Erin chats with Cary Lowe and his wife Trish Butler. Trish lives with multiple sclerosis and uses a mobility scooter, and she and Cary have continued to travel well into their seventies, traveling to nearly half the US states and another twenty countries.

We talk about the realities of disabled and elderly travel, what it takes to plan accessible trips, and how travel can remain rewarding even as our bodies and circumstances change.

• Check out Cary's website and book,On Two Legs and Three Wheels, here: http://www.carylowewriter.com/ 
• Order On Two Legs and Three Wheels, here: https://tinyurl.com/3zj4r77m

If you're a fan of the show, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review Curious Tourism: Responsible Travel Podcast.

Follow us on social media @curioustourismpod.

Read Erin's award-winning blog, Pina Travels.

Subscribe to Kattie's podcasting newsletter, Pod the North.

CREDITS

Written and Hosted by Erin Hynes

Produced by Kattie Laur

Music is "Night Stars" by Wolf Saga/David R. Maracle/Chippewa Travellers. Additional music from Motion Array.

Logo by Nicole Hall

Mentioned in this episode:

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Something I've noticed about travel as I get older is that it does change.

Now that I'm well into my 30s, I'm feeling those changes.

As I compare travel now to what travel was like in my 20s.

One thing that has stood out to me is that I don't cope with tiredness very well anymore, which is why I now avoid those early morning and red eye flights.

And I've also stopped staying in hostels for the most part.

I loved them in my 20s and I still love them.

In theory, I'll still get a private room every once in a while.

I just find I do a lot better with a quiet space these days when I travel.

The way I Traveled in my 20s looks very different from how I travel now, and I imagine it'll look different again in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years.

But one thing I hope won't change is that I'll still be traveling.

That's why I'm excited to talk today with Carrie Lowe and Trish Lowe.

Kerry is the author of the book on Two Legs and Three Wheels.

Kerry and his wife Trish, who lives with multiple sclerosis and uses a mobility scooter, have continued to travel well into their 70s, traveling to nearly half the US states and another 20 countries.

Today I'm chatting with them about the realities of disabled and elderly travel, what it takes to plan accessible trips, and how travel can remain rewarding even as our bodies and circumstances evolve.

This is Curious Tourism, the podcast focused on making travel better for people and the planet.

I'm Erin Hines, travel writer and content creator, and I'm joined by my producer, Katie Lohr, that is me.

And if you enjoy the show, Erin and I would love for you to support it in some way and it's really easy to do.

So first, you can make sure that you're actually subscribed to the show on your favorite podcast app right now.

And second, keep an eye out for all the cool stuff that we're posting on the Internet, all the cool stuff that Aaron's posting on the Internet.

And if you like any of it, send us an email.

Or you can review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And on that note, you can also get in touch with us directly on social media or by email.

All our contact info is in the show notes.

So I saw a really funny TikTok this morning that I'm going to recount to you.

It was a video of these two girls on a flight.

They're boarding the flight and they look at the flight attendant and they say, are we going to Nice?

And the flight attendant looks at them and she says, tunis, Tunis.

Tunis, Tunisia.

They had gone to a gate agent and asked for a flight Tunis.

And the gate agent misheard them and booked them onto a flight to Tunis, Tunisia.

So the video was just them panicking, like, do we stay on the flight?

And so it was so funny.

Someone's like, it's really nice in Tunis.

Like, you should stay on the flight.

Anyways, there were a lot of people.

I felt bad.

A lot of people in the comments, like, saying, oh, you.

You're dumb Americans.

Like, how come you didn't know?

And in their defense, this has happened to me where I've gone to a gate agent or to a train station desk and been given a ticket that is not going to the place that I'm going.

And it's just.

I think it's just a risk you take when there's a language barrier.

My one question was how they ended up, like, boarding the flight because they had to go to a gate that said Tunis, Tunisia.

This was my question.

It's like, how do you end up getting on the plane?

The gate agent issued them tickets to Tunis, Tunisia.

I guess my question is, did they not look at the tickets and say, wait, tune that says two ness, not niece.

Well, maybe they thought it said two niece.

Honestly, what a simple mistake.

Seems like a valid miscommunication.

I never comment on videos like this, but I did feel like commenting because I just thought of it the time that I attempted to book a train out of Rome heading north to Austria.

And the funny thing is, they also, they were in Rome.

This happened to them in the Rome airport.

And I don't know how, but my request got lost in translation.

And so, like, 10 hours later, I'm on this train.

I think I'm going to Austria.

I'm like 19 at the time, so I don't have the wherewithal to look out the window and ask myself why it looks like we're going into a desert.

Because we're going more south.

And the train gets onto a ferry, like it boards onto ferry.

And at that point I was like, I shouldn't be crossing an ocean right now.

Like, I don't know.

This.

This can't be right.

Anyways, people around me informed me that I was actually headed to Palermo.

And the thing is, I ended up really liking Palermo.

And now I go there all the time with Lucas.

So all I'm saying is they should have gone to Tunis and they should have experience Tunis, because maybe it would end up being the best part of their trip.

Sometimes you just gotta leave things to fate.

I was gonna jokingly ask, so did you enjoy Palermo?

No.

You fully stayed there and that was your trip?

Yeah.

Okay.

Should I tell you my thing?

Yeah.

White Lotus has been renewed for a fourth season.

Yeah.

And it's taking place in France.

France.

France.

Yes, I did see that.

So what do you think the storyline's gonna be, Erin?

Ooh.

Oh, right.

Because there's definitely gonna be, like, an angle to this.

What would the angle be?

See, I think it's gonna be taking place in, like, the south of France.

At a resort in the south of France.

That's, like, what I would assume.

Yeah, I think.

For sure.

I don't think Paris is gonna be, like, a big part of it.

Unless, like, you've got kind of a guy like Rick again, who's, like, headed to Paris for whatever reason.

But I think they gotta keep it on resort.

It'll probably be similar to the Sicily season where it'll be like a resort, but there will be off resort scenarios going down.

I'm curious to see mostly what the angle is, what the big thing they're going to unpack will be.

There's nothing stands out to me specifically about France.

To unpack?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm intrigued.

I know I'm totally at a loss.

They might play up some stereotypical French snootiness a little bit.

Well, I was thinking, like, what are themes they could commentate on in terms of the tourism space?

I know, like, maybe something around over tourism.

What are hot topics in France?

I'm not sure.

Maybe somebody meant to book a trip to Nice and then they ended up in Tunisia at a different White Lotus resort.

Like, they'll definitely be able to sit satirize wealthy people because, like, there's definitely a lot of wealthy, wealthy people in the south of France, for sure.

Like the French Riviera.

There's definitely bougie hotels down there.

So, like, obviously it'll be some sort of commentary on wealth, but there's always these, like, side commentaries happening.

And that's what I'm curious about.

I'm almost wondering.

I'm thinking of, like, Lake Como in Italy.

It's in Italy, right?

Like Como.

Yeah.

That's where all the billionaire weddings have been happening.

And I'm like, what if they end up sort of doing something like that, but it's just in France because it can't be exactly Lake Como.

Yeah.

Honestly, I'm not that excited about it.

Is that bad to say no.

Aaron, what's happening to you?

I don't know, honestly.

On further reflection, the most recent season of White Lotus was definitely my least favorite because there were just too many loose ends.

And I feel like he didn't lean into the satirization as much as I hoped he would.

And so I'm just a little skeptical that season four will be great.

Well, we'll have to see.

It'll probably come out in, like, three years, so we have time.

Yeah.

Let's continue ruminating.

Hi, Carrie.

Hi, Trish.

Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourselves?

We both were travelers our whole lives.

We both grew up in families that traveled a lot.

And so this was an important element of our lives before we met and continued to be.

And I think it was one of the things that attracted us to one another was that we both have this love of traveling.

And that's really what sustained us to a great extent through the difficulties we had, you know, through Tricia's health issues.

We were determined to keep doing something that we've enjoyed our whole lives.

And between the two of us, we're fluent in four languages.

Yeah.

Roughly.

Yeah.

That's so impressive.

I'm so jealous.

I am in the process of learning Dutch, but it's only been about six months, so I have quite a lot more learning to do.

So at the start of this episode, I shared a little bit about how the way I have traveled has evolved as I get older.

The main things I've noticed is that I don't have the same energy as I did 10 years ago, and I have a lot more anxiety than I did 10 years ago.

But this is obviously totally okay.

I'm changing, and that's a normal thing.

So I'm just adapting the way that I travel to that.

But I'd love to hear your take on this, because you have more decades under your belt than I do.

So what do you have to say about, like, how it evolves as you get older and older?

And I'm curious, like, how has travel remained rewarding even as your body and your circumstances change over time?

I would start with, I was not diagnosed with Ms. Until my late 30s, and then for the first 10 or 15 years, my case of Ms. Was pretty benign, and it didn't have any physical effects for, gosh, almost 20 years.

Certainly our travel style and our expectations have changed over time.

Whereas once upon a time, I could just run to the airport, jump on an airplane, and go somewhere, literally here in California, you didn't Even have to be ticketed in advance at one time to get on airplanes.

So that's changed a lot.

Just because the travel system has changed, Security is so different now, and so on.

And a lot of these things have direct impacts on us because a traveler, say, on a scooter or wheelchair going through security is handled completely differently than just a person walking through.

The biggest changes have been that we've had to learn a lot about what to anticipate and what kinds of obstacles we're likely to encounter and think about how we're going to overcome those, or if we're skeptical about overcoming them, how we're going to avoid them.

That just takes a lot of research and preparation.

It also takes a great deal more flexibility and willing to roll with things than one had to have when we were in our 20s.

But by doing good research and by keeping the right mental attitude about it, we are able to do almost all the things that any other traveler could do.

I can relate to this in a small way because I travel with severe food allergies, not to compare it to Ms. By any stretch, but I can relate to the experience of having to prepare, because a lot of preparation does go into travel, when that's something that you have to factor in and also mentally think about as your traveling traveling.

And as I've gotten older and I've become more adventurous with the places that I go, it's become even more prominent that I have to prepare, because in some parts of the world, people aren't aware of food allergies or peanuts are used quite a lot in the cooking.

And so I have actually found, as I get older, it's more of a consideration.

So, yeah, I can relate to that piece about having to do the preparation and sort of know ahead of time what those obstacles will be.

But I wanted to talk a little bit first about MS, just in case anyone listening isn't aware.

Ms. Is a chronic disease that affects the central nervous system by disrupting communication between the brain and the rest of the body.

From what I read, it's unpredictable and progressive with symptoms that can include muscle weakness, problems with balance and coordination, numbness, vision changes, and in some cases, loss of mobility over time.

So, Trish, could you tell us a bit about when you started experiencing the symptoms and how you came to the decision together that you would navigate this and continue to travel and live the life that you wanted to live, even with these new considerations to face?

I was first diagnosed when I was 37.

Because of what they call invisible symptoms.

I would get Numbness in my right hand or some effects on my vision, little things like that balance.

So they call it invisible symptoms because it's not obvious.

I was in a very public life.

I was on a board that was on television all the time.

But initially I just could claim, well, I had a bad knee.

And it wasn't until, I don't know, maybe 20 years after I was diagnosed that I started to have invisible symptoms.

My legs became less and less, I say cooperative.

Then I started having used more mobile devices.

Now I'm using what they call a power wheelchair, basically an electric wheelchair.

While it's wonderful for traveling, what we found out is that you can't take it on airplane.

Then we have to adjust.

What am I going to use?

I'll use a scooter when we travel.

So, you know, some adjustments that you need to make.

I think an important factor is patience.

We've had people be absolutely incredibly helpful.

I mean, in places that like Paris, people go, oh, my God, Paris is awful.

No, we found it to be absolutely wonderful.

Every single person we encountered wanted to help, was great.

You stay pleasant, you're cooperative, you're patient, you know, you polite.

And I'd say that's been the case pretty much everywhere we've gone, whether it was around Europe or Caribbean islands or in the Arctic, you name it.

We have always found people who were not only willing to be helpful, but would really go the extra mile to be that helpful.

You know, Trish mentioned Paris.

We had a couple of experiences there where, you know, we couldn't ride the subways because the metro doesn't have elevators at all stations.

So you didn't want to get stuck down there.

So we took city buses, which were great because they all had wheelchair ramps.

But one bus we tried to get on, the ramp wouldn't deploy.

So what happened?

There were four guys, some kind of city workers standing there.

Big guys?

Yeah, big guys.

They got off the bus, lifted up.

Trish on her, my scooter.

The whole thing carried her onto the bus, and three stops later carried her back off.

You know, things like that, they make a travel experience.

That interaction with people, that good feeling that comes from that kind of interaction, just really augments the joy of travel tremendously.

Yeah, I agree.

It's definitely been my experience that the small acts of kindness you experience when there's, like, a language barrier, those are some of my most prominent travel memories.

It's not the landmarks that I saw.

It's just those very everyday interactions, and they're often rooted in people's kindness.

They just leave such an impression on you.

It's funny too because so many people have a bad review of Paris.

So I'm happy to hear this counter review.

The other aspect of that is that some countries, many countries actually are going to considerable lengths to make themselves more accessible, some better than others.

They're trying.

You'll find that a lot of countries have websites now devoted to accessibility because they're trying to promote travel among older people.

Especially because they know that these are people that are likely to have the time to travel and look for new adventures and so on will have the.

Time and the resources.

Yeah, exactly.

So there's that aspect of it.

But there's also the things you mentioned, small kindnesses, things that they do to make it a more hospitable environment for disabled or older visitors.

Going back to Paris again for a minute.

The Eiffel Tower is huge attraction.

There's lines a mile long for people waiting to go up the elevators to go in there.

So we get there, we start to get into line, A guide runs over to us and says, oh no, you don't need tickets, you don't need to stand in line, follow me.

And they just take us to an elevator dedicated for dignitaries and disabled people.

And as we're going to it and we're passing this mile long line of people, I'm like looking.

So things like that.

We didn't even ask for help.

They already had a policy in place that assisted people like us.

And we found that at museums, other public places, not everywhere.

There are some places where was.

They didn't have such.

They hadn't gone to those lengths yet.

Maybe they will eventually.

But more and more places we find are really trying to be hospitable in that respect.

It's hard in older cities, especially where you've got buildings and streets and things that are centuries old and they just weren't.

Cobblestone streets aren't great for wheelchairs or scooters or even for people on a cane or a walker.

But they, they look for ways to accommodate people that have special needs.

Hearing you mentioned that, you're noticing some places around the world are clearly investing in this, especially because like you mentioned, they see a market.

What are some of these places?

I'm curious to hear if there's any specific ones on your radar that you've been interested in going to specifically for that reason.

Well, we research places as we get interested in going to them.

So I'll give you an example of a couple of different experience we had.

We Wanted to go to Slovenia.

We researched Slovenia and they had a website dedicated to accessibility.

But it was funny because they said on their website, please be patient with us, we're trying very hard to become more accessible.

We're still working on it.

It's on their website.

So they were, they were very candid about it and we found an accessible hotel.

But it turned out even though the room was accessible in most respects, the bathroom was not so much.

But they tried really hard.

And so we appreciated that, that they, they did the best they could in retrofitting an old building.

But Counterpoint, we've traveled to a number of Caribbean islands and the one that comes to mind is Curacao, where it's a popular cruise ship stop.

And so right at the waterfront, things are fairly accessible.

There's ramps and there's curb cuts and things.

But you get one block away and there's nothing we didn't see.

I mean, frankly, when we travel we rarely see other disabled people out and about because so many places are not very hospitable to them.

It's extremely rare for us to see another scooter or wheelchair out and about.

And in Curacao we could really understand why because we wound up having to walk everywhere in the streets because there were no corner ramps on sidewalks, so you couldn't get on and off the sidewalk at intersections.

It was just not a city.

Willemstad, the city that was not designed for.

It's interesting you mentioned this about the street specifically because I was on a walking tour in London in the UK just earlier this year and someone on the tour with me was using a mobility scooter.

And I noticed like we often had to find specific places to cross the street to like specific sidewalks to take so that she could get her scooter up onto the sidewalk.

And it's so silly to say, but like, because I've never been surrounded much by people using mobility devices, it's just something I never really thought about.

And being on this tour with her made me really realize like there's such small details about our day to day life that we don't consider consider when it comes to accessibility.

And I think that's a really good example of that.

What are some of the other small details you would say that you think about when you're choosing a place to go.

And I ask this out of curiosity, but also to sort of uncover some of the things that are maybe easy to do that a lot of places around the world could be investing in.

Well, for us, one of the important Things is that there be things that we can also do separately.

And that's important, I think, for any couple traveling together that you don't have to do every single thing, every minute of the day together.

Right.

But then where there are things that we can do together afterwards.

So I come back from diving, we eat lunch and then we have a rental car and we go explore the island.

Sometimes those are surprisingly accessible things.

Just as an example, on the island of Dominica, great scuba diving also.

It's a very beautiful jungle island, waterfalls and rivers and things.

A guide that we had hired suggested that maybe we would like to take a boat ride up this river into the jungle.

And we were really skeptical because how would Trish get into the boat and out?

And you know, he said, again, it was one of those, like, no problem.

Yeah, no problem.

So even though the boat was five feet below the pier, a guy who must have been seven feet tall at least, and the size of a professional football player lifted her up, lifted her down into the boat.

We had this fantastic ride on a little boat into the jungle, came back, he lifts her back up again.

People were so, so impressed.

They're applauding doing that.

I mean, I know from traveling with severe food allergies, part of traveling with that kind of limitation is that you're kind of forced to trust people in a way that you otherwise wouldn't have to because you're asking for a very specific kind of help.

Because like we said earlier, it's one of those takeaways from travel.

Right.

Is that most of the people on this planet are good people.

And when you travel, you can really start to see that.

And it sounds like being able to make travel possible just in general for you too, despite the challenges, is making travel extra special because you have all these special experiences to share that have happened.

So, yeah.

I'm curious if you could tell us about a trip that captures the challenges that you're facing in your travels as well as the joy of traveling with a disability.

Well, I think for both of us, the probably the best example of a trip that had great challenges but that also was fantastically rewarding was going to Alaska.

We had originally planned to just take a cruise down the coast from Anchorage to Vancouver.

Then we found that the cruise line also offered an on land component to the trip.

So we signed up for that.

And what that wound up being was we rode by train from Anchorage to Denali national park onto Fairbanks, which is right in the middle of the state and is where the train line ends.

And there we got on a bus and rode for two days on a dirt highway over a mountain range all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Incredible.

Yeah, the views, the wildlife, the everything.

It was just phenomenal.

It was such a unique experience that not only was it so enjoyable and stimulating in every way, but when we were leaving this charming town called Dead Horse on the Arctic Ocean, the manager of the sort of hotel that we were staying at, he gave Trish a certificate that read first scooter to the Arctic Ocean.

Yeah.

We were curious to ask you about your perspective on cruises because we do see a lot of scrutiny around cruises because I'm sure both of you are well aware they do bring large amounts of people to small ports that are sometimes overwhelmed with the volume of people.

There's obviously environmental impacts as well with cruise ships, but one of the defenses of cruise ships that I think is a really important one is that it's a very accessible way to travel.

In my mind, it's one of the best ways to travel if you've limited mobility because you have everything you need right there on the ship.

And I've never been on a cruise ship myself, but I'm assuming that they're designed to be quite accessible.

So I'm curious if you have thoughts around that, if cruise ships are something you've done a lot yourself, or if you have thoughts around the balance between their negative impacts but also their benefits.

Yeah, but we haven't done a lot of cruising.

We've gone twice.

We took the Alaska cruise and we took just a three day cruise from San Diego, where we live, down to the end of Baja California to Cabo San Lucas over a New Year's weekend.

I think we probably will cruise again in the future because as you say, it's a very hospitable environment for people with mobility limitations.

I'm curious to hear from you both what you would say to someone with a disability or someone who has a partner with a disability who might feel hesitant about taking their first big trip.

Do you have strategies you've used to research places and anticipate obstacles or just like specific things that you do that you think are helpful to someone who's just starting out?

Well, I think one of the things we do, after you just kind of look at a website and some of the brochures and whatnot, you can start with contacting the tourism bureau.

And they're usually not all that humble, but they try.

And then you pick where you're going to stay.

And one of the best things to do after you've looked at their website, which doesn't tell you much.

I always call the hotel because they almost always have an 800 number.

But every now and then you got to pay the international fees.

But it is so worth just contacting the hotel.

And they're really always.

We've always had good, good experiences.

They're happy that you call them and you explain what you need, what your concern is, and you just tell them, I really need places that I can get to from the lobby to the restaurant or from my room to the pool.

Do you have places that have no stairs?

It's really important to me that there's not these stairs.

And they're really good about helping you and they're glad that you called them.

And they do try.

I mean, we've never had somebody who say, oh, no, forget it.

We don't have room for wheelchairs.

You know, please, no.

And they're usually pretty candid.

I mean, we sometimes find that they were going to a new.

A new place.

On our last Europe trip, I wanted to go back to a place in Austria, resort town that I had gone with my family a number of times as a child.

And it's a spa town called Bangastein, up in the mountains, in the Alps in.

And we had the hardest time finding a hotel that could offer an accessible room, even though it was a spa community that you would think a lot of older people go, but it was in the season when some hotels were closed.

And anyway, it took some real effort to find a hotel.

And when we found one, it was fantastic.

It was a great choice and it all worked out very well.

But, you know, you couldn't just assume that any hotel there would be bound to have accessible rooms.

We had planned on the same trip to take a side trip into Switzerland to go to another place that I had wanted to go back to from my childhood.

And we couldn't find a single hotel in Missouri that could offer us an accessible room.

And in the town that we wanted to go up in the mountains, there was only one hotel with accessible rooms, and they were all booked and just gave up on that part of the trip and just did something else.

And that's an important lesson too, is to always have contingency plans because you will run into things that you didn't expect.

You will find that a place you thought you could go, you can't, or that a place that.

Or it's closed, or it turns out that there's stairs when they said there weren't any, or whatever.

And so have an alternate plan.

Don't get upset, don't get frustrated.

Just have contingency plans, roll with it and go and have a good time doing something else.

I guess it's very much about being adaptable and being willing to just accept that things aren't going the way that you thought they would and being open to just finding another path.

Sometimes when I tell people about the lengths I sometimes have to go to to travel, like, especially in, like, Southeast Asia with my severe allergies, people look at me with like a look of horror and they're just like, how, how do you do this?

Like, how is that enjoyable?

And I always tell them, like, it sounds really hard because it is, but you just, you get used to it.

It's your normal.

And you realize that it's worth having the experience, even if it's not going to be the same experience that everyone else has.

Do I get to eat local food every place that I go?

Typically not.

Food is just not part of the travel experience for me.

And accepting that was important, and I did and I moved on.

And I enjoy travel for other reasons.

Well, and sometimes even when you don't think you can have the same experience that everyone else has, there are ways, ways to do it.

I'll give you a great example.

We were on the island of Grand Cayman, and the scuba diving group that I'd been diving with for a few days said, well, tomorrow we're going to go to this place where stingrays gather on the ocean bottom.

And the guide said, do you think your wife would like to try that?

And I said, I, I don't think she, you know, it seems a little over ambitious.

And he said, well, if she's ever, she has dived, you know, you mentioned she had dived once before.

We can help her get into the water and we'll get her down there.

And they did.

She, she.

Her legs were a little stronger then, so she was able with, with help to get down a ladder into the water.

They got her scuba gear onto her in the water.

She drops down, what, maybe 25ft, 30ft to a sand bottom where the other divers are all in a circle.

And so we join the circle and the stingrays start showing up and they start swimming all around us and they especially start swimming around her.

Yeah.

Which the guide, the dive master, later said he had observed that once before with a disabled diver, that it was like the rays had some kind of an affinity for.

They could detect something about her that was.

That attracted them.

So she was able to have this exact same unique experience as all the other people in the group.

Something she never would have expected to be able to do.

And then when it was over, got her back onto the boat and it all worked out well.

You've both been traveling well into your 70s.

Could you tell me a bit about how your relationship to travel has changed as you've gotten older?

I guess when we've traveled, I don't mean to be impolite, but we never really thought of ourselves as bolder travelers.

Yeah.

Because we've always traveled and that's, you know, just what we do.

And we never felt like people were trying to be nice to us, you know, because we're older.

But I think that that's the point that, you know, if you're younger and you already like traveling, keep traveling.

That's the best thing you can do.

Right.

That's the, the best advice we can give you is have it remain a.

An important element in your life.

Because frankly, we haven't changed the kinds of destinations we go to or the activities we engage in based on our age.

Now, at some point that may become necessary, but we're still, you know, Tricia's mobility issues notwithstanding, we're still vital enough in our 70s that I can keep scuba diving, she can keep running around pounds on her scooter or wheelchair.

I mean, we, we haven't changed our, our method of traveling in 25 years of doing this together.

There will come a time, I suppose, when we'll have to concede some.

Something to age.

But it doesn't have to be anytime soon, I hope.

I mean, I'm not trying to get people to do things that they're not physically able to do.

You have to, can only be adaptable to a point, but stretch your limits.

For example, you might get to the point where you just can't do stairs.

Well, you just contact wherever you're going, say, I really can't do stairs.

Is there a way for me to access your hotel and your restaurant without having to go upstairs, so otherwise I can't stay there.

And that's all they need to hear.

And you're not being cranky about it.

You're just saying I can't stay with you if I can't.

Can't get places.

And I guess a nice little side effect of making the calls to, I guess, like hotels.

But you could also be calling airlines and restaurants.

When you voice this need, it's also communicating to them.

Even if they can't accommodate you.

You've then put it on their Radar, that this is an accommodation they should be thinking about.

And the more people that call and raise this with places, the more apparent it becomes that this is something that they should be accommodating.

So that's a nice little side effect, making those phone calls, I imagine.

One other quick anecdote, this is one of the best chapters in my book is we're taking a train trip from Berlin to Vienna.

And we had made preparations, made reservations in advance for accessible seats on a certain train on a certain date.

Well, we get to the.

We stopped at the train station the day before just.

Just to be sure everything was okay.

And the guy at the office that handled special needs travelers says to me with a straight face, yes, you have tickets, but you have no reservations.

That's the name of the chapter in the book.

We didn't know what to say.

What do you say to that?

But he explained that for some reason, even though, yes, we had tickets, they were for a first class car on this train, but there was no first class car on this train and nobody had made for the specific seats.

And now it was too close to the time of our travel to do that anymore.

So.

So we just prevailed on him to do what he could.

And he.

Again, he was somebody who could have just said, sorry, I can't help you, it's too long.

No, instead he went to work and he did as much as he could do.

He said, just, I think it's okay, but come back in the morning and go to, you know, tell us where to go, and.

And we get there and of course, once again, nobody knows anything about it.

Right.

They take me back up to the same office as the previous day, and nobody knows what to do because there's nothing.

They have no record of it.

At the last moment, it was like, the train is boarding.

Was that where the woman came running?

This woman comes running in, literally running in hands a piece of paper to the woman who's helping me or trying to.

And she looks at it and she looks up and says, low, you are low.

I guess.

Yeah, everything is good.

And off we go.

I have no idea what happened, but.

It worked out well.

Carrie, you mentioned your book on Two Legs and Three Wheels.

Can you tell us a bit about what inspired you to write the book?

Was there a specific moment where you realized that these stories needed to be shared more widely?

Sure.

Well, I've been writing for a long time, but most of my writing had been essay writing.

I published a lot of essays in newspapers, but mostly political or environmental.

And then I published one previous memoir that was more of a personal autobiographical memoir about my experiences growing up in Europe and then coming to the United States.

And so this book was something very different.

And it started out as a series of standalone travel stories that I thought would be interesting to share with people and perhaps publish as individual stories.

But after writing a few of them, I thought, you know, this is I'm writing so many of these and there's so many more I could write, maybe I can turn this into a book.

And so I started to string them together so they were chronological.

And over a couple of years I wrote the 24 stories that comprise the book, about 24 different travel adventures, starting with the very first thing that Trish and I did together, which was a hiking trip out in the desert in California and concluding with our most recent trip to Europe two years ago.

So far, good reactions, good responses to it, good reviews.

It's only been out now for a few months, so still promoting it and appreciate being on podcasts like this and probably will write more travel stories in the future that maybe I'll do a augmented second edition with some additional stories in it a couple years down the road.

Well, thank you both so much for joining us on the show and sharing your experiences.

It's been a pleasure to chat with you.

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Sam It.