Hello and welcome to episode 200 of Travel Stories from the Back Again And Gone podcast.
Being recorded in the beautiful home office of, Chateau’ Relaxo, FL. Tonight it’s a look back on 200 podcast episodes. If you are a new listener welcome, if you are a returning listener welcome back.
Tonight I’m partaking in a New Belgium Voodoo Ranger Tropical Force IPA coming in at 9.5% ABV.
Before looking back let’s spend a few minutes talking about podcasts.
I have worked in the technology space since 1990, and we classify people into one of five categories.
Innovators. 2.5% These are the people that come up with the technology ideas.
Early Adopters. 13.5% These folks will load software as soon as it’s released in Alpha
Early Majority. 34% These people see it on social media and now want it.
Late Majority. 34% This group finally cave in and purchase it
Laggards. 16% This is the person that still has a VCR just in case they come back into style
In the business world, I am an innovator, enthusiastic about new technology, and willing to take risks.
In the Chateau’ Relaxo world, I am an early adaptor, willing to work through early bugs and setbacks.
I first discovered podcasts in 2005, two years before the first iPhone, all we had were MP3 players. I had an ILO with a 64 Meg SD card and I remember writing a batch file to transfer podcasts from my computer to the ILO.
Early on I listened to the Travel Commons, the Croncast, and The Daily Source Code. It was so cool that you could wake up each day to a new episode due to an RSS feed. No searching and no clicking on anything.
When it comes to podcasts, as of February 2024, the average podcast has 50 episodes, but 44% of podcasts have fewer than three episodes. Only 720,000 podcasts have more than 10 episodes, and only 156,000 of those release episodes weekly. I released a weekly episode until 2021 because my travel had decreased, more on that in a minute. As of 2024, there are over 5 million podcasts available worldwide, with more than 70 million episodes between them. However, if we remove the inactive podcasts, the total number of podcasts available will drop to 4.2 million. This ends today’s statistics class.
I toyed with the idea of a podcast for years and then finally in 2017 I posted the first episode on SoundCloud under the name Back And Gone Again. The first episode was 7 minutes and 52 seconds long and was recorded in the Fairfield Inn Duluth, GA and the topic was Airline Loyalty. Seven years later airline loyalty still matters. Take a listen to an excerpt.
This was recorded on a gaming microphone with little knowledge of Audacity. The second episode was Table Talk which had three fellow road warriors talking about the best places to eat. We used GoToMeeting to record it.
For the first six episodes, I used SoundCloud and then shifted over to Anchor, which Spotify acquired in 2019. Anchor/Spotify does an amazing job of distributing episodes and providing the analytics, all for free.
Around 2018 I got into a weekly cadence of posting episodes and this stayed in place until April of 2021. That’s when I consciously pivoted to a monthly or six-week cadence. Here’s why, in 2018 I had 51 trips and 248 days away from home in April of 2021 it was 7 trips and 19 days away from home.
The reason was COVID. We were off the road for the first 100 days of COVID, and then it was our choice to travel if we wanted to, or felt comfortable traveling again.
Personally, after 100 days of being at home, which I had not done since 2000, I was packed and ready. My COVID strategy was, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes”. Knock on wood, to date I have never had COVID. I came close just check out episode 113, COVID Got Inside Chateau' Relaxo. Here’s the Cliff Notes - a friend of the family went to a wedding where the bride was diagnosed with COVID but chose not to tell anyone and selfishly decided to go forward with the wedding which turned into a super spreader event. This friend landed at MCO and wasn’t feeling well so she decided to take a COVID test at one of those mobile testing stations. A few days later she visited Chateau Relaxo and on her visit, she brought over a bottle of gin, and we drank from the same glass. Later that night she got the email letting her know that she tested positive. This was on a Friday and we were told to wait four days to take an accurate COVID test. I had a Monday flight, which meant I had to cancel and cost my company an extra plane ticket.
During July 3 out of the 4 people living in Chateau got COVID and I still managed to doidge a bullet.
So back to those 100 days of not traveling in 2020. During those 100 days, we learned to do business differently. It was discovered that face-to-face meetings weren’t always necessary. I don’t agree, but I don’t have a master's degree. Travel wasn’t as necessary as it was just 100 days prior.
During the height of COVID, there was plenty of non-COVID content. I was able to have several fellow road warriors join me across several episodes. I did a series on the towns I like, a few mental health checkin episodes and several episodes focusing on the things that I had learned from working at home.
By April of 2021, I had run through any content that I had sandbagged and released episode 138, The Pivot Episode.
My plan is to continue to release episodes, hell I live in Thank You Florida so every month there will be crazy travel content emanating from Thank You Florida.
Let’s get to some of July’s travel news.
We’re calling this first story, If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
Like mentioned earlier, I have spent the last 34 years working in the technology corridor. Oftentimes, my mantra is, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. On Friday, July 19th much of the world was brought to its knees. One word CrowdStike, Capital C, and capital S. If you’re not familiar, CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm that has Microsoft among its clients and they pushed out an update that impacted many, many, many Microsoft users with the blue screen of death.
American Airlines, Delta, Spirit, and United Airlines were affected. One major carrier that is missing Southwest. Wanna know why? Because Southwest is still operating on Windows 3.1. Yes, Windows 3.1 which was released in 1992.
Delta alone canceled over 5400 flights, with travelers stuck in terminals 6 days later. And just this past week Delta announced that they will be suing CrowdStrike for 500 million dollars.
As a tip-in to this story, you’ll have to head to the Ticky-Tok for the real value. This is where kylephilippi decided to take out his Crowd Stike frustration against Delta. since Delta wasn’t going to compensate him for his lost hours and wages. kylephilippi decided to even the score in the Delta Sky Lounge where he and some rando traveling partner decided to pile several plates full of food for a snack. In addition, they grabbed several bags of Cheez-Its, overused the hand sanitizer, went into the Sky Lounge shower fully clothed, turned on the water and lt it run while he pumped and pumped shampoo out of the container and onto the shower floor. It that wasn’t enough kylephilippi even got a glass of wine and then poured it out in the trash can. The Ticky Tok has over 1.5 million views and the comments are 50/50, pro kylephilippi and anti-kylephilippi. The title of the video is “This will set them back”, kylephilippi I’m guessing your food and beverage rampage totaled up to $30.00 on the high end. It’s doubtful Delta will even notice this, unless they see you video and possibly ban you for life.
Have you ever heard the term raw-dogging? If you haven’t don’t look it up on Urban Dictionary. Raw-dogging when it comes to air travel is the act of boarding a flight ― long-haul or otherwise ― with no headphones, no book, no form of entertainment or diversion other than the digital flight map.
This takes a bunch of discipline, along the lines of Jacko Willink’s book “Discipline Equal Freedom”. For me staring at the digital flight map for even a 2-hour flight is silly and serves no purpose. I use those 2-hours to get caught up on podcasts or watch some TV shows that Hallmark or Food Network produced. If you want to raw-dog your next flight get on with your bad self, but I won’t be joining you.
Let’s get biblical for just a moment. From Matthew 5:38-48 If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. Thankfully Roger Allan Holmberg Senior’s wife didn’t turn the other cheek. You see Roger Allen is an evangelical pastor and he smacked his wife on a recent Alaskan Airlines flight.
You see, Roger Allen’s wife is an Alaska Airlines MVP Gold member and received a complimentary upgrade to first class. This didn’t sit well with Roger Allen, so he walked up to first class and demanded to know, “How the hell did you get the upgrade?” His wife replied, “I’m a gold point member, and don’t speak to me like that.”
A bit later, Roger Allen returned to first class, handed his wife his phone, and told her to read it he then flipped her off.
Returning a third time, Roger Allen “pushed in front of his wife’s seatmate and attempted to swing his arm towards the victim” (per the police report) The seatmate leaned forward to block the strike and an off-duty police officer jumped up to help. At their destination, FBI officers met the aircraft and detained Roger Allen.
She clarified that he “struck her in the head with the back of his knuckles”. He responded that he had only “tapped his wife on the head in passing to get her attention”
Roger Allen was arrested on simple assault and jailed pending a hearing. Alaska Airlines has canceled his return ticket and banned him from future flights.
Roger Allen would’ve been better off raw-dogging that flight as well as practicing what he preaches.
Earlier we spoke about kylephilippi’s petty revenge against Delta let’s talk about a United pilot's revenge against his ex-girlfriend. Andrew Hill, 36, and his girlfriend broke up over a decade ago, and get this, it wasn’t an amicable break-up. Hill’s ex-girlfriend told police he had sought revenge by “making online profiles pretending to be her and posting nude images of her for more than a decade.”
Eventually, this all caught up with Hill after Police served warrants on mobile phone providers and social media websites and were able to trace the revenge porn back to Hill’s electronic devices via matching IP addresses.
Hill was arrested at SFO and put on the next flight to Utah where he is charged with.
* pornography distribution
* unlawful distribution of an intimate image
* electronic communication harassment
* stalking and online impersonation
The distribution charge is a felony while the harassment and impersonation charges are misdemeanors. All may carry significant professional consequences.
Hill is innocent until proven guilty, but I reference my legal training, where there’s smoke there’s fire.
Well, there you have it Episode 200. A look back.
For long-time listeners, thank you for your comments and emails. For new listeners, I hope you return.
If you want detailed show notes, links, and pictures head over to podpage.com/travel-stories/
Or visit Substack at travelstories.substack.com/
You can also leave me a message on Anchor, or shoot me an email at TravelFrick@gmail.com.
As I always say, travel safe, stay safe, and thanks for listening.
