Current Travel PT Opportunities

I recently spoke with Lindsay Evans of Anders Group, and we discussed the state of the Travel Therapy market. As you all know, the market is not as strong as it typically is in non-COVID times. However, opportunities still exist.

We also discuss how to make yourself a stronger job candidate – in COVID times, or anytime.

I hope you enjoy. (15 min)

The Cabin – How I became a travel PT in Aspen

I just got back from a refreshing week off at my family cabin outside of Colorado Springs. The cabin is a wonderful place on the side of 14,115 ft Pike’s Peak that my great grandfather built back in the 1920’s. It’s a rugged place, but it comes with the complete “get-a-way” experience including a mountain stream running through the backyard.

As I recharged at the cabin, and completed various small repairs of the 100 year old shack, I got to thinking about how my visits there as a child may have very profoundly affected my life-path.

In 2007, I had briefly worked at a private practice, then took my first travel assignment at a community hospital outside of Boston. I was waiting for Kate to be ready to leave her private practice job before we set out on the road. When things finally aligned, we headed straight for a summer in Colorado Springs.

There was really no reason to go to Colorado Springs other than my experiences visiting as a child. Colorado seemed really cool, and the only part of the state I had any familiarity with was Colorado Springs. So off we went to unknowingly start 10+ years as travel PTs.

Feeling deep in wilderness on the back deck

We both commuted out of the Springs about an hour South to work in Pueblo. Often, we would scoot out of work Friday night and make the 20 to 30 min drive up into the mountains to the cabin for just one night. We would wake up before sunrise in the morning to go hike a 14er (there are 50-something 14,000 ft peaks in Colorado). With the cabin as our basecamp, we bagged 10 of the high peaks that summer, including Pikes Peak.

Having grown up visiting around and on Pikes Peak, that mountain holds a lot of nostalgia for me. But also, it is objectively magnificent. At about 9,000 ft of prominence above the surrounding area, it is HUGE. America the Beautiful was written atop it. You can take a train up it, there’s a car race up it, there’s a marathon up it. What a mountain, I love it.

As that summer drew to a close, Kate and I started to consider ski towns for the winter and our second travel assignment together. All I knew about skiing in the West was learned from movies and magazines. For some reason, Breckenridge and Park City were the ski towns that came to mind, but I was open to suggestion.

13.1 miles and 8,000 vertical up from the start in 2018. Time to turn around and head back for the finish.

At that same time, two close friends back in Boston decided they were teaming up, quitting their jobs, and headed to ski bum in Aspen for a winter. Kate and I immediately had our sights set on one ski town… a little place called Aspen.

Our recruiters told us there was no way we would find two out-patient jobs in Aspen during the winter. By using a Denver-based travel agency, we eventually found the jobs we were looking for. In December, we started working in a posh outpatient clinic in the St. Regis Hotel working with the very rich including multiple A-list movie stars. We worked at the base of Aspen Mountain and had a 3 hour lunch break specifically for skiing.

14,115′ of Pikes Peak rising up above it all.

In 10+ years of traveling, that was by far the worst assignment I have ever had. It was awful. But, it opened my eyes to the West, and specifically to Aspen. It created opportunities for Kate and I to spend the next 10 years working in Aspen in the winter and traveling elsewhere in the summer.

The work that winter was awful. But the recreation and lifestyle outdoors cleared the path for a new way of living.

2007, my first winter in Aspen. One of my first times up Highlands Bowl.

Now, 13 years later, we’re married and permanent in Aspen. We’ve just put our kids to bed and are sitting in the backyard as I write. We have a stream nearby that I can hear. Truthfully, it’s an irrigation ditch for the adjacent farm field. Whatever the source of the running water, I always think of the stream behind the cabin. Whenever I step out of the daily routine for a minute to look around at the beautiful mountains surrounding me, I think of the cabin and wonder how I pulled off this lifestyle.

Caught up on my journal reading by the stream. With hiking, 100 year old cabin upkeep, and kids, there wasn’t much relaxing, but what relaxation there was occurred on this rock.

When I was at The Cabin this past week, I realized that it was the part of my childhood that gave me a love of the outdoors. Growing up outside of Boston, we never went camping, we hiked occasionally. I won’t say it was typical, but it was a pretty suburban existence… except for one week at the rugged ol’ cabin in Colorado every summer.

Man, I love that place.

Travel PT and Baseball

I grew up going to Red Sox farm league games often. Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where the AAA Paw Sox played, was a short drive across the Massachusetts border from the house I grew up in. I remember seeing a bunch of major league studs passing through there – including seeing Roger Clemens throw a rehab start. I never went to a true Red Sox game before college, but Red Sox baseball was definitely exposed to me at an early age. I even had a second cousin come through Pawtucket one summer, playing in the farm league for the Mets. I think I was 12 and remember standing by the players’ exit after the game to meet him briefly. I was shocked at how huge all the players were – the great majority over 6 feet and some of them ducking their heads to get through the locker room door. Wally came out and took a picture with me – pretty cool. He played a few years for various teams in the big leagues, I wonder where he is now.

There’s my 2nd cousin Wally. Tall dude.

Fast forward a few years, and the Red Sox won their first World series after an 86 year drought. The victory was in 2004 while I was at Northeastern University in Boston – on whose current campus the first World Series was played (won by Boston). Right in front of the old PT building, there’s a statue of Cy Young pitching from the location of the mound in the first World Series. The statue is barely noticeable in a courtyard filled with trees and shrubs. Hardly a tourist destination, but a cool history to know about and feel close to.

By the time of the 2004 World Series, my entire PT class had become entrenched in the Red Sox culture. Exams were delayed during the playoffs, all eyes were on baseball, not books – there was a common understanding that something uncommon was happening.

Through several years of PT school, there were times we’d see players out at the bars. I remember a few classmates who through connections of family members had ended up having Hall of Fame Pedro Martinez and Future Hall of Famer David “Big Papi” Ortiz up to their apartment to hang out one night. Other classmates were working at Fenway Park on the grounds crew as a part-time job. We were in the middle of it when the Sox won in 2004, we all felt like we were a part of it.

Cy Young on the site of the first World Series. Background: Robinson Hall at Northeastern University, site of education for some of this country’s very first Physical Therapists over 100 years ago.

The years between 2004 and 2007 blur together. I remember one roadtrip with friends out to Colorado where we stopped in Kansas City to watch the Royals play. On a later roadtrip out to West Coast clinical affiliations with some friends, we caught the Sox playing in Anaheim against the Angels. That trip included some of the guys from the earlier roadtrip, but added a handful of others including my friend Kate, who I would later end up marrying.

By the next time the Red Sox won in 2007, Kate and I were travelers watching in an empty Uno’s Pizzaria in Colorado Springs during game 4 against the Colorado Rockies. We quietly hid our glee slipping out of the restaurant and then skipping down the street in a town that had lost the Wold Series that night. Later on, still as travelers, we lived in an apartment on a little peninsula just north of Boston when the Red Sox won again in 2013 after the Boston Marathon Bombing. It was nice to be back close to home when they won again, and when they won with so much emotion attached to it. On the day of the championship parade, we had staked out an early-morning table at McGreevey’s Tavern on the sidewalk where the parade passed by. We got a front row seat to the parade and somehow ended up mingling with some of the survivors of the bombing who were first made famous through their trauma, but later through their advocacy for other survivors. Many hours later in the day, we had been at the bar long enough, that our table was inside a red velvet rope and in very close proximity to Red Sox stud Mike Napoli. He hopped behind the bar, poured a couple drinks and marched around like the hero he was that night – the next day, the news published pictures of him parading shirtless through Boston, which I only accept partial responsibility for.

Napoli Travel PT
Mike Napoli was a hero that night. He earned this level of party.

In between all these pinnacles, there were many lows where the Sox did not make the playoffs, or lost brutally to a division rival. There were also a number of road trips between Colorado and New England on alternating travel assignments. Every road trip was a chance to catch a random road game and in one instance to swing by the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. If you have the slightest interest in baseball and are ever within a few hours’ drive of Cooperstown, GO! In 2012, when living in Anchorage, AK, we went to a farm league game up there, and heard a couple stories about the time an outfielder was running away from an aggressive moose… I’ve seen a lot of baseball on the road.

I don’t think my connection with baseball and the Red Sox truly reached its peak until the summer of 2015 when Kate and I were living in a camper on Martha’s Vineyard (Mahtha’s Vineyahd). We had no TV in our camper, and the wifi was iffy enough that streaming anything was pretty much out of the question. So, we turned to Red Sox radio for almost every one of the games that summer. One of the worst and best things about baseball is that the regular season is 162 games – that takes up most of the nights between April and September. That summer is when baseball became a true daily habit for Kate and I. Red Sox Baseball on the radio every night. If I recall correctly, the Red Sox season didn’t last into the playoffs in October that year, which was probably fine, since we moved indoors to an apartment that same month – and resumed the daily cable habit. But, something from that summer stuck, and most nights April into autumn, we are still watching or listening to the Red Sox.

#LilHobo soaking up a night at Coors Field. She has never stayed up that late before and will never stay up that late ever again.

Interleague play brought the Red Sox out to Colorado where we were able to take our 2 year old daughter to her 2nd Red Sox game. Because of the two separate leagues in baseball, the Sox and Rockies hardly ever play each other. It will likely be another 8 years before they play out here again. Sox won that night, Coors Field was full of Red Sox fans, it was fantastic.

But, the first game we took our daughter to was even more fantastic. Whenever a vacation is coming, I eventually look at the baseball schedule to see if there is a game I’d like to see on the road – well, this one was a no-brainer. We were visiting my parents in Florida, and my parents, Kate, our daughter, and I all went out for an afternoon game when the Red Sox were visiting the Tampa Bay Rays. What was otherwise a rather mundane loss by the lack-luster 2019 Red Sox was turned into an unforgettable afternoon when the guy sitting next to us caught a Tampa Bay homerun. His story is really long, but the short of it is this: He’s a long-time season ticket holder, he was wearing a purple suit, and this is the first home run he has ever caught. It made his year. It made my day.

Not my most flattering pose, but it’s me chatting with that guy who caught the home run. Fun day.

I was never much of a baseball player. I think I had written it off by 4th grade. Too bad, really. Apparently it’s in my blood. On my Mom’s side, we have Wally who pitched in The Bigs for a while. I also remember my Grandfather telling stories about pitching to Shoeless Joe Jackson while in the Navy. My Dad is a big fan of baseball with a deep knowledge of the game. I didn’t realize his passion for baseball until very recently, you’d think the frequent trips to see Farm League Baseball as a kid would have been a clue a little bit earlier.

As the current World Series works towards a conclusion, I have just a couple days left to celebrate as a fan of the 2018 World Series Champions. Man, what a game. Maybe you think it’s too slow. Maybe 162 regular season games is crazy. I’m just looking forward Spring Training and whatever park I might get to visit next. Play ball!

Why Travel PT Exists… and Why It Shouldn’t

This is the dirty little secret of travel PT. Everybody knows it, why not say it aloud. Everybody with me now:

“Travel PT should not exist.”

…Nor should any other traveling healthcare profession, really. Don’t worry, no employers will take this message to heart like they should – a healthy travel industry will undoubtedly persist beyond this blog.

Why are we allowed the ability to travel all over the country to choice destinations while making more money than the hard working professionals that live and work there year round? We shouldn’t, but many employers are so buried in processes and organizational optimization that they fail to see the easy answer to their staffing issues; A classic case of not seeing the forest through the trees. Pay your permanent employees more and you will need less temporary staffing!

I have to back up just a minute. We couldn’t eliminate the entire industry, some travel assignments are available for exactly the right reasons:

  • Losing an employee who is a new parent to maternity/paternity leave for several months after the birth of their baby.
    • If only paternity leave were a real thing. It’s a unicorn, it doesn’t exist. I guess paternity leave is more of a narwhal than a unicorn, because it exists, but it is very rare and few have actually experienced it. More on what employers could do to keep employees later.
  • An employee suddenly quits. A thorough search for a long-term employee will happen, but the clinic needs help NOW. Good time to hire a traveler while the clinic finds an awesome permanent employee.
  • An employee is lost to an injury for an extended or unspecified length of time – this is a great time to hire a traveler!

The reason most employers hire travelers is not these good reasons. It is because they believe they can’t find consistent staff in their area. False! Wrong! Misnomer! STOP TELLING YOURSELF THAT!!! The reason you can’t find employees is because your compensation package is sub-par. If you would just pay more, people would rearrange their lives to work for you.

I’d like to present a case of one specific employer I heard about recently – actually a group of a couple dozen employers. These hospitals share market information within a group. All of these hospitals are in the same geographic area. They base their pay off of the “market rate” which is an average pay between all the hospitals they compare rates with. The numbers they are looking at are for full-time PTs. So, a full-time PT gets paid a competitive rate versus the other fulltime PTs in the region. If one facility increases their rate of pay, their increase is averaged against the other employers. The thought behind this model is as need for employees increases, the pay goes up in the market – employees must be paid more to meet staffing needs. I’m not so sure this model works like they think it works.

This example sounds fair-and-good until travel PTs are included in the equation – travelers are not included in the calculation. You have a group of hospitals hiring full-time PTs at one rate, hiring travel PTs through agencies for much, much more money, and then not including that rate into their calculation of pay for full-time employees. Effectively, the market system of comparing with other local employers keeps the pay down – no one actually raises their pay, because they all compare to the “market”. Meanwhile, these hospitals hire expensive temp workers and do not add that cost to the calculation. Infuriating.

This is why travel PTs should not exist. If employers would pay their physical therapists a modest amount more, they would not have to hemorrhage money out to recruiting agencies every month to fill their needs, but they do and the travel PT life is a wonderful opportunity for the therapist that can pull it off.

A few years ago, I was accidentally sent an email containing one single recruiter’s billing for a week. The bill was organized by each facility and contained amounts for each traveler provided. There weren’t that many facilities listed, maybe 15. Most of the bills were for a modest number of travelers – 1 to 3 travelers per facility typically. BUT, one particular facility had over $30,000 of pay for travelers in one week!!! I kid you not. (would I kid about this?) I think I could quickly fix that facility’s staffing issue. PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES MORE!

Now, I am not advocating for the end of travel PT. I must repeat that it is a wonderful opportunity. I certainly took advantage of being able to travel the country while working a professional job and think many others should exploit this opportunity as well. Traveling is so cool. GO TRAVEL! Travel all across this country, work in different settings, with different people, in many different places. But, if all the employers smartened up at once and started paying their full-time employees more, the travel market would instantly shrink to less than half its size.

Don’t worry. The travel industry is going to do just fine, I don’t see any big changes happening any time soon. I can only write this because it will make zero impact on any employer – they will keep marching forward keeping their full-time employee rates at just enough for most people to no quit. Take advantage, travel, and enjoy yourself doing it while making much more money.

….and shhhhh! Don’t tell the employers about what I said.

Travel PT Resources

Travel PT Resources

Social media is full of trash, absolute junk. Physical Therapy’s twittersphere and facebook groups are mostly a flaming pile of garbage. Now, don’t get me wrong. Most of the people running groups on facebook and moderating discussions have pure intentions and deep knowledge – for the most part, they are true experts. It’s everyone else who gets involved that ruins it. Social media has leveled the playing field so that everyone’s opinion counts equally. There is no rating to show that one person may have in depth knowledge and experience while another is just a know-it-all crackpot. Vetting info and figuring out whose advice you can trust is more important now than it has ever been.

travel PT tax home rule

There was a particular post on a travel PT Facebook group with a series of completely false answers that led me to write this piece. Someone asked the often-asked question, “How far do I have to travel from my tax home to get a tax-free housing stipend.” Let the wrong answers pour in: “50 miles!” “60 minutes!” “100 miles!” ….people with such confident, concise answers. The correct answer is: “a taxpayer must be on a trip that requires the taxpayer to stop for sleep or a substantial period of rest.”^ …and there you have it, non-specific, open to interpretation, and totally typical of the IRS! That’s not an easy answer, is it? That is not easily repeated, typed into a social media thread, or understood. So, we get repeated, false answers like “50 miles!”

I’m done with the griping part of this blog, let’s get positive. I only share the example of awful information on Facebook pages to illustrate the point that you need to dig a bit deeper to find good resources – there are some fantastic resources out there!

  • There’s a number of blogs out there (like this one, of course!) that offer great travel advice. Rather than going fishing for a correct answer on a Facebook page, reach out to myself ([email protected]), or any other one of the many great bloggers – we all love to help people discover travel PT. Look around a little bit and you’ll find a blogger that has similar interests as you, like independent contracting, international service work, traveling with kids, traveling with pets, living in RVs – it’s all out there*. If you find a blogger that you identify with personally, you will have found a great mentor.
  • Ask a friend. Surely you have known a traveling PT, or you have a friend from PT school who knows one – or ask a professor at school who likely has a former student that is a traveler. These personal connections are important in finding your way as a traveler. Having someone you can confide in and trust their advice is very valuable.
  • If you have a great recruiter, they will be your greatest advocate and resource. Now, how might you find a great recruiter? Again, there’s some really bad resources for this online bought and paid for by the industry – The advertisers in the margins of this post are not just advertisers, but also companies I have traveled with and trust greatly. If you post on the HoboHealth Discussion Board topic Travel Therapy Companies, I’d be happy to email you with the names of the recruiters I use and trust. Also, I give some more generalized advice on picking a recruiter here: https://hobohealth.com/wordpress/traveling-pt/your-first-travel-gig/
  • Finally, I would be doing myself an injustice if I didn’t self-promote a couple more of my own resources that I think are fantastic:
    • Travel Essentials – these are the best blogs I have written over the past 12 years. You will find the answer to most travel PT questions within.
    • The Media page contains a whole bunch of interviews that are all about the same topic – traveling physical therapy.

Happy travels out there. Please don’t listen to any ol’ know-nothing on the interwebs when it comes to travel PT… or when it comes to any other topic. You’re better than that, and there are great, easy to find resources out there that have the answers you need.

^Sourced via traveltax.com: Tax Court Small Tax Cases (Archive), Daniel P. and Glenna J. Marple v. Commissioner., U.S. Tax Court, T.C. Summary Opinion 2007-76, (May 21, 2007)

*Some bloggers that I think put out great information:

Minimizing for Travel PT Assignments

The ‘ol Accord. Fully loaded, ready to roll.

When I was a traveler, everything I owned fit in or on my Honda Accord. Now, just 2 years departed from travel, I have all this stuff. Most of it has a function, the things that don’t definitely have sentimental value. Regardless of it’s use or sentiment, all of this stuff is… here. In my house.

As I get ready to move from my current home to a bigger house with additional free space (which I’m sure I can fill-up quickly), I am reflecting on everything I own and how it came to be this way. I had great joy living in a camper for 5 months on Martha’s Vineyard. I lived out of 2 suitcases in Hawaii for 6 months – multiple times. A 5×5 storage area once contained all my wintertime equipment and toys – now they spill forth from every closet, rack, and corner.

As I lament my minimalistic-demize, I’ll share these tips with you for down-sizing and keeping small as you transition to your next travel assignment. Come on, Marie Kondo, hugging all my belongings? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Rent Furnished

This one is easy. If you rent furnished apartments, you won’t need furniture or appliances. This simplifies everything as you move place-to-place. Simple.

Airbnb, Craigslist, and HomeAway make it easy to find furnished housing for the short-term. I always had good success in the local classified papers finding things like inlaw apartments above garages (Skowhegan, Maine for that one). Just hop on the interwebs and find the local paper for wherever you are headed and you should be able to access their classifieds online. There remains this percentage of people who haven’t discovered the ease of online buying and selling – you will find apartments in the local classifieds that aren’t listed anywhere else.

It was just awesome living in the camper. I was so connected with nature that summer and had so little with me. Less is more.

9 Month Rule

You’ve got this car full of stuff that you’re dragging around the country. Some stuff is seasonal in nature – for me, ski gear^, but 9 months should account enough for the change of seasons and activities. If you haven’t used something in 9 months, you don’t use it enough to justify bringing it from assignment-to-assignment. Ship it home, send it to a friend, or consider establishing a gear cache (below).

Ditch the Electronics

There is so much you’ll be tempted to bring that you don’t need. You don’t need a better TV. You don’t need to bring video games with you. Leave the DVDs behind. Eliminate all the stuff you might see as a nice luxury for downtime. Your furnished apartment will have an adequate TV. With subscription services, you can order up whatever you want for entertainment while you are on assignment. Besides, hopefully, you are going somewhere awesome that will keep you out of your home most of the time. Maybe with less in-home distractions, you’ll go on more outdoor adventures and make more friends while on assignment. Games, TV, movies, Facebook – it’s all a giant time-suck that doesn’t enhance your life.

One In, One Out

Once you have pared down your belongings to a reasonable amount, you must maintain that small volume. Don’t accumulate! It’s easy to let stuff start showing up and staying – you will regret it the next time you have to move, which may be sooner than you think in the world of travel. Follow the simple “one in, one out” rule – if you bring something in, something must go out!

Need a new shirt? That means one has fallen out of favor in the rotation. If you’re going to buy a new shirt, you have to throw one away. Of course, the more stuff we can keep out of the landfills, the better – always resell or donate. The same goes for anything else you want to buy – want a new book? Then something comparable has to leave. Easy peasy. You’ve been living just fine with what you have. If you get something new, something old must go.

Gear Cache – A place to keep some stuff

I can’t tell you where this lean-to is, but it seemed to have everything I ever needed to live a fulfilling life.

Some stuff you want for “someday,” but you just don’t need it on assignment. Maybe you’ll want it when you’re not traveling anymore and are more “settled”. I have this waist-high gold colored box that I just moved to the new house. I haven’t opened the box in years, but I can’t bring myself to toss it either. The box has old baseball cards, pictures from high school, a class ring… things of that nature.

There’s some stuff you’re going to want to keep, but absolutely can’t travel with. You need somewhere to stash it. Maybe there’s a space at your tax home where stuff can stay, or maybe you need to rent a small storage area. It doesn’t matter where your extra stuff goes, but hopefully it’s cheap in case it stays there for a long time. And, hopefully it’s accessible in case you decide you need something from your storage.

For traveling, you have to lighten your load. Otherwise, transitions between assignments will become overly burdensome. Ditch the stuff you don’t need, travel light, and happy Marie Kondo-ing if you have the spare time.

^Footnote:
My first time up Aspen Highlands Bowl in 2008 – nearby where I live today. A truly inadequate ski selection that day. I was about 4 pairs short of an acceptable ski-quiver.

I believe every avid skier should have at least 5 pairs of skis for a variety of conditions and activities:

  • Rocks ski for the early season and questionable conditions.
  • Everyday ski for you standard mid-season, good-coverage ski day.
  • Powder ski for any epic pow-day, this ski should only be used with the correct combinations of conditions and skill-level.
  • A.T. Set-up – Alpine Touring for back country skiing, traveling to snowy places by foot, or just to earn your turns.
  • Cross Country For exercise when you can’t be on the hill.

This list is meant only as a bare minimum of the skis one should own and is no way meant to limit ski possession. ….perhaps this might explain something about my gradual fall from minimalism…. but what am I going to do? Give away my Powder skis!? Blasphemy.

Interview a Travel PT Recruiter with Anders Group

Last month, at APTA CSM, I got together with Stacy and Melissa, two recruiters from Anders Group to discuss travel PT. The premise of the conversation was getting into some of the “next level” topics that recruiters and travelers never get to discuss together.

At just under 40 minutes long it’s a good listen for your next run, commute, or road trip. Either stream it right now or hit the three dots on the right to download it for later. Happy listening!!!

I’m very happy with the conversation we had and hope all the things we discussed will help you find the assignments you want!

Many thanks to Stacey, Melissa, and Anders Group for taking the time out of a VERY busy conference to chat.

A Year of Firsts

2018 was my first full year living a settled life – not as a travel PT.

It has definitely been a transition – a transition that I might not be fully appreciating until now. Friends often ask, “Do you miss traveling?” I answer quickly, “Yes”. But, as I reflect, I realize all the things that have gone on in the last year. A lot of the things that I accomplished could only happen once I was done with the travel lifestyle. I loved my life traveling for work between ski slopes and beaches, but this year has been pretty special.

Violet charging around in the backyard of our family cabin in the foothills of Pikes Peak

This is the first year since 2004 that I have lived in one domicile for an entire year. Kate and I bought a house out here in Colorado almost two years ago. After months of DIY jobs and decorating, we are finally feeling a sense of home. Previous to this, we had briefly worked as permanent PTs before our 10-year stint as travelers. Before that, we had each traveled state-to-state for clinicals our final 6 months of PT school. …and prior to that, lived in a potpourri of apartments scattered across the segment of Boston inhabited by Northeastern University students.

I finally lived in Colorado long enough to get acclimated to the altitude. Many say it takes 2 weeks to get acclimated, I insist it takes more like 6 months to truly feel strong. I had grown up outside of Boston, but visited a family cabin in Colorado at 8,000 ft for just a week or two most summers. On most trips, someone got altitude sickness. Whether it be me, a family member, or a friend I had brought along, someone would puke intensely for about 24 hours, and then be fine for the rest of the trip. Now knowing what I know about altitude sickness, we might have approached acclimation a little more seriously.

This sign put up near an aid station about halfway up Pikes Peak made me laugh out loud. A bunch of rescue workers and volunteers were camping out around that part of the mountain… with a helicopter, just in case.

When I was a kid, my family trips to the cabin were usually during the last couple weeks of summer before heading back to school. We were often at the cabin during my birthday which is the same week as the running of the Pikes Peak Marathon. On most trips to the cabin, my family would drive up the “Pikes Peak Highway” to the 14,110 ft summit of “America’s Mountain”. On more than one occasion, we were at the top during the marathon to watch runners tag the 13 mile mark of the race, barely pause, and head back down. We all thought those guys were a bunch a psychos – who would want to do that? At some point along the way, I decided that I too was a psycho who wanted to do it – probably intense nostalgia and just a bit of hypoxia influencing that desire.

This year, I got to check the Pikes Peak Marathon off my bucket list. I was extremely excited and motivated during the whole process of training and through the marathon’s completion. The race went great! I took a relaxed approach and spent time getting food and water at each checkpoint. After resting a few minutes at the top to shoot some pictures, take in fuel, and have a small internal celebration, I soon realized many people were blowing past me to head back down to the finish line. I quickly rejoined the psychos for the 13 mile plunge back to the bottom. I am so happy to have had that experience. I don’t think I’ll do it again… but who knows.

Half way done. Feeling great taking pictures at 14,110 ft while this guy in the purple shirt and lady in the blue jacket both casually pass me and head back down.

I feel like staying in one place and stopping traveling finally let me make some headway professionally. I knew this would be a part of stopping travel, and it’s one small solace in losing several months near the coast each year. When I left my patients every 3-6 months, it was hard to find any sense of professional momentum. Now, working in one place for almost 2 years, I finally feel like I have some personal connection with my patients. I have people who come back every time they have an injury. I have malingerers who are constantly hurt and seem to never leave. I have doctors who expect me to be there for their patients. Most importantly, there is continuity – I get to see all patient cases to their end, and that has helped me grow tremendously as a clinician.

I still frequently joke about going back to travel, if only to make my co-workers uncomfortable, but let’s be honest, I have a house, I have a life here, and I have a kid – I am stuck!

Which brings about the greatest and best addition to my life – this has been my first full year with a kid. I can’t describe the happiness our daughter has brought. It’s a wild experience. At 1.5 years old, I’ve already been strapping her into skis in the backyard. She enjoys it for about 2 minutes, which is probably enough skiing when you’re one year old. People around here typically get their kids on the mountain in this first year – but I’m not so sure we need to be so aggressive about it. It will probably happen just before her 2nd Birthday, but only if the timing is right, and if it’s fun.

The whole fam damily.

I just remembered one other great thing from this year: my Boston Red Sox winning the World Series…. again! The Red Sox winning the World Series this year was the cherry on top of an already incredible year. Just had to mention that. GO SOX!

That’s it for now, but another year of adventures and firsts is just beginning. The whole family will head to CSM in Washington DC to kick off the year, and we’ve been brainstorming other potential air and road trips for the summer. Other APTA conferences have me busy zipping out of Colorado for 2-3 days at a time throughout the year. Hang on, it’s going to be a wild ride, and I’ll keep you updated as we go. Happy New Year!

Travels Well With Others

Physical therapists find ways to live this crazy travel-life in a bunch of different ways and have to overcome a variety of obstacles to find the flexibility in their lives that can allow them to up-and-go to different jobs at any time. People travel with their friends, with their spouses, with their pets, and with their families. Any of these obstacles adds a little complication to travel, but by no means should these be reasons not to travel.

Traveling in an RV has always seemed to me to be the best way to overcome housing struggles. Having your own, mobile space solves many of the difficulties of shuttling kids around from state-to-state or finding a short-term apartment that will allow pets. In 2014, we lived in a camper on Martha’s Vineyard to solve the issue of not being able to find affordable housing. The camper was a major part of what made that one of my all-time favorite travel assignments. There are pieces of our lifestyle that summer that I wish I could make more consistent staples of my everyday life. If Kate and I ever did continue to travel with our daughter, it would be in a camper again – like the Partridge Family of Physical Therapy.

Travel PT Camper Martha's Vineyard
Our pretty sweet set-up on Martha’s Vineyard.

A couple resources:

  • I have been enjoying reading PT Adventures and some of their recent posts on traveling with a baby – some on traveling with a dog too.
  • Highway Hypodermics is a facebook page for healthcare travelers living in RVs. The page has over 5,000 members and is definitely the best resource if you have any questions about living the travel life in a camper.

Travel PT With a Significant Other

If I know anything, I know how to find two travel PT jobs at once, because Kate and I were travel PTs together for about 10 years. I can’t think of a time that we weren’t able to travel to where ever we wanted because we couldn’t find two jobs – though, we did have to be flexible and inventive at times.

Travel PT Kona Waipio Valley Hawaii
One independent contract I worked was in Kona, Hawaii. This is from a day trip out to Waipio Valley. That was a great summer.

Normally, our first line of attack would be to find two jobs close to one central town. This approach would typically work. We never put any effort towards trying to work in the same clinic, but often a recruiter would find us two jobs at the same workplace. The agency would present us as a “travel team” which is advantageous for a facility trying to fill multiple positions – one stop shopping for multiple therapists. This easy solution was sometimes nearby where we wanted to be and not necessarily exactly where we wanted to be (i.e. commuting to work in communities just outside a major city we wanted to live in).  The most frequent settings we would find work together in was in smaller community hospitals (CAH) or working for a home care agency.

Even if you’re not romantically involved with another traveler, you might consider traveling with a friend. Two travelers working contracts together can be a great way to get ahead financially – getting two housing stipends and having only one rent is a great way to keep some more cashola in your pocket.

In the rare occasions that we couldn’t find two jobs in the same area, we would start calling around the area to private practices looking for independent contracts. One of us would have the “official” travel job with benefits, and the other would find an independent contract. Here’s a more detailed post on the process for finding an independent travel PT contract.

Living with a significant other who isn’t a Physical Therapist should not be the lone reason not to travel. I have met many couples along the way who have figured out how to make travel therapy work for them. One good friend (PT) met a Speech Therapist while traveling. They eventually got married, settled down, had kids, the whole nine yards. But, for a while, they took year-long travel assignments – her as an SLP in schools, him in a variety of settings as a PT. Additionally, I know several PT/OT couples who have had the same positive experiences we did – there’s a lot of facilities out there looking for PT/OT teams. I’ve also met many couples traveling as a PT with a non-healthcare worker (even one PT/recruiter couple!). If the non-therapist doesn’t have an easily portable job, he typically has to be more flexible in his work – odd jobs, seasonal work, Ridesharing driver, Amazon delivery, etc. With a little determination to get on the road, it’s easy to work odd-jobs for a few months at a time in many regions of the country.

Traveling when you have add-ons (family, pets, etc.) ultimately comes down to the final conclusion that so many things in travel therapy do – flexibility helps! The more flexible you can be with where you’re willing to travel, what setting you’re willing to work in, or what you’re willing to live in, the more opportunities you’ll have. A little flexibility goes a long way in finding happiness through traveling therapy.