Hannah Bowley is a 32-year-old speech-language pathologist in Seattle who recently cycled across the world for a year and plans to do something similar every three years. (@hannahbowley)
Hannah and I met when she hosted me, as a total stranger, at her apartment in Seattle. We later embarked upon a 5-week cycle adventure in Patagonia, where we experienced stunning landscapes, challenging gravel roads, and a shocking lack of empanadas. This was just one of many adventures for Hannah, who was in the middle of a 11-month cycling voyage through Europe, South America, and Asia.
To make this trip possible, Hannah lived super frugally in Seattle—a superpower in itself—and took advantage of a hidden clause in her public school contract, allowing her to take a full year of unpaid time off every three years. She discusses the mental journey of long-term travel, how she convinced friends to join her along the way, the kindness of strangers, and how she relaxed about money throughout the trip. (She spent a grand total of $23,000, including flights.) Hannah considered recruiting a full-time travel partner, but she ultimately chose to go solo as a form of personal growth, becoming less obsessed with time and embracing her introversion.
Back home in Seattle, Hannah enjoyed her 9-to-5 existence before the trip but couldn’t see herself taking the next big steps that her friends were taking (house, marriage, kids). After the trip, she’s still trying to find a new normal, struggling with an excess of consumer choice, and may be experiencing an existential crisis.
We conclude with a discussion of our mutual friend and adventure partner, Vince, and how the three of us formed a lean, mean, Patagonia cycling team… even when the horseflies arrived.
Full transcript: dirtbagrich.com/hannah
Recorded in October 2024.
AI Notes
This is an AI-generated summary and transcript. Typos and mistakes exist!
Summary
The transcript is a conversation between Hannah Bowley and Blake Boles, discussing Hannah’s year-long cycling trip across multiple continents. Hannah shares details about her journey, including her motivations, experiences, challenges, and personal growth. She reflects on the impact the trip had on her perspective, detachment from consumerism, and her current struggle to readjust to her normal life in Seattle. The conversation covers topics such as budgeting, minimalism, finding purpose, and the existential crisis Hannah is currently facing after her transformative experience.
Chapters
00:00:01 Introduction and Background
Hannah and Blake discuss how they met through the Warmshowers community, where Hannah stayed with Blake for a night in Seattle. This led to Blake inviting Hannah to join him and his friend Vince for a cycling trip in South America, specifically the Carretera Austral in Patagonia.
00:02:28 The Patagonia Cycling Adventure
Hannah, Blake, and Vince cycled together for about six weeks on the Carretera Austral, a challenging gravel road through Patagonia. They faced difficulties like rough terrain, horse fly swarms, and hitchhiking challenges. However, they also enjoyed memorable experiences like whitewater rafting, staying in cabanas, and bonding over shared adventures.
00:05:20 Hannah’s Extended Cycling Trip
After the Patagonia trip, Hannah continued her cycling journey for a total of 13 months, spending four months in Europe and six months in Asia, including Vietnam, Southeast Asia, South Korea, and Japan. She shares how she was able to take a year off from her job as a speech therapist in Seattle by utilizing a leave of absence policy.
00:17:39 Budgeting and Minimalism
Hannah discusses her budgeting strategies, which allowed her to travel for 13 months on a budget of around $23,000. She emphasizes her minimalist approach, carrying only essential items on her bike and detaching from consumerism during her travels. This experience profoundly impacted her perspective on material possessions and marketing.
00:31:49 Personal Growth and Existential Crisis
The cycling trip facilitated personal growth for Hannah, helping her slow down, appreciate simplicity, and connect with kindness from strangers. However, upon returning to Seattle, she is facing an existential crisis, struggling to readjust to her normal life and feeling unfulfilled. She plans to continue taking extended trips every three years to maintain her newfound perspective.
Transcript
Blake Boles 00:01
Hannah Bowley, welcome to Dirtbag Rich.
Hannah Bowley 00:03
Thanks for having me.
Blake Boles 00:05
How did you and I meet?
Hannah Bowley 00:07
I met you by hosting you on warmshowers in Seattle, Washington. You slept on my couch one rainy night. You came on the train at like 11 30 p .m. I think.
Blake Boles 00:20
Oh, rude. And for those who don’t know what warmshowers is, cause it’s kind of a weird thing, what is it?
Hannah Bowley 00:27
It is essentially couchsurfing, but for bike tourists. So you have to be traveling by bike in order to get hosted.
Blake Boles 00:36
So I stayed with you for exactly one night in Seattle. This was definitely less than 24 hours. And then what happened next? What led us to the next chapter in our relationship?
Hannah Bowley 00:48
Well, your super awesome friend that lives in a bus picked you up and I thought, wow, this guy seems pretty cool. If he has a friend that lives in a bus. Um, and the next chapter you asked me if I wanted to ride with you in South America on the Carretera Austral. And that led us to riding together for about six weeks in South America. Fast forward, I think that was like a year and a half later.
Blake Boles 01:15
Yeah. Why did you agree to that? You hardly knew me.
Hannah Bowley 01:22
Well, I Googled you, you have a great website and I was able to find out a little bit more about you and you seemed pretty legit. Like you knew what you were doing on a bike, traveling around and I don’t know, something about your job and how starkly different your career is for mine in terms of unschooling.
Hannah Bowley 01:46
And I work in a formal school system. Just fascinated me. And I was like, I need to know more about this person. And I thought, what better way to get to know somebody than traveling by bike with them for an extended period of time?
Blake Boles 02:01
Indeed. What percent chance was there in your head that I’m a psychopath or murderer?
Hannah Bowley 02:08
It was less than 5% for sure.
Blake Boles 02:11
But it was more than 1%. Let’s just move on. Let’s move on. Talk about our bicycle adventure. Where did we travel? What was it like? Who did we go with? And maybe any memories, any particular memories that stand out?
Hannah Bowley 02:28
Yeah. So we met up in probably one of my favorite spots on my trip, El Chalten in Argentina. And Blake, you invited your friend from childhood camp, Vince, who was super awesome. He was just graduating from nursing school and kind of in a transition phase.
Hannah Bowley 02:48
So he was able to come join us for a couple months. And we rode the Cara Terra Austral, which is a beautiful road straight through Patagonia. That is the worst gravel of your entire life.
Blake Boles 03:01
Seriously, seriously.
Hannah Bowley 03:02
Biggest rocks.
Blake Boles 03:06
Rípio is Spanish for hell on wheels
Hannah Bowley 03:09
And the three of us had, you know, bikes that were probably the least suited for that path, but yeah, we rode through Patagonia for about six weeks together from El Chalten to Bariloche, where we had the best steak of our lives.
Hannah Bowley 03:26
And in that time, the core memories I think were just the ripio, the hitchhiking. We did a lot of side adventures like whitewater rafting on class five rapids that are just one class down from an actual waterfall.
Hannah Bowley 03:45
They had me questioning my life decisions for sure in those moments of.
Blake Boles 03:51
You and me both, Hannah.
Hannah Bowley 03:52
Yeah, we stayed in some cabanas and then did a combination of wild camping. Ate a lot of food that was labeled excesso en calorias.
Blake Boles 04:04
Almost got sponsored, right? You almost got a sponsored by Takis. By getting your, the photo you took of Vincy, uh, carrying bags of Takis on the, the Takis Chile social media, like Facebook or something, right?
Hannah Bowley 04:18
Yeah. And Blake, yeah. During that hike, you brought different bags of Takis and we did a blindfold Taki tasting, which talkies were just a huge theme of our bike trip because there weren’t that many snack options at all these stores.
Hannah Bowley 04:33
Yeah. I had visions like empanada stands on the side of this road and dreamt about them leading up to this bike trip. They weren’t there.
Blake Boles 04:42
Definitely not many empanada stands can count them on one hand And You were in the middle of something bigger You were not just coming down to south america to do This cool bike trip and then going back home to seattle. What were you in the middle of?
Hannah Bowley 04:59
So I was in the middle of a 13 month bike trip and I had just left four months of biking in Europe, where I biked from Copenhagen to Barcelona. And then I flew down to South America and worked in a hostel for three weeks prior to meeting up with you and Vince in El Chalten.
Blake Boles 05:20
And what about after our adventure in South America?
Hannah Bowley 05:24
Okay, after the adventure, I flew to Vietnam and biked in Asia for six months, Southeast Asia, South Korea and Japan.
Blake Boles 05:35
So you’re just like a rich girl biking around. You don’t really have to work, just privileged generational wealth, right? This is clearly anyone who’s just like, I want a bike for 12 months. It’s coming from some, some elevated status to tell us about your, your father who owns the pin factory.
Hannah Bowley 05:56
Yeah, I wish, just kidding. So I’m actually, I don’t come from generational wealth and I’m a speech language pathologist in Seattle Public Schools, so I don’t make a huge amount of money, but leading up to this trip, I was really careful about saving.
Hannah Bowley 06:11
I basically stopped going out to dinner and was living very, very simply within the confines of how simply you can live in Seattle and saving as much money as possible to go on this trip. So I didn’t work.
Hannah Bowley 06:25
I took a leave of absence and I just lived off of savings. And that’s also why I chose bike travel because it is much, much cheaper to travel by bike and be able to camp and have that freedom than to travel and stay in fancy hotels and other things people might do.
Blake Boles 06:44
aside from the occasional cabana.
Hannah Bowley 06:46
Yes, yes, of course.
Blake Boles 06:48
very affordable when split three ways.
Hannah Bowley 06:50
Absolutely.
Blake Boles 06:51
So you were able to take a full year off of your normal job, public school job, which I assume has benefits. It’s like a normal person job. And you were not fired. You had job security. How did you do this? Most people don’t do this.
Hannah Bowley 07:11
Yeah. So unlike a lot of people, I read my contract, which is about 360 pages. And there is a small section in the very, very fine print that says you are allowed to take a leave of absence. And it does not have to be a medical leave of absence.
Hannah Bowley 07:28
You can just take one every three years, you’re allowed to take one year off. And it can be for a variety of different reasons. And one of them is personal growth. So of course, I spun travel as personal growth, and was able to take the year off at my job.
Hannah Bowley 07:47
They held it for me. And I was able to return to my job in this school year. And I already started and I’m already planning on doing the same thing in three years. Just don’t tell my employer that.
Blake Boles 08:01
Yeah, yeah, I won’t tell them. So, so you told me, and this is why I invited you onto the podcast, that you’re planning on essentially doing this again and again, as long as you can. Is that still true?
Hannah Bowley 08:15
Yes, I hope that my new cadence in life will be three years of working, one year of travel. And I’ve only done that once and I’m already kind of mentally and financially prepping to do it again in three years.
Blake Boles 08:30
So what is it that you’re so fascinated by or obsessed with that you, you know, you’re not going to just settle into a normal cushy job in Seattle? Why would you keep taking a year off, uh, going away from, from friends, going away from family?
Blake Boles 08:47
Uh, I mean, this is a year is a pretty big vacation. It’s a pretty big break. I think most people are super happy if they could take a month off. So what’s in it for you?
Hannah Bowley 08:58
Yeah, that’s a good question. I, I guess I’m kind of still in the transition phase of figuring out what my new normal is. And I think this year, last year of travel helped me realize that everybody has a different sense of normal, you know, Blake, you have a very different sense of normal of what I might have, and then somebody who’s never taken an extended period of time off.
Hannah Bowley 09:20
So I feel like I’m halfway into the normal life, halfway out, still finding my sense of that. And after the year of travel, upon returning, I wasn’t sure what I want to do this again. And now it’s really all I can think about is traveling.
Hannah Bowley 09:37
And I, it just had a huge impact on my life. I’m still within that transition phase of figuring out what it means and how I can use that impact in my daily, quote, normal life in that I’m working a full -time job.
Hannah Bowley 09:52
I have a, you know, nine to five. I guess I’m just learning how to experience or how to integrate the experiences of what last year’s normal was of traveling by bike into my new life of working a nine to five.
Hannah Bowley 10:06
And all I can think about in my daily life in Seattle is how I want to travel again. And I don’t know what it is that makes me obsessed with it, but it’s something I cannot stop thinking about. And there’s so many different factors that could be why I’m obsessed with it, like the sense of freedom, the simplicity of the relaxation.
Hannah Bowley 10:28
There’s so many different things that come with the alternative kind of different lifestyle that I’m still making sense of in my daily life now.
Blake Boles 10:37
Well, maybe this conversation can help you make a little more sense of it. So when you think back to this year, traveling and cycling, beyond the places that you went or the food that you ate, what is it that, that you suspect made this so transformative and impactful again, I think there’s a lot of people out there who, who idealize long -term travel, but when presented with the reality of like month six of full -time ongoing travel, they really crave, you know, familiarity and stability and, and old friends. And it’s kind of stressful to keep going someplace new. So how did you make this work for you? And what do you think was the secret sauce in what you’re feeling now, this craving to do it all again?
Hannah Bowley 11:29
Yeah, I think while you are on a long trip, it’s a mindset. A lot of times before this trip, that was long, I would travel for two weeks. And at the end of that two weeks, I’d be like, Oh, I’m so ready for my bed.
Hannah Bowley 11:44
I’m so ready to get back into my routine. And I think that’s a complete mindset, because I would meet people that were traveling for a short period of time. And they would ask like, How are you doing this for so long?
Hannah Bowley 11:56
I can’t imagine sleeping in a different spot. But as you do it, you find your new routine. And the secret sauce is I think your mental kind of stamina and state of finding your new normal and finding the excitement and doing something different or sleeping somewhere different every single night.
Hannah Bowley 12:17
And I was very fortunate to have a lot of friends visit me along the way. So that was huge. I had, you know, all these deep and meaningful relationships in Seattle that I left behind. And that felt very stressful when I left all my friends, but I was lucky enough to have at least one friend every month and a half come visit me and that provided me a big sense of comfort. Now moving forward, would they do that again? Probably not.
Blake Boles 12:47
Yeah, each year they’re getting more and more adult responsibilities and obligations and reasons to not be able to travel.
Hannah Bowley 12:53
Absolutely.
Blake Boles 12:54
How were you able to convince them to come out and visit you and were they were they bringing their bikes were they also cyclists?
Hannah Bowley 13:02
Yeah, I actually didn’t have to convince anybody. I kind of just left it open. Um, and people wanted to come visit and we’re excited about it. Nobody, for the most part, nobody came to bike with me except for two friends that actually introduced me to bike packing here in Seattle in 2020.
Hannah Bowley 13:22
They introduced it to bike packing and they came to visit in South Korea and Japan, and they actually biked with me for an entire month, which felt like, wow, I have a slice of Seattle in Asia. And that was really cool and unique to experience.
Blake Boles 13:39
When the other friends visited but they were not cycling, did you stop cycling?
Hannah Bowley 13:43
Yeah. So I would usually store my bike at a warmshowers host house, or I found creative ways to kind of stow my bike away and travel by just means of public transit.
Blake Boles 13:58
Are there any specific moments that stand out, especially moments of like, Oh, this is so beautiful or meaningful that really made you feel like, Oh, I’m so glad that I’m taking a full year off and I can be out here doing this.
Hannah Bowley 14:12
Yeah, I felt towards the end of the trip, it was like month 10. I was in Japan and I had nobody else visiting me for the rest of my trip. And I was very kind of, I was a little nervous and on edge, like, okay, nobody else is going to visit.
Hannah Bowley 14:26
I’m in this place where there’s not a lot of cyclists or even other tourists that speak English and every, almost every single day, somebody in Japan would do something kind or bring me something or give me a gift.
Hannah Bowley 14:41
And that just, I don’t know, that completely changed my mindset and made me realize, wow, kindness goes farther than I could ever imagine. And that was like, you know, I’d sit outside 7 -Eleven eating my lunch and somebody would bring me a cold drink or a pakari sweat, which is the equivalent to like a Gatorade in Asia, or I’d be camping and somebody would see that I’m, you know, cooking on my camping stove and they’d bring me a beautiful bowl of ramen from their camping setup from their car.
Hannah Bowley 15:14
And these little moments every day just kept me going. And it wasn’t long conversations I had with these people. It was just, they would smile, hand me the gift, bow, and then walk away and expect absolutely nothing in return.
Blake Boles 15:26
Wow, cool.
Hannah Bowley 15:27
Yeah, that was awesome.
Blake Boles 15:29
Did you have any concerns at the start of this year that that turned out not to be big concerns in the end worries that evaporated?
Hannah Bowley 15:38
Yes, finances. That was my biggest worry. And the reason it took me years to finally go on this trip, I just thought, how am I going to make a whole year of travel off just savings? How will I survive if I don’t put money away in retirement each month?
Hannah Bowley 15:55
And that worry just completely dissolved. And I stopped worrying about it on the trip. I also haven’t even thought twice about it upon returning. It was worth it. And also traveling by bike is much cheaper than anyone would ever think.
Blake Boles 16:12
Did you stop worrying about it because you’re like screw it I’ll just spend whatever money I need to or was it because you realized that you were very conservative with your budgeting and your estimates or something else?
Hannah Bowley 16:26
I was a combination. I was very conservative with my budget. I stayed with a lot of warmshowers hosts in Europe. I did a lot of camping. So that, I was very conservative. I didn’t spend nearly as much as I thought.
Hannah Bowley 16:40
And along the way, it just felt so worth it. Like it was worth every last ounce of my savings that I was spending. And I thought, who cares about retirement? You know, I was so focused on that back in Seattle before I did long -term travel.
Hannah Bowley 16:56
Like, when can I retire? And how much can I put in each month? And I need to retire so I can travel. And now it feels very much like I’ll retire when it works for me. And during the time leading up to that, I’m going to live my life and enjoy it.
Blake Boles 17:12
Certainly you are. How much money were you spending? Can you just talk roughly about your budget, maybe what it looked like in different parts of the world? And if there is a figure of how much money it costs you to cycle travel for a year, not including expenses back at home, just however much it costs to do the travel, to sleep, to eat, to survive.
Blake Boles 17:39
Yeah, I’ll take anything you give me.
Hannah Bowley 17:42
Okay. Well, my total that I calculated included like a storage unit and included I have student loan payments. So without all of that for a year, it was about 23 ,000 to travel for 13 months. And keep in mind, I traveled in Europe for four months, which is very expensive.
Hannah Bowley 18:00
And I hit all the major cities that are expensive like Copenhagen, Paris, Munich, you know, I wasn’t only traveling to small towns that includes all my flights. You know, I flew to three different continents and that also includes splurging when friends were visiting.
Hannah Bowley 18:19
So there was one point that I ate at a Michelin star restaurant in Tokyo when I had friends visiting and I paid for it. Yes.
Blake Boles 18:27
Not just rice every night, the poverty experience with Hannah.
Hannah Bowley 18:32
Yeah, but to be honest, in Europe, four months in Europe, I spent less than three months in Southeast Asia, and that’s because I started in Europe, and I was so scared to spend money on anything except the bare minimum of exactly what I needed.
Hannah Bowley 18:49
So I hardly spent any money when I was in Europe. And then I loosened up a little bit when I was in Southeast Asia, and I stayed in fancy hotels that were the same price as one night of camping in Europe.
Hannah Bowley 19:02
So kind of all evened out, but I couldn’t believe that I spent more money in Southeast Asia for less time than I did in Europe.
Blake Boles 19:10
Yeah, that shows how smart you were being in Europe. How thrifty.
Hannah Bowley 19:15
Yeah.
Blake Boles 19:17
Yeah, I’m glad that when you and I crossed paths in South America, you had lightened up a bit about your budgeting because when you described how much of a tie, why do you wear in Europe? I’m like, I’m glad we can chill out and drink a beer together here in Chile.
Hannah Bowley 19:31
Yeah, yeah. That was probably one of my major regrets in the beginning of my trip was like being so tight and obsessive about how much I was spending.
Blake Boles 19:39
Yeah. Yeah. But I imagine you had to go through that in order to relax in the long run.
Hannah Bowley 19:45
Yeah, yeah
Blake Boles 19:46
So is this your first major solo travel that you’ve done? What building blocks or previous experiences led you to believe that this was reasonable and within your grasp?
Hannah Bowley 20:00
Yeah, that’s a good question. So the longest I had traveled alone before this was only two weeks. And I’m used to kind of planning shorter trips and executing on my own because I’m a school employee.
Hannah Bowley 20:14
So I have all summer off, which is really rare for a lot of people to have that much time off in their normal jobs. And so I didn’t want, I haven’t let friends not being able to join or partners not being able to join hold me back from traveling each summer.
Hannah Bowley 20:30
So I’m used to kind of planning these solo trips. And within the solo trips, I just realized, wow, it’s so easy to travel alone in that you can make all your own decisions, do exactly what you want. And so I really felt like, when thinking about the year, I had some people that were interested in joining.
Hannah Bowley 20:50
And ultimately, I kind of decided like, I’d love for people to join me for short amount of times, but I wanted to do this solo trip. I wanted to learn more about myself. There was just a lot of intentions behind this trip that I needed and wanted that did not include somebody else coming with me.
Blake Boles 21:11
Can you just expand on that a little bit? What were your intentions?
Hannah Bowley 21:16
Yeah, so some of my intentions, that’s a good question, and I’m still processing kind of how I achieved some of those and maybe in the future and work more towards some of them. But one of them was just to be ultimately kinder to myself and another one was to decondition myself to kind of the everyday life in the U .S.
Hannah Bowley 21:40
I’m very obsessed with time and waking up at a certain time, eating lunch at a certain time, going to bed at a certain time. And I really just wanted to kind of follow what I was feeling each day and not be so time obsessed and bound.
Hannah Bowley 21:56
And that was one of my intentions that took me about two months to decondition myself to not being so obsessed with time and like, okay, it’s noon, I must eat lunch. It’s like, not hungry. I don’t actually need to eat lunch.
Hannah Bowley 22:08
It doesn’t matter what time it is.
Blake Boles 22:09
What happened after two months that told you that you had reached that milestone.
Hannah Bowley 22:16
I think just the sense of letting go. It took a full two months to let go of time, expectations of myself, and to fully just kind of lean into traveling and following like my own, I guess circadian rhythm and kind of desires of what I wanted to do, not be driven by like, okay, it’s morning.
Hannah Bowley 22:39
I must do this in the morning and I must accomplish this by this time in the afternoon. I think this invisible weight lifted off of my body. I don’t know how to describe it. I can’t really put it into words because for me it’s still hard to, yeah, put into words all this time later.
Blake Boles 22:59
Did you have other intentions, other ways you were hoping to change or that you changed unexpectedly?
Hannah Bowley 23:07
Yeah, I think unexpectedly I went from being somebody who’s always been an extrovert and wanted to be surrounded by people every chance I get to sort of an introvert. I couldn’t believe how much alone time I enjoyed.
Hannah Bowley 23:24
And in that time, of course, I was able to do a lot of reflecting on my life up to this point and how I want to live my life moving forward. And in that time, I feel like I kind of became a little bit more of an introvert.
Hannah Bowley 23:42
That was very unexpected because coming back to the US, everything feels a little bit overstimulating and I didn’t feel that before. I think that was probably the biggest way I’ve changed. That’s like outwardly easy to define and see, but I’m still, you know, I just got back two months ago and I’m still kind of figuring out this impact and how to articulate it. So I apologize. I can’t do a better job.
Blake Boles 24:08
nothing to apologize for. But I want to use this as a bridge to talk about your life in Seattle now. And maybe just walk me through a typical Hannah week in your job. And yeah, go ahead.
Hannah Bowley 24:23
Okay. Well, I work Monday through Friday. I work in an elementary school. So we start, you know, back to the time bound. We start at 7 .25 and I get off at 2 .55. So that’s my normal Monday through Friday.
Hannah Bowley 24:38
And after work, typically, I guess before the trip, I would have always done something, whether it’s rock climbing, volleyball, go out to dinner, do something. And now my new normal is twice a week I do something after work, which includes playing volleyball and or rock climbing.
Hannah Bowley 25:03
Otherwise, I come home and I just relax and do exactly what I want. I ride my bike a lot. And then on the weekends, typically, I see friends, primarily spend most time with friends. Lately, I’ve been redecorating my apartment, trying not to buy things.
Hannah Bowley 25:21
That’s a big one.
Blake Boles 25:26
Sounds like you have a pretty normal. I’d say pretty normal, yeah, I think I’m, yeah. And are you happy with this version of normal in your life? Does it work for you? I’m trying.
Hannah Bowley 25:36
Um, I’m trying to be, um, I’d say before I used to be extremely happy with it and it just felt like this is what’s exactly what I should be doing and it felt very fulfilling and now I’m trying to make sense of my new normal and I can’t say I’m fully happy with it right now in this moment.
Hannah Bowley 25:57
Oh no. I want to be. I really want to be. In what way?
Blake Boles 26:01
Why are you now ruined?
Hannah Bowley 26:02
I feel like each day just feels a little bit more dull like okay is this really this is my day I’m going to bed now and that was all I’m going to experience with this day no one handed me
Blake Boles 26:14
of ramen.
Hannah Bowley 26:15
Yeah, no one handed me ramen. I didn’t meet anybody new. I didn’t see or experience anything new. I don’t know if my brain just needs to unwind from all of the newness and the nuances that I experience each day or if really it’s just going to feel this dull.
Hannah Bowley 26:33
I’m still figuring that out, but I have a hunch that it’ll just feel a little dull back in Seattle.
Blake Boles 26:42
Yeah. Yeah. At least there’s less ripio in Seattle.
Hannah Bowley 26:45
Definitely less rip you a more comfortable bed and more fulfilling relationships, but right now
Blake Boles 26:52
Ouch, Hannah.
Hannah Bowley 26:52
Oh, sorry. Sorry. But yeah, still making sense of the everyday feels a little bit just mundane.
Blake Boles 27:03
before your trip you felt totally fulfilled with your day -to -day existence and you’re like this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing but at the same time you made plans to take a year off. Where did those plans come from?
Blake Boles 27:17
What was the desire, the need underlying that?
Hannah Bowley 27:22
Yeah, I just, I felt very complacent. I felt happy and fulfilled in a way that feels different now. And I just felt really complacent. Like everything was comfortable, felt relatively easy, which is a huge privilege, of course, but at the same time, I just really wanted to shake things up a little bit.
Hannah Bowley 27:41
I’ve always wanted to travel for a longer term. Um, so yeah, I just, I didn’t want to feel complacent and that comfortable in life. I wanted to really shake it up and experience new things and gain a new perspective.
Blake Boles 27:59
I feel like there’s a lot of people who are in something like your situation or your previous situation where it’s like Okay, I’m doing what I’m good at. I have a nice apartment. I got friends. I go climbing on the weekends I host weird warmshowers people every now and then and I do want to do something bigger go on some adventure going some long -term travel But it’s very easy to just push that into the future and you decided at age 30 To actually do it You know at perhaps at a risk to your your career because there’s not like a one year Even though you have job security you can return to the same job.
Blake Boles 28:36
There’s a gap on your resume Was there any like inciting incident or or specific trigger that made you think okay? I’m actually going to do it this year
Hannah Bowley 28:49
Yeah, so I decided at age, I think it was 27 or 28 to do it and I was signing all the paperwork with my job and it was February 2020 and I thought, oh, is this COVID thing like gonna impact my year off? Signed the paperwork and then I realized I’m not gonna be able to leave Seattle on this year off. So I retracted it and was able to stay working and then I thought, oh my gosh, I turned 30. I’m gonna need to settle down, buy a house, continue dating and finding a long -term partner. I can’t just take off for a year. And then something in me, I just couldn’t drop it. I couldn’t let go of the feeling that I really wanted to do something different and I just didn’t feel this burning sense of desire to buy a house or buy a condo and settle down.
Hannah Bowley 29:40
All my friends, that’s exactly what they wanted and I just felt like that doesn’t feel authentic to me. It doesn’t feel like what I want and I’m not gonna force it upon myself because this is what society tells me the next step in life is. It just didn’t feel right and so the itch to travel didn’t go away. So I persisted through and then ultimately made the decision when the world was opened back up that I am gonna take the year off.
Blake Boles 30:09
You really dodged a bullet there. Nice job retracting the year off in your day to day life. Is there any way that you feel like unable to conform to the expectations of normal society or play along with the game that other people are playing? Do you, is there any significant way in that you feel you don’t fit in?
Hannah Bowley 30:32
Um, I feel like at this point, it’s all internal, like, I am objectively day to day following along with what’s quote, nor normal for working a normal job, earning normal money, have a normal apartment.
Hannah Bowley 30:48
But internally, right now, I don’t feel like this is what I really want. And it and I don’t know if other people feel that way when in their normal lives, but it just feels like no longer an authentic way to live my life.
Hannah Bowley 31:06
And so to answer your question, I don’t I don’t know, I guess I’m fitting in with what’s normal. Yes, if from the outside perspective, but internally, it’s kind of eating me up and I’m like, Okay, how am I gonna, in the future, not with this style of life, I guess so
Blake Boles 31:26
Are you in the middle of an existential crisis?
Hannah Bowley 31:28
Yeah, I am, and I knew you were gonna ask that because you have that question. I am in the middle of an existential crisis right now, but it’s hard to talk about with other people because, you know, my friends that are happy in their everyday lives, you know, and I don’t wanna say woe is me, I just traveled the world and now I can’t figure out what my life is gonna be like.
Hannah Bowley 31:49
So it’s something I’m struggling with internally and figuring out, but yes, I am going through an existential crisis. It hit me about a month and a half ago. After being back and seeing all my people, that excitement kind of wore off, it really hit me hard.
Blake Boles 32:10
Well, thank you for sharing. I won’t keep digging into that. Um, so just to circle back to the money question, you are a self -funded person. You were, you were able to do all this by, by working and saving.
Hannah Bowley 32:25
Mm -hmm.
Blake Boles 32:27
Awesome. Okay, so you don’t have anyone supporting you to make this possible. Are you like a super extraordinarily well paid employee of the Seattle Public School System?
Hannah Bowley 32:39
No, definitely not. I am paid on the same salary scale as teachers with slightly more, I guess bonuses, but as in bonuses that are very minimal. So really along the same lines as a teacher, just really careful with my money and intentional with it.
Blake Boles 33:01
clearly because you were able to save up $28 ,000 to go cycle, I mean more because you had to pay storage fees and other stuff. So what is it that you do that other people with a similar job to you don’t do? How do you spend less? What do you not value that other people seem to really value and want to throw their money at?
Hannah Bowley 33:26
That is a great question because it’s not that I don’t spend money. You know, I have all the hobbies like skiing and climbing that are not cheap, but I am very careful about not going out to eat. When it comes to buying gifts, I sew.
Hannah Bowley 33:47
So I always make people homemade gifts day to day. I just am fine not buying just material goods. Of course, sometimes I buy new clothes, but in general, that’s very rare. And I do a lot of thrifting.
Hannah Bowley 34:03
I’m just fine with used belongings. Like I’m looking around at my apartment right now. I’m like, got a free table, free shelf. Yeah, I’m just good at thrifting. And I don’t know. I don’t go to coffee shops and spend a lot of money daily.
Hannah Bowley 34:20
I’m just very intentional. Like if I’m going to spend money on something that brings me happiness or joy, it will be on a hobby and it will be something I saved up for or something I bought used.
Blake Boles 34:33
It sounds like a lot of your friends spend money on restaurant food and drinks and coffee. How do you say no? It’s very easy to do in Seattle. It’s very easy to do. I’m sure there’s some great restaurants there, but they invite you to go somewhere.
Blake Boles 34:44
It’s a social event. How do you say no?
Hannah Bowley 34:46
I typically will go and have a drink. I don’t get like, you know, the $30 salad. I’ll just go and have…
Blake Boles 34:53
30 dollar salads in Seattle.
Hannah Bowley 34:54
Definitely. It’s hard to find one under 20 at this point.
Blake Boles 34:57
Oh my gosh.
Hannah Bowley 34:58
And then you have to tip, you know, the awkward like, you know, iPad automatically puts 25%. So
Blake Boles 35:06
That’s an expensive salad. Yes. All right, so you’re sitting around drinking a beer or a tea while all your friends are eating their fancy salads.
Hannah Bowley 35:14
Not always. I don’t want to come off as like, I’m not a weird person, but I kind of are. I kind of am. And I think my friends are kind of used to it.
Blake Boles 35:24
That’s it, you have to train your friends.
Hannah Bowley 35:26
Yeah. And I always offer to host people for dinner instead of going out. That’s a big thing. And I think, um, yeah, I’ve kind of, I don’t want to say I’ve changed my friend group, but a lot of them do at home dinners, not just for me, but in general.
Blake Boles 35:43
Charity night for Hannah.
Hannah Bowley 35:46
I’m a charity case. I did eat ramen for like a whole month leading up to my trip because I’m so focused on saving. But I’m not usually that obsessive at all.
Blake Boles 35:55
Yeah. So how much of your income are you able to save on a whatever basis, monthly basis? You tell me.
Hannah Bowley 36:04
Probably about half I think yeah
Blake Boles 36:06
50% savings rate. Yeah. That’s really cool.
Hannah Bowley 36:11
Especially before when I was saving because my rent was really cheap because of COVID, um, Seattle rent just dropped significantly. So now it’s back a little bit higher, but before my trip, when I was like really, really saving, my rent was relatively cheap.
Blake Boles 36:30
So when you’re doing the speech therapy and saving half of the money that you earn, is this work that you believe in? Do you feel like you’re contributing to something important? Is there purpose there for you?
Hannah Bowley 36:40
Yes, absolutely. I feel extremely gratified and I am. I feel I am making a difference in my work. I work with a lot of, I work with only kids that have disabilities in one way or another. And I just, I feel like I’m having a huge impact.
Hannah Bowley 36:56
I kind of missed that. That was one thing I did miss a little bit on my trip, the impact, not the actual day to day.
Blake Boles 37:03
Not the actual children.
Hannah Bowley 37:06
Yes the actual children. Not the hours and the work that come with it. It’s like the paperwork, but I did miss having an impact in working with the children.
Blake Boles 37:14
Yeah. How did you deal with that over your year of cycling feeling like perhaps you’re just a, a traveler who’s consuming things and not really contributing in the way that you’re used to contributing, you know, how did you navigate that?
Hannah Bowley 37:31
Yeah, at first, it felt a little tricky because I’m so used to feeling important in this world. But I just found different ways that I thought I could have an impact. Whether it was like, you know, as I’m cycling, picking up trash on the side of the road, or trying to help somebody else out that I see.
Hannah Bowley 37:51
I just tried to find little ways to find gratification, I guess, and make a little bit of a difference in somebody’s life. It was much smaller, of course, than helping somebody learn to communicate, but just little tiny ways that I could make a difference in somebody’s day or life.
Blake Boles 38:12
I want to stick with that. Previously, I asked you about moments of beauty or meaning. Did you have any deeper moments out there, more transcendence level, deep experiences that are sticking with you?
Hannah Bowley 38:29
Yeah, this one, I had so many while I was traveling, but they didn’t really hit me until I got back, I guess. They were coming at me these moments and deep meaning and beauty along the way, but it really hit me when I got back to the US.
Hannah Bowley 38:50
And my biggest recent one was in a Target while I was trying to buy shampoo when I got back. And after a year of traveling, I didn’t realize how my brain had actually changed by only having what was on my bike and only having those possessions until I got back.
Hannah Bowley 39:11
And I just had this visceral realization of how marketing and consumer culture is just thrown at our faces so aggressively, specifically in the US, but other places in the world. And I realized I think a lot of the clear mind and relaxation you’re able to reach after a year of travel or even long term comes with just detachment from those consumer habits.
Hannah Bowley 39:41
And I think just along the way, I didn’t realize the moments of transcendence that were happening until I got back and realized the impact it’s had on me. It just felt like a moment of clarity and a reminder of how much fulfillment you can get from living simply.
Blake Boles 39:58
So when you say detached from consumer society or from advertising, I mean, what does that mean for you? Are you consuming fewer ads, uh, through like Instagram? Are you watching less TV? Because if you’re cycling around in Asia, there’s still billboards.
Blake Boles 40:15
There’s still, you know, you’re still navigating the world of advertisements and you’re still buying stuff. You’re still consuming. So what do you think it was?
Hannah Bowley 40:26
Well, I think ultimately it’s the inability to consume like material goods. Like I was, yes, buying stuff, but it had to be, it was the most intentional thing. So if I needed shampoo, I would walk into a store.
Hannah Bowley 40:39
There’s two options. I’d select one. Typically there are very small bottles, not these like huge 14 ounce Costco bottles that you could buy. And I had a very specific spot in my bike or on my bike for them.
Hannah Bowley 40:53
And I wasn’t able to buy new clothes. So I guess maybe the ads were there, but they didn’t have the same impact on me.
Blake Boles 41:01
Cause you’re like, this doesn’t apply to me cause everything I own must fit in one of my bicycle bags.
Hannah Bowley 41:07
Yes. And everything I own must be intentional and I must have fine purpose in it each day versus coming back and realizing there’s so many different items you can buy. I mean, there’s just an entire volume, sheer volume of shampoo and targets, like an entire wall just for like women.
Hannah Bowley 41:27
And that’s like a whole other aisle for men. And so just that being kind of in your face, I didn’t realize the impact that had on me and how stressful it feels, I guess, to live in that world of consumerism.
Blake Boles 41:46
Yeah. Do you have any early influences that set you down this path? I asked before about like traveling and you’ve done some multi -week solo travel, but were there any people or experiences or organizations that you were a part of that convinced you that doing something this big is both possible and desirable?
Hannah Bowley 42:09
No, I didn’t. I’d say the most influential people were the people I hosted for warm showers.
Blake Boles 42:16
because they were in the middle of long -term cycling trips. And they’re like, yeah, that’s totally fine.
Hannah Bowley 42:21
Yeah, and they were living their life and they were just fine and just fine
Blake Boles 42:26
So this is a public service announcement, get on couchsurfing, get on warmshowers, start hosting people, change your life, and then you won’t be able to enjoy normal life anymore just like Hannah.
Hannah Bowley 42:37
But before my trip, I did kind of sit down with some people that were either close to retirement or retired and asked them about their life at my age and what they wish they had done. And consistently, everybody said, I wish I spent more time to relax, more vacation time.
Hannah Bowley 42:56
I never used all my vacation time. That was a common thread amongst at least 10 different individuals. And that really spoke to me. Nobody was like, oh wow, I wish I had 28 ,000 more dollars in my savings account right now.
Hannah Bowley 43:13
Nobody once said they wish they had more money. It was all, they wish they had experienced or done something that they didn’t do. It was never related to money.
Blake Boles 43:26
That’s so cool that you sat down with older people and asked them like, where’d you get that idea? What prompted you to do that?
Hannah Bowley 43:32
Well, I had asked one person who I trust and look up to very much, and she’s very close to retirement. And I was just talking to her a little bit and just kind of her information just shook me a little bit to my core of like what she wished she had done and if she could go back at my age and do things differently.
Hannah Bowley 43:52
So I, you know, quickly wrote down what she had told me. And then I thought, wow, that was really valuable. I should talk to more people around her age or maybe a little older. And it just became a common theme of something I did before my trip just to…
Hannah Bowley 44:07
I don’t know if I was searching for validation of, yes, I should do this trip, but just kind of looking, I don’t want to be their age and, you know, on the other end of that interview and say that I have all these regrets when I can kind of control that and live my life exactly in a way that feels fulfilling.
Hannah Bowley 44:27
So by the time I get to that age, I don’t feel that way, I guess.
Blake Boles 44:32
Okay, so you had some influences. Yeah. Yeah.
Hannah Bowley 44:36
recently, nobody in my family or…
Blake Boles 44:39
Has done anything like this? No siblings? No close friends? No. You were the trailblazer.
Hannah Bowley 44:46
I guess so, yeah.
Blake Boles 44:47
Have you inspired anyone else who’s close to you to do something even a little bit similar?
Hannah Bowley 44:53
I think I inspired somebody to take a three month sabbatical from their trip that are from their job. That was the most they could take off a friend that’s doing that. But otherwise I’d say a lot of people just say, Oh, I wish I could do something like that.
Hannah Bowley 45:07
And my answer is always what needs to be different or what could get you to the point where you could do that? Like instead of wishing. And I think people always are stopped. They stop in their tracks and they’re like, well, I don’t know, because I haven’t thought beyond wishing that I could do something like that.
Blake Boles 45:24
And they keep chewing on their $30 salad. Yeah, exactly. Great question, Hannah. I don’t know. So I have one final set of questions for you and it’s about our mutual friend, Vince, and this is who we cycled with for a month, month and a half on the car, Tara, and I would like you to begin by telling everyone about Vince’s, um, bag.
Hannah Bowley 45:52
Oh, his green bag, like Mary Poppins style. Well, Vince, um, packed, he just graduated from nursing grad school for nursing. And he packed like four different books that he was excited to read for pleasure.
Hannah Bowley 46:12
He packed like an infinite amount of clothing and socks. And this all somehow fit in his stuff. Um, and this green bag on his bike that I think it’s like 30 or 40 liters. He every day, big bag, he would just pull out the most random stuff.
Hannah Bowley 46:30
It would be like, Oh, you need butter. Oh, here’s two sticks of butter in my green bag. Oh, you need chips or Doritos. Here’s this bag of Doritos I’ve been carrying for a week. Oh, you want to read a book?
Hannah Bowley 46:41
I don’t know. It was just this green bag that had absolutely everything you can imagine.
Blake Boles 46:48
I mean, it’s a wonderful security policy, right? To be cycling with the green bag because you need extra toilet paper. There’s that’s in there.
Hannah Bowley 46:55
Yeah, kind of just like four things in this green bag like he’d pull something out that was like from three weeks ago. And you know, mind you, we’re cycling up 70 plus 1000 feet of elevation and he brought all this stuff in the green bag up those hills, which is wild to me.
Blake Boles 47:13
And when we would go downhill, he would consistently go faster than either of us. Maybe it was the green bag.
Hannah Bowley 47:21
It was probably the green bag pushing them, yeah.
Blake Boles 47:25
What other memories stand out cycling with me and Vince, and what kind of a team do you think we were?
Hannah Bowley 47:33
you know, I think we all brought a completely different personality style to the table, which was a good balance. You know, everyone has different intentions and in just life in general, we’re all coming from different like, none of us were leaving normal, I guess, lives or jobs at that time, and maybe sort of all a little bit in a transition phase, maybe less you Blake, because you’re permanent traveler.
Hannah Bowley 47:59
But yeah, what that was really cool to spend time with people that are completely different. And, you know, spending as the third wheel of somebody who was spending time with two friends that have known each other since they were like 12.
Hannah Bowley 48:16
It was cool to see two very different types of people be so such close friends. That was cool to observe. And you both are just really hilarious. That was really fun. That stood out.
Blake Boles 48:33
You know what stands out to me is we’re hanging out under some like artificial tree and some plaza. I think with a couch server that we met.
Hannah Bowley 48:45
Oh yeah, you picked up a couch surfer.
Blake Boles 48:47
Yeah. Yeah. Well, don’t say it like that, but we met some cool couch surfing people along the way. Yeah. Um, were, were there ever any moments where you’re like, who are these dudes and what, what’s going on?
Blake Boles 49:00
And maybe I should be off by myself. Um, I remember one moment, which I’ll, I’ll share in a second, where you considered going off by yourself, but I want, I want to hear from you after all this time has passed.
Blake Boles 49:12
If you were ever like, well, what’s going on here and how do they get involved with these dudes?
Hannah Bowley 49:20
Um you know I feel like any feelings I had like that I just I must have blacked out because I just don’t feel looking back like that. I do think it was a hard transition traveling by bike solo to be traveling with people because you were the first people that I had consistently biked with other than people from warm showers in Europe that had joined me maybe for like only three days.
Hannah Bowley 49:46
Um I think no there I just can’t think of any times I thought of times where I could have gone much faster or slower um but no times really stick out but maybe that’s just me romanticizing that time in Patagonia.
Blake Boles 50:04
Let me help you remember one moment.
Hannah Bowley 50:06
Okay, okay, this is a horsefly thing.
Blake Boles 50:08
This is the horsefly. We’re cycling on bad ripio, bad gravel. It’s a hot day. We’re going uphill. And so you have to keep your hands on the handlebars and, uh, you, I mean, we all are getting swarmed by probably a dozen horse flies each, and these are big Chilean, like a bodybuilder horse flies and they, they are not messing around.
Blake Boles 50:33
They’re not coming down to lick salt off our, our skin. They’re coming down to take a chunk out of us to go home and feed the family. And you were like madly swatting, trying to get these horse flies away.
Blake Boles 50:45
And I think I came up next to you and I said, how’s it going? And you’re like, I want to throw my bike into the river. We were cycling next to a river, get on a bus and go home more or less that. Is that your memory also?
Hannah Bowley 50:59
Yes.
Blake Boles 51:00
It’s so nice to black out sometimes.
Hannah Bowley 51:02
Yeah, you’re risking your life every time you swat a horsefly because you let go of your handlebars and you’re going to fly off into this like, chunky, rippio. But it’s like, you can’t help it. Yeah, that was wild.
Hannah Bowley 51:14
I think I was crying in frustration at one point during that day silently to myself. Yeah, it’s funny because a lot of those moments happened along this year off, but it’s really like your brain just must, my brain must block them out because now I can look back and laugh at that, but at the time it was not funny, it was terrible.
Blake Boles 51:35
Correct. I think a great part about having Vince along is that he’s so positive and finds a way to, to laugh and make any situation light. And that was a really valuable addition. If, if we had like a group of just super serious people who would get down and focus on the hard parts, it could have been a much different trip.
Hannah Bowley 51:54
Yeah. And both of you, what really stuck out to me helped me with my whole intention of slowing down and not being so like, okay, we have to make it this far today, which internally I did before because you guys would take a midday siesta or like an hour to two hour lunch break.
Hannah Bowley 52:13
But I really, really, really took that and used it for the rest of my trip because it was so relaxing and it was just a whole other way of experiencing bikepacking that taught me it’s actually a lot more fun to just, I’m not going to say go slow, but just like relax and enjoy what’s around you rather than just like biking.
Hannah Bowley 52:35
I remember there was one time where we were at a beautiful viewpoint and Vince and I were just taking tons of pictures and you’re like, okay, everybody put down your phone and just look around and enjoy it.
Hannah Bowley 52:44
And I remember thinking, whoa, why does that feel like something I’ve never done before? Although I do feel like I enjoy these viewpoints. When you said that I was like, oh yeah, I should do that. And so for the rest of my trip, I tried to enjoy a viewpoint before I was like, okay, I’m going to take 20 pictures here.
Blake Boles 53:06
That warms my heart. To, to wrap it up, I would like you to explain one more facet of our trip. Very important and a good example of how, you know, if some, if you tell someone you’re biking for a year, it’s not like you’re like biking a hundred miles every day, um, please tell everyone about the legend of the red truck.
Hannah Bowley 53:26
Oh my gosh, the red truck. Well, there was many days where we, well, okay. There was one day where we hitchhiked for like eight to 10 hours. And we just like kept, I guess somebody might call it manifesting a red truck.
Hannah Bowley 53:39
And we were like, red truck, red truck. And we just really wanted to get picked up by a red truck. And in the end, we did it that day. But then the next time we were hitchhiking, it was within I think 20 seconds.
Hannah Bowley 53:51
Yes. One of us put out our thumb and this beautiful red truck shows up and pulls over and picks us up. And it was the best red truck I’ve ever ridden and will ever ride in in my life. It was this wonderful family on vacation.
Hannah Bowley 54:07
And they squished their two kids up in the front and let us have the backseat to ourselves. And not only that, they gave us like our favorite chocolate at the end and drove us around in the town to make sure they dropped us off at a spot that would have a cabana.
Hannah Bowley 54:24
Yeah, that red truck. I’ll never forget that red truck. Oh, when we were hiking the red truck, there was another red truck that took us back on the worst road that we would have had a return on after hiking all day.
Hannah Bowley 54:38
And then Vince had a flat tire. So yeah, two red trucks. You know, even in Seattle, when I see a red truck now, I actually I can’t help but to smile.
Blake Boles 54:52
Oh my gosh, um, Hannah, is there any place that people can find you online so that when you’re on your next full year off and bike touring or doing whatever else, just hitchhiking only using red trucks across the world, uh, they can follow your adventures.
Hannah Bowley 55:11
Um, I’m on instagram. You can find me on instagram at hannah bowley
Blake Boles 55:16
Easy. Hannah, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Hannah Bowley 55:20
Yeah, thank you, Blake. This was fun to talk about and reflect my trip.