Join Paul G to talk about how to travel safely!
Travel is back!
And with Pow Wow season starting, we need to protect ourselves and our families while on the road this year. Paul will share some of his tips for safety while traveling.
Intro: Welcome to Powwow live podcast from Powwows.com. Connecting you with Native culture since 1996. Here's your host, Paul Gowder.
Paul: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Powwow Live podcast. My name is Paul Gatter. I am here from Powwow.com and this is your place to come learn, experience and connect with all things native culture. And we've been doing it for a long time. So thank you. Thank you for being here and being a part of our community. All you out there at Powwow Nation means so much to me. And I really appreciate all your support. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about safety while you're traveling. There's some advisories and things going on that we always need to be aware of. and be careful out there. So I wanna talk a little bit about how you can be safe this year while you're traveling to powwows or just traveling with your family on vacation. Let's all stay safe out there. I do have a few announcements to get to before we do that. First, thanks to our friends over at eighth generation, we are hosting a giveaway as we count down the days until the Gathering Nations Powwow in Albuquerque, New Mexico is the biggest powwow of the year. And we're going back out there to New Mexico. So excited for that. And we're counting down that It's great giveaway. We're giving away three eighth generation blankets and you can learn more about that over at powwows.com slash win. At the end of the episode, I'll give you a special bonus code that only you get for listening to this podcast. Stay tuned for that. Also wanna let you know that we are adding lots and lots of powwows to our calendar. Find out more over at powwows.com slash calendar. We have powwows all over North America. The United States and Canada, there is a powwow near you happening sometime this year, so go to the calendar and find out. Or if you want an even easier way to find Powwows, you can download the entire calendar to your phone, your laptop, your desktop, your iPad, whatever. Go over to powwalkalendarbook.com and you can download the whole thing in one PDF. You can search it, you can organize it, we put out a new edition every month, so go check that out over there. also wanna give a big shout out to our supporters. Those are the people over at powwow nation.com that are helping us out by joining our Patreon. We've got a really great community going over there. We're doing some things like private Zoom calls with just our Patreon members. There's some exclusive merch and things you can get for joining Patreon, and that is a way to really, really help support powwow.com. So if you'd like to join and be part of that community and support powwow.com while you're doing it, go find out more over It's a great way to help us keep going, doing what we're doing. Thank you for your support and I appreciate you considering joining our Patreon, powwow-nation.com. Alright, let's get to the show and let's talk about ways you can stay safe this year while you travel. Keep in mind, this was recorded live on Facebook and YouTube during our live show we do every Thursday night at 9 o'clock. I'd love for you to come and be a part of that, but that's okay if you want to listen to our content on the podcast. That's cool too. hear me addressing some of the comments and questions that came up during that. If you have comments or questions, you can always email me at paul at powwows.com and I'll be happy to help you out in any way I can. But here is our talk on safety while you travel. And let's start with what some of the things I've heard, you know, the power is the last couple of years and just recently talking to some folks. Theft, robbery, crime, whatever is happening at powwows more and more. We've covered it on powwows.com for years. You know, you hear about people that have their car broken into and their outfits stolen, um, going back to disc golf. I heard one of the professional disc golfers had his entire bag of discs stolen out of his car one night at a hotel. People know, these folks that are doing this, they know now that people are taking and putting their valuables in the trunk and locking them in the trunk. So if you watch Mark Rober or some of these other guys on YouTube, they've looked at this and one of the things that car thieves are doing now is they're not even looking through the car. They're breaking the back window, pulling the seat down, looking in the trunk or finding a way to open the trunk. They're going straight there because they know that's where people are storing stuff. So here's my travel tip number one. to your room at the hotel at night, take everything out the car. Don't leave anything in there. I've even heard it some cities, now this is not at Powell's, but just in general, that some cities are actually leaving their trunks open at night because of the number of break-ins. I'm not recommending doing something like that, but don't leave anything sitting out in the car to even make people think that there might be something there and take everything inside. Do not leave anything. Do not think it's gonna be safe in the trunk. We're past that, right? If you leave anything in there, your laptop, your outfit, your regalia, Don't do it. Take it all with you. That's tip number one and please if you have traveled to safety tips, too I'd love to hear it or if you've got stories about some things that you you know what want to share Let me know I'd love to hear that um Let's see a good see Louis Barry Pennsylvania's watching things. Thanks Marshall likes the shirt appreciate that Marshall Marshall and beautiful mess Glad to see you guys back tonight seeing the regulars Over on Instagram. I'm seeing amigo. Hey, man. What's going on? He runs a great YouTube channel with some good powwow videos go follow him over there That's somebody else said Rachel says she watched that same one with Mark Rober in the glitter bombs Yeah, if you want to if you want to follow some of this stuff and see how crazy it is Go check that video out. So that's tip number one Number two is kind of the same thing. And I was sad to hear that this has happened at some powwows recently. Um, but it's no longer safe at some places. So just keep it in mind. Don't leave things unattended at your seat. It used to be that, you know, that you toss a blanket over the bench or over a few chairs and you could walk away and leave some things at your chair while you went to dance or maybe went out and grabbed you, um, an ear of corn from nibble, my So whatever, unfortunately, it's not always safe to do that. So don't leave any valuables around your chairs while you're out dancing or let somebody stay there with them or just don't bring them with you, right? Or keep them in your pockets, keep them in your purse, whatever. Be careful about leaving things at your chair at Powwows Unattended. Unfortunately, we are past those days of it being safe at all places. Now, here's another one. I heard recently. on TikTok and this kind of scared me. But think about what would happen now if somebody stole your phone. You know, a few years ago, people were stealing phones because they wanted to get the phone and resell it. Now, nobody cares about the value of the phone itself. It's the value of what's on that phone. And I heard some people talking on TikTok recently about what happened to them and they had their phone stolen. The person was able to unlock it or use it because it was still unlocked. change their Apple ID password, change their screen protection, or their passcode on the phone, and within minutes, they had the original owner locked out of everything, was able to access all their bank accounts, their investment accounts, their crypto, if you've got crypto, anything you could think of is all right there on the phone. If you use two-factor authentication, which I highly recommend turning on for your social networks, your banking and all that, but if you use two-factor authentication and somebody has your phone, well, that's your second factor. they've got you. So there's some ways to do that. I don't want to get into the technical ways of how to do that, but Google how to protect your phone from thieves or stealing your data off of it. There's some things you can turn on. Like you want to make sure they can't change the Apple ID on the phone, that they can't turn off the passcode on the phone, that those are things they have to do on another computer that is verified that it's used. that way. Beautiful mess says yeah that video was insane doing the glitter bombs. Glitter bombs at powwows. I don't know if it's legal and I don't want to recommend it but I will say if somebody plans on doing that let me know because I do want to be there to film it. Yeah Marshall says not sure about if that's legal or not. Yeah I don't know either. Alright I do have a couple of videos tonight thanks to our friends over at Gathering Nations. These are gonna be played during gathering nation, but I think their important to talk about today too. So here's the first video.
Man1: Vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death for children under 13. Honor your tribal heritage by keeping your children safe. Use the right car seat, booster seat, or seatbelt for your child every time.
Paul: All right, so that's really important too. Make sure you're keeping your kids safe when you're traveling. That's really important. All right, and the second video is about gathering nations, but this is just good safety information in general. This is a PSA from the New Mexico State Police.
Woman1: Hello, and welcome to the 2023 Gathering of Nations. As we come together to celebrate indigenous cultures from all around the world, New Mexico State Police wants to remind you to keep you and your valuables safe. When you arrive to New Mexico remove all valuables from your vehicle or store them out of sight. Also make sure your vehicle is locked before heading inside. Do the same when you arrive to your hotel. Never leave your vehicle unlocked or items in sight where thieves can take them. When you're inside the event, find one of our officers to tag your tides. We'll give your child a wristband and if they get lost your child can approach any New Mexico State Police officer and we'll get them back. Finally, enjoy the event. New Mexico State Police is here to make sure everyone enjoys our beautiful state and the special event. So enjoy your stay and stay safe. Thank you from all of us at New Mexico State Police.
Paul: She brought up another tip too that I wanted to make sure that I emphasized and that's Making sure your kids know how to get in touch with you when when we first started traveling with my daughter We What we taught her, you know who to go and find if she did get lost We also found something on Amazon or Etsy I can't remember that they were temporary tattoos that we could put on her ankle like underneath her sock that had our phone number on it so if she did go and find somebody that And she couldn't remember that you know cuz kids are gonna get scared they're not gonna even we made her memorize our phone number she might not remember in the moment so we had our phone numbers on that temporary tattoo so. Give you kids ways and help them bring your teach them what to do in situations like that i think that's super important. Um… All right. Ways, use ways, that's a really good safety tip. Use ways for your travel. All right, I'm just checking the comments there, seeing what's going on there. Okay, another thing, I keep all, this is something we got on one of our Disney cruises and we keep all of our travel documents in one container. So this has like, still has our vaccine cards, not that we need those anymore, but it has our passports and other kinds of documents that we know that we're gonna need on travel. We take this with us. This goes in the hotel room. We lock this in the safe as soon as we get in a room. But all the kind of things that you're going to put in something like this, make sure you take pictures of them before you start your trip. Have them on your phone, and I would recommend taking them again at the beginning of your trip so that you don't have to scroll through your camera roll or try to figure out where that picture is. Just at the beginning of a trip, take pictures of your driver's license, your passports, anything like that, any tickets that you have for, If you're going to Gather Nation, maybe want to take a couple copies of your ticket or keep a digital copy, whatever. Have all kinds of documents and things like that with you and have backups of them. Okay, let's talk about hotel room safety. Somebody recommended this to me, and I have traveled with this several times, is getting a simple doorstop and taking that with you. This on the inside of the door, just slide this underneath the door jamb, and that's going to prevent people from breaking in, because there are ways to get into hotel rooms, even to bypass the chain or the extra lock, there's ways to do it. Get something like this and jam the door to slow them down, may not prevent them, You know, this was a few years ago, but I went out to Albuquerque. I was doing some work with gathering the folks over there gathering helping them with their website a few years ago. And we had the way we had it set up is we had like a suite. So there were two separate rooms that me and another guy were staying in. And there was like a common area in the middle. And we had doors that open to the outside and we had doors that open to the common area. So I came in to the common to work and do what we were doing for the day and closed my door, not really realizing that I had left the chain lock on the outside door. And so when that door closed behind me, I was locked out of my room. And so I called the people at the front desk, they came up and it was kind of scary to watch how they were able to bypass the chain or the extra little security, metal security thing on the back of the door. There is a way to do it. and I saw them do it firsthand. So get you something like this and protect yourself. I mentioned putting your valuables in a safe and that is important. I do recommend using the safe, but remember at just like they can know how to bypass the door security, there are master codes to those digital set, you know, the digital number pads on safes. There are ways for the hotel to get into that safe. So if you're, if you have something really valuable, I've heard of people taking like if they're traveling with large amounts of cash for whatever reason I've heard some people like take and Clip it To the curtains behind the curtains up high Not thinking that people will look there and you can hide it in the curve of a of that and they won't notice maybe So just to consider that or you know always consider Things in a hotel is not being completely safe. So just remember that All right, another one, and this is one that applies especially to bigger trips, when you're going away for more than just a weekend at a powwow possibly. If you're going out of the country for sure, if you're going on a cruise, 100%, and that is I always recommend for those kind of trips, get travel insurance. As many of you know, my wife is a travel planner and she talks about this with her clients all the time. It is more important than you think. The first time we ever took a cruise as a family, I remember that before my wife was a travel planner, and the travel agent we were working with at the time told us, I said, look, I make all of my clients, they have to get, if they're going on a cruise, you have to get travel insurance because she had seen it happen too many times where people needed it. So I can tell you a couple of stories where it actually mattered not just to us, but we saw people on the cruise need it. We were in at Disney's private island, Castaway Key, and we were late leaving that night, and we didn't know why at first. And then later we found out that a man was snorkeling with his family, and he had a heart attack and passed away. So from there, there were lots of issues as to how to get him back onto the boat, getting through customs. There were fees for transporting. And when we went to the next port, they had to do things with regulators there. There was a lot of stuff that happened and they needed that travel insurance to help them. We had another, actually it was crazy enough, it was actually on that same cruise. My daughter got sick and we needed to go to the medical facility on the ship. And they were actually not open at the time and she was feeling pretty bad. She had a high fever. So we were worried about her being dehydrated or whatever, you know, might have happened. So they called the medical team to come down after hours. And of course, we had to pay for that. It was several hundred dollars for her to be seen that day. But when we got back, we were able to file with our travel insurance and they covered everything. So and now I've heard of we were just actually just watching a YouTube video a few minutes ago about another what happened on a cruise recently. And that's where somebody off the ship onto whatever port they were at. I believe they said they were in Roatan maybe. Anyway, they had to be taken to the local hospital to have whatever procedure needed to be done. And guess what? That's when you need travel insurance. Your local insurance probably isn't gonna pay or may not pay as quickly. It's gonna be a lot of paperwork. Travel insurance will help you and get you that care you need fast. So travel insurance for your big trips. Highly recommend that. Okay, and then one other thing when we're talking about phones. We probably all carry this anyways but it is a safety tip and i would encourage you to put one of these in your backpack put one of these in your power bag in somewhere in your car. And that is to carry a cell phone extra battery with you in cases of emergency if you have a flat tire late at night if you get lost driving to the power. when it's convenient. So it's probably going to happen in those times where your phone is almost dead and you need an extra little bit of juice. So having a battery can help you out in those situations. So just think about that. Alright, so those are my safety tips. Just make sure you have situational awareness. Always check your surroundings and just be careful out there. As I was talking to somebody today about safety, their comment to me was the world is not what it was a few years ago. People are crazy, people lost their minds on some of this stuff. So be careful and protect yourself. Well, I'm so excited that we are able to travel again and that, you know, the few little bit of traveling we've already done in 2023. People are out in full force and it is great to see. I love it. And we've got several trips coming up. So we are going to be following these trips or following these tips as close as we can. Jason or Jackson Sean says, yeah, you need travel insurance. Yeah, even going from the United States to Canada. Yes, for sure. Um Yeah, these are not things they're going to teach you in school for sure. I'm checking the Instagram comments to if you have again keep posting the comments any kind of questions or Any other travel tips safety tips you may have for us we have several trips lined up here We are going to be away from home more than we're home probably in the next three months Like I said earlier, we're going I'm going to Oklahoma the second weekend in April second week of April. It's gonna be weekdays Then heading to Gathering Nations the end of April My daughter moves home from school while I'm in Albuquerque. So when I get home, my daughter will be here. We'll be home for about four days after I get home from gathering altogether. And then we are heading on a month or 26 day trip. We're actually taking a transatlantic cruise, a bucket listing we've always wanted to do. We're gonna be heading, leaving Miami and then we off the boat in Barcelona 20 days later. So gonna be kind of crazy. So we got lots of travel. We've booked our travel insurance for that thing, for that trip, and got our passports ready and all of our documents copied and ready to go. So keep these in mind as you travel. I hope you are able to make it to how I was here. Thanks again for being here and being part of this episode of the Pow Wow Live podcast. Let me know if you have any travel safety suggestion or tips, I'd love to hear from you. Email me over at paul at powwows.com. All right, here is the bonus code for that special giveaway we're doing as we count down the days to the gathering nations powwow. You can enter this code over at powwows.com slash when. Your bonus code for today is 843101. Good luck. I hope it's you that wins. Have a great week, and I'll see you back here next week on the Pow Wow Life podcast.
Ender: Thanks for listening to the Powwow Life Podcast from Powwows.com. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get notified of our next episode. Find a Powwow near you by visiting www.powwows.com forward slash calendar. Support Powwows.com by visiting www.powwownation.com.
Last Updated on August 22, 2024 by Paul G