Episode 23: Micro-Adventures Matter
Explore the power of micro-adventures, backyard adventures, and simple travel with Rob and Brent. In this episode, they share how spontaneous outings, nearby day trips, and easy adventure planning can spark curiosity, strengthen relationships, and bring more excitement to everyday life. From childhood bike rides and underground forts to coffee shops, caves, and overnight getaways, this conversation shows how small adventures and personal exploration can lead to real personal growth. If you’ve been feeling stuck in routine, this episode offers practical inspiration to help you rediscover spontaneity, connection, and the joy of trying something new.
Links, resources, books mentioned:
Topics we are covering in this episode:
Why spontaneity matters in micro-adventures
How to find and plan micro-adventures close to home
How local exploration can spark growth and strengthen relationships
Using local insight to uncover hidden gems
Ideas for half-day, single-day, and overnight adventures
Transcript:
Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.
Lena: Remember when adventure didn't need a plane ticket or a perfect plan? Just a bike, a free afternoon, and a reason to wander. Today on Midlife Circus, Rob and Brent explore the power of microadventures, small spontaneous experiences that break routine, spark curiosity, and help you feel more alive in your everyday life. From caves to coffee shops to unexpected detours, this episode is a reminder that a little adventure can go a long way. Before we begin, remember to follow Midlife Circus on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, and join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack.
Let's dive into micro adventures matter.
Rob: Brent, before the age of 13, what were some of your greatest adventures?
Brent: Well, I lived in a rural area in Boulder, Colorado. And one of the things that my parents gave us a lot of open kind of free rein was riding bikes. And I remember one of my favorite things to do was taking my BMX bike to Kmart. And it was about a mile or two away, so it wasn't that big of a ride, But that was the thing that we did. It was like this freedom, like go ride bikes and go to Kmart.
So you go get your junk and your baseball cards and wander around the store and look for the blue light special. And as soon as we had a dollar, let's go spend it. Kmart gang. Yeah. We were definitely a Kmart gang.
Rob: How rural can you be if you actually could ride your bike within a mile or mile and a half, two miles to a Kmart? That doesn't sound too rural to me.
Brent: Well, we were on the north side of town, Rob, and so we had a lot of open space around us. It was rural in the sense of there was dirt roads to get halfway there. And then it was paved roads after that. The other thing that we actually like to do now that I think about it, and I loved doing this because I was a much, I was very hands on type kid. And we used to build forts in these open lots or these open kind of grassland spaces next to our houses.
And we used to dig tunnels. This is crazy now that I think about it. We used to dig these tunnels and it would be probably 12 to 15 feet to get to the cave and we would dig down in and build a cave underground with shovels and picks and things like that. What parent allows kids to build a cave underground?
Rob: A parent of a Gen X child. That's exactly what it is. Parents of a not Gen X parents, but parents of Gen X children.
Brent: I mean, that's like free rein. That is one of the most dangerous things if you think about it, just dirt collapsing on you. We had candles down there. We had all sorts of, you know, like rations of our Kmart snacks. I just remember it would just be hours and hours of fun trying to build our fort underground.
I think our parents finally caught wind of what we really were up to, and they said no more because they kind of said this probably is not going to end well.
Rob: I'm guessing when you're leaving the house, your mom or dad's like, hey, what are you doing? Well, I'm going to build a cave with Billy down the street. Alright. Have at it. Go have fun.
And they see you leave with shovels and a pick and things like that. Don't think twice about it. That's how we were raised. Right? It's like, oh, yeah.
You're outside. Go play outside until they actually saw this cave. Right? Wasn't it didn't they have to visually see what you were doing before they actually realized, wait a second. This isn't just a ditch.
They're literally 10 feet underground, dirt over the top of their heads. This could cave in at any moment. Right? You weren't putting support beams up because you had no idea what they were. Even with your engineering mind, they probably had you had no clue what they were at that time.
I was like 12.
Brent: I mean, that was just We were just digging holes and the only rule we had was be home by dark. But I loved the freedom side of it. So when you said, you know, greatest adventures, it was always something related to my bicycle because I loved my BMX bike. Go ride and go anywhere that could take us. And the other thing was go build and go build a fort or go build a tree house, things like that.
So it was just constantly things that we were working on that we just enjoyed. And it was always something that was unplanned really. It was just an adventure, like, we got two hours. Let's go to Kmart. Super fun.
Rob: Yeah. So I grew up in a small town as well, at least through that age. And the big thing at that time was, again, riding your bike. I mean, that was the first step of freedom that we all got was getting on a bicycle and leaving the cul de sac. And we used to go to seven Eleven.
It was a small enough place. We didn't have a Kmart in town, but the big deal was to ride our bikes to seven Eleven and buy the low level candy. So, like, the now and laters, the sixlets, the Jolly Rancher, the sticks of Jolly Ranchers. And if you remember those, the Fire Stick Jolly Rancher, you know, you get a couple of nickels and you got a great bag of candy is what it felt like. And then every once in while, they had those four for a dollar sales.
And if you had a dollar, you got real candy bars like the peanut butter cup or something like that.
Brent: Yeah. And the ICEEES too. I remember they used to have specials everyone Slushies. Slushies. That's right.
And that was super fun. You think about those adventures and it was just purely, you had this moment in time, let's go do something. And a lot of it was very directionless. It was just go and let's just start riding our bikes that direction. Let's just grab a shovel and start digging a hole.
And then it became an ongoing adventure to keep expanding it to work. And the parents would let us ride our bikes a little bit further. It was always very spontaneous. It was nothing planned. And that's something that I look back on to say that was so much fun to be spontaneous and not really think about what are we going to do when we get there.
Just let's figure out how to get there. And then let's decide what we want to do when we get there. If we don't like it, let's go back home.
Rob: Let's just go do something. And as you shared the supervision or lack of supervision that we all grew up with, and I think I've shared this on the on the on the podcast, is we moved from Sandy, Oregon, which at the time I lived there was a two stoplight town to Manhattan, New York City, Manhattan in the late eighties. And one of the, you know, the adventures, I would call it an adventure or an experience that I don't think is people would allow their kids to do today, especially back in the eighties, how unsafe New York was at this time. But in the summertime, I can remember my brother and I would jump on the subway by ourselves and ride out to the end of Manhattan and then get off the train, turn around, and ride all the way home because there was air conditioning on the subway cars. We didn't have air conditioning in our apartment.
And so my mom would say, oh, just go ride the subway. And so we jump on the train. We'd walk to the station, jump on the train. I'm 12 years old, 11, 12 years old. My brother's two years younger, so he's nine, maybe 10 years old.
And here's two of us jumping on a subway train, riding it for an hour one direction, get off, turn around, and ride all the way back. And that was an afternoon of un-supervision and excitement for us because you never knew what was going to happen on the trains at that time. You know, whether it's going to be a fight that broke out, what might happen when we get off the train and have to change to come back and we're standing around by ourselves in the subway station. There was a air of excitement and adrenaline that came. But you're right, Brent.
It was about the spontaneity of going and doing those things. It wasn't anything that was preplanned. My mom didn't have a plan for us. It was go out and do something. And when New York, that's what we did at that time.
And a lot of my friends that I had back then, we talk we've talked about it since living in the city is that that's what's normal for us to go and do. We didn't think otherwise of getting on a train and riding by ourselves at 11 or 12 years old to go and do something.
Brent: What's crazy about that is that doesn't necessarily fly today. Send a 10 and a 12 year old just on an adventure. But what's cool about it is you had the responsibility to go do it. Got to see a ton of things along the way that you're traveling through. You get off, you're learning kind of that how to navigate a city.
So fun, but wow, that I couldn't imagine if I lived in New York City sending a 10 year old out to do that. I think I'd probably be thrown in jail.
Rob: Your kids could handle it. I don't know if you could handle your kids doing that.
Brent: Not at all. Yeah. Definitely not.
Rob: Well, as we talk about adventure, and it's fun to have this nostalgia look back at the adventures that we all grew up with, and I'm guessing most of our audience has similar stories growing up unsupervised and being out having micro adventures or little adventures almost every single day, especially in the summertime when we had all this gift of time in our hands. That's really what today's episode is about. And we call it either backyard adventures, micro adventures, spontaneous adventure, or experiences. But it's really about going out and doing something that is out of your norm. It's the unexpected.
It is the chance for you to reinvent yourself a little bit by finding a new portion of you, having some excitement, and doing something that helps break the rut of the day to day lives that we all live and the patterns of behavior that we all actually live through. And today's really about micro adventures or backyard adventures. Brent, when I say those two phrases, and I and I talk about backyard adventures and micro adventures, we'll get into the detail of what some of these things are. But how would you define big picture? What is a backyard or micro adventure?
Brent: Something that's a bit spontaneous. So it's not something you're planning weeks in advance. And I think the other side of it is, and you alluded to this, it's getting out of your comfort zone. And I think that's one of the challenges that we face in midlife is we get so focused and we get so caught up in our own routines, is we maybe stop growing, we stop learning, we stop seeing the world through a different lens. And so we don't challenge ourselves.
We do the same thing. We go to the same park, we go to the same coffee shop, we go to the same restaurant. If we've got a free day, we might go do the same activity that we normally would do. You and I talk a lot about, Oh, let's go mountain biking. Well, we go on the same trails.
Or, Hey, we want to go for a run. Or, Hey, let's go to the diner. We go to the same diner, Rob, for the most part, like when we want to go hang out at a diner. So this is saying, okay, if you still want to do something like that, pick a different place, try something completely new, go to a different town nearby, go to a different neighborhood that you're not familiar with, so you can grow and start to see things through a different lens.
Rob: Some of other things about what these small adventures are is they typically don't actually cost very much money. They're pretty simple to go and do. The hard step is actually taking the step out the door to go and do them. The activity itself is actually fairly simple. Some of the strategies or ideas that we're going to give you today, they don't take a lot of planning as you mentioned, Brent.
It's just something simple that you can go out and do pretty easily, and they're usually within a very close proximity to your house. So your story of riding your bicycle a mile and a half to the k mart, and maybe that's the challenge for everybody is to go find and walk through a k mart if there's one near you. That might be that adventure that someone can go and do, But it's a short proximity from your house. It doesn't take a lot of effort to go and actually do. The biggest part of the effort is just getting out the door.
When you think about growth, Brandon, some of the some of these types of micro adventures or backyard things have you done, what is some of the growth that you've experienced in doing them?
Brent: I think it's that curiosity. So when I do some of these backyard adventures, I find that that curiosity just gives me a different perspective. I may see something completely beautiful if I'm doing a new type of exploration that I just wouldn't see. And then I realize, especially in the community that I live in and you live in, there's so many places to go that I haven't experienced. And every time I go, I'm like, wow, that was really cool.
And it's just, it's experiencing something new. So instead of always repeating, it's go try this, do it a different way than you normally do it. And it's a way to grow, but you also, in some cases you meet people along the way too that creates the story or makes it even more interesting Because it's somebody that might share the idea of a place to go to, or you arrive somewhere and they're like, Oh, I've come here all the time. Hey, here's that little secret area. You should go check that out.
I'll run into that. And that's like, I would have never gotten that experience if I just didn't talk to somebody at that new destination that I went to. What have you learned when you know, the growth that you get from some of these micro or backyard adventures?
Rob: So a lot of these things are going to push beyond your comfort zone. That's why people avoid them. I think, Bren, is that's why people we got on autopilot, and we do the you know, we hit the easy button, which is just stay home or do the thing that you're used to doing. So it breaks that autopilot loop that we're all in from time to time, and it puts you in a place of discomfort. And I think the more that I know I I know for me at least, when I put myself more often in a place of discomfort, I actually get significant growth.
It helps make that discomfort or the uncomfortable places more comfortable for me over time. So I'm able to actually go and explore and do bigger things. So I've had different experiences, and I know that feeling when it comes on. I felt the anxiety. I felt the tension around doing something that is out of the norm for me.
And when I'm in a big environment or on a big adventure, I'm able to actually harness some of those learnings I had in terms of managing my own emotion in that uncomfortable situation. The, the other thing I think it does, Brent, is it is it strengthens relationships too. And I and I think as we talk about a lot of these, I know in a previous episode, we talked about solo retreats. And this is different than a solo retreat. You can do some of these adventures we're going to talk about today by yourself, but I think they're a lot more fun with somebody else.
You know, it strengthens that relationship. It gives you a combined memory and something you can talk about. I know the funnest times that you and I've had or we've been out with friends is reminiscing about things and stupid things and crazy things and fun things that we did historically. Those create the biggest laughs. And some of these micro adventures are really misadventures.
A lot of times they become misadventures, which become the funnest stories to talk about down the road. So I think from a relationship standpoint, putting, you know, you and a friend or you and your spouse, significant other in a place of discomfort, it actually helps you grow as a as a as a couple or as a as a friendship, but it also creates that commonality down the road that you get to reminisce on and have fun about and laugh about.
Brent: That's such a great distinction. If you can do it with others, it just creates the experience that much more fun, entertaining, and it's a great way to do these micro adventures.
Rob: So the easiest type of adventure that we're going to talk about today is a half day outing. And it's that looking at the afternoon, you know, it's a few hours in the day, so it's either morning, afternoon, evening, half day outings. So, Brent, as you think about the half day outings, how do you approach them and what are some of the things you've done for half day experiences, half day micro adventures?
Brent: What's really fun about a half day is you can make it so impromptu. Like there's just not a lot of coordination that goes into it. So there's one that comes to mind and this was actually a few years ago. So the way that I approached this one, it's a bit analog. And in the town that I live in, I called the visitor center.
And I'd heard about these caves that were nearby, I think it's maybe forty minutes away, these caves, and I've never been to them. And so I called the visitor center to say, Can you tell me about this? Now I could have done the research online, that's super easy to do, but I actually wanted to talk to somebody because I know these caves kind of are open and closed all the time. And there's a special type of bat in there that they protect the bats. And I was like, okay, that adds all of them complexity.
This adventure was an afternoon. It was my brother, sister-in-law, and my wife and I. And when I called the visitor center, like, it's great timing. You should go. Here's what to expect.
You're going to get really dirty because you're in a cave. And it's not a big process. You have to climb down this ladder and it's a tube. So they basically built a tube to get down to the caves. You're going to wear headlamps and you're just going to go explore.
That is freaky to me because it's a different version of dark. It's a cave.
Rob: Yeah. And it's dark. It's dark, dark. You can't see the hand in front of your face.
Brent: No. No. One fun memory that we did is we found the spot to sit, and there was the four of us. We said, okay, let's take off our lights and tell stories. And we just had fun.
And it wasn't like we were trying to freak each other out type stories, but it's really strange to be talking with three other people or four of us without being able to see them and the mannerisms and all the moving of the hands and all the things. That was fascinating. We were laughing so hard about being inside of a cave. Yeah. And it was so strange, but why I think that was such a memorable moment, and I'm still talking about it today, and that was several years ago, was the way we approached it.
Call the visitor center and ask them about it. Hear about it, but maybe talk to a person. Let's go analog here. This isn't like digital, go find it on a website because this didn't have a lot of information on a website at the time anyways. And that person knew a lot about it.
We just lucked out and they just gave us some good guidance and we laughed. But I'll tell you, we were glad to get out of the cave at the end because there's also this claustrophobic, What if somebody closes the hatch on us? We're stuck here forever. Because it was so remote. There's no cell phone signals or of course it wouldn't even work underground.
So it's one of those things you just got to go, this is going to work out. I look back at that moment in time, it was so fun what we did. And it was definitely for me personally was a growth moment. Because that wasn't something that I've done a lot of, this was just like a hole in the ground.
Rob: The middle of nowhere, right? Go to a parking lot, there's one or two other cars in the parking lot, you go for a mile hike up to this hole and you climb in.
Brent: So that was a lot of fun and it was a half day. But it was simple, that was the cool part. We only had a couple of things we needed. We needed to have clothes that could get really dirty and we needed a headlamp. And it's cold under there, so you just have to be prepared for that.
But the person at the visitor center, when they called, they gave us all the prep. And so it was really easy and we followed their guidance and we just went for it and we actually had a lot of fun.
Rob: So I want to ask about the visitor center a little bit. Absolutely analog. Most people would jump online to ask for stuff. We're going talk about that a little bit later in the episode is how to search for some of this stuff. When you called the visitor center, did they give you a couple of options?
Or was this the first one that just landed? Like, oh my gosh. That sounds so cool. Was it the first one or did they give you a couple of them?
Brent: Well, I called and I was like, we have some time. And they said, well, if you have some time, this is a pretty cool thing to do. And then I'd heard about it. So then they gave us a lot of details. So they didn't give us a lot of other options.
But the reason why I did it is I just couldn't find a lot of information about these caves online, but I figured a human connection might be able to give me the inside story, what to expect and so forth. Part of that too, Rob, is probably a little bit more comforting to say, we talked to a person, they're familiar with it. So it's just not like some randos website, go try this out, dude, it's amazing. It wasn't that. It was like somebody that was a volunteer at a visitor center that knew a lot about it.
I don't know how many times people go into visitor centers. Those people are there to help.
Rob: That's what they're
Brent: That's there for, their job. And it's fun. Any place, any city, town that you go to, there is a visitor center and you can walk in and they are a treasure chest of information. They have so much cool things and it's this inside information that I find so fascinating. And this cave was a perfect example.
It was inside information that brought us some sense of comfort because it wasn't so far out there.
Rob: Besides reading it online about what you're going to go and do, you get to hear the tone of voice of the person, right, which helps you think about how old they might be. Is it a 22 year old kid that is, you know, an adrenaline junkie that says, oh, yeah. Go do it, dude. No problem. Or is it a 60 year old guy that would say, yeah.
No problem. This is or a woman. This is easy, actually. I take my kids there and grandkids there all the time. So I'd had to absolutely alleviate some of your concern in going and doing that.
Brent: She just brought a sense of calm. I mean, who was at the visitor center that day when I called, she was great. I mean, she was just like, this is really cool. I think you'll like it. Here's what to expect.
So that was a lot of fun. How about on your side when you think about half day adventures? What's one that maybe sticks out for you and how did you approach it?
Rob: So these, as you said it, Brent, these are the easiest things to do. It's the spontaneity around it. Just looking at your calendar, we have half a day or three quarters of a day, short portion. What can we do nearby just to go out and have fun? And so I I think of a couple of things here, and a lot of them have stories behind it.
It could be that, you know, the restaurant that you've driven by 20 times and you decide to go have dinner there that night. And whether it's good or bad, it's going to be a fun story. I think about, you know, you went on a tour and you know, of a cave. It's touring something nearby or going to a local museum, and a lot of even small towns have local museums. I know our 5,000 person town has a small little local museum.
I've never been inside of it, but that's something that I've driven by a ton of times that you could go and do in an afternoon. This could be going to a new coffee shop that you've never sat in before and just work there or read a book for a couple hours. It's go take out turn off your phone and go wandering on a pathway or a trail or through a subdivision or neighborhood that you've never been in before. So all of those things are really easy to go and do. And as you were talking about sitting in the dark, and this might be a tangent, we actually went to a restaurant that was called dining in the dark.
It was opaque, you actually eat dinner in this restaurant. So the restaurant was named opaque. It was dining in the dark. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face. You had a three course meal you had to order in advance, and then you got to enjoy that with no light in the room.
Like, the hands on my watch were glowing through my shirt. It was that dark. And you talk about a weird experience. That was completely a weird experience for us. Unfortunately, the first thing of food they gave us was a hummus plate.
So you're dipping your hands in hummus. You're trying to scoop it up and drinking wine from a stemless glass and trying to find the wine on the table. But it was a fun experience, and it was some you know, we were on a trip someplace, so we just added that in in the evening. But these half day adventures should feel really simple to go and do. It's about taking that first step out of the house, out of the norm to go and do something.
Brent: You know, there's one that came to mind that I recently did. There's a town that's probably forty five minutes from us and I had a car that I had to get fixed and the mechanic happened to be in that town. So I had a few hours to kill and normally I would try to pack it full of calls and I would either try to figure out logistics. Can somebody come with me? I'll go back home and then I'll go back and get it.
I said, I'm going to do it different this time. I'm going to just drop the car off. I knew I had about half of the day and I'm going to go try out a breakfast place. So when I arrived, I kind of asked around like, what's a cool breakfast spot? I walked to it.
And then after that, I went to the library and I walked around their library, which I'd never been in. I haven't been in a library in years. So that was kind of cool to sit in the library, walk around, see the books and how they operate a library today. That was cool. And then I finished off my kind of half day with going to a cool lunch spot that I've never been to.
I didn't know much about this town, but it was something different for me, Rob, because I normally would try to pack it full of other things that I'm used to doing. I did it completely opposite. I just said, I'm going to go however my energy takes me. And I actually had a lot of fun. And I walked six miles that day.
It was beautiful. That was zero planning. I just had to drop off the car and I let the rest unfold after it.
Rob: So, Brent, I'm going to ask you a question about the half day adventure just real quick that you just talked about going to this town. You didn't have a plan when you got there. You just talked to locals when you got there. You just asked you know, you dropped off your car, asked the mechanic shop. Did you just do this by asking locals along the way what you should
Brent: do next? Yeah, would ask locals and then I'd hop on my phone and just say, breakfast places nearby. Because I knew everything had to be walking distance for me. Wasn't going to take a cab I just would bounce from place to place. And then I'd say, okay, where's the library?
And then I would navigate with my phone to the library. So I just knew that the first point was to the find a breakfast place because it's pretty early in the morning, but I'd asked the people at the mechanic shop to say any recommendations? And they give me a few. Then I'd look them up on my phone and then I just walk there.
Rob: All right, nice. The next adventure we're going to talk about are single day adventures. And Brent, you and I have done quite a few of these. Just to define a single day adventure for our audience to think about is, this is a within a few hour radius of where you live. So just a few hour radius, not a overnight, not an extended trip, but something you can go to and from in a single day.
They shouldn't take a ton of planning, but maybe a little bit more planning in advance than these impromptu half day type outings where you drive by something, stop and go and do it. Brent, how do you approach these single day activities? And then what have you done in that area?
Brent: I don't try to rush it. That's the key to me on the on the full day is half day, you've got a couple hours. But a full day, I want to make sure that there's not too much packed into it. And so I approach it like, I got a day, what am I going to do this day? And I go explore something that I may not normally do.
And sometimes Rob, it's not even the proximity to my house. I just might be at a place like, oh, I'm at a wedding for instance, and I'm not a part of the wedding party. So I've got a full day before a 05:00 wedding. What am I going to do for that day? And I kind of just think through ideas and I try not to plan in advance.
I just go explore.
Rob: When I think about these, that the things that we have done is I know within a few hour radius as to what types of towns or what places could I go into them. Usually, we have an anchor item that we want to try for a day like this. Like, you know, for us, it might be restaurant in a town or a gear shop. I want to go check out a gear shop in a certain town that's a couple hours away. A fly fishing store, a, you know, ski store, something like that where I can just go tinker with different gear, and then we build the rest of the day around it.
And so it's going to be a couple hour drive. We might get breakfast on the way, hit the shop. Usually, when we get there, Brent, a lot of it is asking locals what options we have when we get there. So we don't try to plan these things except for maybe an anchor item for us. Like, we want to go check this out, and then we're going to ask questions while we're there to people that know the area way better than us, and I think know it way better than the Internet, can give us some local insights into going and doing something.
And so they're one step harder than that impromptu half day outing where it takes a little bit more initiative to look at a map or to look at an area and say, we're going to go to this geography, and then we're going to go and figure it out. So where can we get breakfast along the way? Just a slight level more of planning to go and do these single day outings.
Brent: But not complex. No. That's the key there. A little bit more planning because it is there's a destination as you get there. So there's a little work to get there, but a lot of times you have this flexibility of time when you're there.
How are going to fill it?
Rob: Brent, I know you have a fun story about a single day, outing and adventure that you had, but it was on a work trip. So share with us, that single day outing and how it transpired, what you found out, which now is a hack that everybody on our podcast can go and use going forward.
Brent: So this isn't local. So let me just put out that disclaimer that I had a work trip to Paris. And this was just a couple of years ago. And I was traveling with a bunch of my work colleagues. I think we arrived sometime early morning, got to the hotel and a lot of people were like, We're going to crash out.
And I was like, No, I want to go explore the city. And one of the things that I wanted to do because I'd seen Versailles, which I think is about an hour outside of Paris, about twenty five years ago. And I didn't remember it much, but I just remember how cool it was, but I don't remember some of the finite details. So it was a Saturday. And a Saturday from my understanding at Versailles in probably this was the summertime is packed and you have to buy tickets in advance.
The hotel we're staying at actually had a concierge. I'm not going to try the French accent because I'll screw that up. But I asked the concierge, I said, I have an interest of going out to Versailles. Is there any way that I can get in? And he looked at me and he kind of said, Well, today's a tough day.
And he pulled it up online. He's like, It's sold out completely. There's no possible way. There'll be thousands of people there. I said, All right.
I said, Is there any way that I can get into Versailles? Then he lowered his voice a little bit and he said, there actually is. I said, well, what is it?
Rob: I'm over here. Come next to the desk. Let me whisper in your ear.
Brent: And he said, there is a little cafe slash bar attached to Versailles. So it's near the entrance of Versailles. And what you need to do is take a cab there to Versailles. And what you need to do is go into that bar and have a drink and maybe something small to eat. Then at the end, you're ready to go to say, I would like to go to Versailles, can you help me out?
Say, Sure. And you buy the ticket from the waiter. And what the waiter does at that moment in time is says, Come with me. And they have like a back entrance into Versailles and you walk in on the other side of the gate. I was like, what?
And he's like, yeah.
Rob: Don't tell anybody else.
Brent: Don't tell anybody else. So I did this and then I spent a good three or four hours in Versailles without waiting three or four hours to get into Versailles. And in that day, couldn't even do that because it was sold out. And it was a little insight and what that required was humans. I just said, is there any possible way?
And he kind of looked at me and said, yeah, there is. Let's go try it. You should do this. He goes, it works. You just have to follow this process.
And it was great. So we went, I went with a work colleague, wandered around for a few hours. It was gorgeous. And I walked out. I felt like I was the king of Versailles at that day.
Because I didn't have to actually go through the process that everybody else did. I had the insider route to get inside of Versailles on one of the most busiest days of the week or the month. And I felt so proud of that, but it all started with something really simple, asking somebody at the hotel to say, Do you have any ideas here? And of course they first started like, Not going to happen, buddy. Are you sure?
Yeah, I think there is a way. Let me tell you about this. Of course, I tipped him heavily. Because I of knew he was doing us a favor. He was totally there to give me a route in there that's different than everybody else did.
You just have to follow his plan and it worked great. He didn't have to call ahead. It had nothing to do with that. It was just purely like, this is the way I think it's going to work for you. It was fantastic.
Rob: That's great. And leave it to Brent to one up the story. Brent drops in a trip to Paris and a and a tour of Versailles. But I think actually, Brent, this does fit into the single day adventure category, especially for people that are working and actually travel extensively for work. This could absolutely be a thing that fits into a single day adventure and asking the concierge, hey.
I have a single day. I have a gap day in my travel or gap day in my meetings. What should I go and do? And so while Versailles is not in our backyard and easy to do, it is easy to do something like that if you're traveling for work. And that also sets up a segue into the next category, which is multi day adventures.
And this is really an overnight getaway, someplace different, which is typically either a longer drive or flight to go someplace. Takes just a little bit more planning in advance to go and do a trip like this. It's not something you could just get up and go do that morning. However, I have been tempted just to show up at the airport and look at the board and buy a ticket. I don't think I'm ready for that adventure just yet.
But these are things that take just a little bit more planning, but also typically come with a lot better story involved. So, Brent, let's hear some of your stories about these overnight adventures.
Brent: There's one that sticks out and it's related to family for me. And my kids were a little bit younger at the time and we were newer to our community. And we'd heard about this lake that was about, I think an hour and a half, two hours away. And they had teepees at the lake and to do an overnight. And we had two dogs, two kids, my wife and I, and we're like, we need something simple to do, but we wanted to go explore with them.
And I called up there once again, Analog. And they said, yeah, we have actually one TP available. So we got up there and this is the funny part of the TP experience is it was a very, very warm day, middle of the summer. We actually looked inside of the teepee, we're like, it's probably 110 degrees inside of this teepee. We got two dogs, two kids, and the two of us, and it was so dusty and dry that day.
We just looked at each other like, this isn't going to work out. So then we walked inside and I said, Is there any other options? They're like, It's your lucky day. And he said, We actually have somebody just canceled on a little cabin and the little cabin had a couple bunk beds, perfect. So we did that.
But while we were there is we didn't do any planning of what we were going to do when we got there. We just knew they had this little lake and they had some trails that you could go walk on and something to do. So they said, I'm going to take my kids out on a canoe. My wife's like, Go ahead. I'm going to I'll hang out with the dogs.
Kids were loving it. We're giggling, splashing each other. We start to head back in. Change of plans. There was a moose parked where the dock is.
I haven't seen too many moose at that moment in time in my life. They are massive rock.
Rob: Those are big animals. Yeah.
Brent: Had the huge rack and it was just like, you know, the antlers. I was like, oh my gosh. So then we could not bring the boat back into the dock. And so then finally somebody came out and said, Just pull the canoe down like 200 yards and just leave it there, we'll take care of it later. But that was an experience that I had never thought would happen.
It just kind of wandered from the forest into the little lake and parked itself because there was a bunch of grasses nearby the dock. And my kids were laughing so hard. Dad, there's a moose in the water. And I'm like, Yeah, and I got to keep you safe, or mom over there is going to be the end of me. The reason I shared that story, now I went back in time and my kids were younger, but that story to me left a mark because we had heard about this place and we just said, let's just call up there.
Once again, analog. I called up, what can you do for me? Yeah, we've got a TP, TP didn't work out. Oh, you got lucky with a cabin. Little teeny cabin worked out great.
Then the exploration that says, Do you guys want to go in a canoe? Sure, let's go in a canoe. And we just did that. So it was a lot of fun, but none of it was planned. We just said, Let's get there and we'll figure it out once we're there what we're going to do.
And that was the beauty of it.
Rob: So before I share my story, want to go a little deeper because you talked about doing this with kids, which I know adds a whole other layer of complexity to this, Brent. How do you approach these things with kids?
Brent: Well, you know that kids are just generally curious. And that is one thing that I think children do, even young adults do better than adults or people in midlife is they're willing to go explore. I even have that today with my kids, we'll go to a new city, they are way better at just saying, let's just start walking. And so you know that they're going to be more typically naturally curious. And the cool thing today is when you do that, you get off the cell phones, you get off the social media and you just say, let's go try this.
How I've always done it with my kids is you set it up as like a curiosity adventure. And you could do it with grandkids the same way. If you've got grandkids, you can just go to a place and be like, let's just try this. And sometimes you do it around food. Sometimes you plan around lunch and just say, always know that you got to have some excitement built in there, or you got a candy store, you got something that you can go to kind of get the energy at the right place.
But it's that curiosity that I find kids are really good at, as long as you untap it. I find even with my kids that now they're a bit older, if we all put our phones down, the curiosity and the willingness to explore is so there. So let's take advantage of that. And that's a fun thing. And that's when you start laughing more.
That's when you start to just poke fun at things and you start to just get curious from place to place to place because you're not dependent on the little teeny screen on your phone that everybody's looking down. So that's part of these adventures in today's society. Either you got young kids, older kids, grandkids, if you can get them away from the device, even us, I'm not going to put them in one bucket of saying they're the ones guilty, we're guilty too, is go be curious without something that is going to guide you through the process like a phone.
Rob: Such two cheat codes you've given our group today, Brent. One is how to see Versailles on a whim. And the second one, the up down up down a B A B, whatever that thing was on Nintendo, you gave another cheat code on how to get your kids off of cell phones and off of, off of screens to go and do stuff, and your excitement around the activity transfers on to them as and I know that's absolutely the case with the boys.
Brent: Yeah. Absolutely. So
Rob: a couple of the multi day or overnight outings that we've done, we actually have one coming up here in just a couple of days. A lot of these things come from our bucket list or life list as we call it. Items that we just keep track of on a regular basis that we want to try and go and do. And I'll talk about how we approach it after I tell you about some of these outings and some of these opportunities. So the thing we're doing this weekend is we're going truffle hunting just outside of Seattle.
It's something we've had on our list for a long time, and in fact, we could have done it when we lived in the Northwest. It's one of those missed adventures because we moved away. And so we talked about adventures expire. That was one of those ones that would have been a lot easier to do for a couple hour drive from our house. Now we're actually getting on a plane, flying out to Seattle for just a quick couple of nights.
I get to see my brother, but we're going to go truffle hunting with dogs. So something that was on our life list for quite a while that we're going and doing. The other one I'm going to give is an example. There's actually a friend of mine that does this. Is she and her husband actually are huge Trailblazer fans, and they will travel around the country to watch the Trailblazers play in a new stadium.
I know a lot of people do this with baseball, basketball, footballs. They want to follow their team to a new location and see a new stadium. And so those are really simple things because the date's already out there. You just got to plan the trip around that date. And then, you know, what else might you go and do in that town?
So just a couple of fun ideas around that, but that's going to segue me into how, Tara and I plan these types of outings. The first thing we do is we just look at the calendar and says, do we have an open weekend coming up? We can go and do something. So the first step is we look at the calendar, and we say, up. Here's a here's a weekend that's two weeks out, three weeks out, a month out.
We have an open weekend. We have an open couple of days. Let's go do something. And so we start off with just blocking the time in the calendar, and then we actually both look at our list, the life list that we have. So we check out our life list.
We search the Internet. We look at maps, and we go on our own pathway of trying to find ideas. Then we actually come together and we talk about our ideas. Alright. So on May, we have an open weekend.
I have a couple ideas. Here's what I'm thinking. I share my ideas with her. She shares her ideas with me. We have a discussion and we always end up picking her idea.
I think that you know how that works, Brent, is
Brent: Absolutely. Smart choice. You're very, very wise.
Rob: Yeah. So but I still do the research because my idea might win in my dreams. But it it's fun to actually go and do the research. Sometimes new items add to our bucket list, which is actually kind of fun too is that as I'm doing my research, as she's doing her research, oh, we can go and do this too. It may not be the trip we do that that time, but it's a future trip and a future opportunity for us.
And so that's how we approach these things on a multi day. A little bit more planning, but because we run with a list on a regular basis, it's easy for us to go and select an item and then just let's go figure out how to go and do it.
Brent: So can you take me back to truffle hunting? Because I know nothing about that. What was the curiosity there? Like, I understand, hey, we found a cheap flight. Let's just go.
Let's kind of figure it out. But what was tell me a little bit about the truffle hunting. Why that?
Rob: So have you ever had truffles before? Not chocolate truffles, but the Yeah. Really expensive ones.
Brent: Yeah. Yeah.
Rob: They taste fantastic. Yeah. And so that was like, oh my gosh. These truffles are good, and they're really expensive. And so it was this like, oh my gosh.
There's truffles. And we I don't know how we heard about it, but there's truffles are in the Northwest. I thought they were all in Europe, and so that's why they were so expensive, but there's actually truffles in the Pacific Northwest. I was like, oh, that's kind of cool, but you still have to buy them at a grocery store. And so then, you know, it was one of those things like, hey.
Let's go and learn. Is there an opportunity for us to go? And this took some research. Can we go out and actually find truffles ourselves? And I know in the Northwest, people go out mushroom hunting, and they go find different mushrooms, which I think has a little more risk involved just because you never know if you're going to get a bad mushroom that might kill you.
I know there's professional classes you can take, and that's on the list as well as to learn how to go mushroom foraging. But the truffle piece was, for us, it was on the list. We'd heard about it as an opportunity to go and do. We have a couple of guides, so it's not just us out doing it. It's a couple of guides.
It's a class. There's a tasting experience that comes along with this thing too. A couple of dogs that will take us out to find the truffles, and we get to come home with a couple truffles as well. That's actually what I'm most excited about is flying home with a couple of truffles and then figuring out what dishes. I love to cook, so, alright, how do I sneak truffle into some things, or what should I wait to put some truffle into?
Brent: So the cool thing about that trip is you have this idea. You figure out a time block, but it's still not a massive adventure. That's what we're trying to get across here. Like the way you described it is, Hey, we've got a weekend. What do we want to do?
Hey, we've always thought about this truffle hunting. You do a little bit of research, But one thing I like about it, you didn't say, but we're also going to do this and this and this. You're going to go there. You know you got the main event, but you're going to build around it. Like your friend who goes watch the Portland Trailblazers play basketball.
They go and I'm sure they find a cool restaurant. They find something cool to do in that city. So they've got one event and they just work around that. That's what a micro adventure is, is you just go explore and sometimes you create an anchor around that exploration. So the anchor for you is truffle hunting.
The anchor for your friends is going to a basketball game, but then there's all these other things you can do and it's how you're going to fill the time. Have fun with it.
Rob: Right. And it might be relaxing. It might be just sitting in a library reading books for the afternoon. We don't know what's coming. We'll figure it out as we go.
Brent: I love that. And it's also weather dependent.
Rob: Well, it says 10% chance of rain, which means it's going to rain.
Brent: That's awesome.
Rob: Yes. It will rain while we're there. We know that. Yeah. Alright.
So as I as we're starting to wrap up, I'm going to give some insight into how to think about getting ready to do these things. And I and I mentioned a couple of them. And Tara and I have a life list that we've been running with since we were dating back in college. And we keep adding things to the list, keep moving things off of the list after we've experienced them. And so that's one of the things that we've done.
And one of the ways that we keep adding to our list of items, it comes in pictures on Instagram, a video we might see on YouTube, something we see from hear from a friend. That goes on the list. And we have no time frame on this list when we have to get stuff done. It's just ideas of things we might go and do. And this day and age with Instagram, just seeing a picture is like, where's that?
Quickly research where it's at, and then we add it to the list if it's something that looked like it might have been interesting to do or an interesting experience to go and have. And those are some of the fun ones that we get to see now. Unfortunately, some of them become have become too social media impacted, and so they are crowded. You get a nice social media crowd there, but they're there because it's good. And so that's the other thing we've gotten our head around too is we know if we find something on social media, it might be a little crowded, but it's crowded because it's a fun or neat experience.
The other thing you can go and do is just do a Google search. That's probably the next easiest step is to do a Google search on a town. What can we go and do in this town? If you want to take it one step further, use AI to help you reduce that search a little bit and help you narrow that search down a little bit more. But the last area, and this will be available on our Substack account.
If you come look at Midlife Circus on Substack, you'll find a very robust AI prompt that you can use, and you can use it for your current city. If you're traveling someplace, You'll have to actually fill out some information. So you have to copy and paste this into a Word document and then fill out personal information like activity level, types of budget you have, things like that. And AI will come back with a list of items in that geography for you to go and do. Takes a little bit of couple extra steps up front, but the output is actually really fun and diverse.
I've come up with some really neat things to go and do in a community or a town that I've never experienced using AI to help me go and find those things. Those are all ways in which you can actually go find opportunities and little tiny exciting things to go and do on a on a quick whim or a quick weekend. So as I wrap up, my challenge to our audience is to, in the next seven days, go on a small adventure. Take an afternoon. Look at your calendar in the next couple days.
I'm not talking about the overnight anywhere, but just look at your calendar over the next couple of days. Do you have a three hour block in your day, morning, noon, or night, where you can go and do something out of the norm? Change the rut that you're in. Get out of that cycle. Get out of autopilot and try something new or different that changes your comfort zone a little bit and maybe pushes your boundaries.
If you feel stuck, it's rarely because you need a bigger life. It's usually because you need more aliveness inside the one you've had. And micro adventures bring that aliveness to you.
Brent: I can't wait to see your prompt Rob because I haven't used it yet. So I'm going to go to Substack as well and try the prompt once you post it. Cause that sounds so cool to me to have a little bit of a guide through this. Now we shared a bunch of analog examples where you could go to a visitor center, could go to concierge, you can talk to people, but this is also another way to do this. So is that super cool?
So as we close out today, we always like to talk about gratitude and our gratitude share today. I had this amazing experience just last week. A friend of mine, their son is a ski racer. And so I went and watched the ski races with them, and we're in between races. And I know that my friend's wife, she was traveling for work at a work conference a couple days prior.
And so we're just sitting there chatting and she goes, I got something to tell you. I'm like, what? And she's like, I love your podcast and I like what you and Rob are doing. So I'm at this conference with a bunch of work colleagues and I'm telling them about Midlife Circus. And she said, what I did is I said, All right, everybody pull out your phones.
Go to Apple Podcasts, open it up, search Midlife Circus. She's telling me this. I didn't ask her to do this. And she goes, Then I walked around and I hit subscribe on all of their phones. She's like, I just got you some new subscribers.
I was so thrilled by that because she said, I like what you're doing. And so her husband was saying the same thing. And it was neat to hear how she approached it. So we'll ask the same of our listeners. If you like what you're hearing, follow us.
That's the first step. But even take it one step further, share it with a friend because we think they'll like it too.
Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder, the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice.
This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the big top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.