How to Fly With Your Bike Like a Pro

Posted on January 18, 2017 by Syd Schulz

A break from our usual programming to tackle a question I get a lot — do you have any tips for flying with your bike?

After flights to four different continents and 7+ countries in the past three years, and only a few disasters, I have learned a thing or two about how to bring your bike on a plane. Here is my attempt to organize all that accumulated wisdom into one post, in a more or less sensical step-by-step process.

Bike and Osprey Packs all ready to go. Also, a cat.

Step one. Choose an airline and decide whether you’re going to try to dodge the bike fees or not.

Flying with a bike internationally and not paying fees is possible — you can cram all of your stuff into two bags weighing less than 50lbs…wheels in one bag, frame in another, clothes and everything else stuffed around the sides, and travel internationally for *free. We have done this numerous times, and if you’re really that broke (and we were really that broke), it’s great. But there are some serious disadvantages here, namely you have to get each bag to be less than 50lbs which is harder than it sounds, especially if you’re going on a few month trip which we often are. Also, with many airlines now offering only one free bag internationally (and none domestically), this strategy barely saves you any money. And this make-you-pay-for-everything trend is only going to get worse. Also, there is the matter of moving around the airport with two bags, plus a carry-on, which, unless you can find a luggage cart immediately, results in an awkward game of leapfrog that inevitably pisses off everyone behind you in the customs line. But it may be worth it to you to save $300 roundtrip, in which case check out these wheel and frame bags from Ruster Sports.

Now that Macky and I have slightly more than zero dollars of disposable income, we find it way less hassle to just pay the bike fee and get on with our lives. Plus, traveling internationally, we’ve found that other countries are way less organized about actually charging you the bike fee — and international airlines sometimes have way lower fees so if you check in with, say, Lufthansa, instead of American, on your way home you may not have to pay the fee at all. Also, even in the U.S., airline staff are often confused about what to charge you. For example, we once checked two bikes in with American in Albuquerque and only got charged for one. Whoopee!

If you’re traveling domestically within the U.S., try to fly on either Southwest ($75 bike fee), JetBlue ($50 bike fee) or Frontier ($75). These airlines make traveling with a bike super affordable. However, if you’re stuck flying a big carrier within the U.S. (American, United, Delta, etc.) the bike fee will probably be $150 – $200, which is utterly egregious for a short flight. If you absolutely can’t get out of flying with one of these carriers, and you can’t just drive to your final destination, definitely check out BikeFlights.com. There are some downsides to BikeFlights — namely, the bummer of being without your bike for a few days on either end of your trip- — but it’s certainly a better option than paying $200 to get your bike from SFO – DIA. (BikeFlights will probably still cost around the same as the bike fee from Southwest).

Casual packing scene in the hotel room less than 3 hrs before international flight. We made it.

Step Two. Pick a case for your bike.

Cardboard box or fancy bike case? Honestly, if you’re not planning on flying with your bike often, a cardboard bike box is totally fine. You can get usually get one at your local shop free of charge. In fact they may try to give you ten. Cardboard boxes are also great if you have a complicated itinerary once you get to your final destination, because you can ditch the box and get another when it’s time to go home, as opposed to having to tote a case around for your entire trip.

There is an advantage to having a bike case, however, and it’s definitely a worthy investment if you travel with bikes more than once every few years. Simply put, it’s way easier, faster and more efficient to pack your bike into a case. The process is streamlined, and there are pockets with zippers which means you’re way less likely to have a pre-production-literally-the-only-one-in-existence endcap fall off your wheel and disappear forever. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

We use Shimano Pro Mega Travel Case which has a frame but a soft exterior, so it can still can be folded up pretty small for transport once you unload your bikes. They also have wheels, which makes for a superior experience to dragging a cardboard box around the airport. Soft cases are definitely where it’s at — hard cases are bulky, impossible to store and, as far as I can tell, pretty unnecessary.

Step Three. Pack your bike.

Macky and I can now pack (and unpack) two bikes in about half an hour. Here’s a little video of me showing you how to pack a bike IN ONE MINUTE —

In case you don’t like videos, the steps are basically as follows —

Remove handlebars
Remove pedals.
Remove your brake rotors and pack them in cardboard so they don’t get bent
Remove and protect derailleur.
Put down your dropper post (or shove your seat post into the frame if you don’t have a dropper).
Mount bike in frame (if you have a case).
Zip tie the ever living shit out of any loose parts you don’t want to lose when the TSA paws through your stuff.
Let the air out of your tires.
Pack other stuff around your bike.
Cover any remaining pokey bits with foam packing material to avoid scratches.
Zip everything up and good job, you’ve done it.

A few things to be aware of — technically you aren’t allowed to fly with CO2 cartridges. I say technically, because we just pack them into plastic water bottles which somehow throws off the TSA’s super advanced CO2 cartridge detectors and they go unnoticed. The only time this didn’t work was in Thailand, which is ironic considering how much more intense US security is [supposed to be]. The main point is if you do decide to risk having TSA steal your Co2 cartridges, DO NOT leave them in a tool pouch or backpack because then you risk having your entire pouch or pack taken away by security. (I really hope this tip doesn’t get me put on some sort of a list.)

The TSA also isn’t super fond of tire sealant, and there’s nothing more annoying than showing up at a race and realizing your tire sealant has been ~~stolen~~ confiscated. I’m not entirely sure what the issue here is, but apparently Stan’s sealant contains ammonia, which is a no-no, and Slime’s old sealant was inconveniently named TNT, which makes the TSA nervous for some reason (because if you’re going to bring TNT on a plane, obviously you’re going to label it?!!?!) To get around this we just remove the labels. Apparently mystery liquids are fine.

Also, if you’re going to do this a lot, it’s worth investing in a semi-accurate scale to weigh your bags. Otherwise you will inevitably be unpacking and repacking in the check-in line which is not a great way to make friends.

Step Four. Go to the airport and check your bags.

This is theoretically the easy part but it can be a massive pain in the ass if you haven’t followed that last tip in Step Three and weighed your bike bags. Technically bike bags can be up to 70lbs for most destinations, which sounds like a lot, but really isn’t once you start adding in helmets, spare parts, extra tires, etc. We usually end up with half our tires in our carry-on for this very reason. Sometimes you get lucky and they don’t weigh your bags. Sometimes you get someone who makes you repack your entire bag because it’s 0.4lbs over the limit, and you nearly miss your flight.

Killing time with the selfie stick the one time we arrived early enough at the airport to get bored.

Step Five. Arrive at your destination and collect your bike.

But what if the airline loses my bike? People worry about this a lot and I get it — bikes are expensive and we love them and it is heart-wrenching when something happens to them. But shit happens. Bikes fall off bike racks going down the interstate. Bikes get stolen. And probably, sometimes, airlines lose them. But your odds of having your bike lost or crushed by an airline are pretty slim. Something like less than 1% of all luggage gets lost and that’s INCLUDING all the “lost” luggage that eventually makes it’s way back to its owners, which, as far as I can tell, is nearly all of it.

So, if you don’t see your bike pop out on the carousel, DON’T FREAK OUT. For starters, it’s probably going to come out at a separate oversize baggage spot (which is sometimes miles away from the normal baggage carousel) and it will probably be one of the last things out, just ’cause. Of course, sometimes bike boxes come out on the normal carousel — there seems to be no discernible pattern here — so you just have to wait and see. This might sound weird, but I love it when the airline loses our bikes because then they have to deliver them to our final destination which means that really awkward bus/train trip with two bike boxes just got way easier. Every time my luggage has been “lost,” it has shown up (and been delivered directly to me) in less than 24 hours. Sometimes this is annoying (like that one time I had no toothbrush in Thailand) but other times it’s awesome (like when we didn’t have to shove two bike boxes into a 1988 volvo and they arrived only four hours after us).

If you’re still worried, I seriously recommend purchasing insurance on your bike. I’m in the process of doing this (after my little stolen bike fiasco in April), so maybe I’ll write a post once I go through the options and figure out what makes the most sense. From my preliminary research, this seems like something that is fairly affordable and would make a ton of sense for anyone who travels with expensive bikes (which is probably literally all of you, if you’ve made it this far).

Step Six. Leave the airport.

For the love of all that is holy and whatnot, try to remember that you will have bikes with you when you make your arrival/return plans. This is something that Macky and I are not so good at and it has resulted in entertaining scenarios like strapping bikes on top of cars and also that one time Macky had to run up and down a flight of stairs with a 70lb bag on his head TWICE, while I was fending off a pack of bums, and then we basically had to jump on a moving train with all of our stuff. That was fun.

Now that I think about it, this was the same day as the bum/train fiasco. Jeez.

All this being said, bikes are tough. They survive being chucked into creeks and off boulders, so they will survive being stacked by airline employees or strapped to the top of your car. It’s all going to be okay. The real key to traveling with your bike is to not get unduly stressed out, and just enjoy the opportunity to travel and see the world. Bringing your bike on a plane is no big deal and the reward…

Step Seven. Go ride somewhere awesome.

Is totally worth it.

Shredding in the snow and mud in Scotland.

…and the sun in Argentina.

Freewheel Finance: The Power of “Faking It” Mindfully

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Syd Schulz

According to google analytics only about 2,000 people read this blog on a monthly basis, which means that about 10% of you are also sending me emails asking how the bleeping hell I afford to do what I do.

Fair enough. Point taken. Everyone can relax now, as I have written a blog post.

In fact, I’ve decided to start a monthly(ish) series called Freewheel Finance, with the hope of clearing up some of the confusion and proving that it is actually possible to be a freelance athlete/writer and travel the world while simultaneously feeding oneself and [generally speaking] paying bills on time.

Back in November, a reader emailed me requesting that I write a blog post about “how I make ends meet on the road,” which made me realize two things. A) People are super curious about this and B) my blog makes it look like I have my shit together WAY better than I actually do.

I think my response to this email was something along the lines of “if I manage to pay my credit card bill at the end of this month without going into debt, then I will most certainly write that blog post because if I pull that off I might actually be qualified to tell other people things about money and while I’m at it I should just add some fancy initials to the end of my name like Syd Schulz, F.F.W., for fucking financial wizard.”

Spoiler alert — I paid off my credit card bill for that month and for the three subsequent months. And this year, I’m on track to actually make something close to a living wage. So I guess it’s time to write that blog post.

The theme of this particular blog post is “faking it until you make it” and how that works from a financial perspective. I know at least three of my relatives are cringing at this statement, but hear me out. I’m not saying goof off and pretend you know what you’re doing until a big pile of money falls into your lap — I’m talking about intentional, mindful faking. I’m talking about doing what you want to be doing, doing it well and doing it the way you want to do it — even if you’re not getting paid. Yes, I’m telling you to work for free. I know, I know, haters gonna hate, probably big time, but here’s the thing — if you want to build a living out of doing what you love, and you expect to get paid for it, you have to prove to people that you can do it well — or, in some cases, that there is a real need for what you do.

(In case you’re thinking I’m crazy, I didn’t pull this whole “work for free until you get paid” thing out of the ether — listen to this guy’s TED talk.)

2014 was my trial year. I told myself that if I ended up broke and destitute and borrowing money from my parents after a year I would go get a real job. But for one year I was going to throw all my energy into doing the things I wanted to do — traveling, racing bikes, writing — and see what happened. Here’s a brief summary of how I survived 2014. It’s not very glamorous or impressive. In fact, it’s a little bit pathetic. But remember, it was all about “faking it.”

I started the year with about $6,000 in savings from my college job. I signed up for a new credit card, which got me 30,000 American Airlines miles and my flights to New Zealand and South America. My savings lasted through early June. From then on I survived on a few freelance writing gigs (around $2,000), the money from selling off a lot of bike equipment and other possessions (another $2,000) and a generous loan from the Bank of Boyfriend ($1,400 thanks Macky I love you!). For most of this time I either lived in a van/tent, at Macky’s parents’ house or at my parents’ house. By scrounging, hoarding money and spending every cent I made before it even landed in my bank account, I was able to afford plane tickets to Italy and Thailand. When I wasn’t traveling or begging for freelance gigs to pay off my credit card bill, I was doing the following things, largely without financial compensation:

– Writing a lot of blog posts
– Figuring out social media and social marketing and building a following on twitter/instagram/facebook
– Riding my bike A LOT
– Networking with sponsors and making new connections in the bike/outdoor industries
– Representing sponsors in exchange for free (and sometimes discounted) gear
– Writing blog posts, posting social media updates and taking photos for sponsors
– Racing my bike nearly every weekend for an entire summer

It was brutal. It was stressful. It was easily the best year of my life.

And it paid off…

In 2014, I earned $200 riding my bike (and spent don’t-even-ask-how-much on bikes). 2015 will put me just shy of $7,000.
In 2014, I made about $2,000 as a freelance writer. In 2015, through a combination of freelance writing, social media consulting and copywriting, I should make around $9,000.

So no, I’m not rolling in it. I’m still spending every dollar that comes into my account (usually before it gets there. More on living “ahead of the curve” in a future post). I still spend the latter half of every month wondering when I’m going to get paid and if it will make it in time for me to pay my CC bill. My income has gone up, but so have my expenses (hello, Enduro World Series), and I’ll probably be selling off a lot more bike stuff to try to close that gap. Oh, and I’m still going to be doing a lot of work that I’m not getting paid for, because I’m still trying to build a career out of nothing, and it’s a bike-racer-eat-bike-racer kinda world out there.

This strategy requires a certain amount of financial and emotional risk. Good bye stability, hello roller-coaster. I get not everybody wants to live like that. But I would also argue that, in the long term, the “build-your-own-career” plan is no less risky than a lot of the options recent college grads are facing in 2015. Throw all your energy and time into a corporate job that you hate and that may dry up by the time you turn 25? Make minimum wage bussing tables while you spend all your time (and money) trying to get interviews for dream jobs that 10,000 other qualified people are applying to? Spend [another] $50,000 on grad school? Or spend a few years scraping together freelance work, working remotely, living on next-to-nothing and create your own job doing what you love?

Obviously I’m biased, but I’m really not judging anyone — all of these decisions are fine choices given today’s over-saturated and hyper-competitive job market. But the important thing to realize is that they’re all risky [i.e. I’m not actually crazier than you]. Maybe in 1975 you could get a master’s degree and be guaranteed a lifetime of employment, but it’s not 1975 anymore, and all three of these options are equally likely to blow up in your face (and also equally likely to work out great).

This isn’t a “get-rich-quick” plan. In fact, it isn’t a “get-rich-ever” plan. My goal is not to make heaps of money, but rather to have heaps of fun, ride lots of bikes, have lots of adventures and be fulfilled by what I’m doing. But I’m not nearly as big of a dirtbag as some of you may think I am. I do have career plans; they’re just a tad unconventional.

So, for everyone who’s been dying to know how I’ve been “making it,” you now have the truth. I’ve been faking it hard, and now I’m sorta making it.

If you make a living doing what you love, leave a comment — I’d love to hear your strategy. And let me know if there are any particular topics you’d like me to cover in a future post!

By the way, I’m going to Italy… (and I can’t afford it)

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Syd Schulz

I’m going to Italy, by the way. That’s kind of what it feels like right now.

An afterthought.

Oh hey, I almost forgot, but I’m going to ITALY tomorrow. (Erm, today, technically.)

They say (and by they, I totally just mean Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project, which if you don’t know about you should, because she’s one rad lady) that anticipation is a huge part of happiness. So, fully enjoying a trip involves anticipating it, getting excited, making packing lists, making plans, etc.

In the past I have always been a huge planner. I love guidebooks. I read travel blogs (I better, right?). I use apps like Trover to make list after list of things I want to do. I even wrote this article for Matador Network about why planning is just as much fun as traveling.

But this trip? Well, I’ve kind of blown it in the planning department. Actually, it’s more than that — I’ve blown it in the “getting excited” department. This is not to say that I’m not excited to be going to Italy. I certainly am, on a logical level. However, a combination of factors have prevented me from actually feeling that excitement on a true, emotional level. They are as follows:

1. I have been running around like a crazy person for the past 2.5 weeks. No, make that all summer, but especially the past two and a half weeks. For example, this is what has happened in the past few weeks: I did a five-day mountain bike race, drove four hours, flew to Las Vegas, attended the five-day bike trade show/expo, Interbike, went to a shitload of a meetings where all sorts of wrenches (mainly good, but still stressful) were thrown into my plans, flew back to Durango, drove more, packed up everything I needed for Italy, drove to Denver and took Macky to the airport at 5 am on Thursday. And now, apparently, I’m going to Italy. Whoop-de-fucking-do-just-tell-me-when-I-can-sleep.

2. There are still a few obstacles remaining between me and Italy. In other words, I have the world’s worst flight. Because I am broke and therefore always buy the cheapest flight available, I have an 18-hour-layover in Brussels. Now, I like ol’ Bruxelles just as much as the next person, but it’s still a city and more specifically a city in which, to my knowledge, I have no friends. This is the part where, if you are reading this blog and you happen to be in Brussels, you say, OH HEY I WANT TO TAKE THIS BLOGGER OUT TO DINNER and you email me pronto at syd.schulz@gmail.com. I will be there Saturday at noon through Sunday at 6am.

At least I have this elephant pillow…name suggestions in comments, please!

3. This trip represents a serious changing of gears and possibly a full-on identity crisis. Here’s why: I’m going to a writing conference in Sicily where I will be part of a workshop and the workshop will be workshopping the book I wrote last summer. Have I mentioned that I wrote a book? Probably not, because I haven’t thought about it since February, when I submitted my application to to this workshop. I kind of got distracted by the whole bike racing thing and how I didn’t totally suck at it. And then I went to Interbike and received a few offers, that, while tentative, make it look like I could be a full-time professional athlete next year, albeit a poor one. I’m not sure why being a writer and being a pro mountain biker seem like such huge conflicts to me, but they do. Possibly because they are both extremely absorbing jobs. You don’t just stop being an athlete when you finish a race. And you don’t just stop being a writer when you put down your pen. They’re both the kind of jobs that invade your dreams and I guess I’m not sure I will have the emotional energy to do both. Now, I suppose, is kind of the time when I try to reconcile that. And that’s sort of stressful. Like, hey Syd, figure out your entire life in the next three days, ready, set, go.

4. And lastly, I can’t afford this trip. Both bloggers and athletes are notoriously bad about talking about money. It’s much easier to just gush about all the awesome places you’ve been and all the cool things you’ve done, and leave people to speculate how on earth you afford it. So how do I afford it? Well, the honest answer, at least at the moment, is I don’t. Or, I do, but by riding a wave of hope. Hope that things will come together before my next credit card bill, or, in other words, hope that the people I wrote things for MONTHS ago and who owe me $500 will get their act together and pay me before I murder them or die of starvation. That’s the appalling thing about being a freelancer — you budget as well as you can and then one person doesn’t come through and leaves you totally in the lurch. My temptation to call them out by name on the internet is overwhelming, but in the name of professionalism (ha), I will resist. The point? If it weren’t for what I’ve dubbed the “boyfriend-bailout” I would be flying to Europe with $48.76 to my name. Awesome, that’s like 5 euros, right?

I have complete faith that when I step off the plane in Palermo, I will feel that unmistakable buzz of being in a new, unexplored place. I will fall in love with travel all over again. I will find the spirit of adventure and new experience. After all, it’s never failed me yet. And I think also, that, as it has so many time before, travel might provide me with some answers.

How do you get excited and “in the mood” before a big trip? And, equally pressing, what should I name my elephant pillow?

This is What It’s Like to Live in A Sprinter Van for 11 Weeks

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Syd Schulz

Also could be titled, this is what it’s like to drive 5,000 miles and live in a sprinter van for 11 weeks with two smelly boys and eight bicycles, but my web designer would object to both the length of that title and to being called smelly.

When you hear about people living out of a van, it’s usually a couple, or maybe a couple and their dog. In extreme circumstances, a toddler might be involved. You don’t often hear about TWO couples living in a van. That’s because, by all logical considerations, it’s a terrible idea. However, that’s what we did, and a few stressful moments aside, we had a pretty awesome summer.

Before anyone gets too concerned, Macky and I slept in a tent, because no Sprinter van, not even an extended one, sleeps four. Especially after you put eight bicycles and a full workshop and an air compressor in the back. One of these days (when this whole blogging thing starts to pay off big, amirite?!), I’m going to buy my own van and it will have wood panelling and homemade curtains and all sorts of other evidence of female nesting, but for the moment, the van belongs to Sean and is therefore basically a man cave on wheels.

So, here’s a brief summer overview, mainly photos, to give you some idea of what it’s like to live out of a van.

The Sprinter took us to some pretty awesome places.

We spent a lot of time staring at the open road…

Our campsite was usually a little chaotic. With two coleman stoves and a propane tank, we could whip up some pretty elaborate meals.

Sometimes it rained, and we cooked in the back of the van.

Sometimes there were mosquitoes. Note my outfit.

Sometimes we ate dinner in the middle of the road, because there were no other humans within a ten mile radius.

In case of naptime emergencies, the Sprinter can kinda sorta sleep three….

We took very few showers and the ones we did take tended to be cold. Sorry Macky, for posting a picture of your naked bum on this site not once, but twice.

When you drive a ~25 foot van, it can be hard to find a parking space so sometimes you have to improvise.

In addition to our two Coleman stoves, we had a Jetboil Sumo for super fast morning coffee creation. Nothing quite like drinking a cup of strong coffee and watching the first sun beams hit the Moab redrocks.

With very little internet access, we had nothing to distract ourselves from the beauty that surrounded us.

Photo: Sean Leader

Do you live in a van or have dreams of doing so? Share your thoughts below!

Out of the Pacific Northwest…and Into the Desert

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Syd Schulz

We spent ten days exploring the beautiful, misty forests of British Columbia. And then we drove 20 hours to Moab. So, you know, that’s a contrast.

It’s kind of like out of the forest and into the frying pan, literally. Whoever decided that doing a bike race in Moab in August was a good idea….oh wait, that was me.

I’m not going to write a “things to do in British Columbia” post because a) I hate posts like that and b) our trip through BC was kind of like a cheese sampler. As in, go ahead try all these delicious cheeses and if you want more, well, YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY. And obviously you’re going to want more.

And I really, really wanted more. I’m already planning an extended trip to the Pacific Northwest — it will involve a camper van (because I’m over being wet in a tent) and it will take several months. This trip really reminded how much I HATE rushing — I want to explore BC the way I did New Zealand. Slowly, thoroughly. Because I think I might fall in love. Or maybe that already happened. Yes, it’s true, I might be in love with a place that rains 300 days a year.

This, of course, prompted a bit of an existential crisis. Earlier this year I wrote a post titled “10 Reasons to Live in the Desert” and it’s one of the most popular posts on this blog, go figure. When I wrote that post, I sort of thought I had myself figured out — I was a desert girl. Albeit a desert girl who grew up in the Midwest and went to school in the Northeast and who hated any temperatures over 85 degrees fahrenheit.

And according to that post, everything the desert has going for it is basically the opposite of the British Columbia.

The desert has 360 days of sunshine and no mosquitoes and no humidity.

During our ten day venture through BC, we had seven days of rain and mist. We had lots of mosquitoes, one flooded-tent disaster and a lot of laundry that refused to dry. The van now smells like the worst variety of wet dog and Macky and I don’t smell much better (Sean smells worse). It was basically everything I love about the desert, blatantly reversed.

Still, I loved it. Because this:

Photo: Sean Leader

And this:

OOPS.

This whole dilemma reminds me of the scene in Juno where she tells her parents that she’s pregnant and her dad says something along the lines of “I didn’t think you were that kind of girl” and then Ellen Page says, with all the wisdom of a prophet, “I don’t know what kind of girl I am.”

Or something like that. We all know how good I am at quoting movies. Regardless, DEEP STUFF.

The point? I don’t know what kind of girl I am. I might be just as into coastal rain forests as I am into deserts. Maybe I belong in Taos, maybe I belong in Squamish. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere at all. Traveling is a little bit like trying on clothes, only you’re trying on places where you might want to live. Once you’ve seen a lot of places, it’s tempting to combine them in your head and create the perfect home in your head — like, the sunshine of Taos and the soil of British Columbia, plus the coffee shop from my hometown and a roadside stand that makes Kiwi-style real fruit ice cream.

News flash — that place does not exist. It can’t exist. It’s not real.

For example, last night we camped outside of Moab and an epic windstorm deposited an inch-thick layer of sand in our tent. So, if it’s not raining, it’s pouring (sand on your face). No place is perfect, and that’s a good thing, because if there were a perfect place, everyone would be trying to live there and it would be crowded and boring. Because, frankly, perfect is overrated.

So I guess I’ll just keep moving, and keep trying places on.

Has travel changed your idea of where you want to live, or where you belong in the world? Please share your thoughts!

Flesh-Eating Bacteria and Other Minor Annoyances

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Syd Schulz

Disclaimer — I love my life. I don’t want to change a thing. I get to travel, ride bikes, and explore somewhere new almost every day. I don’t have to sit in a cubicle and I almost never have to deal with an excel spread sheet. (Except when I do and then I throw things.) I have very few complaints. However, every now and then I have a conversation with someone who is all “uggggh I’m so jealous, your life sounds so amazing and romantic and I wish I were you.” Okay, fair enough, there are romantic moments every now and then, but for some reason whenever anyone says something like this, I am overcome by an urge to throw it back in their face and say “NO, NOT REALLY, SOMETIMES IT SUCKS AND SOMETIMES MY LIFE IS HARD, TOO.” I realize this is an immature impulse, probably a product of our society’s constant victimhood peddling, but it’s also kind of true.

Life on the road is not all late-night campfires and beautiful sunsets over the open road. Sometimes it really does suck. Sometimes you’re swarmed by gigantic mosquitoes. Sometimes you can’t get some important document because you have no stable mailing address and such-and-such bureaucracy will not pay attention to your constant address change requests. Sometimes you’re just tired and hungry and grumpy and totally OVER cold showers. (See photo)

Oh, and sometimes you contract a mysterious flesh-eating bacterial infection and don’t get it attended to until it gets so bad that you begin to worry that your leg might be about to fall off so you have your boyfriend drive you an hour and a half in the middle of the night to the closest open emergency care facility, which (obviously) is not that close at all.

So yeah, that happened. And fine, flesh-eating might be a minor exaggeration, but I did, it turned out, have a pretty healthy and potentially antibiotic resistant staph infection. FUN TIMES, PEOPLE.

At the risk of providing too much information, I will just tell you that my left leg developed a series of unpleasant, red pustules and then swelled up to twice it’s normal size. I also had a fever and all sorts of other alarming side-effects that prompted our late night journey to the ER. The doctors didn’t seem to think I was in imminent danger of amputation (but can you blame me for freaking out?!?!), but they did put me on a cocktail of antibiotics and drained my wounds (sorry sorry gross I know). I won’t, however, post a picture because, frankly, I don’t need to add to the reasons why google-image searching “staph infection” is a terrible idea.

I felt somewhat better the next day, as I no longer thought I was in imminent danger of losing my leg and that obviously puts a person in better spirits. However, I still had a fever and was largely incapable of doing anything. I spent the entire day flopped in the back of van while the others rode their bikes, shivering and sweating and doing the only thing my addled brain was capable of — mumbling my way through the Duolingo Italian lesson on animals. Luckily no native Italian speakers happened by or they probably would have been somewhat alarmed by the glassy-eyed, gauze-encrusted creature curled into a fetal position and muttering, over and over again, “the horse eats the apple, the monkey drinks the water.”

And while I won’t post a picture of my unbandaged wound, I do feel like I owe you this — the unsexiest picture of me to ever make it onto the internet…in the height of pathetic, the night we cracked and finally got a hotel room because I was just done with coping. I was trying to look positive for this photo (happy MRSA day!), but instead I just looked like a sick puppy.

Through this entire experience, I just kept thinking how much I wanted things to be easier. I wanted chicken soup. I wanted functional internet. I wanted my own bed. I wanted more than three dollars of disposable income.

I think the main reason I get irritated when people romanticize my life is not because my life secretly sucks. Actually it’s almost always awesome. Last week it happened to suck, but don’t we all have sucky days? Don’t we all contract the casual case of flesh-eating bacteria once in a while? No? Okay, guess that’s just me.

No, the main reason I get irritated is because this assumption is the conversational equivalent of erecting a big, stone wall. Recently, I’ve become convinced that many people don’t want to hear about the day-to-day life of a professional traveler/hobo. (The exceptions, of course, are you lovely readers of travel blogs, bless yer hearts.) People want to assume that if you’ve managed to work out a lifestyle that doesn’t involve an office or a 9-5, that you have achieved the unachievable, that you are unbelievably privileged and your life is all stars and roses and midnight campfires. People don’t want to think that you’re anything like them, because then they could be doing what you’re doing, and they’re not. The truth, at least for me, is that I am poor and I live in a tent. The truth is that my lifestyle is a choice, and one that has come at what is, for many people, an unfathomable sacrifice. The truth is that I’m a normal person, just one who would rather camp with a staph infection than give up one iota of freedom. (Not recommending camping with a staph infection. Horrible idea.)

Sometimes, we’re tired.

If you want to live on the road, prepare to eat sandwiches for dinner and to sometimes be cold and wet and miserable. Prepare to be sick and very far away from a warm bed. Prepare to be kicked out of your campsite by a park ranger at least once. Prepare to be tired and frustrated and elated all at the same time. Prepare to cry every time you have to deal with a multinational company. Prepare for your phone battery to die at the most inopportune of times. Prepare to feel guilty when you buy a beer because you know your bank account can’t handle that kind of extravagance. But most of all, prepare for the moment when all of these things happen in one day and then some stranger tells you how “jealous” they are of your “romantic life.” Prepare to smile and say thank you, because in that moment you will know that, no matter what, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s worth it for nights like this. Photo cred: Sean Leader

What would you give up in order to live the life of your dreams? And, because I just have to ask, has anyone else had a brush with flesh-eating bacteria???!?!

Danger in Durango (Also titled, Risk Assessment FAILS)

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Syd Schulz

I’ve recently accepted that I might be bad at risk assessment and this post is kind of about that.

When I started writing for the awesome travel blog GoSeeWrite, Amanda from A Dangerous Business suggested that I write about adventure travel. Because, you know, I have this reputation for being adventurous. Okay, cool, but my first thought was, Amanda, maybe YOU should write about adventure travel, because you’re the one who has gone BUNGEE JUMPING. MULTIPLE TIMES. HOLY MOLY CRAZY PANTS.

There are some things I will just never do and bungee jumping is one of them. There’s the whole heights issue, for starters, and I have a major hang-up about heights. Major, major hang-up. And then there’s the free-fall-to-being-jerked-around-on-the-end-of-a-string-like-fish-bait aspect which everyone swears is not nearly as unpleasant as it looks but I definitely DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. I mean, seriously, it looks horrible. But the truth of the matter is that nothing, LITERALLY NOTHING, could force me to jump off a 200ft platform with a rope tied around my waist. Nothing. So I tend to think of people who bungee jump as being a whole-nother-category kind of of brave.

Unrelated to bungee jumping, but Colorado is pretty!

Of course, the truth of the matter is that people rarely die bungee jumping. At least not with established companies. In fact, people rarely even get hurt. As someone who routinely rides my bike into trees at 30 miles per hour and almost always has at least stare-inducing bruise occupying the length of my thigh, I’m probably not the one you should ask for a risk assessment. Because, given the choice between bungee jumping with a company that has never, ever killed anyone, or going tubing on a river that has claimed multiple lives THIS YEAR because of abnormally high water levels, I’m going to choose the tubing. Because, you know, I’m an idiot. (Although to be fair, we did not know that anyone had died, but really that’s no excuse.)

In retrospect, our time in Durango was wrought with activities that other people would probably consider dangerous but somehow managed to not raise any alarm bells for me or any of my traveling companions. I am, however, quite thankful that we chose to do dangerous shit in Durango, as it really helps with the whole alliterative title thing.

We kicked off our dangerous-streak by picking up a smelly hobo on the side of a curvy mountain road at 10 o’clock at night. He turned out not to be an ax murderer (*phew*) but he was extremely intoxicated and supposedly legally blind . Apparently his “friends” had stolen his glasses and left him in the middle of nowhere CO between Ourey and Durango. We were rather concerned that he was going to vomit in the back seat of the van (which doubles as Sean and Emily’s bed) but we felt like good samaritans for driving him over the sketchy pass.

We did, however, deposit him somewhat unceremoniously on the side of the road when we reached the turn-off to our campsite and progressed to Dangerous Thing #2 — backing a 35-foot sprinter van down a teeny gravel road with a huge drop-off. In the dark, no less. This was probably the moment when my risk assessment instincts were working most effectively, which is to say, I was shitting myself. Sean, however, demonstrated excellent backing-up-large-vehicles skills and maneuvered us to safety before telling us about the last time he backed the sprinter down something steep and gravelly, in which the tires lost traction and he slid 20 feet into a tree. Let’s just say there were no trees to catch us in this particular situation.

Dangerous Thing #3 was the next day’s bike ride, a ridiculous descent off Kennebec Pass. I don’t usually qualify mountain biking as dangerous (when you do something every day it seems pretty normal) but the top of Kennebec is TERRIFYING. But it’s also incredibly fun and you should ride it. But be prepared for what mountain bikers like to call “exposure” and what the rest of the world calls “mind-crushing cliff faces that spell instant death.” But it’s all worth it for the views? And it’s not bungee jumping so you don’t actually have to jump off the cliff, thank god.

Photo: Nick Ontiveros

Dangerous Thing #4 was our accidentally-epic tubing experience. I’m not a huge fan of white water (I prefer my rocks to be dry, thank you, and also, breathing is nice), so for me, ideal tubing experience is, you know, calm. It should be kind of like a day at the beach only with movement. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t have to put your beer in a nalgene bottle and strap it to your tube so you don’t lose it. The occasional rapid would be okay, but our experience tubing the Animas took it a little too far.

Actually, it was completely fine until the last ten minutes, so I suspect most people who tube this river get out a bit before we did. And, to be fair, I probably would have found the last ten minutes to be fun, too, had I managed to stay in my tube. Sadly, I am massively uncoordinated so I fell out in the first big rapid and got dragged downstream, my feet and knees scraping on every single sharp, rough rock as I tried to scrabble my way back into my tube. It was about what I imagine sharing a washing machine with your little brother’s rock collection would feel like.

Then, once I finally got back into my tube, I promptly got stuck in an eddy and could not extract myself. (HEY, steering a tube is hard!!) Luckily a kayaker came along and nudged my tube back into the current with his boat. Thank you, bemused-and-slightly-annoyed kayaker. Without you, I would probably still be there, going in circles and cursing like a crazy person. At the time I didn’t really fear for my life (although perhaps I should have?), but I was a little banged up and annoyed about losing my favorite shirt and getting whacked in the face by my own beer. Goddamn you, karma, you suck.

What about you? Bungee jumping or mountain biking? How do you assess risk when you travel?

Travel the World and Stay in Shape (With Minimal Effort)

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Syd Schulz

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions that boil down to this:

You travel a lot and you talk about burritos even more. How are you not fat?

Or this:

So, you’re a serious athlete who travels. I want to stay in shape while traveling, but I hate running. HALP ME PUHLEEEASE.

I find these questions pretty amusing, because basically I’m the last person on earth anyone should be asking for fitness advice. I haven’t run for longer than 15 minutes in YEARS and every time I read an article that’s like “10 Awesome Ab-Flattening Exercises YOU Can Do in Your Hotel Room!!” I throw up a little bit in my mouth. In fact, I should probably just redirect this entire topic to Macky since he’s the only one in our relationship who can follow a training plan for longer than, say, five minutes. And he does push-ups. In the airport. Oh and sometimes this happens:

And so, while I should turn this over to Macky, I’m not going to because when I got to thinking about it, I realized that I might have some helpful advice of my own. I can’t tell you how to stick to a training plan or resist that second donut (although I think the latter might involve divine intervention), but I CAN tell you how to travel the world, have fun, and stay healthy with minimal effort. And I feel like that might be of some interest.

Step One: Find your passion and pack it with you.

This is the most important one.

Nobody (I repeat: NOBODY!) is passionate about doing push-ups in their hotel room. Not even Macky who, due to some bizarre genetic anomaly, was blessed with approximately 10 times the will-power of the average human-being. If Macky is doing push-ups in our hotel room, it’s because he’s so passionate about mountain biking that that passion has bubbled up and spilled out into other arenas of life. Or, in other words, he wants to be the best mountain biker ever and his coach has hinted that push-ups will help.

I’m not a huge fan of hiking, so I don’t do it unless I’m too sick to ride my bike. And then I REALLY hate it…

What’s my point? If you don’t enjoy something, you won’t do it. End. of. cuento. So, here’s my advice: don’t bother trying. Instead, find the thing that you actually enjoy doing. Find the thing that keeps you up at night, wiggling your toes and wishing you were doing it. Instead of trying to fit twenty minutes of “exercise” into your travel day, structure your travel around your passion. Play all day, every day. Or, whenever you can, as much as you can.

And so, if you’re a mountain biker or a surfer or a scuba diver or a skier, suck it up and pay the damn oversize baggage fees. If you’re into hiking or running or yoga or pilates, you’re in luck — your passion is relatively easy to pack.

Stairs at Machu Picchu = stellar cross-training!

If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes and thinking, but I hate ALL exercise — STOP. Travel is a fantastic time to find your passion if you haven’t already. Maybe you’ll go snorkeling in the Bahamas or spelunking in New Zealand and you’ll be like OMG THIS IS WHAT I AM MEANT TO BE DOING WITH MY LIFE. Or you’ll be like, that was horrifying, but at least I got some exercise. You can’t lose. The bottom line is this: stop looking for “exercise” and start looking for fun.

Step Two: Cook your own food.

This is as much a budget tip as it is a health tip. You wouldn’t eat at restaurants every night of the week at home, so why would you do it traveling? This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sample local delicacies, but if you’re traveling for an extended period of time, you will have plenty of time to do so without eating out every night. As a whole, restaurant food tends to be greasier, saltier and more decadent than anything you would create yourself. Not to mention larger portion sizes. In New Zealand, Macky and I bought a $15 dollar camp stove and cooked delicious, real-food meals at our campsite almost every single night. In addition to having healthier food, we also got to be outside almost all the time, soaking up all sorts of Vitamin D and whatnot.

Salmon and veggies over cous cous, cooked on a campstove!

In terms of diet, it is my personal belief that the less you agonize over food the better. Eating is not nearly as complicated as today’s nutritional science pretends. Obviously if you have serious food intolerances, Celiac’s, Crohn’s, food allergies or other issues, you will have to think more about how you eat when you travel. However, for the rest of us, the simpler the better — eat real food (i.e, things that don’t come in packages) until you’re full, then stop. See how easy that was?

Step Three: Recognize the difference between traveling and vacation.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all “real travelers do blah blah blah” on you. My only distinction here is time. In my book, vacations are under three weeks and they are an escape or aberration from your normal life. Everyone needs a vacation here and there. Travel is a more permanent state. I firmly believe it’s possibly to travel indefinitely — to vacation indefinitely? Not so much, because the central definition of vacation is “break” or “time-off.”

You will find plenty of articles on the Internet telling you not to overeat on vacation, or to do such-and-such body weight routine every morning. I am here to tell you that these articles do not have your best interests in mind. If you’re going on vacation, focus on having a good time, whatever that means to you. This is your body’s chance to recover from normal life, to relax, to explore, to do things you don’t normally do (and if that means stuffing yourself on Parisian pastries, then go for it, damnit, you’re on vacation).

If you’re traveling for long periods of time, you have to take your health into account because traveling is your real life. I think that’s the hardest thing for long-term travelers to internalize, at least, from a fitness perspective. It’s very easy to think “I’m in some fantastic new place every day, I spend tons of time doing fun new stuff and exploring, this must not be real life.” But it is, and the more you take care of your body and your mind, the more fun it will be.

Step Four: Sleep. Seriously, please just SLEEP.

There will be an urge, especially when you’ve just arrived in a new place, to stuff every minute of the day and night with fun activities. RESIST THAT URGE. Traveling, in and of itself, is exhausting. And when you’re traveling and spending all day doing something super fun (like, say riding laps at the local gravity park) you’re going to be tired. Accept it and go to sleep. And if you can, take a recovery drink. No, I’m not suggesting one of those random thick, chalky protein shakes, but an actual recovery drink that’s specifically designed to rehydrate you and help your muscles recover from a workout. And if you have trouble sleeping due to jetlag/too-much-excitement, Osmo Nutrition makes a sleep recovery drink that has saved my sanity on many a redeye flight.

Step Five: Have a stockpile of healthy, emergency rations.

I’m lucky in that I don’t usually have huge junk food cravings. However, when I get hungry, I REALLY get hungry and I become quite miserable to be around. To avoid the hangries I will eat just about anything that is available. Gummy worms. Potato chips. I draw the line at anything that is unnaturally orange. While it’s best to avoid this state of starved desperation in the first place, it does happen, so I try to be prepared. Energy bars are the best option, as they can be stored indefinitely and always be on hand when you need them. Of course, I almost always HATE energy bars so this strategy hasn’t always worked out for me. Luckily, Macky and I recently started working with Taos Mountain Energy Bars, a local Taos company that makes bars that are, GET THIS, delicious. And I’m not just saying that because they give me free food. I swear. They are basically crack, only made out of all natural, real-food ingredients. So many wins.

The bottom line is this: find something you like (and gummy worms DO NOT count) and keep a stash in your suitcase for those moments when the world seems to be collapsing down around your ears. Because, let’s be real, nothing is collapsing, you’re just hungry.

Step Six: Don’t drink like a frat boy.

Here is Macky double-fisting a Santa Fe Brewing Happy Camper and a Recovery Drink. Totally acceptable behavior.

I like beer just as much as the next person (probably more), but I almost never have more than one drink in a night. Especially not when I’m traveling and training at the same time. My body (not to mention my budget) just can’t take it. Again, this goes back to the whole vacation vs. travel dilemma. I don’t see travel as an extended holiday. It’s my life. I’m also just not someone who sees partying with thousands of strangers as a very good time. (More like nightmare.) So this isn’t a huge sacrifice for me. I think there are ways to work alcohol into a healthy travel lifestyle, but it’s important to know your own limits and listen to your body. If you get struck down with a cold the day after a night of partying, it’s not a coincidence. That’s your body saying “stop being a jerk.”

Added bonus: when you do let loose and have more than one beer, things get fun REAL FAST. Wooop woop!

That’s really all the advice I have for the moment. Listen to your body and if you’re not having fun, make some changes. Fin. If you have more questions, or would like to hear about something else in particular, please don’t hesitate to write a comment or shoot me an email.

How do you stay in shape while you travel? Do you balance serious athletics with traveling? What are the challenges you have encountered?! Please share!

Inca Avalanche (Or, That One Time I Barfed on Ancient Ruins)

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Syd Schulz

Here’s the thing about traveling — sometimes things go wrong.

And here’s the thing about traveling as a mountain biker — you are doing something relatively dangerous and strenuous and you are hauling around extremely expensive equipment so when things do go wrong, it tends to be catastrophic. Continue reading →