Don't Tell Me "Have a Safe Trip" (Bali Journal, Day 1 )

Tuesday 3/19/19

7:26am

M Boutique Hostel

I guess this trip wasn’t totally spur the moment but it was pretty damn close.

I booked my ticket three weeks ago. I had the miles, I have the time and the idea didn’t leave much space for negotiating. Although I had told myself I was staying put in Austin I was wrong. A calendar check, coordinating a couple of phone calls and checking my Ultimate Rewards I said “Screw it” and booked the trip.

Bali, Indonesia. Leaving the Sunday after SXSW was perf, though late March is one of the most beautiful times to be in Austin so right now probably wasn’t the best.

But hey, Bali beaches, SE Asia adventures and meeting homies on the road is hard to turn down.

This trip kind of evolved, as most things do when allowed space.

It’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned : allow space.

Having definite, set in stone plans limits the universe’s ability to work it’s magic. That’s part of why travel is amazing : space.

Space from day-to-day, from obligations, responsibilities, real life.

Travel allows us to take a step back from the beautiful painting we’re nosed up to so we can see a bigger section, more of the full picture.

So why Bali? Why now?

It started with Kelly, my second in command at LIVE A GREAT STORY. She had her Bali trip planned for awhile now, taking some time away from the hecticness of her hospital PT job in the New Jersey winter, taking some time to explore for a possible retreat.

Her calling is to help people take life changing trips so Bali has been on the horizon as an option. She led our Peru trip last year and leading trips is definitely her super power.

So Kelly is Part 1 and Part 2 is Danny.

Danny is an internet friend. We’ve never met in person but over the last two years we’ve chatted a bunch.

He’s the original LIVE Homie which is our still-yet-to-be-figured-out Ambassador / Influencer campaign.

We connected through Insta and then he filmed this rad video in Cuba.

Danny and his partner-in-adventures Kevin host trips and sure enough, they organized a trip to Bali in the same time period as Kelly. They’re hosting a trip for Woke Travel so they’ve organized some influencers to come together to help launch Woke and raise awareness for elevated entrepreneurs.

Kelly + Danny + Bali + Airline Miles + “don’t tell me to have a safe trip” = Bali 2019

Don’t Tell me “Have a Safe Trip”

I strongly dislike the phrase “Safe Travels” or “Have a safe trip”.

It’s meh, basic, par, boring, lame but it’s probably your go to phrase, ya?

Whenever someone’s going on a trip, you tell them, “Have a safe trip.” It’s what we say.

But that person is headed to Europe, to Asia, to South America, to freaking New Orleans or New York, probably one of the coolest places on the planet to have a life changing experience and you just told them to “be safe”.

That’s like the most baseline, breakeven, vanilla statement possible.

Your friend is about to travel the world, see a faraway place, take some space to see more clearly, get lost on backroads, communicate with people who don’t speak their language, eat random food, navigate a foreign city, talk to people from different cultures, take sketchy transport and you just told them to be safe?

The equivalent is “don’t get food poisoning” when they’re going to a restaurant, “don’t fall asleep” when they’re going to a movie, “don’t get kidnapped” when going on a date, “don’t….” you get the point.

So this trip is the start of a campaign to kill “have a safe trip”.

It’s a trip to start replacing that phrase with a way better one : “come back with stories”

Stay tuned for LIVE A GREAT STORY Bali