About
Meet Nan, aka @headroamer in chief. Here’s why I’m passionate about deep dive, immersive travel.
Hi, I'm Nan, aka @headroamer. And I want to go everywhere.
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.
Travel is an investment
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.
The passionate, thoughtful, less-frequent traveler's Guide to Trip Planning
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.
- Get inspired. Coming soon: Our list of 10 easy ways to get inspired.
- Research. For the true deep diver, the journey begins here. This post shows you exactly how we go about that.
- Share. If a tree falls in a forest and you’re the only one there…write it down. Then, it doesn’t just happen to you, it—and more importantly, its impact—can be felt, by the people you care about, and by people you’ve never met but who are kindred spirits. We’re working on everything from simple photo organization to how to share those moments that you’ll never forget with the people you care about most.
Head Roam exists for you: To help you connect with new people, new places, and new experiences, and to tell your stories with grace.
About Nan
A little background info
Nan Bauer
Headroamer in Chief
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.
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