0:11

Every time you walk in it, you're creating an

0:13

imprint that will be there on your marriage for the rest

0:15

of your lives. So we wanted to create this huge

0:18

imprint, and to do that, we just we

0:20

decided to do this really hard

0:22

thing, which was to climb a mountain.

0:26

Welcome to A Way to Go, a production of I

0:28

Heart Radio and Fathom. I'm

0:30

Jerlyn Gerba and I'm Pavio Rosatti.

0:33

Our guest today is Joe Piazza,

0:35

an award winning journalist whose work has

0:37

appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times,

0:40

and countless other publications, including

0:42

our website Fathom. She is

0:45

a novelist of the political novel Charlotte

0:47

Walsh Likes to Win, and co author of the knockoff

0:49

and hilarious send up of women's magazines.

0:52

I read both and I loved both. She's

0:54

the host if you are paying attention to your I Heart

0:56

podcasts. She's the host of Committed,

0:59

which elves into the hilarious, heartbreaking

1:01

and inspiring stories of couples who

1:03

have soldiered through unimaginable circumstances

1:06

and still want to wake up next to each other, Which

1:09

brings us to what we're talking about Today. Joe

1:12

met her husband on a boat in the Galapagos

1:14

while on assignment as the managing editor for

1:16

Yahoo Travel. Three months later,

1:19

after five dates in New York, San Francisco,

1:21

Joshua Tree, Corsica, and Paris, they

1:23

got engaged. Terrified of failing

1:27

at her first year of marriage, Joe used

1:29

her job as a travel editor to crowdsource marriage

1:31

advice from around the world. The result

1:33

is how to Be Married What I learned from real women

1:36

on five continents about surviving my first

1:38

really hard year of marriage, hilariously

1:41

candid and raw account of her newlywed

1:43

year. Along the way, Joe lost her

1:45

dream job and learned she had a rare genetic form

1:48

of muscular dystrophy. As a way of

1:50

testing her new marriage and her physical abilities,

1:52

she set out, to, of course, climb Mount

1:54

Kilimanjaro with her new husband as one

1:57

Yeah, so, Joe, can you tell us why

2:00

you chose Kilimanjaro as the

2:02

test of the middle of your health and your new

2:04

marriage. Well, first, I have to say, hearing

2:06

this whole story set out loud, it sounds fake. It

2:09

sounds like I made all of that up, doesn't it. Yes.

2:11

By the way, sometimes sometimes when people

2:14

ask me how I met my husband, I just say Tinder

2:17

because it's easier. So

2:19

we chose to climb out Kilimanjaro because

2:22

we wanted to do something challenging

2:25

that neither of us had ever done before. And

2:27

my husband's a big traveler. I'm a big traveler.

2:30

Combined between us, we had been to something like fifty

2:32

countries. He's climbed mountains

2:35

his entire life, and I wanted to do

2:37

something that would really test both of

2:39

us, so test us as individuals and

2:41

then test our relationship too, because

2:43

I'm always looking for an out. I guess

2:45

I love that you're testing it, but after

2:47

you get married, not like as a prequel

2:50

to Well, I kind of think that a great

2:52

thing about being married is that you you can't

2:55

just run away. So I

2:57

wanted to do it after we got married, and we did

2:59

it at the tail end of our first year of marriage,

3:01

which people kept telling us the first year

3:03

of your marriage is the hardest year. They

3:06

called it the wet cement year because it's

3:08

the year where the cement is still

3:10

kind of icky and gloopy but everything.

3:12

Every time you walk in it, you're creating an

3:14

imprint that will be there on your marriage for the rest

3:16

of your lives. So we wanted to create

3:19

this huge imprint and to

3:21

do that, we just we decided to do this

3:23

really hard thing, which was to climb

3:26

a mountain. Had you already checked off

3:28

zip lining and bungee jumping,

3:31

jumping off mountains and things like that, Well,

3:34

I studied abroad in Australia. You do all that when

3:36

you're eighteen years old. So I've done

3:38

the sky diving, the zip lining, the

3:40

scuba diving. So really it

3:43

was it was the final frontier. This

3:45

was the frontry. It's hurdle for you to have to do this

3:47

together. Well, we couldn't get on the SpaceX list

3:50

Kilimanjaro. Was there something

3:52

about getting physically away

3:55

from your home where you were living at the time,

3:57

and having this experience away from

3:59

home that you thing added to it? And was

4:02

that one of the things that you said, we have

4:04

to get out of home and get out of

4:06

the routine as much as possible to do this. Well,

4:09

I think that the whole point of

4:11

the book was to really push ourselves out of

4:13

the comfort, out of our comfort zones. And pushing

4:15

ourselves out of our comfort zones meant getting

4:17

away from home it meant not just getting away from

4:19

San Francisco, but getting away from the United

4:21

States, because I think that travel tests the person

4:24

in a way that nothing else does, because

4:26

you're vulnerable and in a way

4:29

that you're not at home and you

4:31

have to get out of your comfort zone. And when

4:33

you do that, when you get there, you

4:35

can actually see a real person.

4:37

I tell people all the time, the amount

4:39

of traveling we did for the first year of our marriage,

4:42

I think equaled ten years

4:44

of fights and getting to know someone,

4:47

peeling back the layers of the onion, because

4:49

you just start to see a person for who they really

4:52

are when Because travel, and

4:54

it's I think it's best form,

4:56

isn't easy. It's hard,

4:59

little things up that you don't expect, and

5:01

so watching a person navigate that you

5:04

may see a person come out that you wouldn't

5:06

see for five years in your marriage if you stayed

5:09

at home. But then all of a sudden

5:11

they lose their job right or

5:13

you can't pay your mortgage one month,

5:16

and then you're dealing with these things. But when you're

5:18

traveling and you miss flights, or your

5:20

hotel reservation falls through, or

5:22

no one speaks the language, and you get food

5:24

poisoning. You're dealing with that stuff

5:26

right up front, right right. So

5:29

how did you go about planning the trip?

5:31

Did you do it together every step of the

5:33

way. Were you doing like a tip for tech

5:35

and a thing like I want to do this. I want to do this because you're

5:37

both season traveler, both season

5:40

travelers. Yeah, so we planned

5:42

the trip together. We plan pretty much all of our trips

5:44

together, except for the fact that I let Nick,

5:46

my husband, do all of the

5:49

airline booking. He is a miles

5:51

geek, a master

5:54

of points, so I never I never

5:56

even touch our our airline

5:58

accounts um and he's so good. I mean,

6:00

we haven't paid for a domestic flight in years at

6:03

this point. So I let him take care of all of

6:05

that. He did all of our booking, and then

6:07

I usually handle hotels and

6:09

restaurants, and I took care of finding

6:12

the different um group

6:14

that was going to help lead us up the mountain. What

6:17

was that group in Trepid Travel? Okay,

6:19

in Trepid Travel, and they were they were

6:21

great. It was a small group. How

6:24

many people were on the trip eight

6:26

eight people total? And is that a good number

6:28

for doing Kilimanjaro? I mean, is that

6:30

with the standard. So what I learned is that

6:32

these Kilimanjar trips can really run the

6:34

gamut from group size too. You

6:36

can pay a gazillion dollars to do a

6:38

private trip up the mountain. I didn't want to do

6:40

that. I think it's more fun when you have more people

6:43

to interact with. Or there's

6:45

a thirty person trip, which is just insane

6:47

because everyone walks at a different pace. Everyone

6:50

climbs at a different pace, and when you're trying

6:52

to wait for thirty people to catch up, it's

6:54

like you're hurting, hungry, angry,

6:57

sweaty kittens. Do they

6:59

ask you beforehand what your level of activity

7:01

is to pair you with people so that there

7:03

are similar abilities on the

7:05

trip at a time, precisely so that

7:08

there's a more even pace to the

7:10

trip. They do? They do? They ask you

7:12

what your physical activity is? I mean?

7:15

And so our group was mostly people

7:17

that were like us, people in

7:19

their twenties, thirties and forties,

7:22

who were relatively physically active,

7:24

but not marathon runners. Um.

7:27

Meanwhile, Nick could drink a six

7:29

pack of beer and climb a mountain the next day.

7:31

I'm a person that's like slow and steady. I

7:34

can I can run a nice mile and

7:36

then I want to I want to want to do a nice walk

7:38

and have a cocktail. So we had we had

7:40

people that were pretty similar to we were,

7:43

and so even though you were fit,

7:46

you had just discovered that you

7:48

were, in fact sick. I

7:50

did. I did. So right

7:52

after we got married, I did a genetics test

7:54

because we knew that we wanted to have kids relatively

7:57

soon. I was thirty five, I'm like, why

7:59

should we wait? And we wanted to find

8:01

out if I was a carrier from muscular dystrophy,

8:03

which my dad had recently passed

8:06

away from. And so we got the test

8:08

done and found out that I was.

8:10

And it's this rare form of muscular dystrophy

8:12

that hits you later in age. You have no symptoms,

8:15

and all of a sudden you do have symptoms. So

8:17

far, I've had no symptoms, but it was in

8:21

that way. But it was another reason

8:23

we wanted to climb a mountain, that

8:25

we wanted to do this really physical thing,

8:28

because what happens with this disease is

8:30

your muscles started degrade and you

8:33

can ultimately end up in a wheelchair. And I wanted to

8:35

make sure that we've done this big physical

8:38

challenge together that we had that kind

8:40

of muscle memory in

8:42

case it was something we couldn't do later on.

8:45

And and I also wanted to challenge my body.

8:47

I wanted to prove that I could

8:49

do this. And

8:52

I thought I always thought I was going to be the weink link

8:55

on this trip um because

8:57

I'm in perfectly acceptable physical condition?

9:00

Am I in mountain climbing condition? We

9:04

didn't really know? So

9:12

what was it like? We chose a four day

9:14

so four days? Is it? Two days up and

9:16

two days down? Is that how it works? It's

9:18

really only one day back down. It's really

9:21

first to get back down. It was

9:23

one day of kind of acclamation

9:25

and to start the climb. And

9:28

how far up the mountain do you get on that first day?

9:30

On that first day you don't go that far. There

9:32

are sherpas and guys who are

9:34

carrying your stuff or you're carrying your carrying your

9:36

stuff, but you do, just you and your back.

9:39

You've got a backpack and a water bottle. You how cold

9:42

is it hot? So

9:44

this is Africa, but climbing kilman Jar you

9:46

go through about seven different climate

9:49

systems. So strike a layer.

9:52

Oh, I mean, it's like living in San Francisco.

9:55

So you're wearing layers, you're peeling them off,

9:57

you're putting them back on. You're in

9:59

a rainforest, jungle, and then all of a sudden

10:01

you're in a desert, and by the time you're

10:03

at the top, you're in kind of an Arctic

10:06

zone, which can be below freezing

10:08

temperatures. So you're packing for

10:10

This is literally a test of everything

10:13

you would ever take on and travel because

10:15

you're packing for absolutely every ecosystem

10:17

on the planet and trying

10:20

to fit it all into a carrier in

10:22

to a tiny, little beautiful bag. Um.

10:26

Okay, so you're going up the mountain. And then

10:28

so day two, what

10:31

was it like like going to sleep at night? Was

10:33

it climbing

10:35

the mountain? I was slow. What

10:38

I realized is that I'm like not a

10:40

very good mountain climber, and

10:42

it wasn't. That was an interesting test for our marriage

10:45

and relation. It means like you can't put one ft

10:47

in front of the other, like no, I was. I was just I

10:49

got I got out of breath really

10:52

easily. I found that I was kind

10:54

of in the back of the group and Nick was in the front of the

10:56

group. And it's not it's not that I

10:58

couldn't do it, but I was. I was one of the slow were

11:00

people climbing this mountain? Uh?

11:03

And it was really great because he hung

11:05

back with me. He chose to adjust

11:08

his pace to my pace, which

11:10

looking back, is this nice lesson

11:12

because all of us are constantly going at a different

11:15

pace than our spouse and

11:17

he chose to match mine. Did

11:19

you? Was this Uh?

11:21

Okay, baby, thanks so much. Where you're like, no, no, you

11:23

go ahead. I don't want to hold because

11:26

I mean as like, you know, a strong empowered feminist

11:28

woman. I'm like, oh no, I'm fine, go get away

11:31

from me. Um. And he didn't

11:33

let me, which was also interesting

11:35

to watch to watch him be like you know what, no, I I what.

11:37

I want a beat? Can you just let me be with you? And

11:40

we'd heard stories going into

11:42

this of couples who had broken up on Kilimanjaro.

11:44

In fact, our guide had a couple on their

11:47

honeymoon, maybe a year

11:49

before we did the trip who broke up

11:51

on their honeymoon and he went

11:53

ahead of her. Her pace was slow, he didn't

11:55

want to match it, and he kept going. He

11:58

gets all the way to the top. She sees him

12:00

as he comes back down and she's

12:03

no, and she's like, we're done. Yeah,

12:06

I'm out. And apparently,

12:08

I mean the guys stayed in the guys stayed in touch, and

12:11

they did not get back together. So break

12:13

up on killing Garald. I want to

12:15

write a romantic comedy about that

12:18

one day. When there's so many metaphors

12:20

happening on this mountain. Yeah,

12:24

I feel like climbing a mountain is the best metaphor

12:26

you can have for a marriage, right, full

12:29

stop. Right, and then with all those costume

12:32

changes, the costume changes. So

12:34

when when you were climbing in there are these other

12:36

people around, how

12:39

much time are you spending just the two of you walking?

12:41

Because I've heard from friends who have climbed

12:43

it like you get into this rhythm with your breath, for

12:45

example, where you you can't really talk

12:47

anymore, and so you're just hearing each other breathe,

12:50

and maybe you kind of breathe in a syncopated rhythm.

12:52

Its interesting

12:54

things happen. Were there times

12:56

when it was just you two and the group was far ahead

12:59

or behind? Were you always with

13:01

other people around you? It was mostly just

13:03

the two of us. Because there's a there's a guide in the front, and

13:05

there's a guide in the back, so you walk at your own pace.

13:07

You're not being forced to walk with the group

13:10

the entire time, So mostly it was

13:12

really just the two of us, and it

13:14

was not that crowded, and it

13:16

felt like just the two of us climbing this mountain

13:18

together, which was a really beautiful

13:21

thing. Can you tell us a little bit about the

13:23

kinds of conversations you were having or not

13:25

having during the course of these twelve

13:28

hour walks every day and then when

13:30

you were in your lean to sharing your

13:32

sleeping bag or in the

13:34

pitch black what was going on there? Was

13:36

it learning about how to be

13:39

silent together? Were you finding that there

13:41

are a lot of conversations coming up? Singing?

13:44

So I went into this trip thinking

13:46

that we were going to have all of these life changing

13:49

conversations, right I'm like, oh my gosh, we're

13:51

gonna be walking together, we're going to be climbing

13:54

this mountain, We'll talk

13:56

about everything. And we didn't.

13:59

And I think that that's a tremendous blessing because

14:02

I think that climbing your

14:04

breath it does become labored.

14:07

You are going uphill while you're climbing.

14:09

Killman Daro after a while, after about the first hour

14:11

of climbing a day, and we

14:13

just kind of learned to walk in this beautiful silence

14:16

together. And I think that

14:18

taught us how to be quiet together

14:21

during the first during the courtship period,

14:23

in the first frenetic year of marriage, you're

14:25

talking all the time. You're talking about

14:27

what you're going to do the next day. You're making plans.

14:30

When are we gonna have a baby, or we're gonna buy a house. Do we

14:32

want to stay in San Francisco? Do you want to live closer

14:34

to your parents? And it's just constant chatter. We

14:36

live in a world of constant chatter. So

14:39

learning to not talk and learning to

14:41

be quiet together was

14:44

this really amazing thing that I think we've carried

14:46

on into our marriage now five years later. It

14:50

did start to get grueling because I'm a terrible

14:52

sleeper. I mean, I'm like the worst sleeper. And

14:55

they tell you that because of the altitude, you can't take ambient,

14:58

which is my worst nightmare. And

15:00

and so I didn't sleep, and it gets

15:02

freezing cold on the mountain at night. So

15:04

I was freezing cold, not sleeping.

15:07

I cried myself to sleep. I didn't.

15:09

I didn't want to go out. You have to leave

15:12

your little lean to that you're sleeping

15:14

in to go outside to use

15:16

the bathroom. There's these monkeys shrieking

15:18

as if they want to murder you. I didn't want to leave,

15:21

and it's pitch black out there, so you

15:23

know, essentially, I just held it all night

15:25

long, awake, freezing cold, and

15:27

so not sleeping was driving me insane,

15:30

and I felt like I was slowly going insane going up

15:32

this mountain. But then you're

15:34

walking all day long, You're walking twelve miles

15:36

a day, and you're like, all right, these

15:38

endorphins are helping me out. So you feel

15:40

amazing and terrible, and you have every range

15:43

of emotions you can possibly have. Oh my god,

15:45

it's so concentrated because all that you're doing is walking.

15:47

You're not going out to the restaurant, you're not going shopping,

15:49

you're not going to a gallery. It's like the travel

15:52

experience stripped bear down to one

15:54

thing. Walking walking, that's

15:56

it. That's it. Sorry, Can you tell me, like what

15:58

are you saying? Is it rocky? Are their trees?

16:01

Are their bushes? If you're going through these different

16:03

climates, so you're also going through different geological

16:06

and physical thing. Yeah,

16:08

it changes every day. So it starts.

16:12

It starts in rainforests. So it starts in

16:14

rainforest with these beautiful Columbus

16:16

monkeys. They're the black monkeys that look

16:18

as though they're wearing a long black cape.

16:21

They're gorgeous with these long, furry white

16:23

tails. They're about the size of Labrador retrievers.

16:25

And so they're hopping from branch to branch

16:28

above your head. And these chameleons are just

16:30

skittering around the ground in all different colors,

16:32

and it's absolutely gorgeous.

16:34

You're in the rainforest, and then you emerge

16:37

and you're kind of in this temperate forest with

16:39

these weird trees and plants,

16:41

these trees called ground cells

16:43

that look like they belong on the set of

16:45

a Star Trek planet. And

16:49

then you're climbing up into this crazy arctic

16:51

desert and and also there's rocks to climb over

16:53

all the time, and screen which is like gravel where

16:55

you walk three steps and you're pushed

16:57

back two steps, so you feel like sisiphus

17:00

rolling a boulder up the man the hill. So it's okay,

17:02

all right, So you are getting up the mountain.

17:05

What happens. Did you make it to the

17:07

top of the mountain. Did you overcome your physical challenge?

17:09

This feels like a spoiler alert, but I don't care because I've

17:11

talked about it so many times already. Like I

17:13

said, I thought I was going to be the weak link on this

17:16

trap, but I was nervous about it because I didn't want to fail

17:18

in front of my new husband. I wanted

17:20

to be this strong, empowered woman. But

17:22

I was like, I also know that the last

17:24

day of the climb, it's very

17:26

very steep, the walking is very hard.

17:29

It's below freezing temperatures, and I was scared

17:31

of it. We're approaching that last day,

17:33

we're walking through what's becoming

17:36

kind of an arctic desert zone. It's

17:38

just this completely empty landscape.

17:40

I wish we had visuals. I wish we could

17:42

show everybody what we're seeing right now and where

17:45

you were at which point of the journey. Listeners just

17:47

it looks a little like you're

17:49

on the moon. It really does. And

17:52

all of a sudden, Nick started slowing down, and

17:54

that was weird because I've never seen next

17:56

slow down, and He's like, I

17:58

don't feel good. And I'd also never seen Nick admit

18:00

that he didn't feel good, and then he sits

18:03

on the ground. And he actually sat on the ground right

18:06

next to this like rusted out

18:08

gurney that someone had just tossed

18:10

behind like a cactus or something.

18:13

And I'm like, oh wow, we could use that

18:15

gurney if you need it, and

18:18

he's like, I'm not okay.

18:21

And he, despite

18:24

my husband being in this tremendous

18:26

shape, despite being the guy who could drink a six pack

18:28

and run a marathon, he got the altitude

18:30

sickness. And again,

18:33

I hate being like it's a perfect metaphor for marriage,

18:35

but it is because this is

18:38

not what we expected to happen. So

18:41

then what happened. So he sits down,

18:43

his head is spinning, and if you've never gotten altitude

18:45

sickness before, it's kind of like the worst hangover

18:47

you've ever had in your entire life that just

18:50

hits you out of nowhere. Massive headaches

18:52

and you just can't even head ache, you can't see,

18:54

you're dizzy, you can hardly stand up. His

18:57

breathing got really labored, really quickly,

19:00

and you knew that this is what it was, and what

19:02

it was. He felt he was going to pass out.

19:05

The guy tries to give him oxygen doesn't

19:08

work, and we

19:11

just realized it was only going to get worse from there

19:13

because you just had hired to climb, Yeah

19:16

and so and hired quickly.

19:19

That's the thing, like, this is the point where the altitude

19:21

goes up so quick. And

19:23

are there other people that you're seeing stopped

19:27

on the side of the mountain. There, No, we need

19:29

to see other people because they're they're they're very

19:31

good at staggering these roots. So you don't

19:33

feel I've been I've been to places where

19:35

I'm like, oh my god, this is just crowded with tourist and I hate

19:38

this. This is not

19:40

like you had to It's just you guys, and

19:42

you have to make a decision of whether we

19:46

We couldn't. We couldn't really stay put because

19:49

we had about half

19:51

a day's worth of hiking to get back down

19:53

to the next camp um

19:55

and a few more hours to go up. But like I said, it was

19:58

a steep climb from there. So his

20:00

outsitute sickness was only going to get worse,

20:02

and he told me to keep

20:04

going. He's like, you go and

20:07

I go back down, and

20:09

you spend a lot of money to climb kill him in jar. Oh

20:11

right, So like that's the financially sound

20:13

decision. You climb the mountain. And

20:16

I didn't want to do it without him, and

20:19

I also didn't want him to go down alone.

20:23

Again, I know, to like send

20:25

him alone, and I said no, and we

20:27

sat there. We're just like sitting in the dirt, and you can

20:29

see the peak this whole time too, so it's taunting

20:31

you. The peak is just like I'm here.

20:34

You could reach me if you if if you

20:36

really tried hard enough. And I was like, well,

20:39

we're just going back down. Did

20:41

you have any moment where you were like, oh,

20:43

should I go up? Of course I did, of course

20:45

I did. I had that moment where I was like, well, I do really

20:48

want to do this, and look at me. I'm doing

20:50

so well, I'm

20:53

countering this mountain. And of course you're

20:55

thinking of all the pictures on the peak of a mountain

20:57

today you're like, you know, with your arms above your

20:59

head and doing star jump at the peak with the

21:01

wooden sign and all of that. And

21:04

I ultimately decided I

21:06

needed to go down with him. I needed to take care of

21:08

him in a way that I'd also never

21:11

ever taken care of another human being

21:14

and we went down and it was kind of great

21:17

too, because we're

21:19

not going to do it again. That was

21:21

going to be my next question. And now we

21:23

talk about it a lot. We're like, all right, how old do our

21:26

kids have to be before you can

21:28

do it again? We can do it again? And we've had when

21:30

the kids or no, or do you kids? We

21:32

did? I mean we did see families doing it

21:34

with kids as young as seven. I mean kids

21:37

are also good hikers. Even two

21:39

year old is like a scrambler. Well, I have

21:41

two questions. One, do you have any advice that you give people

21:44

who are attempting to do this with a partner?

21:46

And then too, do you feel

21:49

like it's always necessary to go into the

21:51

the whole story and kind of out your husband

21:53

as the guy who, oh my god, he hates that ome.

21:55

That would really, that would really get it. And I

21:58

was also writing this book, right, and so this

22:00

book chronicled our first year of marriage and

22:03

all of our travels during our first year of marriage, and

22:06

I had no idea how is it going to end? Because you don't know how it's

22:08

going to end. It's fiction. And as soon as we're

22:10

walking down and I'm like, well this is great. I'm

22:14

like it's just the perfect ending. And he's like Jesus

22:17

to San Joe too soon? Um,

22:20

and he was and he you know, he's got an ego, he's

22:22

a man, and he's embarrassed

22:24

that he didn't climb it. And so

22:28

I do. I bring it up. I bring it up every time. I'm

22:30

going to counter this though, I think that you did climate

22:32

because you know the experience, You've

22:34

done the whole thing. It's almost like you go to a

22:36

restaurant and you have the seven courses, but

22:38

you skipped the dessert. You still had the meal at

22:41

the restaurant. It's not like you didn't climb

22:43

kill him and Jarro. You climbed a

22:45

five kill him and Jaro. We saw

22:48

the peak, we could touch, We could pretty much touch

22:51

that. You climbed it. I'm saying that for the record,

22:53

for the record, we climbed it anyway.

22:55

But as Jarlyn said, for people who are listening

22:57

and say they want to go and kill him Andjaro with

23:00

without a partner, and he don't do the fast

23:02

trip, that's and Nick says this every

23:04

time. He says, he says,

23:06

if he had one extra day, he would

23:08

have been fine. That's interesting,

23:11

um, and I think that that's true. I think

23:13

that he needed one extra day to

23:15

acclimate at the third

23:18

level, the final level, and he would

23:20

have been totally fine. And so a five

23:22

day trip is the way to do it, as opposed to even

23:25

a six just I say to slow

23:27

down and take your time. And you

23:29

know, we're the people we were also cramming

23:32

in Safari's we were using this. It

23:34

was late um, in our first year marriage

23:36

marriage, but we were using it as our honeymoon, and

23:39

so you know, we were going to grow

23:41

grow Crater and the Serengetti after

23:43

that, and then up to Kenya, and we're

23:46

like, whatever, we can do this, so let's do it

23:48

quickly. And I think since minutes,

23:50

let's kim Since

23:53

then, we're trying also to embrace slow

23:55

travel more and to

23:58

really kind of savor one experience as

24:00

opposed to we used to be people that were like,

24:02

we can do an entire country in five

24:05

days, and now we're like, let's just

24:07

spend two weeks in ale city

24:10

and not maybe a neighborhood and

24:12

not leave it. This is a reason why a

24:14

lot of people who planned this kill him and Jaro

24:16

Adventure will then pair it with a

24:19

beach holiday in Africa afterwards,

24:21

so that you can you can relax, relax

24:24

and decompressed from this incredibly intensive,

24:28

metaphorical thing that you've just done. Yeah,

24:30

exactly exactly, So I would say slow down, slow

24:33

it down, and also make sure

24:35

that both of you, both you and your partner on

24:37

the same page going into it. I think talking

24:39

about the things that I've just talked about.

24:41

You know, if I'm slow and you're fast, do you care

24:43

if we don't walk together? Do you care

24:46

if you're up in the lead, do you will you feel

24:48

abandoned? Is this something that a solo

24:50

traveler can do or is this something to do with It

24:52

such an easy trip for a solo traveler because

24:55

the group trips are so good, the

24:57

guides are so experienced, and you meet

24:59

people. Half of our trip was

25:03

Yeah, so I think it's a wonderful thing to do

25:05

as a solo traveler. And also that

25:08

time alone when you have people you can talk

25:10

to, of course, but it's a really wonderful

25:12

meditative experience in there with your head. You're

25:14

in there in your head and you're you really are just walking,

25:17

I mean, but walking for twelve hours a day.

25:19

Going uphill is hard, it's hard on your body,

25:22

but it is just working with this great,

25:25

this great end goal too. It's not just walking

25:27

aimlessly. It's you know, it has this very

25:30

goal. But I think anyone can do it. Like I said, we saw

25:32

kids as young as seven. And there

25:34

was this one German Man

25:36

in the group ahead of us who had to be in his seventies

25:39

who wore like a half cut off sweater

25:41

and like these suspenders and shorts, and

25:44

we kept time, We just kept running into him and we

25:46

loved him so much. But yeah, and he

25:48

was in his seventies. Thank you so much

25:50

for sharing that. Great

25:52

stories. Yeah, I feel like it sounds

25:54

like such a beautiful journey and it does play perfectly

25:57

into a book. It

25:59

does sound like fiction a little bit. It totally sounds

26:01

like fiction. Have the movie rights been purchased,

26:04

so the nonfiction

26:07

television rights have been purchased for

26:09

How to Be Married? Wow, we're working

26:11

on turning it into a travel

26:13

show right now actually, where we send

26:15

different couples around the world to

26:18

try to heal the things in their

26:20

marriage through working with different cultures. Well,

26:23

that's awesome and we'll have you back to talk about that.

26:25

Um, Joe Piazza, thank you so much.

26:28

I also wait, I want to pause. I want to thank Nick

26:30

for letting us share his story.

26:33

Nick, you are a champion

26:35

among men and you are a model husband.

26:38

Just take it from me who has never

26:40

been married to you. But that's what I think from

26:42

where I'm sitting. Tell our listeners where they can

26:44

find you. In addition to the committed podcast

26:46

on my heart and on every single bookshelf

26:49

in the bookstore, I talk most on Instagram

26:51

of all the social platforms, I'm at Joe Piazza

26:54

author on Instagram, and that's where I talk about

26:56

all my new book releases and new podcast releases

26:58

and where we're trying going next, which

27:01

is not a lot of places because I'm giving

27:03

birth in about seven weeks. Well

27:05

we're excited for that. And for those who are not good

27:07

on their Italian spelling, that is at j

27:10

O p I A z z A

27:13

author A U T h O R. Thank

27:16

you so much, fun, thanks, thank you. We

27:18

will put in the show notes details

27:21

about Joe's trip, including

27:23

photographs of the moment they decided

27:26

to go back down of the rusted out stretcher

27:28

behind the cactus, as well as other

27:30

details about how you can

27:32

do this trip. If you are so inclined and inspired

27:35

to book a trip after hearing

27:37

this episode, which I am and that brings you to hate,

27:39

Gerlyn, would you like to climb out killuman? Jarry wasn't

27:41

going to ask you the same thing. No

27:44

talking, We have to be silent the whole time.

27:46

I'm okay with that. Yeah, do we

27:48

seem like the talker? And

27:52

that's our show. Thanks for listening. If

27:54

you like what you heard, please subscribe, and

27:56

you know, leave us a five star review. Oh

27:59

Wait to Go is a production of I Heart Radio

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and Fathom. You can find the details we

28:03

talked about in the show notes and on our website

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Way to Go. Please tag your best travel

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photos hashtag travel with Fathom.

28:21

If you want to really go deep on the travel inspirations,

28:24

pick up a copy of our book, Travel Anywhere and

28:26

avoid being a tourist. I'm Jarrelyn Gerba

28:28

and I'm Pabo Rosatti, and we'd like to thank

28:30

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28:33

and our executive producer Christopher Hassiotis.

28:36

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