Author Chris Brady's Blog

Towns of Tuscany - Part 3

Warm sun on your skin, smooth and curving mountain roads, beautiful vistas, delightful acceleration, the rumble of the engine, and nothing on your schedule but hundreds of kilometers of Tuscan roads. That pretty much describes the privilege my friend Tim Marks and I experienced on our recent motorcycle trip through Tuscany. Let's close out this third and final installment with a short video. May you chase down your own dream roads soon! As Orrin Woodward once said, "It's not enough to dream, you've also got to make them come true!"

Sincerely,

Chris Brady

Towns of Tuscany-Part 2

Part of the beauty of Tuscany is its seemingly endless supply of beautiful roads. While the main towns like Florence and Pisa can be frustratingly crowded, the rest of Tuscany is largely open countryside. It's here, out in the hills and mountains, that one really falls in love with this place. And it's on a motorcycle that one can really get to know it in a fun way.

Tim Marks and I covered more than 1000 km and experienced over 100 towns. Most of this was countryside, mountainside, hillside, sunnyside! At one point Tim said over the helmet-to-helmet radio system, "Man! It's like someone designed this area especially for what we're doing. It feels like one big motorcycle adventure park." A pretty apt description, I think.

Descriptions, however, can only convey so much. Therefore, I invite you to mount up and join us for a few minutes in this video. 

(To be continued)

Towns of Tuscany Tour-Part 1

There are times in life when everything just works out great.

In my book, A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation, I talked a little about riding a motorcycle through Tuscany. That trip, however, was mostly a family vacation, and I only logged about 400 kilometers in the course of a whole month. As any motorcycle enthusiast knows, that's nowhere near a serious amount of riding. It was a family vacation and my top priority was spending time with Terri and my four brown-eyed kids. As you can read in the book, that part worked out wonderfully. 

However, while on some of those short outings and zipping around smooth, unpopulated Tuscan curves, I couldn't help erecting in my mind a return trip dedicated solely to adventures of the two wheeled variety . . . .

And so, one of my first calls was to my friend, business partner, and boondoggle buddy Tim Marks. Tim and I have embarked upon many an adventure together, including racing a dune buggy through the Baja, flying fighter planes, scuba diving, snorkeling through swim-throughs (one of the scariest of our capers, believe it or not), shooting machine guns, using kayaks to hunt muskrats, power boating, motorcycling, snowmobiling, and owning and flying an airplane together. So I knew Tim was the perfect partner for some serious motorcycle exploration through Italy. Our only challenge was the calendar. With launching a new company, building our businesses, and being heavily involved family men, the toughest challenge was finding a spot in the calendar. Finally, we settled on September of 2012. We both had over a week available, and the situation in Italy would be perfect that time of year. The summer holiday crowds would be gone, and the temperatures would likely be in the high seventies to low eighties. Perfect.

We reserved two BMW 1200GS motorcycles from the super reliable Ricardo (also featured in A Month of Italy), purchased plane tickets (first class so we could recline flat and arrive rested and ready to ride), and began the process of planning and provisioning. It was decided that we would mostly restrict our touring to Tuscany, with it's thousands of kilometers of curved roads through an extreme range of topography. This would allow us to establish a home base in one location from which to venture out each day, thereby eliminating much of the logistics and wasted time of finding new lodging every night and packing and unpacking. We chose a borgo (a type of village converted to a resort) near Siena. We also decided we'd like to see at least 100 towns in Tuscany, a detail agreed upon by two overachievers with choleric personalities that would come back to haunt us. Tim also indicated he had two additional objectives: 1) to see the leaning tower of Pisa ( Torre pendente di Pisa), and, 2) to obtain some purses of a particular style for his wife Amy. Little did we know how these last two would combine into a story of their own. 

To be continued . . . 

The Joy of Eating

For anyone who knows me (the "food Neanderthal"), you may already be shocked by the title of this article. So you may not be surprised to discover that I've invited the talented Karen McCann, author of Dancing in the Fountain: How to Enjoy Living Abroad, to share on the simple pleasures of the Mediterranean culture of eating.

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“Do you have any idea how much fat there is in a single almond?” demanded an American friend who is in the throes of a deep diet. “As for olives . . . !”

For one ghastly moment I looked down at my plate and began to see my dinner as a minefield of calories, fat, salt, cholesterol, mercury, white sugar and non-nutritive chemical additives. And then I remembered Chris Brady’s wonderful line in A Month of Italy:  "There is never any talk of ‘low cal’ or ‘carbs’ or ‘proteins.’ For Italians, dissecting foods into these vulgar terms is as offensive as breaking sexual intercourse down into steps and sub-components.” With Chris’s words in mind, I came to my senses and tucked into my dinner with renewed enthusiasm. If my years of living in Seville, Spain, have taught me anything, it is that food should be treated as a welcome friend, not an enemy.

The Sevillanos consider it their God-given birthright to enjoy themselves every day. They fling themselves into their social lives with the same zeal Americans devote to their careers. Just meeting a friend for a café con leche can take two hours, not counting the preliminary debate about where to go for the best coffee at the best price. Lunch is even more time-consuming; my record so far is seven hours one St. Patrick’s Day in an Italian restaurant on the Costa del Sol. Dinners may last until four in the morning. Late nights can run until dawn and not infrequently include walking home through the silent streets, arm in arm with friends, and (if I am to be totally honest with you) singing a medley of old show tunes, Beatles hits, and Besame Mucho. The neighbors put up with it because they know that next time, they could be the ones serenading the barrio.

I have never met a Spaniard or an Italian who was in danger of saying, in T.S. Eliot’s famous phrase, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”  

The essence of the Mediterranean lifestyle isn’t living in a particular geographic region, it’s about how you live wherever you are. It’s about eating when you’re hungry, taking a siesta when you’re tired and enjoying your wine without guilt or the nagging worry that Merlot really is totally uncool.  Like sex, eating for pleasure isn’t something to be done indiscriminately, but it is something you’ll want to stay in practice for, so that you don’t lose your touch.

 

Guest blogger Karen McCann is the author of Dancing in the Fountain: How to Enjoy Living Abroad. An award-winning journalist, author, editor and blogger, she has been living in Seville, Spain, since 2004. Wanderlust has taken her to more than thirty countries, including many developing or post-war nations where she and her husband volunteer as consultants to struggling microenterprises. A fourth-generation Californian, she lived in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband for two decades before the couple moved to Seville “for a year” and decided to make it their home. Today, she spends her time writing, blogging, painting, traveling the world and working on her next book.

"A Month of Italy" Featured on "The Dove"

I was recently asked to appear on "The Dove" television show.  Perry Atkinson did a great job keeping me on track! 

Vagobond Reviews "A Month of Italy"

Vagobond is a cool online travel magazine we deemed worthy to include in the exclusive "Travel Recommendations" list on the A Month of Italy website. A special thank you to Vago Domitio, the creative force behind Vagobond, for the great review of the book. Here are some excerpts: 

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The thing that most captured me as I read was the sense of how it made me feel good about the life I lead and the choices I’ve made. Chris is a hard working guy – like me. I spend a huge amount of time writing, editing, working on projects, and building a future for my wife, our daughter, and me. The thing is though, I always make sure to take the time to enjoy life too. Chris pointed out at one point that the average working American father spends an average of 37 seconds a day with their kids!!!! What?

And yet, there is much more to this book than the adventures and misadventures of an American family in Italy – instead, this book is about finding the balance in our lives between work and play – it is about the importance of taking the time to really live – and it is filled with powerful messages that every stressed out CEO or entrepreneur needs to read.  The reason? Because life is sometimes meant to be fun and sometimes it is meant to be downright silly.

Ultimately, this book is about Italy and more. It’s about Tuscany, food, culture, and the misadventures of travel – but, beneath the surface, this book is about the choices we make in our lives. It is about how to be more effective in our work, more loving in our families, and how to enjoy the art of our lives – both on vacation and at home.

As to the rest – it’s an enjoyable story about traveling in Italy and it offers some funny stories, beautiful descriptions, and some inspiring moments. It’s a very good book and I recommend that you read it.

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For the complete review, click here.

Thanks, Vagobond, and thanks to all who've read and recommended the book! May you strike out on your own adventures soon!

Sincerely,

Chris Brady

Device Addiction

I don't know if it's just my heightened awareness since releasing my latest book, A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation, or if the world is also catching on, but it seems as if more and more people are talking about the need for restorative breaks. In the following article from the New York Times, even the executives responsible for producing and advancing the consuming technologies of our time are starting to ask the tough questions. 

Silicon Valley Says Step Away from the Device:

Tech firms are uneasy over the effect time online has on relationships.

By MATT RICHTEL

Published: July 23, 2012

Stuart Crabb, a director in the executive offices of Facebook, naturally likes to extol the extraordinary benefits of computers and smartphones. But like a growing number of technology leaders, he offers a warning: log off once in a while, and put them down.

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of Wisdom 2.0, an annual conference about the pursuit of balance in the digital age.

In a place where technology is seen as an all-powerful answer, it is increasingly being seen as too powerful, even addictive.

The concern, voiced in conferences and in recent interviews with many top executives of technology companies, is that the lure of constant stimulation — the pervasive demand of pings, rings and updates — is creating a profound physical craving that can hurt productivity and personal interactions.

“If you put a frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it’ll boil to death — it’s a nice analogy,” said Mr. Crabb, who oversees learning and development at Facebook. People “need to notice the effect that time online has on your performance and relationships.”

The insight may not sound revelatory to anyone who has joked about the “crackberry” lifestyle or followed the work of researchers who are exploring whether interactive technology has addictive properties.

But hearing it from leaders at many of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies, who profit from people spending more time online, can sound like auto executives selling muscle cars while warning about the dangers of fast acceleration.

“We’re done with this honeymoon phase and now we’re in this phase that says, ‘Wow, what have we done?’ ” said Soren Gordhamer, who organizes Wisdom 2.0, an annual conference he started in 2010 about the pursuit of balance in the digital age. “It doesn’t mean what we’ve done is bad. There’s no blame. But there is a turning of the page.”

At the Wisdom 2.0 conference in February, founders from Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Zynga and PayPal, and executives and managers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco and others listened to or participated in conversations with experts in yoga and mindfulness. In at least one session, they debated whether technology firms had a responsibility to consider their collective power to lure consumers to games or activities that waste time or distract them.

The actual science of whether such games and apps are addictive is embryonic. But the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, widely viewed as the authority on mental illnesses, plans next year to include “Internet use disorder” in its appendix, an indication researchers believe something is going on but that requires further study to be deemed an official condition.

(For the rest of the article, click here).

What do you think?

Are people too connected to their electronic devices?

What impact, if any, do you think this is having on our society?

What have we gained?

What have we lost?

Sincerely,

Chris Brady

 

One Company Incentivizes the "Art of Vacation"

Here's a portion of another article someone sent to me demonstrating that some companies are weighing in on the idea of the "Art of Vacation."  In my latest book, A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation, I try to make many of these same points through an emotional, dreamy, and (hopefully) humoruos narrative that will provide the impulse people need to take strategic breaks themselves. In this article, we see that a company has decided to give its own incentives toward that end.

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Bart Lorang calls it a "paid, paid vacation."

The CEO and co-founder of Denver-based software provider company FullContact is offering his employees a $7,500 bonus to go on vacation, on top of their normal vacation pay.

So what's the catch? There's three, as Lorang describes in a blog on the company's website.

First, employees must completely go off the technology grid,  meaning no e-mail, texting or phone calls. In conjunction with the first rule, employees are not allowed to do any work while on their trip.

Third, employees must actually go on a trip. Lorang explains he believes all his employees deserve a nice vacation, and he chose the $7,500 dollar amount because he believes it is enough for a family of four to take a trip to Mexico for a week.

"We felt that everyone should have the opportunity to take a nice vacation without constantly worrying about how much money they’re spending while on vacation," Lorang blogged.

Lorang tells KDVR he had the idea for the incentive when he was browsing photos of his trip to Egypt. He was struck by a photo of himself riding a camel among the pyramids, but he was texting. 

He says experiences like this have made him realized the value of completely disconnecting during a trip, and wants to encourage his employees to do so as well. 

Some of Lorang's software engineers that have taken him up on his offer say while it was difficult initially going off the grid, they ended up loving their completely unplugged vacation.

“Absolutely fantastic.  I mean you get so used to waking up to emails in the morning,” engineer Kyle Hansen tells KDVR.

His coworker Robbie Jack says though it was hard to give up his gadgets for the trip, he found it extremely beneficial.

“The biggest benefit is when you get back.  You’re so much more invigorated, recharged,” Jack told KDVR.

(For the full articel on Fox News, click here.)

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Dear readers: What do you think of Lorang's three requirements of A) completely going off the technology grid, B) doing no work while on vacation, and C) having to actually go on a trip?

 

Others Rediscovering the Art of Vacation!

Since the release of my latest book, A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation, I have received countless connections to others who are also touting the power of vacations. Here is an article that appeared on CNN. For those of you who have read the ITALY book, you will notice some similar points!

 

Relax, it's only a vacation 

Vacationing with no agenda -- for some travelers it's heaven, for others a week or more of unscheduled free time is like staring into an abyss. 

Planning for a vacation is usually part of the fun for me, but largely skipping the research and reviews on a recent trip to Costa Rica was surprisingly refreshing. 

Arriving without a bunch of expectations and a long list of things to see and do and accomplish wasn't entirely premeditated. I ran out of time, and since the friend I was traveling with is a native Spanish speaker, I felt great about being able to resolve those inevitable travel snafus. Also, we did book hotels a couple of weeks in advance. (I probably would have melted into a puddle of anxiety otherwise).

We did a lot -- zip lining, snorkeling, bird watching, tarantula spotting, sitting on the beach -- but without that gnawing sense of missing something really important. Ignorance might indeed be bliss. 

Have I been doing it wrong all this time? After the trip, I consulted a trio of sages -- a travel agent, a psychiatrist and a life coach -- to see what vacationing advice they'd offer to people who want to avoid going back to work dragging, desperate for another vacation.

Maybe you don't need three professional advisers to have a nice trip, but some Type A would-be vacationers could use a little help. You know who you are.

We asked: Your vacation planning tactics

Loosening up

"If your vacation causes you stress, it's not a vacation, it's a should, a to-do or an overachieving chore," said Laura Berman Fortgang, a career and life coach and author of "Living Your Best Life." 

Trying to squeeze too many activities into one trip with "no built-in time to chill" can be exhausting, especially when your trip lasts a week or less. (Ours was a weeklong trip and we visited three places. Overly ambitious?).

27 must-sees on earth

Consider this strategy, posted by enthusiastic planner Kris Stafira on CNN's Facebook page: "I usually do plan every minute of every day, but then our family sets our priorities and we make SURE we do those things -- the rest happens or not, depending on the day. I tell my kids they can relax at home -- vacation is for SEEING and DOING and LEARNING!" 

Right. But what if life at home is just as busy? 

Berman Fortgang recommends taking at least 10 to 14 consecutive days away, if at all possible, and building in time to do nothing.

"A week isn't a lot now. At the pace that we all go and the amount of adrenaline that we force our bodies to produce because we move so quickly -- your body doesn't really recover from that in a week," she said.

Berman Fortgang and her husband are self-employed and they shifted their family's schedules years ago to be able to take European-style, three to four week vacations in August. 

"Just knowing on that sixth night you didn't have to pack up to leave, then we started relaxing," she said.

Switching off from the 24/7 work ethic

Finding flexibility

From a psychological standpoint, vacation offers time to build resiliency, according to Dr. Gregory Fricchione, director of the Benson-Henry Institute of Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

The term, adopted from structural engineering, refers to the ability to bend or adapt, but not break, under pressure.

I employed a little of that when I figured out shortly after we got off the plane in San Jose that two of the three places we'd picked to visit were not in fact within day-trip distance of each other, but actually three hours apart by van and boat. (Everything looked really close on the map. This is where reading up and carefully mapping things out comes in handy.)

Strong connections with family and friends and meaningful and positive experiences bolster resiliency. Your stress response, an alert to threats that spurs you to action, is also a key component, Fricchione said.

The stress response is essential, but it burns a lot of energy, so avoiding stressors is part of what's restorative about vacation.

If you want a restful trip, ask yourself "what's a nonthreatening and socially supporting and meaningful and positive experience for me to have? And it would be different for different people," Fricchione said.

Sitting on the beach reading books is just the thing for some people. For people with highly active, risk-taking personalities that don't satisfy that side of themselves at work, an adventure trip can be very fulfilling. 

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having a very busy vacation. Being outside your normal habitat has its own benefits.

"There is something rejuvenating about that in the sense that your mind is very alert, your senses are very alert," Fricchione said.

"If you enter into that experience and you're not exhausted at the beginning, it can be very energizing. It's a nice kind of stress, in a way, and you have enough resiliency to deal with it."

Fricchione suggests taking stock of how you feel and what would be restorative for you and planning your time off accordingly.

14 outstanding airport amenities

Listening to yourself

People who go for the trips they think they want instead of the type of experience they really want and need are the ones who come home needing another vacation, said travel agent Anne Morgan Scully, president of McCabe World Travel in McLean, Virginia. 

"The reality is a vacation should really be about you and what your body needs, what your mind needs, what your soul needs and what your heart needs, and that drives good vacation decisions," she said.

Scully asks her clients about their best trip ever and for two reasons why they loved it. She takes those and other responses and tailors a trip to suit everyone in the group.

"We try to put a balance in what they're asking for so if there are choices and options, something is going to work," she said.

(For the rest of this article on CNN, click here)

Sincerely,

Chris Brady

Customer Serve Us

Most companies give the concept of customer service world-class rhetoric and mediocre implementation, at best.  The attitude isn’t one of customer service, but rather of “customer serve us." 

Just the other day, my wife Terri was in a place where for no apparent reason she was forced to take a new number and begin her wait anew, without any explanation or apology.  When she finally got to the counter she was greeted with an artificial urn labeled, “Ashes of Trouble Customers.”  Nice.  (Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, it was actually a government office and not a bona fide business, but we’ll leave that huge topic for a future post.)

Every now and then, however, someone surprises us.  When it happens, it’s as refreshing as the sunshine after a cold rain.

Observe Exhibit A: our family cocoon packed into a small minivan traveling sleepily through rush hour traffic in Rome.  Scooters zip by on all sides, cars dart in and out, horns blare, and pedestrians play chicken with cars by avoiding eye contact.  After three hours of hazard-avoidance, our quota is used up and we collide noisily with a passing scooter (see previous post for details).  Since the incident occurred on a busy street directly in front of our destination hotel, I suggested Terri take our kids inside to safety.  Within moments, I became vaguely aware of hotel employees in black uniforms extracting the baggage from our damaged vehicle.  Next I looked up to see one of them bringing me a bottle of water with two fancy drinking glasses.  Soon, the general manager of the hotel was standing next to me, comforting me, advising me, and reassuring me that he would provide assistance to help my with any language barrier issues.  

After several hours of cleanup and paperwork, we were ushered to the hotel’s courtyard where our children were comfortably seated and being pampered by the hotel staff.  We were offered drinks and informed that we had already been checked into our rooms.  As a final exclamation point, I was informed that the hotel would additionally be changing my flat tire for me.  “Prego, prego, we insist!” I was told. 

The hotel in question? The Hotel Forty Seven.  The general manager? Paolo Dalle Vacche.  The employee who brought me the water and took care of my children?  Piero Galli.  The man who changed my tire? Valentino.  I mention them all here because they deserve worldwide recognition for putting into implementation what most people only talk about – world-class customer service.  Thank you gentlemen!  Grazie mille!

So, do you think I’ll stay at the Forty Seven upon my next visit to Rome? Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. 

When it comes to you and what you do for a living, here are a couple things to think about when attempting to provide true customer service:

1. Your heart matters – all the best intentions and formal training don’t amount to a thing if you don’t have a heart for thrilling your customer
2.  Your actions speak louder than words – everyone talks, few walk. Let your actions exceed your promises.
3. Put yourself in the customer’s position – this should be obvious, but what made my experience at the Forty Seven so exceptional was the way in which the hotel staff anticipated my needs and met them.
4. One individual is not enough – it takes a whole culture to get it right.  Not that one individual taking the lead and the initiative isn’t how a culture is built – it is – but ultimately, most of the team has to be emotionally on board and committed to authentic exceptionalism.
5. It makes a difference – the hotel Forty Seven didn’t merely cement their relationship with me as a customer, they made an impact on my life.  Who knows what calamities they steered me clear of by their attentiveness.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but you get the idea.  Can you imagine what the world would be like if companies absorbed just these five lessons deeply into their operating psyche?

All of this makes me wonder why more companies don’t get it - why they don’t truly implement the high-sounding platitudes and pronouncements that litter their flashy brochures and walls.

I have two questions for you, dear readers: 

1. When is the last time you had an exceptional customer service experience like mine in this example?
2. What can you do in your business, job, or career to be like the staff at the hotel Forty Seven in Rome? 

(Please share your responses in the comment section below.  I want to hear them!)

Thanks for participating!

Sincerely,

Chris Brady

www.amonthofitaly.com