The last words
closing remarks from a Big Trip Influencer Family
One final newsletter as we near our one year anniversary of embarking on our big trip, and have now been home about 5 months.
We still love living in Asheville, North Carolina. Our home was mostly spared from Helene damage (although in the last week our refrigerator, dishwasher, A/C, and master bathroom have given us varying degrees of trouble). We anticipate our daughter’s arrival imminently; Liz has now reached term and we can’t wait to meet her…although we still haven’t named her - suggestions welcome! Chester is thriving stateside – spending lots of time with buddies, collecting disgusting cicadas, and singing up a storm. He’s increasingly equal parts irritable, entertaining, clairvoyant; not always a cakewalk but never boring. Since he has better access to the void, he gives us a sense of what baby sister is thinking and when she might be showing up.
On a vocational level, we have both picked up consulting gigs since returning home and continue to focus on the prospect of building something new or buying something existing while continuing to prioritize family life. There’s actually quite a lot going on here so hit us up if you’re interested in the details!
And now, one final interview1 with momma and dadda BTIF:
How do you remember the experience as a whole? Would you recommend it?
Liz: It’s a mix! I was still fighting postpartum depression for the first half of the trip, and then pregnant for the second half - both of which made travelling tricky. Looking back though, I’m so totally amazed and grateful that we were able to have this incredible adventure, to have such depth of time as a family, such an unrelenting barrage of life-changing experiences. While I don’t think I’d recommend long form travel with a baby to just anyone, I’d wholeheartedly endorse pretty much every destination. I remember the pure delight of walking through the irish countryside with Chester at dawn or watching him experience the wonders of Copenhagen astride his father’s bicycle; but I also recall being exhausted a lot, and feeling stressed that I was wasting the gift of the trip when we’d arrive in a place at a loss for an itinerary. In the perpetual motion of it all, I wasn’t able to ground myself very often which eroded some of the experience. I took many days for granted, and others I shed literal tears of happiness. It was beautiful and hard and worth it, and if it doesn’t meet your definition of fulfillment in this one wild crazy life - don’t do it!
Alex: A fever dreamy movie trailer with rapid-fire, confusing cuts of tasty foods, pleasant people, epic scenery, and the BTIF attempting every permutation of being curled up on all manner of undersized beds. That, and whatever our home TV’s screensaver rotating through 10,000 pictures from the trip (a curated selection from the 60,000+ I took) spits out at us.
In an effort to adopt more sincerity than I did in the rest of our newsletters put together, I would almost 100% recommend something along these lines. Given what we were looking for, I think we nailed the flavor and format more or less (Liz would probably advocate for a little more forethought and structure.) Other variants of a different family’s trip could be faster, slower, more domestic, by car or boat, involve working alongside travel, etc. etc.. but the basic recipe of taking our little, young family outside of our day-to-day context and stuffing ourselves into a proverbial magic school bus that cruised around to a bunch of different places was a special experience I frequently think about with nostalgia and (for Italy, Georgia, Japan, and Singapore) salivation.
How is life different or the same?
Liz: My relationship to objects has really shifted. At times, it was hard for me to wear the same thing every day, and entertain my son with next to nothing. So much of the pace that I’ve been keeping with work the past decade or so was predicated on the belief that I needed to earn more and more to thrive. Traveling is expensive and would not have been possible if not for our careers; but, going without the creature comforts I’d been chasing from my hamster wheel, I transitioned to a different hierarchy of need: time outside, face time with my family, decent rest, and exercise. My goals now are rooted in waking up excited each and every day, a desire certainly rooted in privilege but hopefully also a force in bringing real change to bear.
Alex: Life couldn’t be more different. Chester is obsessed with airplanes and I blame the trip. Other than that life is more or less the same. We all still get along, arguably even better than we did on the trip… but friction makes fire so now our family life is frigid and devoid of meaning. We also have a lot more space to sprawl out and make messes, which I guess is good?
What have you been up to since getting back?
Liz: Lots! We planned for a soft landing so at first I was just doing a bunch of recon on all things Asheville and reconnecting with my community. We started looking into commercial real estate, piloted an idea of opening a family forward space (kind of like this or this), and started ideating on a new version of perinatal support. I was fortunate to assist a friend in developing a GTM and SAAS playbook for an early stage product, and take the tarot, reiki, and sound healing training I’ve been dabbling in for the last few years to the next level2. I’m doing the trad wife stuff - sewed my first quilt, knitted my first sock, cooking and momming to my heart’s content. The nectar of life is SWEET!
Alex: We adopted five new chickens from our friends at The Good Wheel Farm and would welcome ideas for how to process our ridiculous surplus of eggs.
We came home wanting to start or buy a business in Asheville, and we’ve been up to some initial efforts in both of those areas. I also have dipped my toe into the reinvigorated waters of Sensorium Therapeutics (watch this space!) and I’ve been busy with a fund that invests in Asheville/western North Carolina startups. Also I have near-term ambitions to produce a very small amount of schmaltz on a professional level.
I was genuinely shocked to find that some of the good habits we developed at the tail end of the trip carried through into our back-at-home existence. For a short time we religiously held family meetings, were super organized, and ran our family as its never been run before. Eventually we regressed to our mean of mundane chaos and now we spend our days accomplishing 50% of the things we want to, taking idyllic walks at Beaver Lake, and awaiting the birth of baby #2.
What’s next for the BTIF?
Liz: If all goes according to plan, we’ll outgrow our house in a couple years when we have another baby, open a ketamine clinic, and nab a seat on City Council. Not really but maybe. We’re increasingly invested in our region, very bullish on running a fun and fulfilling business, and expanding our family. With a little bit of luck, we’ll be gearing up for BTIF 2.0 in the next decade or so, but this time traversing more of the developing world with potty trained kids capable of carrying their own luggage.
Alex: Aforementioned baby #2 and the sedentary lifestyle that she’ll necessitate. We don’t plan to leave the country for a minute and look forward to driving around to the wilds of America’s national parks. Chester has enjoyed watching this new movie about the Thunderbirds so perhaps he’ll join the Air Force.
Bonus: Interview with Chester
What’s on your mind?
Airplanes seat belts helicopters oompa loompa frere jacques take me out to the ballgame come with me cuddle me daddy bambas crackers rice balls cicadas swimming class paw patrol trains tower drawing paw patrol booty booty booty rocket all around carry you mommy baby sister coming baby sister paw patrol sleeping mimi papa grandma grandpa tita biscuit uncle melissa aunt victoria uncle alex katie babka nico nanny ice cream chocolate cicadas cicadas muddy puddles MILK!
Who was your favorite person on the trip?
Pema3
Utmost appreciate to our readers and premium subscribers for following along. Until the next voyage, this is BTIF signing off!
Thanks to those of you who submitted questions. This post already ran long so we left them out (for now…)
For the record, I’m too much of a preacher’s daughter to earnestly participate in the occult but these modalities are lots of fun and can offer helpful perspective!
This actually happened. When asked this question during our “welcome home” slideshow presentation party, without missing a beat Chester answered that our driver in Bhutan was his favorite person from the trip.
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