first blog, the first travel blog I started, it was just very loosely just travel. But as I started reading more blogs, I started to realize that they were all written by either baby boomers or millennials. Nobody was, or at least nobody was admitting to being a Gen Xer. There are X bloggers out there. There doesn't seem to be as many as those other groups. And I just felt like nobody was writing, not just for me, but for people in that category that, once again, generation X had been forgotten. And they said, well, you know what? There's a vacuum here, so why not? Why not fill this vacuum?

Drew (06:18):
Well, and you know it because you live it every day.

Susan (06:20):
That's exactly right. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And that's what I say is that my blog is written for Gen Xers by a Gen Xer.

Drew (06:28):
So when thinking about millennials, the first thing I think is that, I mean, in a way, I got inspired to start traveling and doing the writing and the social media by watching them, because they seem to just take to all of that naturally. And then baby boomers seem to be, they're at retirement age, and they're following the old standard of, I'm going to wait till I retire, and then I'm going to see the world kind of thing. So where do the Gen Xers fit in terms of their travel style, do you think?

Susan (07:00):
Well, it seems that, well, they don't travel for as long. They're not like the millennials who are digital nomads and they just pick up and they just go live in a different country for a few months and then move on to the next country or whatever. Gen Xers don't seem to be doing that. And as you said, the baby boomers, they're retired, so mean, not all of them. The younger ones are not, but they will be fairly soon. So they've got the time available to 'em. But Gen X, we're squarely in the middle of careers. Not only are we in the middle of careers, but we're also, we might have college aged kids. I even have friends who have little kids, which surprises the heck out of Masons. I'm on the older end of generation X. So some of 'em still have young kids. And then there's also the people who are now raising their grandkids or at least assisting in some way with their grandkids, and they have aging parents, so therefore they just don't have the time to travel, so aren't doing these extended massive trips. They're doing weekend trips, extended weekend trips, or they also do a lot of extended family trips, like multi-generational trips. And they also, they'll use their time off that they get from their job to travel, but they aren't going for those long stretches.

Drew (08:34):
Yeah.

Susan (08:36):
And they're not doing multiple trips a year necessarily either.

Drew (08:39):
Yeah. So do you think though, that there's a point now where a lot are becoming empty nesters and maybe they're thinking, yes, what should I be doing? But then what happens when they get to that point? Do they, because they've so pushed travel into being just vacation mode kind of thing is, I mean, how do you break somebody from

Susan (09:01):
That? Well, it's interesting that you say that because, well, I'll use my brother as an example. His youngest just went off to college this year, and he, his wife have jumped right into this whole travel thing. And they didn't even do do vacations all that much while the kids were growing up, and all of a sudden they've got a passport and they're going here and going there. I mean, for the longest time, I was the only one in my family that had even had I asked for it. And I love seeing the people I love do this kind of thing to see them being able to do the things that I have had the luxury of doing.

Drew (09:50):
So you've, how much travel have you done, and did your travel really start during this three year period, or no? Were you

Susan (09:58):
Traveling a lot before that? No, my travel, well, because I don't have kids, I've, I didn't have to to worry about that empty nest and waiting till the kids were gone. I've been able to do a little bit more of it, but I don't think I really started traveling until somewhere around 2005, maybe a little before that my husband and I would go to New Orleans. We just love New Orleans. And then we started doing some cruises, and each cruise got a little longer than the last one. And what we liked about cruising was the fact that we got to see lots of places, but we also love being on the water. So that's the appeal of cruises for us. And then in 2009, my mother got sick with cancer, and she was 65 and she passed. So she passed away at 65, and she left a little bit of money. And my mother was a traveler. She loved to travel and had her whole entire life. She loved to travel, didn't always have the luxury of doing it, but she always loved it. And since she left me a little bit of money, I said, that's where I was going to spend it was traveling. And so my first trip after she died was, I guess we took a cruise.

(11:29):
It was a pretty traumatic time, so things are a little blurry. I think we took a cruise, but we may have already had that scheduled. But then after that, I went to Egypt. And when she was sick, I had a friend who was living in Egypt at the time, and I kept, one of the things I told her is that if she got better, that we would go to Egypt. And needless to say, she didn't get better. But I still went to Egypt in 2011, and that was my first trip abroad, and I went solo.

Drew (12:04):
And you went at a time of upheaval, correct?

Susan (12:08):
I did. I actually was supposed to leave on January 27th or 28th, something like that, of 2011. And on January 25th there, Arab Spring, their revolution started, and

Drew (12:27):
You pause at that point and go, what am I doing?

Susan (12:31):
I was determined to still go, okay. But the US government had other ideas. They stopped all flights. And so that put the pause on it, but then two weeks later, Mubarak stepped down, and then two weeks after that I went. So it was a month into their revolution when I went. And there were no tourists, no tourists from anywhere. I mean, I had the pyramids all to myself and all of the ruins, all the pyramids, the bazaar, I mean, all of it was me and the locals.

Drew (13:10):
I was going to say, this is probably not a, I mean, because I don't like crowds. So for me, I'm going, oh, that'd be fantastic to not have crowds. But I don't know that I want to have a revolution kick up for me to get right quick entry into here or into there.

Susan (13:27):
One of the things that it really spoiled me for though, is I got to go to these great places and have no tourists in any of my pictures. So now I get so annoyed when I'm in touristy places and the tourists are all on my pictures. It's like, get away. Get away.

Drew (13:42):
Oh, wow. So what was the feeling when you got there? Mean? Did you feel tense through any of it, or did you just feel like, I'm just going to get guided through this, it'll be fine.

Susan (13:54):
Well, the flight over was the best flight I'd ever been on because there was nobody on the plane. It was me and a couple of, I don't know. I bet there was only a dozen people on that plane. So that was wonderful. But getting, and like I said, keep in mind, this was my first trip abroad, so getting off the plane and having men carrying automatic weapons and all of that, and having military equipment in the streets and this and that, it was, it was intimidating. And they weren't letting people into the airport to meet their guests, so it wasn't like there was even anybody there to meet me on arrival. I did have, my friend was still living there at that time, and I stayed with her, but the first week I was with her, I did everything on my own, but she wasn't even there at the airport to pick me up, and they were under curfew and this and that, no, going out after dark. So it was a little crazy, and it was definitely intimidating. However, I will go pretty much anywhere at this point. I was going to say, cause yeah,

Drew (15:00):
Yeah. It's kind of like you hit the high hurdle right off the bat, and now everything just seems like,

Susan (15:06):
Yeah, when people talk to me about travel, and we inevitably hear people say, well, aren't you afraid? And I do have to clarify with people that my risk tolerance is probably higher than most people's because of having had that experience. Yeah.

Drew (15:25):
But you still made that choice to go do it even after, so there was a certain spunk in you that said, I'm just not going to let this deter me from going,

Susan (15:37):
And I'm so glad I did. It was just such an interesting time to be there. I mean, one of the coolest things that happened was my friend and I had gone, the second week I was there, we had gone to the Sinai. So we drove out to the Sinai, and they were having their first vote on ratifying their constitution. And I went with her to the polling place when she voted, and that was the first non rigged vote that they had had in over 30 years. And there was this real sense of being part of history. It was one of those moments, you knew when I tell people that I, I'll hear people who were in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down, and they think, oh, that's kind of, yes, I know that feeling, but that's the closest thing that I ever hear of people that can relate to what I'm talking about with that. Right.

Drew (16:35):
Yeah. So as you were going around Egypt, did you change your plans at all in terms of all the stuff that you wanted to see, or you just went

Susan (16:44):
For it? No, I just did it. Okay. Just went. Did it.

Drew (16:47):
So what was your feeling, because you had told me earlier, before we started that the pyramids were one place that as a child you wanted to go to. What was your feeling when you first saw them?

Susan (16:59):
They're just so much more vast than you can even imagine. They're just so massive and just, they're fascinating because the great pyramids sit right outside of Cairo. I mean, you can see the city of Cairo, I mean, from the great pyramids, and some people knock that, but I think that's kind of fascinating that this major city built up right around the cradle of civil civilization.

Drew (17:32):
Well, what's funny is that you don't expect it, because when you see pictures of the pyramids, they don't take it from an angle where you can see Cairo in the background.

Susan (17:40):
No. Nope.

Drew (17:41):
Yeah, nope. I mean, that's that three dimensional thing I talk about. Yes. When you actually go, it just feels so much different than any you've ever Yeah. Seen. Yeah. I just posted a picture of my Horseshoe Bend trip, and I had seen millions of pictures of Horseshoe bend, and when I posted my picture, I had actually taken a picture while the speedboat was going through the water, and so you could see how small that speedboat was. And a friend of mine said, wow, I never realized it was that big, because you just can't capture it in a photograph and give people that experience. Yeah. So I'm assuming that when you do your group travels, which is what your main project is, now that you probably don't look for revolutions and ways to jump people into chaos right off the bat,

(18:36):
What you're having to do is basically probably work on changing people's mindsets in terms of getting out and traveling. I know as a Gen Xer myself, I like, I'm very independent, so it's, it maybe if I didn't have the travel background, I might be nervous about doing it because I don't want to do it by myself. It's like people going to a movie theater. Some people just won't go to a movie theater and watch a movie by themselves. But then I don't have that feeling like I want to be around a group all the time. So how do you work that out to,

Susan (19:13):
Right. Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying. And I think that a lot of people feel that way, but I also think that there's some misconceptions about what group travel is and what I try to look at it differently. There are things that I don't think group travel should be a group of 50 people on a bus. That's not the group travel that I'm doing. My trips are capped at 12 people, so they're intimate, they're not huge groups. And I try to build in free time for people to explore on their own so that they don't feel like they are just going from place to place and not doing the things that they want to do. And whether that's them just kicking back at the hotel and relaxing, or whether or not that's going to see just, I don't know, go sit in a cafe or whatever.

(20:13):
I say that because that's one of those things that I like to do when I'm traveling. Let's go to one of the local places and just sit and watch people. So that comes to mind. And the other thing is, I think that one of the misconceptions also is that group travel means that you're going to stay in chain hotels and stuff like that. And that's also something that I try not to do. I want to be staying in more boutiquey places that are in neighborhoods, because I think one of the great things about travel is getting into the neighborhoods. I think that's when you get the local taste of a place, more so than seeing the sites. And that's not to say that we don't see the sites. I mean, there's a reason touristy things are touristy. I mean, there's a reason for it. It's because they're the highlights. They're the things you're supposed to say. So you don't want to steer clear of them completely. But you also want to have other experiences. Like my Mexico City trip, there's like a cooking class in that it's actually in somebody's home. It's not in a classroom, a classroom kitchen setting. It's in somebody's home. There's also a tequila tasting that's in somebody's home. So there's that kind of thing that also gives you interaction that you might not normally get with the locals.

Drew (21:45):
So when you're saying the ability, if somebody just wants to stay in their hotel room, if they're just not into drinking tequila, then that particular night, maybe they can go off and do their own they can sort of thing. Yeah. Okay. So it kind of

Susan (21:56):
Helps as long as they're there when the van pulls out. Right.

Drew (22:00):
Yeah. Yeah. I, when somebody says group travel, the first thing that I think of is probably a lot of people all having to be held up from doing the stuff that they want to do, because half the time is just herding cats and trying to get these large groups to move. It just doesn't. So that's never attracted me to that. So it's interesting to hear your change in focus.

Susan (22:28):
Yeah. I think my approach is a little bit different than some others, but that also means that my prices are a little bit higher than some of the others as well. Because you're

Drew (22:43):
A boutique experience.

Susan (22:44):
It's a more of a boutique experience. And I try to work with all local guides and people that are the area that even if they aren't native to the area, if they've been there a long time and this is the business, they've fallen in love with the place and that's why they're doing tours. Yeah. I mean, that's okay too, because that also gives a different perspective.

Drew (23:09):
So what places are you thinking of having some of these journeys?

Susan (23:16):
Well, I've got the Mexico City trip. I, I was working on putting something together for Baja, and that was going to be in February or March. But with all the stuff that's going on in around Tijuana, right, I've put that on hold. But I do love Baja, and I would really like to share that with people. So that's one of the places. I'm also working on something for Portugal. I went LA well earlier this year actually, and scouted, the scouted out Portugal. And I really think Portugal is a place you need to go now, because if you wait much longer, it's going to be so overrun that it's very trendy right now. And I think it's going to be so overrun that you don't even want to go. And that's another thing. I try to go to places in the less touristy seasons rather than going at peak season in the middle of the summer. I don't even travel in the summer. Right. Yeah. I mean, I understand that that's when a lot of people, especially people with family travel, but I don't know that that's when you are going to get the best experience. I think that you do get a better experience when there's fewer tourists running around.

Drew (24:31):
I guess this is the plus to those, especially those becoming empty nesters, because then they're not so tied down to, I can only take a trip at this time of year or take a trip at this time of year. Yes,

Susan (24:42):
Yes. Exactly. You can spread

Drew (24:42):
It out a little bit more.

Susan (24:43):
Yes. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yep, definitely. So let's see, what other trips? Oh, I think that I'm going to start working on a trip for Chile, the AA desert and stuff. I think that that might be interesting.

Drew (24:57):
You got to hit a James Bond location for me to go then. There

Susan (25:01):
You go. Yeah, there you

Drew (25:02):
Go. That's why we, yeah, right. I was talking about the other day. Yeah, because Quantum of Solace, there's the big fortress that they're in at the end is actually a astronomy building. Okay. So it's not a hotel. It is in the movie. And they didn't blow it up, even though it looks like they blew it up. And so special effects. Yeah, exactly. But that's one of those I, there's places like Morocco that I want to go. Oh,

Susan (25:29):
Morocco's really high on my list. I mean, personally, Morocco's really high on my list. Yeah.

Drew (25:36):
So that, that'd be fun. Yeah. So

Susan (25:38):
I'll let you know when I've got that Morocco trip together. Okay. It's also on my radar, and Mongolia is on my radar as well. Okay. So I also try to go to some of the more offbeat places, I guess. I mean, nobody's talking about going to Mongolia except for me. I mean, Mongolia.

Drew (25:58):
And actually that's probably a good strategy from the standpoint that those are places that maybe you don't want to just go to by yourself. You want to be at least with a small group, to have that comfort of, I'm in a place where I don't know that any English is going to be spoken, and planning might be a little bit more difficult. So having somebody do some of that for you,

Susan (26:24):
I do think that there are certain places that are more, lend themselves better to small group trips than others, and that are more appropriate to go to for small group trips. And Egypt is one of those places or anywhere in the Middle East that I don't personally would not go on a big group trip, mean people think, oh, well, I'll be safer if I go on a big group trip. But I feel that the buses and things like that tend to be targets in those places because they can do the most collateral damage. And at the same time, as a woman, if I weren't me, yes, I might not want to go to some of these more male dominated countries as a solo traveler. So that's where small group travel comes in and is perfect.

Drew (27:16):
Well, and it's a good way to get, especially if you haven't traveled a lot outside the country to get that experience, get your feet with somebody else. Yeah.

Susan (27:24):
Get your feet right little. And hopefully one of the residuals of it is that friendships get built when you're in a small, intimate group like that, you know, can establish some real relationships. And I would love to see the people that go on my trips, go on other trips together, finding travel companions, travel buddies, other people that they're kindred spirits with.

Drew (27:50):
That's true. That's one of the things I miss in terms of doing solo travel, is that I have little conversations. I've made friends all over the place, but they're friends for a moment, and then we'd never keep in touch. In fact, it's the old, somebody hands you my number, let's stay in touch, or here's my email address. And then just somehow you never seem to find the time to make that connection. Yeah, true. Having, well, just going to Texs. Sure. This was my first experience being out amongst other people who travel. And I think we all sort of generally to bond anyway, because that's what we're all about, is getting out and meeting people and seeing new cultures, and

Susan (28:38):
Well, we bond over our experiences. If you talk to some, sometimes when I talk to people who are not travelers, I shy off from telling them all the details of the story of a story because of the fact that I figure this is watching the slides after vacation, right? Yes. There was something called slides for you, millennium stuff

Drew (29:03):
Instagram now,

Susan (29:04):
Right? Yes. It's Instagram now. But I don't want to bore people, but when I'm talking to other travelers, I never feel like a boring them, and I never am bored listening to them either. So like I said, hopefully people will build those relationships around travel.

Drew (29:25):
So if somebody wants to find out more about the trips that you're doing, what, you have two websites, which way?

Susan (29:34):
I have, yeah. So there's two websites. There's my blog, and that is strictly a blog I started in 2015, like I said, and that's Gen x traveler.com. And it's written exclusively by me at this point. Anyways, at some point, maybe I'll have some guest posts. So there's that. And then there's also Gen Explorations, and that's the site for the trips. That's where the trips are. And it's Gen Explorations. It's G E N X explorations. It's not. Okay. So there's no E in there.

Drew (30:15):
And we'll put the link to it in show notes. So if you go to Travel fuels life.com and look up the episode, you'll see all the notes in there and any other links to, so you also are active on Twitter? Twitter.

Susan (30:29):
I'm on Twitter, yes. I'm on Twitter. And you

Drew (30:31):
Actually do a chat on Twitter.

Susan (30:33):
I also have the Twitter chat on the first Wednesday of each month. We do the Gen X travel chat, so hashtag Gen X travel. And that is 12 noon, 12 to one, first Wednesday of each month. And every month we have a different topic. And then I also have my community or my Facebook community as well. And well, if you just do X travel, you'll find that for Facebook, just search that, and I can also give you the link for that as well. And then I'm on Instagram as Gen X, travel traveler, gen X traveler on Instagram, gen X traveler on, actually, I'm Gen X traveler on all of them. Right.

Drew (31:20):
And you just got back from Paris,

Susan (31:22):
Correct? I was in London, in Paris. So,

Drew (31:24):
Because I was rifling through some of your photos from that trip. Yeah. And so highlights what, was there anything you went to that you would say, not enough people go to this when they go to, so that we can funnel all the people away from the Louvre over to something else so that we can get into the Louvre without a crowd?

Susan (31:48):
Well, I opted to go to La Chappelle instead of to Notre Dame. I figured they were both gothic cathedrals, and I knew that Notre Dame was going to be mobbed and La Chappelle not quite so much. And I really felt like I made the right choice in doing that. It wasn't mobbed. It's beautiful. And the money they're working on restoring it, so the money is going for that. And I understand that they also are now having concerts there in the evening. And I understand the acoustics in the place are amazing. Now, I didn't get to do that, but that's something that I think that if I were to go back, I would definitely, yeah, definitely want to do that.

Drew (32:37):
We were talking about this before, and I guess we're the only two people who have gone through the Louv in two hours.

Susan (32:43):
Yeah. Yeah. I would've spent more time there, but not my, it wasn't for my husband. Yeah. If I were traveling by myself, I would've spent more time there, probably

Drew (32:56):
Per Paris was, I had one day and boy, what do you do? And I had a list of places I wanted to go, but I did go up in the Eiffel Tower. Oh, did you? And I thought, yeah, why not? And I'm not big on, I like to say, it's not that I'm afraid of heights, I'm afraid of sudden Falls. Yes.

Susan (33:15):
And quick deaths. Yes. I totally get that. Yes. That's how I feel about it.

Drew (33:18):
So

Susan (33:18):
We're wired that way,

Drew (33:20):
Is that,

Susan (33:21):
Yeah, we are.

Drew (33:22):
So I challenge myself every once in a while. So I'll look and I'll go, why am I doing this? But then I'll go ahead and try it anyway. And it was fun. I didn't walk up. I don't know how people walk to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but

Susan (33:38):
Yeah, I don't know how many steps it is, but yeah, it's plenty. Yeah,

Drew (33:41):
It's great. Great view up there though. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Absolute. Yeah, sure. Have you been you, so you haven't No, we

Susan (33:46):
Done. No, we didn't do that now. Yeah.

Drew (33:47):
Yeah. So that's a fun one. That's one of those where I said, you know what? I'll brave the crowd. Yeah. What the heck it's worth. It's worth checking it out. So

Susan (33:55):
Yeah, there wasn't even crowds when I was there, because it was the first week in October, so the tourist season was over, and it wasn't the holidays yet, so they didn't have that crowd yet. So

Drew (34:06):
Where are you off to next?

Susan (34:08):
My next trip is to Cancun, Cancun area, not actually Cancun. So that's in January.

Drew (34:16):
And have you been there before, or

Susan (34:17):
I have not, no. Okay. I've been to Cozumel, but not Cancun. I kind of stay away from those kind of places. The more touristy places just in, not the Paris and London aren't touristy. They certainly are. But when I say touristy places, I mean places the attractions more the right that I like places that have some culture that aren't just bar hopping and this and that. Yeah, I want some culture. I want some history. I want some adventure. I like some adventure. One of my husband's friends seems to think that I am a total daredevil and doesn't know how he's married to me because he thinks I'm a daredevil. But I mean, I don't consider myself that by any stretch.

Drew (35:00):
So what would be something you have done that you would consider to be daredevil or that they probably consider devil

Susan (35:05):
That they consider Daredevil? Well, my profile picture on my Facebook, my personal Facebook is me sitting on a quad on a dune. And apparently that's not something that people my age do, which I don't don't know, because my brother races quads and so does my nephew, and my brother is a couple years younger than me. So to me, people my age do those kind of things. Zip lining. I like zip lining. For my 50th birthday, I jumped out of an airplane.

Drew (35:40):
Yes. See, now that's stretching it for me. Yeah.

Susan (35:42):
Yeah.

Drew (35:43):
So I would call that adventure. Definitely.

Susan (35:46):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping that I have a feeling that my husband for Christmas has bought me a opportunity to drive like a Ferrari or something like that. I want to do it on the open road though.

Drew (36:00):
And see, we will be posting this audio after Christmas after, so he is not going to get to hear it. Yeah. Yeah.

Susan (36:06):
He just keeps telling me that I am going to be ecstatic. So. All right.

Drew (36:12):
We'll see. We might have to get an update on that and post it on the show. Well,

Susan (36:16):
I've been dropping lots and lots of hints that this is something I want to do.

Drew (36:20):
Okay. All right. Very good. Well, I appreciate you taking the time today and giving us a little insight into Gen Xers and group travel. Thank you. And giving us a little feel for what you're doing in terms of group travel. I thank you. I think it'll be definitely something that from a standpoint of me, one of these days, I need to test the waters on group travel. But I think I would be much more interested in the small group than I would be in the, so I may be getting in contact with you soon on something.

Susan (36:55):
I'd love to have you on a trip. That would be so much fun. Yeah,

Drew (36:58):
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, great. Well, thank you very much. And I appreciate you driving up to Philadelphia. I flew up here and I was like, Ooh, who can I interview while I'm in? And you're right across in Maryland. Yeah. So not too far away. Yeah. So this is great. Yep. Well, thank you very much.

Susan (37:14):
Thank you.

Drew (37:16):
Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and head to the show notesPage@travelfuelslife.com slash podcasts. Look for episode number six, and find all of Susan's communication channels out there, including her website, gen x traveler.com, gen explorations.com, her Twitter chat link, and also all of her social media. And if you're thinking about getting out there as a Gen Xer and doing some of this travel, well, I'll tell you what, head to travel fuels life.com/shop where you can find some of my favorite travel tools, including the sturdy little bag that I take with me everywhere to avoid baggage fees. This one little carry-on is so sturdy that I took all of my podcasting equipment in there and close for four days. So this thing really holds up. It's going strong. And you can find that on my Amazon shop that is travel fuels life.com/shop. I will get a little commission off of the sale, but you will pay the same low price you would pay if you bought it directly through Amazon without my link. So I really do appreciate if you go that route and throw a few pennies my way. And until next time, have a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Life.