Luci & Mike at Machu Picchu
Enjoy Luci & Mike’s travels. Follow @1000fights.
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“Marry the right person. My grandmother told me to marry someone you could spend the rest of your life talking to at the breakfast table. I did. “
You met in the third grade. Do you remember what your initial thoughts/reactions were upon meeting each other?
Luci: Mike and I grew up in the middle of nowhere. So when new kids came, it was a big deal. I remember seeing Mike in second grade when he moved to our school and thinking, “What a scrawny looking kid with an ugly head gear.” My first real memory of Mike is him taking a game away that I was playing with during recess in the third grade.
Mike: I can’t remember that far back.
A reader of your blog commented “I’m single, but reading your posts make me hope to find someone to travel and fight with. =)”
Why do you think they said this? What makes traveling as a couple unique compared to traveling alone or traveling with a friend?
Mike: Comments like this make it all worth it. Granted, no one else in the world is going to find someone as perfect as Luci…so just give up. We started our little blog with the hope that our story would inspire more couples to leave their kids at home with grandma, and spend some quality time together discovering a new place. We encourage couples to renew their relationship by exploring together.
Luci: I was so excited to see that post! What a great comment. When you travel by yourself, you get to be the boss. When you travel with friends, it’s all fun all the time. But when you travel as a couple you have to discuss, fight and then compromise about what you are going to see, do, and eat. It’s like real life except you are somewhere different!
You take turns in planning where to go. In what ways are your personal travel choices usually different?
Mike: Luci and I are very similar in our interests. We both have a passion for history, culture and off the beaten path locations. I do tend to pick some of the more extreme locations (see Amazon Jungle & Swaziland). We do recommend that couples take turns picking the locale. If you have to compromise on a location, then both of you end up going to a place you don’t want to go. Be open to new places and ideas, you will learn a lot from your spouse’s choice.
Luci: Well, when I pick the location, we actually stay in places with running water and clean sheets. I don’t like roughing it and Mike has hauled me some places that I would have never picked on my own. Mike tends to be more adventurous in his choices. My criterion is simple: amazing food, breathtaking scenery, historical significance, and ability to walk around without feeling like someone is going to mug you.
What’s the most romantic place you have ever visited? Why?
Luci: Easy. Paris. Everything about Paris speaks love. However, I don’t feel we ever get that when we are there because Mike doesn’t do public displays of affection (PDA). I end up watching a lot of other people have PDA and yell at Mike for not kissing me in public.
Mike:That’s really a hard one. So many choices! I would have to say Tuscany, Italy. We stayed in a little bed and breakfast there. It was out in the countryside, on a cedar lined drive. The B & B was on a hillside overlooking vineyards and orchards. After checking in with our welcoming hosts, we took a stroll at sunset along an old country road. The sunset was incredible! The sights, smells and company were perfect. Words cannot describe the intense beauty of that evening. I wish I could bottle that and share it with every couple.
Thinking back to when you first started dating and your relationship today - In what ways has traveling together impacted your relationship?
Mike: Much like every country you visit, you get a passport stamp, imprinted on my mind forever are these wonderful adventures with my sweetheart. One of our favorite shows is the “Notebook”. Without giving the storyline away for those unfortunate people that have never seen the show. The crux of the movie is the husband sharing with his wife all of the great memories of their life. Luci and I have had some wild and incredible adventures. Memories have been made together that we will never forget…ever.
Luci: It keeps us married. I don’t want to divorce because I’d miss next year’s trip. Seriously, it’s the only time in our year where we can unplug from work, our kids, and life at home. I get to remember why I married Mike and see some great sites at the same time!
What’s one place in the world, where you could see yourselves living for a very, very, long time? Why?
Mike: China. I am little biased. I speak Chinese and love the: food, culture, history, people and food. Candidly, I think that I could live just about anywhere. We chose to live in the Pacific Northwest. It is a great place to raise a family.
Luci: Hmmm. That’s a really good question. I love living in Idaho. It’s home. But if I could live somewhere else for a very long time, I would want to live in Slovenia.
What’s the secret to having an awesome marriage? : )
Mike: The secret to an awesome marriage? I wish I knew. Marriage is a lot of work. I admire couples that have been together for 40+ years. Do we realize what an accomplishment that is? There are a couple things that I have learned along the way: 1) Marry the right person. My grandmother told me to marry someone you could spend the rest of your life talking to at the breakfast table. I did. 2) Be the right person. Marriage takes hard work. You must constantly try to be a better spouse. Never take your loved one for granted.
Luci: Uh, why are you asking us this? I think we have a good marriage, but we are in search of a great marriage. My advice is take time to be together as a couple. Kids grow up. Jobs change. Friends move. But if you focus on your marriage, you can weather life’s changing circumstances. So go take a trip without your children!
Luci & Mike kayaking at Hilton Head.
Anna & Dave at the 10,000km mark
Visit Anna & Dave at “permacyclists”. Follow @permacyclists.
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”We came around a bend in the thick of the forest and Dave saw ahead of him Anna stopped and mumbling something and pointing at the side of the road and there it was! A gorilla! One of the 300 or so left in wild! It was unbelievable.”
Church bells are ringing in Guadalajara, it must be 9:00…
Yup! : )
Thanks so much for letting me chat with you this evening.
Your about us page says that you two met in Mongolia. That “We were on the same plane from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar and we fell in love when, across ten rows of sleeping Mongolians, 35,000 feet above the Gobi desert, we made eye-contact and smiled.”
Who approached who and what did they say? : )
so, we made eye contact on the plane, and smiled at each other - I (Dave) smiled at Anna and she smiled back.
Then at baggage claim I was looking all around to find the cute blonde, and I didn’t see her. i saw her backpack go around the carousel and then disappear though, and then finally I spotted her in the corner, reading her Lonely Planet…
I went over and talked to her and asked her if she knew where she was going - I didn’t.
So I talked to her first, but what I later learned was that she was faking reading her LP so that I would talk to her.
Anna knew exactly where she was going and was just pretending to stall for time.
So I spoke first, but only thanks to her ruse…
lol! That is too cute.
Yeah, it’s a funny story, we forget it sometimes.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “Before Sunrise”?
Nope! Should I netflix it?
It’s a couple who meet on a train and then spend the night in Vienna wandering the city talking. He is American (Ethan Hawke) and she is French and when we got back everyone made us see that movie.
it’s okay, nothing exceptional, but they are in Vienna, where we lived after we first met, so it’s a funny film for us to see. And it is eerily similar to our own story…
You spent 16 months cycling through twelve countries – How did cycling vs. driving a car or taking public transportation, change your overall travel experience?
Tremendously! There is nothing like cycling and we could go on for hours about what makes it so great. In general though, you are traveling on the same level as the local people - especially in Africa where few people can afford private cars.
And so people are much more open to you and approach you and since they generally think what you’re doing is totally crazy they’re curious and ask lots of questions.
And then also, when you’re cycling you’re limited to how far you can pedal in one day -100km maximum for us really - and so you stop where you need to stop, not where the guidebook says to stop.
As a result, you spend a lot of time in areas where tourists usually never go - and for good reason of course, there’s nothing “to see” there. But what you realize pretty quickly is that “nothing to see” doesn’t mean anything, there are people living there, it’s their whole universe, and most travelers miss it totally.
Anyway, if you haven’t cycled somewhere, you don’t know it really, that’s our feeling on travel!
Did you meet other cyclists?
We only met 5 other cyclists in our whole 16 months in Africa.
There are lots out there in other parts of the world, but Africa isn’t so popular in the cycling crowd.
But the ones we met were very hardcore - three of them had done over 100,000km, one of them had been living on his bike for 9 years at that point.
Oh my goodness..just finished an hour run and am feeling like a slacker…
An hour run is hard! Cycling is easy compared to running! And besides, no one starts out saying you will bike a billion kilometers.
Every day you just make it to the next village and soon you find it’s a bit easier, the hills aren’t so steep, and you roll along.
And then you realize you’ve had 6 hours of exercise, you’ve been outside all day, and that in the space of 24 hours you’ve had the best and worst moments of your life.
Must of been incredible.
it’s incredible, yeah, totally.
You must of worked up an appetite!
oh yes, we ate a TON!
Favorite meal you enjoyed?
In Mozambique, they make a stew of casava leaves, coconut milk, peanuts, and sometimes shrimp. and it’s served with “sima” which is a sort of hard maize meal cake (like a thick polenta), which is a staple all through eastern and southern africa.
Matapa it’s called! it’s delicious, best food we had the whole trip
A big part of what you two are doing while traveling is trying to understand issues facing the world right now and then trying to make a difference - - In your opinion, what is a big problem, that most people aren’t really aware of?
Hm, interesting question…
Anna thinks that most people don’t really appreciate the degree of the destruction of the environment. This is what struck us most in Africa, seeing that in the least developed continent, where you would think things would be relatively preserved, that still the forests were being cut down, the fields were becoming deserts. And then you realize, once you know what to look for - once you know what a healthy ecosystem is and what an unhealthy one is - you see it everywhere. The planet is sick, and most of us live lives that are so divorced from nature that we dont realize it. For us, this was the biggest revelation of our time in Africa. (Dave agrees - like a good husband).
The environmental destruction we saw there is present everywhere, in every continent, we just need to learn how to see it. Traveling through the southern US you see kudzu growing everywhere, and there is a massive drought now in texas, and the list goes on and on. It’s not just Africa, it’s everywhere…
What’s a phrase that you learnt in Africa and used quite a bit?
There are a few phrases we picked up that we still use actually. One is Mzungu, which is a Kiswahili word to refer to foreigners and white people in general. You hear this constantly in the parts of Africa where we were. “Mzungu how are you!” is like the national anthem in some countries. We got used to it though, and now we say Mzungu all the time, which is nice since most other people don’t understand it.
The other phrase is “pole pole” which is also Kiswahili and which means “slowly slowly.” It’s something people will say whenever you need to be careful, or just to say there is no need to rush. Pole pole is for us such the African approach to life - work hard, take things seriously, but no need to rush, things will happen as they happen, when they happen. A great mantra for travelers!
How is traveling as a couple different than traveling by yourself?
We have both traveled independently, in fact we were traveling alone when we met. Since then though, it’s been mostly traveling together. I think we couldn’t say one is always better than the other, but they work for different phases of life. When we were younger and wanted to go out and see the world and sort of “find ourselves” I think traveling alone made more sense, it’s more intense and pushes you in a more personal way. Now though that we’re older and our interests are more in understanding the political / environmental situations of the countries we’re visiting (and especially now that we’re meeting and filming environmental organizations on our way down to Rio), it’s much easier to be in a couple. It gives you someone to talk to about what you’re seeing, a sounding board for ideas and the like. It also makes traveling for long periods easier in general - we’re each other’s family, so we’re always home when we’re together, so it’s not so bad to be on the road for 16 months, or now 20 months. It’s like that song: “Home is wherever I’m with you…”
What is one travel memory from your time in Africa, that’s particularly special to you?
A memory that is particularly special to us… There are so many! Every day, especially when you’re cycling, is so intense that there are moments of bliss and moments of horror sandwiched together.
There are many people who offered us hospitality and kindness along the way out of nothing but the warmth of their hearts, and we remember each of them with such fondness and gratitude. I suppose though that if there was a sort of “epic” moment that we will never forget, it was in Uganda, biking on the worst road ever through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. This is where Uganda’s gorillas are, and tourists come and pay about $1,000 all together to see them, which is way beyond the kind of budget we have. We thought we would take the public road across the park just to see the tropical forest though, which is spectacular. Everyone we met assured us that we wouldn’t see the gorillas of course, they are so few, and they would be on the other side of the mountains at this time of year, and on and on. Some people who lived there had only seen them once in their lives, so we assumed we wouldn’t and just went to bike through the park. But the roads are atrocious and the local people, who know that tourists spend more money than they will see in their lives just to spend 45 minutes with a gorilla, were not very welcoming, chasing us and grabbing at our bags and demanding money. It was the hardest cycling of the trip, though the forest was so beautiful that the moments we were thick in it we forgot all the difficulties. It was raining too of course, it always is at such moments.
Anyway, on the second day, we came around a bend in the thick of the forest and Dave saw ahead of him Anna stopped and mumbling something and pointing at the side of the road and there it was! A gorilla! One of the 300 or so left in wild! It was unbelievable.
We parked our bikes farther on and watched from a distance and took some photos. There was one by the road, and then another up in the hillside above us, and another we could hear downhill a ways. They were all grunting to each other and eating leaves. It was amazing, and we were alone there with them until the park rangers came and shooed us on - Mzungu can’t see gorillas without paying $1,000 it turns out.
We didn’t mind though, it was such an incredible experience.
Dave & Anna at the southernmost point of Africa
