Episode 29 - Building a New Life Through Travel and Creativity

Ever wondered if a shared love for travel could reignite the spark in a long-term marriage? Meet Zeke and Terri Mead, who were on the verge of divorce after 25 years together until the COVID-19 lockdown forced them into close quarters. Discover how daily intimacy, vulnerability, and therapy, combined with their mutual but diverse interests—Zeke's love for cycling and Terri's passion for museums—breathed new life into their relationship. They recount their adventures from quaint bike rides to serene beach walks and the genesis of their travel channel in Half Moon Bay.

Curious about balancing career shifts and family dynamics? Zeke's journey from managing a wood shop to becoming a full-time homemaker and videographer offers a unique perspective. He shares the challenges and rewards of evolving his videography skills with tools like iMovie and Final Cut Pro, all while juggling family responsibilities and creative pursuits. Together with Terri, they reveal how pet-sitting during their upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., allows them to blend local living, content creation, and client work seamlessly.

We also introduce an inspiring aviation-themed consultant and angel investor who has shattered glass ceilings in male-dominated industries. Learn how she launched the "Piloting Your Life" podcast and wrote a book to empower women over 40. Her story underscores the importance of lifelong learning, stepping out of comfort zones, and the enriching experience of slow travel. From navigating the complexities of perimenopause to planning future projects like teaching at Stanford, her journey is a testament to resilience and the pursuit of personal growth. Whether you're looking to rekindle a relationship, pivot your career, or seek inspiration from trailblazing women, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights.

Website: https://www.zekeandterri.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@zekeandterri
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zekeandterri/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zekeandterri
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@zekeandterri

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Rebooting Marriage Through Travel and Adventure

Jim Santos 0:18

Welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita . Jim and Rita , I'm your host , jim Santos , and in this podcast series you can follow along as my wife Rita and I work out our crazy plan to outfox the real estate market in the US and actually increase our retirement nest egg by spending the next three years or so living abroad and exploring the world . Are we bold , forward-thinking pioneers or just plain nuts ? Let's find out together , shall we ? Hello , and welcome once again to Travels with Jim and Rita .

Jim Santos 0:56

We were in Stillwater , oklahoma , last week visiting family , and right now we're just outside of Athens , georgia , staying with friends . And by the following podcast episode we should be in Berlin , germany . We'll be meeting Zeke and Terry Mead of the San Francisco Bay Area . After 25 years of marriage and raising two children , they were about to make the decision to divorce . Instead , they managed to accidentally reboot their relationship by setting off on a series of adventures sparking a mutual love of travel . They chronicle their adventures on YouTube and on their website , zekeandterrycom , and we'll be getting into that in just a bit . But first Zeke , terry , welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita .

Terri Mead 1:41

Well , thank you . We're excited to be here to have this conversation with the two of you .

Jim Santos 1:44

Thank you very much . Well , I think we need to start with the big question how do you manage to accidentally reboot a relationship ?

Terri Mead 1:52

I don't know if we can do the PG version of that . We're after 25 years of marriage and we've known each other since we were 10 . We went to junior high and high school together . We went together in the eighth grade . I dumped him . We're 21 . We dated again . The story is better if it says that I dumped him , but it just kind of fizzled out because we were in college . We're 24 . We dated again and I dumped him again .

Terri Mead 2:18

I wasn't ready for a relationship and so we got back together when we were 25 , largely after too much wine skiing one day you should see the look on Zeke's face right now and basically said one day we're going to get married or relationship's over and we're only giving this one more chance .

Terri Mead 2:37

And 14 months later we were married . So we got married at 26 and we came into the relationship with our own baggage that we never really effectively dealt with . And one of the things that we realized with ourselves and also through therapy is that we are very , very different people , despite having very similar backgrounds and being raised in the same place in Northern California . And so after two kids and 25 years of marriage , we just said this is not working anymore , this is not healthy . We called it off and then , after a week of agony for me because it was during COVID and one of us couldn't move out I brought up the idea of okay , maybe we should try to prepare ourselves for being out in the dating world , and we decided we started having sex every day and introduced intimacy , vulnerability communication . We both went to therapy and accidentally rebooted our relationship and created something that I don't think either of us thought was going to be possible in our relationship .

Jim Santos 3:45

Well , that's really interesting because COVID put a strain on a lot of relationships .

Rita Santos 3:49

Right .

Jim Santos 3:50

And it sounds like that was a big factor in you getting back together .

Terri Mead 3:54

Yeah , because I think , if you know , zeke looked at various different places to move out into and it just didn't make a lot of sense .

Terri Mead 4:02

I looked into buying one of the houses on the block so that we could stay together , so we could be super close for the kids , and it just didn't make economic sense because our financial situation is very complicated . We're very fortunate that it's very complicated . Getting fully divorced wasn't going to be a possibility . We were always going to be intertwined financially and also because we've been really good friends for a really long time . So I I'm actually really grateful that we didn't take the steps to physically separate outside of the house , because it gave us the opportunity to reconnect , cause even in that first week when , after we decided to get divorced and both are separate and the kids were like , of course , you guys haven't gotten along for years we , every night we had dinner , our youngest was still home , we , we hung out , watched movies and , you know , supported each other through the big decision to to separate and leave our marriage behind . And we did leave our marriage behind . We left the old marriage behind and , as I said , created something that was a lot healthier for both of us .

Jim Santos 5:12

And it sounds like travel was a big part of that reboot as well .

Terri Mead 5:15

So the travel piece of it . It's interesting because Zeke cycles and he goes on trips with his buddies . There are a couple of buddies that he goes with and he's been to New Zealand . They've done Route 66 . They've done the Empire State Trail . They've done a number of different cycling trips .

Terri Mead 5:31

So he and I don't do that . I'm much more of a museum goer , europe . I mean , I'll chase after a tennis ball all day , but riding a bicycle hour after hour and sleeping in the dirt isn't really my idea of fun . Hour after hour and sleeping in the dirt isn't really my idea of fun . So we , the travel was how could we find , where can we find common ground , being very different people , and that's where traveling , you know , we come up with compromises around some of the trips and we do trips separately , like I've taken the kids to Europe post high school , post college , for a couple of weeks while Zeke goes cycling with his friends .

Terri Mead 6:06

And then back in December , we were starting to talk more and more about where is common ground , where can we compromise , where can we find ways to spend time together , enjoy each other ? And that's when , on January 4th , we were walking along the beach in Half Moon Bay . 4th , we were walking along the beach in Half Moon Bay and , I think , in a moment of weakness , after I asked Zeke , and I suggested hey , let's launch a travel channel , let's build a brand around embracing midlife , embracing adventure and showing how we navigate our lives and the world together . And thus , zeke and Terry Adventures was born .

Rita Santos 6:42

Now do you do this full-time , and thus Zeke and Terri Adventures was born .

Terri Mead 6:45

Now do you do this full time your travel or are you working as well ? Well , it was meant to be full time and then one of my former clients reached out desperate , and so I have a consulting project through the end of the year , but we decided back in January to make this our full time jobs , and it is a full time job . Yeah , we're working on our video that's going to drop . We drop a new travel video every Friday and then we recently launched a tranquil escapes . That's four to six minutes of just a tranquil escape into something that we have a lot of B-roll on and that's come out every Sunday . Now , but , yeah , it's , it's . It's basically a full-time job between Instagram , blog posts , postcards from the road , facebook I mean , I have to look up in the board . I have this , this whole complicated thing . You know , tick tock Instagram . Yeah , I was looking at that .

Jim Santos 7:39

Yeah , I was looking over your stuff there . You have you have the website zekeandTerri . com and that's Terri with an I . You have a well-stocked YouTube channel . You've got a presence on TikTok Thread Trends Medium . Let's face it , you guys own social media .

Rita Santos 7:52

So are you enjoying your travel at all ?

Terri Mead 7:55

So you know , that was really interesting , zeke . Have we enjoyed our travel at all ?

Zeke Mead 8:02

We've attempted to ?

Jim Santos 8:03

Yeah , because you know we try to keep you know my blog and our podcast going while we travel and I get writing assignments from International Living conferences to prepare for , and I know how tough it can be when you're on the road . So how do you find the time to be so prolific online and still enjoy your vacation or your tripping ?

Terri Mead 8:19

Well , so that was the thing . So we did a Europe trip in May , so Zeke did a cycling trip with his buddies from Santiago to Lisbon , and then he flew over to Rome and met me in Rome , and then we spent three weeks between Italy and France . And the one thing about YouTube is well , and also with writing , as you know , jim , you have to do it to get better at it . And we wanted to get better fast , and we knew that if we dropped daily videos , that we could get better , figure out what was working and what wasn't working , and then realize that in our travels we don't want to be dropping daily videos .

Terri Mead 8:56

I think , it was going to put an end to Zeke and Terri Adventures if we continue to do that . So we had really really long days . We were up between five or six in the morning and then we would do some work , have some breakfast . We do physical postcards from the road in addition to the newsletter postcards from the road , so write some postcards to people and then spend the day enjoying . And we really managed to . We figured out a good rhythm because then right before dinner we'd come back , I'd airdrop all my videos to Zeke , zeke would get started on a video , we'd go to dinner , come back to the hotel and then we'd work for four to five more hours in order to drop the video . Getting to bed around midnight I think there was one that was maybe 1 am and then get up and do it all over the next day . We maybe 1am and then get up and do it all over the next day . We still managed to enjoy it , although that was a lot and it was not sustainable .

Terri Mead 9:47

So by the time we hit Verona , we decided that we were going to do it by city , so we did .

Terri Mead 9:56

You know , instead of having a daily drop , we were in Verona for two nights , so we did one video in Verona . We were in Venice for two nights , so we did one video and it was really interesting because I felt like we had so much time . And then , when we got to Bordeaux , it was almost like , well , aren't we supposed to be doing something else ? Cause we had four nights in Bordeaux and we did two videos there , one for St Emilio and one for Bordeaux . And then we got to Paris and we had three nights in Paris and we did not do the Paris videos until we got home and it was almost like we were missing something because we developed this rhythm . And then we were in Vancouver and did British Columbia for a week and we tried something different and it was a little harder to enjoy because we felt like I think , zeke , you felt like you were getting really behind on the video production and you were getting a little stressed around that .

Zeke Mead 10:42

There's definitely a backlog or a looming volume of work that you look at , because I don't have some super duper computer and so I'm always in memory management mode , especially with video , so memory intensive , and so you're trying to sort all these things and even just the video I did yesterday it was like this whole group of videos . I get to the end and I'm like wait a minute , I know I took a video of this , that and the other thing . Where's that ? Then I have to go find it and I've got to dig it out . And if you're trying to dig it out of a week's worth of video , you know it just gets even more challenging . So we're still trying to figure out the process .

Terri Mead 11:22

And the balance between enjoying it , because we still enjoy it , the travel , and you know we're kind of . I'm constantly well , I mean , I've been a content creator for my brand , terri Hansen Mead , for the last seven or eight years , so constantly looking at what's going to be interesting , what can we include . You know , it's just the way that I will look at the world now , and so I can still enjoy the travel . And you know , as we are , you know trying to record content , create content . But you know we gave ourselves a year from the time that we started this to really build a business around this , so ultimately have sponsorships and affiliate marketing and speaking engagements maybe a second book for me out of this so creating , creating different revenue streams around it . But , to answer your question , we still enjoy the travel and we still . What this has given us actually with the travel is it's given us some common language and something common to focus . It gives us something to talk about and I think it's really enriched our relationship by doing this . So we are enjoying the travel and trying not to feel the burden of the content creation way too heavily and hopefully we'll find the balance soon of the content creation way too heavily and hopefully we'll find the balance soon

Navigating Career and Family Dynamics

Terri Mead 12:40

.

Terri Mead 12:40

We're gonna do two weeks in DC at the end of August . A friend of mine from childhood reached out , was like , hey , you're doing something crazy . Like we are , they took over her parents' travel agency and they're gonna lead a river cruise in France . They were like hey , will you come house sit , cat sit and dog sit for us and stay at our house for free while we go to Europe and then you can create content on DC . So what we're hoping there is to live locally , spend maybe half days out touring around . That'll give time for content , it'll give us time to I'll have client work to work on , plus I have my own writing to do for Terry Hansen Mead . So we're gonna try to find a balance and see if that's going to be something that works better for us . But grouping content tends to be something that's difficult when you spread it over a longer period of time .

Jim Santos 13:33

Right , well , your videos do seem to be pretty well put together . Zeke , did you have any background in videography or social media before you started ?

Zeke Mead 13:40

So here's the short story is I was managing a wood shop on a corporate campus . That was an amenity . So think of middle school , high school wood shop classes . Make a cutting board and a box and whatever Dangerous .

Zeke Mead 13:56

It was could be , definitely , and it was on a corporate campus for the employees to come in and have something to do . A lot of the corporate campuses , the jobs , are all digital , so they wanted to offer something that was more tactile for employees . Great idea it hands-on doing things . I'm an amateur handyman , if you will , and so I enjoy tactile engagement analog and then we get to March of 2020 and it all shuts down , but they said we'll continue to pay you . They were very generous and my team I had a crew of about seven people .

Zeke Mead 14:34

If you could just create videos to share online with the employees , oh , okay . So then I start using iMovie , which I know now why Apple stock is the way it is because iMovie is very generous for someone like me who's not super digital , and I start making videos . At the same time , I go on a bike trip and to be able to share with Terry and the other wives and other partners and friends of ours my bike adventures I would at , and friends of ours my bike adventures I would , at the end of the day , on my phone . After taking pictures and video with my phone , I would then use iMovie on my phone to create a video , upload it to Facebook and share it with everybody , and so that was sort of the Well , you also had content from GoPros and then from the other guys as well .

Zeke Mead 15:18

Well , so here's the slippery slope on that one Love my guys , but at the end of the day they go . Oh , I've got all this . We talk about memory management .

Terri Mead 15:26

Oh , I've got all this other video here , and then they hand me the , you know the little digital card out of their GoPro .

Zeke Mead 15:32

And now I'm going to try and figure out how to load that onto my phone , get it into iMovie , get in all this type of thing .

Terri Mead 15:37

After riding somewhere between 60 and 100 miles a day .

Zeke Mead 15:40

Right , I'm in a tent laying down with my iPhone , trying to uplink to Facebook . So that's where it all started was a combination of the wood shop and the bike rides . And so then fast forward another year and a half or so and we're talking about how to do this , and so then I've since moved to Final Cut Pro , and thankfully , I'm not doing everything on my iPhone . It's all happening mainly on the laptop . So that's my guerrilla education of how to make videos .

Terri Mead 16:09

And you found a guy , michael Ross , that has been providing you with kind of coaching and guidance , and so you were working with him about once a week .

Zeke Mead 16:19

Yeah , I still do ?

Terri Mead 16:19

Yeah , and we really , because we really needed to rapidly figure out how to create good videos . We're still working on .

Zeke Mead 16:31

I'm not . I'm not going to claim any of the videos are good . I'll say that the the the last one is better than the previous one .

Terri Mead 16:38

Yeah , we're constantly experimenting with new technology , new thumbnails , new sound . You know , uh , the time , the days and times of the week when we're releasing stuff . What do we release when ? So it's yeah , it's , it's constant , yeah .

Jim Santos 16:55

Well , that's interesting , zeke cause . I got into audio and radio work kind of accidentally like that as well . I was visiting a friend who was working at a radio station at a college and the guy who was supposed to take the next shift didn't show up . So he real quickly showed me how to use the board and shoved some albums at me and said here you're the DJ for the next four hours . So you learn under fire , you learn to do it when you have to do it Right . Because Zeke knows we also have something else in common . I also at one point left my job to care for our two kids . Was it hard for you to make the choice to become a homemaker ?

Zeke Mead 17:30

It wasn't . It wasn't . There was a . So the numbers were stark and I was . I was well-paid and well compensated , Um , but it was nothing compared to what Terri was making as a consultant in IT and biotech here in the Bay Area . And so what we were funding from a daycare perspective was in the stress and all of the ancillary effects on our lifestyle of eating out three and four nights a week because we couldn't get home in time to make dinner . We couldn't get home in time to make dinner , and all the things we were considering in terms of daycare , and then the extended daycare and then looking at getting a nanny to be able to cover for that gray area .

Terri Mead 18:06

Well , that's largely because Zeke was a police officer and he worked four days on four days off , five days on three days off , with back-to-back fives .

Rita Santos 18:14

Right .

Terri Mead 18:14

And then he also had court and mandatory overtime , so it was completely unpredictable . So the additional stress on me , who was in essence a single parent with two young kids , yeah , made us have the conversation .

Zeke Mead 18:27

Yeah . So the numbers were pretty telling and I wasn't arguing with that , I wasn't arguing with the effect on the family , et cetera , et cetera . So that made it easy . The hard part that probably took a year or more to realize was going from someone as a police officer who I probably had more of a social worker view of being a police officer than a military view of being a police officer . But at the end of the day I still was the one with the badge and the gun , in the car with the light on top . So when I needed to take control of the situation , I could Couldn't quite do that with a three and a six year old , right . So it I needed to take control of the situation , I could Couldn't quite do that with a three and a six-year-old .

Zeke Mead 19:02

So it was a little different , and so I had to then double back onto some of my previous to being a police officer . I was in sales and so I started getting involved in fundraising at the school to give myself some purpose and some focus and some drive and had some enjoyable success there . And it was my calendar was easier and I could coach baseball and that type of thing , so it was a challenge , absolutely .

Terri Mead 19:26

If we could do it again , I think we would enter into the situation with better clarity on roles , responsibilities , expectations . But back then I mean , and for you , jim , it was you know . But back then I mean , and for you , jim , it was , you know , it was not common for men to stay home with the children and be the stay-at-home parent .

Jim Santos 19:46

Especially because I was taking in other children .

Terri Mead 19:48

Well , yeah that's a completely different .

Rita Santos 19:52

There's no way , zeke was aging Although as a business model I should have figured that out because the amount we were paying for daycare was very severe in the Bay Area .

Zeke Mead 20:03

But no , I wasn't going to be able to handle a group of six kids or something like that and we did not want that in our home .

Terri Mead 20:08

No .

Jim Santos 20:09

It takes a toll . It does take a toll .

Zeke Mead 20:10

Maybe if I could create a bike camp and we got to ride bikes all day long . I could do that . That'd be different , yeah .

Rita Santos 20:16

You know , and once we became grandparents we were totally open to tell our children these are yours . We struggled through raising them .

Jim Santos 20:30

Now it's their turn . Now it's their turn , terry . I read that you're a commercially rated helicopter pilot . Now how does that happen ?

Terri Mead 20:37

A girl's got to have a hobby , doesn't she ?

Jim Santos 20:41

When we're going to see some aerial shots on your videos .

Terri Mead 20:44

Well , the very first one we put in this was like early days of the video . We do have a shot of us of me flying underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and then heading up over the Marin Headlands and coming back around . So but yeah , I think we should probably circle back on on that in some of our videos at some point . My dad was a fixed wing pilot . When I was a kid he had a Cessna 152 . He worked a lot . He had his own CPA firm .

Terri Mead 21:10

When he had to , you know , maintain his hours , one of us three kids would be able to go up and go flying . And so I got introduced to aviation relatively early . And then when I was eight , I went up in a helicopter at an air show in Hayward , california , and just said one day to myself one day I'm going to fly one of these things , and I didn't tell anybody . I looked into it in college but it was too expensive . And then when we moved down from San Francisco down the peninsula to Redwood City , we would go by the San Carlos airport and I would see a whole bunch of helicopters . And I would say to Zeke the first person I told that I wanted to do this one day I'm going to fly one of these things . Well then , of course , we had kid number two and it was busy and you know everything else . And then , I think , for my 38th birthday , he gave me a discovery flight , hoping I would shut up , hoping that I would just think it was like too expensive , too loud , too something .

Terri Mead 22:01

And I realized after doing the discovery flight , if I didn't do it , then I was never going to do it , and so I said hell and I just started taking lessons and I jumped right into it without fully knowing what I was .

Terri Mead 22:14

I was signing up for which was . That has proven to be the best way for me to approach big things . It's kind of like we create a Zekentary adventures . We didn't really know what we were jumping into . If we knew then what we know now , I think we would have made some different choices , but we're enjoying what it is . We're doing .

Terri Mead 22:32

So by 39 , after firing my first CFI flight instructor , who only was in it for the hours , not to actually teach me , I got hooked up with a couple of women helicopter flight instructors , and the gal that I ended up getting my private with a couple months later was I was her first student , she was just straight out of CFI school and she was fantastic . And then flying around the Bay Area is complicated and challenging , but it also , I felt like it narrowed down my skillset . And because it was , for all intents and purposes , a hobby , I didn't , and because I was a primary breadwinner , I feel you know I'm all about risk mitigation and so I thought I need to get , I need to build my skills back up . So then , a few years later , at 45 , I got my commercial rating mostly to be a safer pilot . I don't plan on actually , you know , flying for pay . That's just a risk I'm unwilling to take on .

Terri Mead 23:33

But , it is still . You know it was one of the hardest things I'd ever done was to become a helicopter pilot and one of the things I'm most proud of and in the air is one of the I I'm almost , you know , at my happiest when I'm flying , largely because it's challenging flying around the Bay area . You know we have three major airports within a very short distance We've got San Francisco , oakland and San Jose . Plus we have a number of small airports and you've got the bay . You've got the ocean Not a lot of safe landing spots and one of my favorite things to do in the world .

Jim Santos 24:06

And you're an author as well , right ?

Terri Mead 24:08

Yeah , so I wrote Piloting your Life .

Adventure and Growth in Life

Terri Mead 24:11

So all of my branding is around aviation , largely because I work in a you know , with my consulting I'm in a you know often the only woman in the room and then I became an angel investor and I was often the only woman in the room , and one of the things when I became an angel investor I was listening to podcasts and reading books to learn as much as I could , as quickly as I could , so I could be a good investor and not just throw our hard earned money away and realize that it was generally the white bro show and for me , if I don't see it , I can still be it , but I know for a lot of people they can't . So I launched my podcast , piloting your life in 2017 , in order to make visible to others what was possible , and then learned that I really wanted to focus on women and I was going through perimenopause at the time and realized that there wasn't a lot of discussion around aging women , the menopause transition . I was seeing a lack of research and innovation being in life sciences . I saw it from one angle , being in technology , also as an investor , seeing digital health . I also went to Necker Island for the first time and met Richard Branson and had some conversations and realized that I wanted to write a book .

Terri Mead 25:28

But it took another year and a half for me to figure out what I wanted to write the book on . And then just one day , I found a writing coach editor who was just going to be the perfect fit , and then landed on the concept of piloting your life , which was going to be a glorified business card for speaking engagements . But then , when my beta readers read it , realized that I had something more on my hands . So piloting your life I wrote to inspire women over the age of 40 to basically be the pilots in their own lives , to design and live a life of our own creation , and self-published it five years ago , on September 1st , and I'm super proud of it .

Terri Mead 26:07

It should have been probably a bigger hit , but COVID hit and my book tour was canceled . And now the good news is now we're seeing a lot more conversations around the menopause , transition , aging . We're seeing , you know , the . The white house announced a hundred million dollar investment in innovation and research around women's health , so we're starting to see more conversations around that . The book was really what to expect when you turn 40 . So the next one I'm working on is really you know , piloting your life . The next venture you know what to expect when you turn 50 and beyond .

Zeke Mead 26:38

When you just Stanford continuing education class .

Terri Mead 26:41

Yeah , so I think I'm also going to do it again in the in January . I taught through Stanford continuing studies . I taught you know navigating life after 40 and updated for all of the latest research and as much research as I could get my hands on over the last five years so that it was more updated .

Jim Santos 27:02

Do you plan on writing about your travel experiences ?

Terri Mead 27:04

You know that's a really good question At some point , because we've got the postcards from the road . I've been blogging for the last seven years on all things . You know , everything from my consulting work to women , feminism , travel , so I think there's a lot of content out there At some point maybe . Maybe there'll be a joint effort Zeke , you and I might pull something together , because I do most of the writing for the postcards from the road and the blog and such . But maybe I , you know , I haven't really given that much thought because my focus has been so much on dismantling the patriarchy to make the world a better place for all and women and making just . I love to learn , synthesize it and then share it out . I'm all about sharing information and making it more readily available and more palatable to a broader audience .

Zeke Mead 27:59

but maybe and , in a certain sense , what Terri's love of learning has got her to learn about how midlife the brain works and how we always need to be learning something new . So if you take a step back from all of what we're doing , all it is incorporated with is continuing to learn my video editing , being in front of the camera , making videos all of this is something new for the brain , and so we're also trying to redefine the word quote unquote , adventure , because adventure is really for me anything that you sort of take one step deviation off of what you're comfortable with and that becomes new , and your brain receives that information in a different way , and you can talk much more in-depthly about the research that you've read on this which is inspiring us Building the new neural pathways that , you know , is good for the brain , it's good for the body , it's going to help us live longer , richer , higher quality lives .

Zeke Mead 28:55

Right . So if you go and get on the same cruise ship that you always get on every year and you go , get off and get on the same tour that the cruise ship organizes and you sit on the tour bus to go to the place and get in line with everybody else to walk through the museum and turn around and get back on the cruise ship and go back home , that might be interesting , but you're not really pushing yourself .

Terri Mead 29:13

Well , I actually disagree on that because for some people who don't necessarily do anything , that is going to be a stretch , that's going to get them outside of their comfort zone and that will be their definition of adventure For us . That is tedious , that does not build the neural pathways for us the way we want them to .

Rita Santos 29:30

But it gives them a start Exactly .

Zeke Mead 29:33

What we're trying to do is to get folks to get off the cruise ship and make the left instead of the right and start to look around and go somewhere where they're not planning on going , with a plan to turn around and reel it back . We had an experience recently where we made a left instead of a right and we ended up in a spot of town where , like OK , this is a little too far off .

Jim Santos 29:56

Too much of an adventure , yeah .

Zeke Mead 29:57

We need to backtrack here and get back to where we're feeling safe . So , anyway , but all of that , especially that experience , got my neural pathways working . So that's what I'm trying to work on with this whole project is helping folks redefine adventure , push themselves just a little bit outside their comfort zone with the reality realization that it's good for your brain in the long term . And at 54 , I look around and wanting to pay attention to that .

Jim Santos 30:23

Yeah , well , travel will certainly do that , seeing new experiences , having to deal with new languages .

Rita Santos 30:28

Yeah , new metros , new trains , you know all different schedules , but you all seem to do fast travel .

Terri Mead 30:35

Yes , you know that's interesting because you two are trying to do slow travel . I don't do much of anything slow .

Rita Santos 30:43

We do both .

Terri Mead 30:44

We do both .

Rita Santos 30:45

Yes , last fall , I think , we were in a different major city every five to seven days . Yeah , but we're hoping that eventually we will get back . Well , we went to Panama and spent 10 weeks , 10 weeks in Mexico .

Terri Mead 31:01

Yeah .

Rita Santos 31:02

Yeah , and we like a mixture . But because you're always doing the Shenzhen hop , you know you want to get through as much as you can when you can .

Terri Mead 31:13

Yeah , I think it's . You know , I've been following your conversation around slow travel and seeing other people who are doing slow travel . I don't think I'm personally there yet , especially since we need to be creating a certain amount of content , so we have to be seeing and doing enough in order to go get that content . I think at some point we will have to slow down . I think our brains and our bodies are going to be like okay , give us a break , although we're building into , we like going to Palm Springs , california . We've been going there , we have a timeshare down there , we've been going down there for I think , over two decades , play tennis down there , we belong to the tennis club , and so we're trying to build into our calendar like a month in October , november , and then a month in February , march , to be in a place where then we can go explore with us and give ourselves a little bit of downtime because the the breakneck speed at which we are doing stuff is not sustainable

Terri Mead 32:20

in the long run and it also doesn't allow us to do deeper dives . So when you talked about , you know being in Panama , you know being in in one place . I want to be able to do that . The limiting factor right now is our empty nest puppy , george . I've been researching ways to take him with us . So if we can bring him with us , then I want to be someplace for a longer period of time . Right now , like there's Bark Air there are a couple of them , but the pricing is just exorbitant and right now I don't want to invest in that , to be in a particular place , although after being in Bordeaux , zeke said he could live in Bordeaux , so of course I immediately went on to how can I get my dog to Bordeaux ? And looking for ways to be in a place . We've done home exchanges . So in 2013 , we did a month in Paris , in the 17th arrondissement , and then in 2015 , we did two weeks in Paris someplace in the 14th and then three weeks in Provence , and we love immersing ourselves . I love you know , jim .

Terri Mead 33:24

I listened to your episode on languages and totally relate to so much of what you said there , because I want to learn enough of the language everywhere we go to be , be respectful and courteous be able to , and it opens up doors .

Terri Mead 33:40

And so at some point we will be living in France , you know , part-time , or spending a significant amount of time to build my language skill , to get a sense of what it's like to live somewhere other than the San Francisco Bay area , cause I I was born in San Francisco , grew up in the East Bay , after grad school moved back to San Francisco and now we're 30 miles South on the peninsula , so I've never lived anywhere other than the San Francisco Bay Area and it's so easy to get so myopic here that to get out and experience what life is like elsewhere is so incredibly important . I think it makes us more empathetic and compassionate human beings and you can't unlearn what you learn on travel , not only about places and people and customs and culture , but about yourself as well . So the slow travel it's interesting , but we do have the limiting factor the dog is limiting right now .

Jim Santos 34:35

Yeah , pets definitely add a new variable to the equation when you're trying to travel

Embracing Slow and Fast Travel

Jim Santos 34:40

.

Rita Santos 34:40

I've been in South America for six years and we know how much you learn culturally just from being totally in it .

Jim Santos 34:49

And we did have a dog with us there .

Rita Santos 34:50

Yeah , we did .

Jim Santos 34:51

But we've got some pet-sitting gigs set up in England in November . So we'll get to play with other people's dogs .

Rita Santos 34:56

Yeah , in London and live in London for a while .

Jim Santos 34:58

Yeah .

Terri Mead 34:59

Yeah , we signed up last year . We signed up for Trusted House Sitters . We have used Trusted House Sitters twice . One was a huge success and the other one folks at the park were like he didn't do anything and people he was not paying attention to . Your dog . Love to use the first gal . We've stayed in contact with her and we're like anytime you want to come back , let us know . We'll find a way to be gone . And then we signed up to be trusted house sitters as well , and we have not successfully executed that . But we were trying to be a little bit complicated and say , hey , we'd like to bring our dog with us and then we'll take care of your horses and your goats and you know , whatever it was .

Terri Mead 35:33

Right , you bring up .

Terri Mead 35:35

You know trusted house sitter , we've used home exchange , you know ways to change the dynamic of fast travel and have it be something that's more of a local experience .

Terri Mead 35:46

Having a local experience is really important to us . That's one of the things that we are actively seeking for our DC trip , because we're going to be there for two weeks . It's like what can we do ? How can we embrace being local even though we're only going to be there for two weeks , and be able to see and do things that are a little bit off the beaten track , so that it's more in alignment with our value around that and our brand with Zeke and Terry Adventures . In addition to looking for women-owned businesses or Black-owned businesses or Brown-owned businesses , you know those that are generally in the underserved underrepresented , because we're all about voting with our pocketbook and finding a way to financially support those who are often overlooked . So all of these different things come into play when we are planning our trips or thinking about what we want to do , where we want to do it and how we want to do it .

Terri Mead 36:41

Well , we have at least 15 years on you , so that may be part of the reason that we're traveling at a slightly slower pace .

Rita Santos 36:53

But it is two very different ways to experience the world .

Jim Santos 36:55

And it's not like one is better than the other , and that's why we try to make a combination .

Rita Santos 36:57

Yeah , we do . We do fast travel when we need to , when we want to get through several countries for Jim's writing or whatever . Then other times we may spend a month , six weeks somewhere .

Terri Mead 37:09

Yeah , with the fast travel I just call it . You know it's the Goutte way of traveling . You know you're just getting a taste , you're just getting a flavor . And you know , sometimes you can go back to the same place and then get a different Goutte or a different taste of whatever that is At some point .

Terri Mead 37:28

You know , at some point we will have slower travel . It's just , you know , maybe we'll be doing that around the US where it's easier to bring George with us , or when our youngest graduates from college they've already said that they're taking George . So who knows if George is going to be living elsewhere , in which case that might free you , case that might free us up to travel differently and continue to experiment with the different modalities .

Jim Santos 37:54

Well , travel has a way of either making or breaking a couple , so I'm glad it went the right way for you two . Do you have any ?

Terri Mead 38:01

Wait so far , so far .

Zeke Mead 38:04

Still early . Call us March 1st .

Jim Santos 38:07

It might be up for a few other things as well do you have any uh advice or words or wisdom for other couples that may be struggling about how to get along on the road ?

Terri Mead 38:15

I think , finding something that is a common purpose . So for us I'm an anxious traveler . Zeke is pretty chill . As you can tell , our personalities are are very different . Just to give you a sense , we saw a therapist at one point . I think it was like over Anxious Traveler , zeke is pretty chill . As you can tell , our personalities are very different .

Terri Mead 38:31

Just to give you a sense , we saw a therapist at one point . I think it was like over 10 years and this was not a good therapist and she basically said you guys are so different . I can't believe you're still together . I can't believe you got together to begin with . Like that's not really helpful .

Terri Mead 38:41

But having you know so , as an Anxious Traveler , if we did not have the Zeke and Terri Adventures brand and videos and everything to work on , then I think it would be very easy for me to get super anxious and then take it out on Zeke and then Zeke to get very , very frustrated . So , having some sort of a common either enemy or goal in order to put that energy into , for us , it's made it so that we always have something to talk about , we always have something to work on and when we're at a loss then we can always shift to hey , how does this fit into what it is that we're trying to do ? Coming up with that I think has been for a couple who's traveling will help shift that energy , because it can be very uncomfortable for people to step outside their comfort zones and do something new . Not know how to deal with the money , public transportation , the language , where a bathroom is . Are they going to have something that I want to eat ? Did we find a hotel or something ? Did we overspend ? Did we underspend ?

Terri Mead 39:49

So , finding something that is like a common interest , whether it's around books , whether it's around movies , finding a theme around what it is that you're doing , and then having that be the topic of conversation that you can always come back to , or a goal that you're always working towards , I think that can really shift the energy and make it so that you're always working towards . I think that can really shift the energy and make it so that you're working together as a team and not two individuals traveling along having your separate experiences .

Jim Santos 40:15

Well , we've been talking with Terri and Zeke Mead , who rediscovered and redefined their lives together through the magic of travel . Now , if you'd like more information about their journeys , a great place to start is on their website , zekeandterri . com that's T-E-R-R-Icom . They also have a ton of videos , pictures and more on YouTube , instagram , facebook , tiktok , trends , threads and Medium , and you can find them on those outlets by searching Zeke and Terri .

Terri Mead 40:56

Thank you and back at you . Thank you very much .

Jim Santos 41:06

Well , you've been listening to Travels with Jim and Rita . Thanks for your support and please continue to like and follow and promote on social media as you are able . And , of course , subscriptions are not required but are always appreciated . Before we go , a quick reminder that Rita and I will be in the exhibit hall for the International Living Ultimate Go Overseas Boot Camp in Las Vegas , nevada , october 26th through the 28th . You get more information or sign up at intliving . com/ events . That's intliving . com/ events , but do it soon because it's filling up quickly . If you'd like to read more about where we've been and see some photos and video , be sure to check out our blog at jimsantosbooks . com . You can also access my books , audiobooks and short stories at jimsantos . net . We'd love to hear from our listeners as well , so if you have a question or a topic you'd like us to cover , or if you want to tell your own travel story , email us at jim@ jimsantosbooks . com . Until next time , remember we travel not to escape life , but so that life does not escape us .