Coming to you from the TravelCommons desk in Nashville, TN, almost two years since wrapping up the podcast with episode #200. In those parting comments, I said that if there was a next iteration of TravelCommons, it would probably be written — a blog rather than a podcast.
And so here it is, words without the voice.
The New Tagline
I also said in my sign-off that the focus of NextGen TravelCommons would shift a bit, tweaking the tagline from “more about the journey than the destination” to “as much about the journey as the destination.” Because as I finally accept reality and drop the “semi-” modifier from my “retired” status, the destination now matters.
When I was traveling for work, the destination was a means to the end — some place I had to physically get to so I could do what mattered — the meeting, the sales call, the presentation. But now that I don’t have anything to sell or present, it’s the destinations that matter. And I get to choose them; places I actually want to be in — to experience them; to enjoy them.
What “Retirement Travel” Really Means
What first comes to mind is what retirement travel isn’t. It doesn’t mean unlimited budget (at least not for me) or completely ignoring the journey — the logistics and the mechanics of getting to the destination. Without the shield of the corporate travel budget — other people’s money to buy my way out of a jam — getting the logistics right is even more important than before.
Instead, I’m learning to leave behind those travel habits I’d built around constraints that no longer exist. I’m no longer travelling to hit other people’s schedules — having to do what I called in the podcast stupid travel; itineraries like Chicago on Monday, Toronto on Tuesday, London on Wednesday, Zurich on Thursday, landing back in Chicago at Friday midnight — so I could minimize the time away from home and family. And smacking the alarm at 0 Dark 30 is now a rare exception rather than the bleary-eyed rule.
Running on my own calendar gives me the flexibility to optimize for serendipity — though that doesn’t feel like something you can actually do, plan for a happy accident.
Flying up to Maine for Christmas, we booked our usual Southwest itinerary through Baltimore (BWI). Weather was great for mid-December; everything was fine in Nashville, Baltimore, and Portland, and everywhere in between. So why was boarding delayed? My travel senses twitched. Eventually they announced what I expected — the plane was broken. The part to fix it wouldn’t show up until after lunch. No problem, they said. They’d put us on the next flight to BWI… but we’d miss our connection to Portland. Not to worry, though; they’ll put us on the next Portland flight, leaving us with a nice, leisurely eight-hour connection in BWI.
Where’s the happy accident here?
Before we boarded our new BNA-BWI flight, we texted friends in Annapolis. They were parked curbside when we walked out of BWI. Saved from walking multiple iterations of the BWI Cardio Trail, we had time for a much less healthy crabcake lunch seven minutes away at G&M Restaurant and then beers at Guinness’ Open Gate Brewery. Two weeks earlier, we’d said to each other “When are we going to get together again?” Serendipity — and Southwest Airlines — made it happen sooner than any of us expected.
Leaning Into Flexibility
Back in July, I was trying to plan a family trip to Hungary while also fitting in a trip to Michigan for a friend’s wedding. I knew our Hungary itinerary would need two stops — from Nashville to a US gateway hub and then from a European hub to Budapest (BUD) — and couldn’t figure out how to squeeze in both the Michigan up-and-back and the double-hop to BUD.
Then the epiphany hit: my old travel reflexes still wanted to book stupid itineraries.
Now that I own my own calendar, I don’t have to do that. Instead, we flew up to Detroit (DTW) for the wedding, spent what was effectively a four-day layover visiting friends and searching southeast Michigan for the best Detroit-style pizza (our vote – Loui’s Pizza in Hazel Park). After that, we then flew out of DTW, a Delta/SkyTeam international gateway, to Amsterdam (AMS) for a quick hop to BUD.
What seemed hard was actually easy once my old road warrior id gave way to my new reality of retirement.
What To Expect Going Forward
I’m not quite sure yet, which long-time TravelCommons listeners will not find unexpected. I’m still thinking way too much about travel; just trying out some different ways to talk about it. Here’s how I’m thinking it’ll go:
More About Destinations: I’ve done a bit of this in the past —blog posts about trips to Santa Fe and Tucson, podcasts about trips to Holland’s tulip festival, Italy, and Louisville. I’ll do more of that, skipping the Top 10 lists (which Google and OpenAI can do better than me), keeping the “here’s what mattered, what surprised me, and what I’d recommend to you if we were sitting together at a bar” flavor. Stories in the pending queue: a Gulf Coast Mardi Gras road trip, a bike tour through Albania, and Thanksgiving in Mexico City.
Trip Mechanics that Matter: Long-time listeners may (justifiably) be thinking “What else can you say now that the TSA is finally enforcing Real ID.” Very fair. But now I’m less interested in road warrior skills, like how to most efficiently navigate O’Hare, and more interested in the stuff that can sneak up on regular travelers, like how to navigate the growing thicket of electronic travel authorizations (ESTA, ETA, ETIAS).
Honest Recommendations: If I recommend a place, it’s because I’ve been there and would go back, and think that you should too. Not because they sponsored the post or because it showed up on some “Top 10” list.
It’s All My Words: No sponsored posts. No AI-generated posts. For better or (mostly) for worse, I will have written everything you read here.
You can find all this here on TravelCommons.com, on the RSS feed if you’re enough of a propeller-head to figure out apps like Feedly, or subscribe to the newsletter on Substack. I’m aiming for a twice-a-month rhythm, but we’ll see. I might still throw in some audio now and again, but my focus will be on the written.
In the meantime, if you’ve got questions about a place I’ve been or topics you’d like me to dig into, let me know — in the comments below, by email at comments@travelcommons.com, or ping me at @mpeacock on X/Twitter or @travelcommons on Instagram.
Leave a Reply