A business friend recently told me that she’d never attempt a trip like ours because she and her husband have difficulty traveling together.  I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: Brian and I don’t travel well together, either.  Here’s the problem…

Brian cannot multi-task.  While this trait can be quite valuable when he applies his considerable mental powers to one problem, it also makes mundane tasks like looking for a parking space while driving or having a conversation while doing anything more complicated than walking, much more challenging.  In our day-to-day life, I help to compensate for his single-mindedness — e.g., “Parking space on your left, love” — but when managing lots of details in a time-sensitive environment, I get ornery.  Overseeing several pieces of luggage, keeping track of our travel documents, helping Brian manage his own belongings while going through security and ensuring we get to our flight on time does not bring out my best side.  As a couple, we just don’t handle that kind of stress well.  That is one reason we’re traveling slowly.

As explained on the Slow Movement website, slow travel provides “the opportunity to become part of local life and to connect to a place and its people” instead of just “flit[ting] from one ‘must see’ to another” as so many of us are accustomed to doing while traveling.

The benefits we receive from traveling slowly are many:

• Housing costs are greatly reduced because we’re out of the hotel and vacation-rental markets.
• Food expenses are also lower because we’re shopping at off-the-beaten-path markets and cooking at home most of the time.
• Daily stress is decreased because we have a home base instead of carrying our lives around on our backs.
• We’re taking our time to see the main attractions, and we’re also enjoying real-life activities like exercise classes and evening walks.
• We’re living like locals so we meet locals, giving us a better understanding of who the locals are, what they do and how they live.

So how does this apply to our time in Hawaii?  If you’re wondering what we’re up to:

• First, we’re taking some time to decompress from our hectic last month in California and the general stress of our prior lifestyle.
• We’re reading a lot of inspirational books.  At the moment, I’m reading Wayne Dyer’s The Shift and Brian is reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.
• We’re taking an excellent Iyengar yoga class twice per week at Big Island Yoga, in preparation for India (woohoo!).
• Brian is running three times a week, and is considering entering full training mode for an upcoming half-marathon or triathlon.  He’s also continuing his flying lessons to finish up his private pilot certificate.
• I’m taking zumba classes to increase cardio and teaching a one-on-one photography class twice per week.
• We’re studying Japanese so that we can better enjoy our next destination.
• And we’re planning out some adventures to share with you in the future.

On Sunday, Brian and I took part in the monthly Kokua Kailua Village Stroll, in which Ali'i Drive is closed to vehicles so that vendors and artists can display their wares and the rest of us can amble and enjoy.

Stay tuned,