Unlike many of her peers who cover travel, particularly through the lens of points and miles, Walker’s introduction to travel occurred via cross-country roadtrips with her family. No one in her family flies, so Walker saw much of America through the windows of a packed van as Kirk Franklin played in the background.
I grew up traveling pretty extensively, but not in the ways that a lot of people in this space started traveling. We did a lot of road trips. We would go from… travel from Virginia to Disney World. We would drive everywhere; we didn’t fly. Nobody in my family flies. We did Texas a few times, we did Las Vegas twice, we did Los Angeles and San Francisco once, all driving, so 12 of us in a 16-passenger van, three days on the road, staying in Best Westerns along the way. Eating at Bob Evans.
Three days. The second time we went to Las Vegas, we stopped in Tennessee and then we stopped again in Flagstaff, Arizona. This is also kind of the reason I hate road trips now because I was in the middle because I’m the youngest, so I have no space. This is pre-nice cell phones, so I had a CD player—I was playing Snake and we had… Kirk Franklin’s album came out. What’s the one with the blue title? We played that the entire three days on the road. To this day, I can’t listen to that album.
I want to break down, meet people where they are. As I was saying before, not everybody has the dream to go to the Maldives or not everybody has the dream to go to Paris or Tokyo.
How do you factor in racism because there are some countries where it’s going to be worse than it will … like you might have a bigger problem in Croatia than you would have in Iceland. Any time I plan a trip, I’m always cognizant of how I will be perceived, not just as a Black person, but particular as a Black woman.
“Oh, you’re not one of them,” as in referring to like people from the continent. I’m just like, “Don’t treat me like that and don’t treat other people like that.” It’s really informed my perceptions of how I move through the world as a Black traveler because even in the lens of Blackness, there are still notable exceptions.
That’s when I realized that traveling was not something that only the wealthy had access to because we were three broke college students. I booked that ticket on a debit card. Three broke college students who skipped our midterms. I had maybe $300 to my name and we still went to Abu Dhabi. It was for my 22nd or 23rd birthday and it was just an amazing experience because I got to see… There were other people on the flight who were like, “Yo, we got the same deal.
Before the pandemic, I had this big plan to do a round-the-world trip on points and miles, pulling together all of my loyalty programs, all of my transferable currency programs, so American Express and Chase, and then just flying around the world. I was planning on flying from New York to Tokyo on ANAs. They have one of the best business classes in the world. I was going to fly Etihad from Seoul to Abu Dhabi on one of the best first-class products in the world.
Just the coddled young Americans.
Covid19 type lockdowns and freedom destroying policies will be the norm under a Joe Biden presidency. Covid19 has leveled the playing field. The rich are unable to travel and enjoy the fruits of their labor, just like the poor. That's the Utopia the Democrats desire. NeverBiden