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YouTube sent us one of those little achievement notifications this week. Seven years.
And we're spending the anniversary the same way we spend every February, heads down, laptops open, doing the kind of work that nobody would ever put in a highlight reel.
We've learned over the years that these cold, quiet months are when the real stuff gets built. Not the filming or the traveling or the parts people actually see, but the systems underneath all of it. The email automations that have been broken for months, the 2026 travel planning that's still mostly question marks, the workout routine Sara's been dragging me back into. She's in the kitchen right now, meal prepping for the week, while I'm hunched over my laptop trying to figure out why our welcome sequence keeps sending the wrong emails to new subscribers.
We even deleted Instagram from our phones a few weeks ago because we didn't want to see what anyone else was doing. We just wanted to sit with what we wanted to do and start making it real.
And every time we've tried to skip this phase, we've paid for it later. Scrambling to hit deadlines from a cafe with terrible wifi, trying to edit videos in a campground with no cell service. It's so much harder to build the plane while you're flying it, and we've done that enough times to know better.
So right now we're building, and pretty soon we'll get to use all of it. We're heading to Asheville in a few days to film, then possibly out to Arizona and California for Overland Expo after that. We're going back to the UK in March to pick up the truck, and from there, we're still figuring it out. Maybe Canada this year. Maybe Scandinavia. The whole year is still a blank map and everything feels possible, which is honestly one of the best parts.
Anyone else in a "building season" right now? Working on something that doesn't look like much yet but you know is going somewhere? Hit reply. We want to hear what you're working on.
We drove the entire North Coast 500 last summer, all 500 miles of Scotland's answer to Route 66. Single-track roads where you have to pull over for oncoming sheep.
If you're even slightly considering a UK road trip this year, start here.
Ten months from now, we'll be walking through Christmas markets in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna with a group of people we've never met. And if the Iceland trip taught us anything, that's exactly how the best travel stories start.
We ran our first group trip in 2023, a week in Iceland with strangers who became friends. People still message us about it. It was one of those things where everything just clicked, the people, the place, the pace of it.
So we're doing it again. This time: Christmas markets in three countries. Glühwein. Twinkly lights. Salzburg looking like it was designed specifically for December.
We have 6 spots filled already, and we're keeping the group small on purpose. Ten months sounds like a lot until you remember you still haven't booked that thing from last year.
Los Angeles → Hong Kong for $619, 40% off (normally $1,040+).Asiana through Seoul with decent layover times. If you don't mind booking through a third party you can get it under $600, but know the tradeoffs. Also available from Dallas ($713), Miami ($665), and Chicago ($712). Price lasts less than 24 hours.
Portland → London for $582, 42% off (normally $1,015+).Icelandair through Reykjavik, and you can build in a free stopover in Iceland on the way. Two trips for the price of one if you play it right. Price lasts 2-3 days.
Is there a city you wish we would feature for flights? Email us back and we'll put it in the next email.
We find all of these through Going. It is worth setting up alerts for your home airport. Most of these deals won't last long, so if one catches your eye, don't sit on it.
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A few things we bookmarked this week:
U.S. Embassy issues shelter-in-place for Americans in Puerto Vallarta and multiple Mexican states — This happened yesterday. Mexico's military killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and the response was immediate: cars and buses set on fire, roads blocked, flights cancelled across Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. The shelter-in-place also covers parts of Baja California (Tijuana, Ensenada), Quintana Roo (Cancún, Tulum, Playa del Carmen), and several other states. If you have Mexico travel plans in the next few weeks, keep an eye on this. Situation is still developing.
Rental car companies are using AI scanners to auto-generate damage bills, and travelers are not happy — Hertz and Sixt have installed AI-powered photo booths at airports that scan your rental before and after. The problem? They're flagging scratches invisible to the human eye and billing people hundreds of dollars automatically, sometimes without any human review. One guy got a $2,200 bill from Sixt for damage that was already on the car when he picked it up. Take photos of everything before you drive off the lot. Every angle. Every time.
Tripadvisor named Madeira the world's #1 trending destination for 2026 — The Portuguese island they're calling "the Hawaii of Europe." Volcanic cliffs, natural pools, year-round mild weather, and it's still way less crowded than most European islands. Tbilisi (Georgia) came in second, and Chicago third. We'd go to all three.
7 years on YouTube— Not a link. Just a personal note. YouTube sent us a little cake emoji and a "thank you for 7 years." It's wild to think about. From a van in a parking lot to wherever we are now. Thanks for being part of it, whether you found us last week or seven years ago.
Thanks for reading Field Notes. We’re trying to make this a space worth saving, full of things we’d actually send to a friend.
Want flight deals worth booking and travel updates that don't sound like marketing?
Join 10,000+ readers getting Field Notes. We're full-time travelers finding deals we'd actually book, bookmarking things worth your time, and writing honest updates from the road. You get the deals, the links, and the real stories—weekly.