The 3 Trip Experience, Learning and Retention

  For the many years we have planned and traveled by motorcycle and exchanged ideas with fellow motorcycle travelers there has always been two camps. Those who want everything to be an 'in the moment' adventure and those who take steps to plan the adventure to potentially maximize the opportunities the trip will yield.

We have almost always fallen into the latter category partly because in sailing you had a number of considerations like prevailing winds, and natural hazards and currents and tides to contend with. Yesterday Sandra came across a quote in a book " Between Two Kingdoms" by Suleika Jaouad that I captured.

We feel it expresses very well what we are able to get from travel. It resonates with me for another reason as well. As an adult educator in a business environment we used a process called Accelerated Learning. Essentially it recognizes that people learn and retain information through four types of learning styles: Visual, Auditory, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic. We would develop instruction that uses each type of style.  Kinesthetic is much more tactile as you integrate all your senses when 'doing' something. 

In travel, the doing, is the actual experience itself. So it is part of the second trip. In essence, your planning is the first part of the trip, and it's valuable and exciting as it's filled with a smorgasbord of choices from which you pick based on your needs and wants. It has a written component and tactile component to it as well. When these two parts of  travel occur one closely after the other our learning or memory becomes more imbedded. 

As a side note we have met people when traveling who, because they didn't research in advance, missed seeing a World Heritage site that was a highlight in our trip. That place was Tomar in Portugal, and the former seat of the Knights Templar castle. Our 'find' was like we pulled back the bushes of time and found this gem, though we didn't see Harrison Ford in his search for the Knights Templar.

The third trip is the trip that just keeps on giving. It's the post trip memories that are imbedded from the first 2 versions of the trip. 

Rarely is there a time that we do not recall an experience or memory from a trip on a daily or weekly basis. From the planning and using of maps to connect one destination to another I have found I am better a geographical positioning and chronological recall of how the trip occurred. And another reinforcement of that learning and recall in the development of blog posts.

I hope this encourages you to consider the value of planning the adventure, experiencing it and recalling it later for yourself, your family and others to learn from.