There’s one small problem, though.
I don’t just want to pop off the plane or out of the car, grab a selfie, and then check off a really long bucket list.
I don’t just want to go. I want to see.
To experience. To adopt a coffee shop and maybe a pub and maybe a restaurant.
So that by the 3rd or 4th time I come back, someone says, hey, I remember you! Chardonnay, right?
Head Roam is for slow burn, deep dive travelers like myself. Who feel that a lengthy bucket list is not the point.
It’s the depth of the bucket.
I dunno about you, but that whole pandemic thing? It really led to a whole lotta reflection on travel.
When COVID-19 erupted in spring of 2020, Steve and I were Lima, Peru. The country’s borders were closed, and it took us a month to get out.
It was, in many ways, an amazing experience, and we fortunately emerged ok. But since we’ve returned home, I have seriously rethought our life of extremely frequent travel.
And now that I want to do a whole lot less than we used to, I want to wring the most out of every possible trip.
In other words: I want to take less trips, and make sure they’re as rich and immersive as possible.
Our goal here at Head Roam: To give you, my fellow passionate student of the world, the tools that help you journey to your dream destination—whether in person or from your home.
Head Roam exists for you: To help you connect with new people, new places, and new experiences, and to tell your stories with grace.
I began blogging around the same time as a lot of people, sometime in the mid-aughts. I morphed from the purely personal Nanarama to Nanette’s Feast, which was going to bring the dinner and a movie concept to life, and which never quite took off. I then migrated to Le Chou Fou, where I documented our 4 weeks in Perù when the borders were closed and we waited for a flight to get home. (That adventure is in process of being turned into a book; shortly, the site will go dark.)
As for the standard resume stuff, I still am a regular contributor of both articles and video content for Edible WOW magazine. I’ve made videos with Harry Josh and Luigi Murenu when I worked at Enlighten, a digital agency in Ann Arbor, MI. A long time ago, I was the Editorial Coordinator for the Criterion Collection.
But of all the things I’ve done, the accomplishment that I feel is most important is my 15 or so years teaching composition, argument, and literature at Washtenaw Community College, also in Ann Arbor. Thanks to that job, I was able to connect with a truly diverse group of people through story: telling our own, and appreciating the countless stories of others.
Connecting and storytelling come naturally to me. I think they’re innate talents that we all have. I’ve got a lot of shortcuts after years of practice, and I’m happy to share them with you. Because I know you’ve got a lot to share back.
Let’s get going.