Discovering the Magic of Ojai: A Family's Journey to Find a New Home

This week Britt and Lindsey come to you from a beach house in Thailand to discuss their travels around the world in search of a new place to live. This week is their review in Ojai, California, where the couple spent a month and fell in love with the town's artsy and hippie vibe, beautiful scenery, and friendly people.

They discuss everything they love about Ojai, including the orange groves, the small-town feel, the incredibly kind people, and the proximity to the ocean.

Britt and Lindsey also open up about their experience and feelings about the journey so far, including moments of homesickness and exhaustion.

Tune into the episode is an honest and authentic discussion of the ups and downs of long-term travel and the search for a new home.

Listen until the end to discover whether they'd live in Ojai and where they're headed next!

OJAI Best of the Best
Food
Hip Vegan is a great vegan food in a lovely setting, and they play dub music.
Farmer and the Cook cooks excellent fresh food, has tons of vegan options, and has great outdoor space.
Dutchess is an upscale restaurant and bakery with a fun outdoor cookout night each week.
Beacon Coffee has the best coffee.
Air Pizza has video games, skateboards, and everything to make you feel like a kid in the 90s again. Very cool owner too.

Things To Do with Kids
Libbey Park is the central park downtown with a great playground, an amphitheater, trails, etc. Go here with kids to play, have a picnic, and meet other cool parents

Barts Books is the most excellent bookstore in an old home and partially outdoors. New and used, something for everyone, and they buy books at a great price.

Ojai Valley Inn is a gorgeous resort in a gorgeous setting. Kids can run around the massive outdoor area while you order dinner at Jimmy's Pub; they even have marshmallow roasting kits—the spot to see the famous Ojai pink moment. And you might meet a famous person.

Take a scenic drive to Ventura, Carpinteria, or Santa Barbara for beach time! 

Other
Real Fun Wow is super cool art made by a super cool person in Ojai.

Wild and Free is a Friday dance class at Starborn Wellness led by Valerie Chaney.

Chef Robin is a cool person we met in Baja that acted as one of our "little yellow arrows" pointing toward Ojai. 

CONNECT WITH US!
We'd love to hear from you! What do you want to hear more about? What do you love? Have a topic request or a guest suggestion? Please shoot us an email or DM on Instagram.

Britt's Photography
Somatic Healing with Lindsey

Instagram
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@itslindseyakey

Transcript

Britt: 0:14

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Can We Start Over Podcast. Beach house edition, boom, boom, boom. Can you hear that? Can you hear the dub step in the background? Boom, boom, boom. Um, you don't hear that actually, but what you do hear possibly is tropical birds. You hear palm trees swing some wind, maybe even some waves, cuz we are outdoors today. Is that exciting to you? It's exciting to me. It's also making me very nervous cuz I'm a sound guy and I hate extra noises. So I'm just diving deep in. I'm just like wallowing in that shit right now. That's why I'm talking about this to you. Are you supporting me? Are you giving me a hug through the ether? Uh uh This is my co-host Lindsay. Hello. And if this is your first attempt at listening to our podcast, we are. We'll see

Lindsey: 1:03

you later cuz you've

Britt: 1:04

shut it off. We are a couple of people who married each other years ago. Had some kids lived in Texas our whole lives, then decided to get the fuck out of there. We sold all of our shit and we have, uh, started this year long trip around the world to find a new place to live. And you know what? We're halfway into it right now. And we got a lot of feelings. We got a lot of emotions, and we'll talk about'em. But today the real meat of this is Ojai, California. We're gonna give you a review on the hottest tips, Ojai, California, where we spent a month of

Lindsey: 1:39

our lives, and by hottest tips, we mean the random things that we remember.

Britt: 1:46

Actually, none of it was that hot. It was all family friendly. It was fair. Hot food and cold nights. That's what I'm talking about baby. Do you like oranges Cuz they got hot some. That's it. That's all I got. And

Lindsey: 1:58

for real, we love Ojai. It's a magical, wonderful place. So we needed to dedicate an episode to tell you all about it. And you probably wanna know if we wanna live there. Listen to the episode and you'll find out, are you someone who has tried everything to shift out of your patterns, to heal, to uplevel, to make a big leap in life? And it just feels like nothing changes or something is missing. Me too. I have been there, I have experienced it, and I spent years learning modalities that actually work and that actually heal way beyond mindset and personal development. If you're ready to make the giant leap in your life to actually feel amazing and embody all the things that you've been learning on your journey through the years, instead of just having it in your mind, then you should book a session with me. I offer one-on-one sessions with various modalities. My process is extremely unique because I use mindfulness. And somatic parts work and inner child work and sound healing, and also mentorship to create a safe space for you to actually reprogram your limiting beliefs and feel heart-centered as you do it, so you can move forward and live your damn dream life. If you wanna learn more about my sessions, you can find the link in the bio. Or you can go to my website, sunnyland and co.com. I can't wait to see you, and I promise you that whatever your big dream is, whatever inkling you have of some kind of life, you are meant for it and you can do it. You are meant to share your beautiful, unique expression with the world. All right,

Britt: 3:55

well, let's get into this show. Let's do it. So here we are in Koosa, Mui. Thailand on a beach. So if you hear the sounds of a beach or a jungle, that's what's up. Yeah, you're hearing it. We're doing it outside today cuz it is very fucking hot inside. We're staying, lemme tell y'all

Lindsey: 4:19

about it. We're staying in a little beach bungalow thing. Juggalo bungalow. That is hot af. Yeah, it's hot. There's fans, there's some Macys, but it's hot. It is hot. It is no frills. Yeah, it's The frills is the ac

Britt: 4:45

and yet we're still not complaining. I mean, I know we were complaining just now, but like we're not complaining cuz we're on a beautiful beach. It, it's, to tell you beautiful. It is a beautiful beach. It's probably the clearest, most beautiful water we've seen since Mexico.

Lindsey: 5:00

Yeah, I think this is the beauti most beautiful beach I've ever seen. I mean, LA Paz is beautiful, but I feel like this is more beautiful. Nice. As far as just like how far you can see, how smooth the water is, how clear it is. And I'm still kind of in a bad mood. Hmm. So that's what this trip is teaching me. Am I an asshole? Am I just always in a bad mood? Um, I hope I don't always seem like I'm in a bad mood. And if I do, Sorry. Uh, I think I'm just a little bit exhausted from traveling. What about you?

Britt: 5:38

Yeah, well, I think about this like how can I not be completely happy on this beach in Thailand right now? And I think it's because if this was just our vacation, we'd fly here, we'd be making the best of it knowing we'd get right back to our routine at home afterwards. And I'd probably be feeling great about it right now. I think I'm feeling the weight of like, what's next? Yeah. You know? Mm-hmm. And that has been sneaking in and out this whole trip for both of us. I know. Uh, but right now it's like, what's next? I mean, we just decided two days ago where we're going

Lindsey: 6:14

next and we'll tell you at the end of this episode. Yeah. Hang on. No

Britt: 6:17

spoiler. Alerts happen. Day tune. So, uh, but yeah, it's all happening in real time. We don't have anything. Really planned out right now. We're just doing it as we go. Yeah. And that makes us a little nervous, I think sometimes also, like, what are we gonna do to make money? You know, that comes up knowing that we're qualified, we can do things. We're gonna pick, we're gonna get jobs, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, money's gonna come to us, we're gonna Right. Make that happen. Sometimes it's hard to just relax and know

Lindsey: 6:46

that, you know. Yeah. Well I think we've been, now, we've been, we're like approaching seven months of travel. And even though if anyone's been listening since the beginning, you've probably heard us talk about sometimes it's hard and then a lot of times it's been amazing. We've had obviously way more amazing days than, than challenging days. But this last maybe since we we're in, maybe since we got to Japan, it was such a struggle to like feel like I was in the right time zone. Mm-hmm. When we were in Japan that we didn't even record there. Ba barely. We recorded like one intro and then we got here to Thailand and I'm like, okay, now we're gonna reset. But there, I think there's also something about, there's like opposing forces when, because we're on this like beach vacation, and I'm saying that in air quotes, but I think we're both feeling like this energy, like our engines are starting back up where we're like, oh, we want to create things and we wanna like, Live somewhere. We wanna work on things, but, but like the beach, it's almost like has this pole where it slows you down. So it's confusing where I'm like, I, my mind is like, oh, I wanna work on this and I wanna write this, but my body is like, I'm at the beach. I need to slow down. And this is

Britt: 8:10

100% a vacation spot. Like this is a shack on the beach. It's

Lindsey: 8:14

1000%. This whole town. You get

Britt: 8:16

island, you get a cat to take you anywhere. Yeah.

Lindsey: 8:19

And that's a little, we're, I'm a little exhausted by that. Yeah. Because it's been so long and not even that long. It's just felt like a while since we felt like we were at home. Mm-hmm. Right. And that means every time I call a cab, I'm just like, Ugh. Yeah. Call cab. I like, I'm really wanting comfort. Mm-hmm. Right now. And that's not available. Other than beautiful scenery and family, and so my normal comforts aren't there, and then I just feel a little bit like,

Britt: 8:59

ugh. Yeah. I wonder what it's like. Our next, next destination, again, we're not gonna tell you it's to the end, but it's gonna be a much more comfortable spot. And I'm curious to see how things change or if they change when we get there. Yeah. What our feelings are gonna be, if we're gonna be like, oh, that's all we

Lindsey: 9:14

needed. Right. You know? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the last few days I've just been feeling super homesick. For what? I don't know, I've said this before also, but I n I mean, partly is homesick for like my friends. Mm-hmm. And family. And then part of it, I just wanna be in a place that's my home. Like I wanna. I'm pretty tired of being in places that someone else picked out the furniture and someone's picked out the dishes and they put the forks in a weird place and there's no, and like what's the art on the walls? And I don't know where anything is that, I mean, we've been doing that and doing that and that's the point of travel I think is to like get your brain in a new space where you have to think about it. But. For me right now, I feel like I don't have the capacity to handle it. Another thing we should say is that pretty much all of us, except Brit this week, have had this stomach bug thing happens, especially when you're traveling in other countries. Somehow

Britt: 10:19

it's taken this long for it to happen though, so that's pretty good. This is the first time we've gotten

Lindsey: 10:24

sick on this big trip. That is true. But so that makes me, when I can't like figure out what I need to get my kids feeling good and then myself, then I'm just annoyed. Yeah. Or I feel annoyed because I go to the seven 11 or the pharmacy and I'm like, I don't really know what anything is. We have to go buy bottled water. We have to, just all these things that add up to it being more difficult to. Help people feel better in your family, especially when you're kids. Right. It's hard. And then I also don't feel good now the last couple days, like the tummy bug has gotten me and it just turns. It's funny how like your, my personal experience turns everything kind of sour, where then I'll just be like, fuck, this place is stupid. And it has nothing to do with the place. Like the place is just being the place.

Britt: 11:17

And you know, we're halfway through this trip. Maybe, I don't know, maybe it'll go longer. And I, you and I have talked a few times about like, are, if, if we do end up like moving somewhere before, like if we don't keep traveling for a whole year, are we failing? Right. Is this whole thing a failure? And really, I don't think it is. I think it's just we've learned the lesson and we've figured out what we needed. Right, right. Yeah. And not that we will stop early. I don't know. I'm, I'm open to it if it happens, you know, if we get somewhere and it's like, oh wow, this is the place, right. I'm there. Yeah. And I'm, I'm down for that. But, um, that is an interesting feeling to have. But yeah, we've really been digging here on this beautiful beach. Why are we so uncomfortable at the moment? So, yeah. Uhhuh.

Lindsey: 12:02

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's just, it's a combination of so many things. We've been going for a long time. Yeah. Like we're still being busy in the midst of all this travel. And I think it's really interesting what you said, like, is it a failure if we stop and live somewhere? And to me it only, I mean, it couldn't, there's nothing can be a failure. Right. Right. It just can't be. Mm-hmm. The only thing,

Britt: 12:32

unless you go to prison, And maybe that's not a failure either. Hey, yeah,

Lindsey: 12:35

maybe that's a life of life, man. A lesson. People go to prison and a lot of times on some fucked up shit. That's not the, let's have, we'll have another episode that's about the prison and judicial system and how fucked up it is. Anyway, what I feel like, I feel like there's the like kind of opposing polar forces too. I feel this need to stop traveling and I don't feel like we're done or I'm like, it doesn't feel done yet. Yeah. So we're, I'm in a little bit of an uncomfortable season of it that does, that is confusing. And the only thing that's, it is not a failure. The only thing that feels like it would leave something unfinished. I guess I just have this idea that I'm gonna land in a place and be like, this is my home and I haven't exactly felt that yet.

Britt: 13:36

Right. And we might not. It, it, there may be more to it than that.

Lindsey: 13:40

That's true. That's true. But I just, I don't know. I keep having this idea that I'm gonna note people. I mean, so many people have said it to me. You're, when you, when you get there, you're just going to know. And I guess, I guess that also is knowing, like not knowing is knowing. And no information is information. So if this place is like, well, here's an island, great. Then that's mm-hmm. Means it's

Britt: 14:03

not. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the place. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that makes us kind of circle back and remember all the places we have been. And be like, was that the place? Right? Do we need to keep going? Mm-hmm. Which is a good segue into today's episode, which is about, uh, du Duluth. My favorite place so far, Duluth, Mississippi. Did you know that existed? Just kidding. Uh, it's about Ojai, California. Yeah.

Lindsey: 14:29

It was great. It is great. I'm sure it's still great even without us there. Yeah,

Britt: 14:33

they're doing. I'm sure they're doing fine. They're doing fine without us. Yeah. They'll do better with us if we end up there, but they don't even think

Lindsey: 14:40

about us. No, but we had a magical time in Ojai. We spent a month there. Yeah, I think exactly a month. And today we wanna talk to you all about just every single thing we loved about it. If you wanna visit it, you should. If you wanna move there, you should. The first thing I wanna say about Ojai is for a few years, several years, I wanted to go to Ojai, but I didn't even exactly know where it was. And actually I thought it was near like Joshua Tree or like Palm Springs or something. And then not until we were gonna go there a little over a year ago was I like, oh, okay. That's where Ojai is.

Britt: 15:25

So you just felt some need to go there? I

Lindsey: 15:27

think I just heard about cool things happening there and that's, that's why I wanted to mention that because people say we heard it multiple times. Like, oh, HAI calls you. Mm-hmm. And you might just hear about it and want to go there, and then you don't even know where it

Britt: 15:42

is. And that, look, I, I, I understand what you're saying to yourself right now. That's some hippie shit. And you know what it is and it's fucking awesome. Yeah, it was wild. Oh, I calls you. It does, it calls you, dunno why you want to go there. And then you get there and you're like, oh, this is it. Oh, this is why. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so Ojai, it's about 90 minutes north of la. It's a pretty easy trip. A lot of LA people do it for like the weekend, for a weekend getaway. It's a cool, like artsy hippie town. There's orange groves everywhere. It's in the mountains, so it's super beautiful. It doesn't feel like it's not a big city and it doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like a small city, but with everything you would need right there. Except for the ocean. The ocean's about 30 minutes away. Yeah. I wish it was about five minutes away, but

Lindsey: 16:31

you know, it's kind of my one that's one we can play. My one thing is, which I've actually been questioning since we've been here, is like, oh, do I wanna live close to the ocean? I feel like I do. Yeah. Our favorite thing about Ojai, besides how beautiful it was and everything about it, is the people, like everyone was so kind. And I don't know if that was just. Our, what we were given off was,

16:58

I

Britt: 16:58

don't know. Hey, come talk

Lindsey: 16:59

to me vibes. Yeah. But that hasn't happened everywhere and it hasn't happened since we were there. It's been a few months since we left there. Two months, maybe a little more, and it hasn't happened since we left. Of course, part of that, we've been in other countries, Hawaii, Japan, and Thailand. Yeah. That's where we've been since, and there's just this like. True friendliness that we experienced in Ojai over and over and over and over again that we haven't experienced since that felt like we were supposed to be there. Yeah.

Britt: 17:34

The first day we got to town, before noon, we got three phone numbers that that's never happened to me anywhere. Yeah. I don't get any phone numbers ever. That's the job

Lindsey: 17:44

or something. It was like, we were teens at the mall or something, but people, people were like, we would start talking to someone and they were like, take my phone number, call me. Yeah.

Britt: 17:53

If you need anything or look me up. That's another thing people do there. Oh, just look me up. You'll just, my, you'll know I'm the only Chef Robin, you know, just look Chef Rob, you know?

Lindsey: 18:02

Oh yeah. Uh,

Britt: 18:03

chef Robin, and sure enough you Google Chef Robin, and that's, she pops

Lindsey: 18:07

right up. Chef Robin is from Ojai, but we actually met her in Baja. And that was a big, uh, taking it all the way back to the first episode. That was a yellow, little yellow arrow for us. Mm-hmm. Because we were going to Ojai and this woman came up and started talking to us in Baja and she said, oh, I'm from California. And then I just asked, I knew she was from Ojai. I was like, where are you? Where from? Near Santa Barbara. And then I was like, are you from Ojai? That was a little yellow arrow. Yeah. Pointing in the direction of Ojai a few months before we got

Britt: 18:40

there. And I mu, I must say it helps to have three super adorable

Lindsey: 18:44

kids too. So True. Yeah. People do come up and talk to us since we left Ojai. It's more focused on the kids. Yeah. Everyone, we still, we still meet kind people, but not in a way of like, it doesn't feel like we could be friends. Right. We, it did happen in Hawaii. I will say that. Especially at Ramdas's House, we've met Oh yeah. So many amazing people and so many people that I like think will know for a long time. Yeah. And outside of that, it didn't really happen for us on Maui and then since we've left Maui. So Ojai was a magical spot for friends for us, and nice people. Right.

Britt: 19:22

And everyone seemed really genuine. Uh, there have been places where I've, you know, people have been friendly, but. It was just the thing to do in Ojai. I feel like people genuinely wanted to know about you, wanted to be friends, actually wanted to hang out. I mean, they gave, they wouldn't have given us their numbers if they didn't wanna hang out. So that was,

Lindsey: 19:40

that felt good. Yeah. They were all working numbers. 100% guaranteed. Okay. Guys we're cool. Nobody

19:46

gave

Britt: 19:47

me a Pizza Huts number.

Lindsey: 19:49

Yeah. The people in Ojai, they're amazing. And then the next thing we loved about it, It is a small town, so for things for, it's very, feels very family friendly. And that was another thing we loved about it. There was a ton of parks. Yeah. Basically every single day we went to the main park in town, which is called Libby Park. It's right there in the tiny little town center. There's a huge playground. There's an amphitheater. There's. Bathrooms, hiking trails. There's trails, there's a little creek, kind of everything. And everyone with kids just ends up there. Every single time we met, we went there. We either met a new person or ran into someone that we met previously. Yeah. And it was so fun. Yeah.

Britt: 20:34

Our kids made friends, uh, especially Otis. He made a lot of little friends his age. He's, he had turned two while we were in Ojai and. I guess he had never really been around other kids his age. He had but not as much. He didn't have little friends his age, but he found'em there and we were making play dates and all these other kids who also were just meeting friends for the first time were kind of coming out of their shells and it was cool to watch that happen. There were lots of cool dads at the park. When Lindsay had stuff to do, I would just take the boys to the park by myself, so, Uh, I met some other dads out there doing the same thing. Matt Wesson, who we're gonna have on the podcast. We did an interview with him. Really fascinating guy. Really cool. His son, Louie, was the same age as Otis. They got along really well. Also, Nate, uh, turns out he was the drummer of this band I really like from Chicago, but he lives in Ohio. Urge Overkill. Became friends with him and his wife. They have kids around the same age as odi. It was great. We made plans, hung out a bunch. Talked about music surfing. I learned about surfing.

Lindsey: 21:41

Yeah. Everyone that we met was just very open to being friends in a really genuine way. And we mentioned this. In an episode that already aired with Darren Thomas McGee. Real of real fun. Wow. But like we just kept meeting people in these very O highways where I went to the park with someone to have a play date and then Darren was there and then we started talking and then he came on the podcast and then, you know, it just like, That kept happening over and over again. Parks kids. Oh, that's what to do. It's the key. Yeah.

Britt: 22:17

Kids are the new dogs. People. If you, uh, you go out and meet people cuz you got a cute little dog. Hey, have a kid. See what happens. You're gonna get a lot of friends.

Lindsey: 22:26

Especially a cute little kid like Otis. Yeah. With blonde, curly hair. It's like having a golden retriever. Yeah.

Britt: 22:32

Another thing we really loved about it was nature. We stayed in an Airbnb that was on an orange orchard. And so you walk out the front door and all you see is perfectly manicured orange trees in every direction and across the street. It was beautiful. We, I would take walks every morning and walk three miles just through orange orchards. Beautiful. So gorgeous. On uh, one side, our neighbor was Jason Siegel. On the other side was Don Glover somewhere. Yeah, we're not exactly sure where. Didn't see either of them. Yeah, it was a big or orchard. But super freaking beautiful. There's mountains up there. When we got there, there was still snow at the tops of the mountains, but the weather was perfect down where we were at. It wasn't too cold, and by the time it would melt away. We'd wake up the next morning and there'd be new snow on top of those mountains. So it was beautiful to see it and not have to deal with it.

Lindsey: 23:26

Yeah. Yeah. That Airbnb we stayed in was amazing. Anyone, I don't know anyone who wants to travel to Ojai. I do think they have the thing where you have to rent an Airbnb for 30 days. That's that true. That's what we were doing anyway, so it was pretty easy. But it doesn't, it seems like there's not a lot of Airbnbs for that reason. Or maybe they're like tricky secret Airbnbs. I'm not sure. There's still tons of great places to stay, but the Airbnb we stayed in. Yeah. Surrounded by orange orchards and mountains. Yeah. Felt like the middle of nowhere and still. And also three minutes from the center of Ohio Center, that's like two stop lights.

Britt: 24:06

There was also lots of cool trails to go on. We didn't get to that many trails. There was one trail we did a couple times, uh, down to this river. Where there was lots of people riding on horses. Everyone was super friendly. The boys got to pet all these horses.

Lindsey: 24:20

A famous thing that people like about Ojai is witnessing the pink moment, and that's at sunset where all the mountains turn pink and it's lovely. I will say, no shame hai people, but it's not as beautiful as La Paz sunset, which is literally the entire sky is. Cotton candy, pink and orange. Mm-hmm.

Britt: 24:43

And it reflects onto all the buildings. Everything is

Lindsey: 24:45

pink. So you guys are doing great with your sunsets in Ohio and La Paz has you beat, and that's okay because you have other qualities and you're still a qualified town and we love you.

Britt: 25:02

But a real popular place to watch that from is, uh, Jimmy's Pub. It's at the Ojai Valley Inn. And it's on a golf course, which may sound kind of stuffy and maybe like you shouldn't bring your kids there. But we kept being told by people, Hey, you gotta go to Jimmy's Pub. You just go there and you sit out on the golf course and the kids get to play on the golf course and it's totally chill. Got there and it was perfect. Uh, there's a whole part of the golf course just dedicated to kids to run around to running around. Yeah. And you just eat food. Look at the mountains. Meet people. We hung out with Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad there. His youngest child and Otis are the same age. Didn't even realize that's who I was talking to for the first few minutes. Just cuz everyone's so nice there. I was just hanging out with some other people. I. And I realized, oh shit, after he introduced himself, said his name. I didn't let on that. I knew who he was. Didn't wanna make it weird, but yeah, it's nice people there. Just want to hang out and be be friends. Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy's pub good food too. Yeah,

Lindsey: 26:03

it was like, it's a very fancy resort hotel. And you're right. Everyone was so nice and it's. It was a great place for kids. We could roast marshmallows. Literally, the kids could just run around like crazy. I guess that's another thing that hasn't really happened for us so much since we left. Ojai was like, well, except for beaches, obviously. Kids can run around and go crazy, but there hasn't been spots since we left OHI where it's like kids can be free to run and play.

Britt: 26:36

Yeah. Especially in Japan. Yeah. Had lots of great playgrounds, but being a kid is, uh, Being a kid like our kids was a little difficult there, I think. Yeah,

Lindsey: 26:48

yeah, yeah, man. I love a rest. I love a restaurant. I love a place that's outside that serves food that's open, where people can just run around. Yeah. Big or small.

Britt: 27:01

Yeah, they even had little fire pits where you could roast marshmallows and make smores. They had little s'mores kits there.

Lindsey: 27:07

Yeah. That was fun. Yeah, the boys loved it. Totally. For kids. They loved it.

Britt: 27:13

There were tons of great food and coffee spots there. I can't even remember all the names cuz there

Lindsey: 27:18

were Right. So many of them. And that's what you're probably gonna do if you're just going there for a weekend. Yeah. Is like go out, get drinks, get food, get coffee, hang out outside. Hang out at your hotel, whatever. There's so much every, every coffee shop's adorable and perfect. Mm-hmm. Which also you can really start to appreciate when you leave, when you, we saw. So again, in Japan, Thailand, Hawaii, we've seen lots of cute places, but there's just something about great design that we have appreciated when we haven't seen it as much.

Britt: 27:52

Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Also, in Japan, not to get too much into Japan, But people will get up a and around a little late there, so even coffee shops wouldn't open until nine or 10. And that's on, on the early side. Some wouldn't open until 12 or two people drinking coffee at night there,

Lindsey: 28:08

night coffee. I don't know what kind of people they are. I'm an old

Britt: 28:10

man. Stay up. I can't drink coffee. Afternoon.

Lindsey: 28:12

Okay. Yeah. But yeah, some of our favorite places in Ojai for food and coffee. We loved hip vegan. We love hip vegan. We went there. Way too much. Not too much, but so much. Yeah. Sometimes

Britt: 28:28

it felt like every day it sometimes, and it was fine. Like every

Lindsey: 28:30

day was so delicious.

Britt: 28:32

And you know what, oh, here's a little side note. Something. How we've known a restaurant is good. It's cuz they play good reggae music, which isn't always the case. But on this trip has been the case for us. Every place that's been playing good reggae music has really good food and really good service and it's awesome. Yeah. And that they played the best stuff there every time. Every time. Yeah. It was all like, Stuff I've never even heard played

Lindsey: 28:55

in public. Definitely another yellow arrow for us. Yeah, we're like, oh, the food's great. The music's amazing. We can sit outside. Our kids can pet dogs. This is the spot for us. Right. We also loved Farmer in the Cook. That's another place if you go to Ojai, everyone's gonna say, go to Farmer and the Cook, and they're right. It's so good.

Britt: 29:18

Another good sign about that is it's a vegetarian restaurant and. All. Some of the people that told us about it aren't even vegetarian. They went there cuz it's great. Yeah. That's how you know a good spot. That's true. Everyone's talking about it, not just the vegetarians and vegans. That had a lot of good area for kids to run around in. There's a like kind of a field beside it with tables.

Lindsey: 29:40

Yeah, that was great. Yeah. You know what I'm reminded of just now thinking about Farmer and the cook is I love a place that has a bunch of flyers for things on, and every place in Ojai has a bunch of flyers for like events and healers and shows and concerts and DJs. And massage therapist. It's like, feels like late nineties. Mm-hmm. Cool town.

Britt: 30:07

Yeah, totally. It feels like community. Yeah. You know, like a lot of places don't

Lindsey: 30:11

feel, yeah, yeah. But every place in Ojai and or and surrounding Ojai had some wall that was just flyers of things to do, or people to hire to do cool

Britt: 30:25

things with. Yeah. And especially coming from like a punk or activist scene. And our youth. It feels really good to see that kind of thing now. Yeah. The, I guess the more old, older people version of it, but there's, there's still cool activism going on.

Lindsey: 30:41

Right. Well, because you can't put that on the internet. Yeah. Like the flyer wall in the restaurant or the coffee shop that you're at. If it was a QR code with a thousand things, it would be garbage, right? I mean, not that you can't have a QR code on your flyer. That's an easy way for people to get more information. But if it was just one giant QR code that was like, here's Debbie who does massages, and Gary, who's the healer. You just wouldn't even look at it. It wouldn't be fun. But to see this big wall that's like, oh, here's what everyone in town does. Mm-hmm. Is super

Britt: 31:16

special. Another cool spot that we went to was called air pizza, and it was surf and skate themed and it's just a local spot owned by a guy in Ojai. Pizza was really good. He came over and hung out at our table. Felt like community. It was awesome. Yeah. Another cool thing that I'm reminded of here is that a lot of cities seem, or at least neighborhoods and cities seem alcohol centric. Like you're going to drink. That's what's happening. OHI didn't feel like that at all. I feel like there's a bunch of people that don't drink or just don't care. That's not part of their, their personality. Yeah, and I've, that was really cool, right? Not to shit on drinking. I drink. I just felt like it was cool not to be, feel like we were just gonna have to sift through bars, like we could go anywhere with our kids, have a good time. Didn't have to be alcohol related.

Lindsey: 32:10

Right, right. Yeah. That's the difference between, I think, between a city or a town that is like just tourism and a city or a town that is its own thing that attracts like, Tourism, right? Yeah. Which is definitely what Ojai is like. People go there to live because they wanna live there, not because they necessarily need to be part of this tourist economy, which we've seen over and over again as we've been to so many places. Two for one. Yeah. Cabo feels very Cabo. Yeah.

Britt: 32:48

You get two shitty drinks for the price of one shitty drink.

Lindsey: 32:52

Yeah. But then they'll always give you four. Yeah. And charge you for two. Yeah. What's that about? There's farmer's markets twice a week in. Oh, that actually is probably really common in every part of California. And there was farmer's markets in Texas too, but not like, Where it was the center of what people were doing like it, like it seems to be in California. Yeah. Where like everyone goes and they were great. We would go get chocolate, get flowers, get coffee, get everything at these beautiful little farmer's markets. Even if it was raining, it still happened. Yep. Bunches of kids

Britt: 33:30

plan out in the field too.

Lindsey: 33:32

Yeah. That's where we first met the air pizza guy was at the farmer's market. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And then Jack was playing basketball and some. Nice guy was teaching him how to play basketball just because we just attracted nice people there. Everyone was nice to us. We loved Bart's books. It's a bookstore there that is part outdoor, part indoor. It's uh, a historic home.

Britt: 33:57

I think it's kind of hard to explain when you say outdoor

Lindsey: 34:00

bookstore. Yeah. But it's so cool. Yeah. Makes sense. Once you see it used, mostly used, but there's also some new books. And we loved it. We went there a lot. And also when they buy books, because I needed to offload a bunch of stuff since that's when we left California, that's when we left our car and we started flying. We needed less crap. They bought my books back for like really good price. Yeah.

Britt: 34:25

And everything was. Affordable there. Yeah. In the first place. So good for them. I'm

Lindsey: 34:31

sure there's other bookstores in Ojai. Maybe not, but Barts is the one. It's another thing that, yeah, everyone will tell you go to Bart's books and it's because it's true. And even if they're, I think they don't open if it's raining, maybe. But on the outside they have donation books, so if they're not open, You can get a book for a donation. Maybe it won't be anything good, but maybe it will be. Yeah, there was a

Britt: 34:55

lot of'em. It couldn't have all been crap. That's true.

Lindsey: 34:59

Other just random cool things we did there several times. I went to this awesome dance class that was taught by Val Cheney, who we had on the podcast a few weeks ago. She's a dance instructor, mindfulness teacher. A very cool and cute and kind. Person that I like. It was at this really cool healing center slash crystal shop in this dance

Britt: 35:26

class. It was improv dance, right?

Lindsey: 35:28

Not exact. I mean, no, Val like makes, she like choreographs it. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, she choreographs it. It's just n was very, it's focused on like fun expression more than like you're a serious dancer. Cool. It made me actually realize that I'm not a good dancer and I thought I was a good dancer, and I'm like, oh, I can't even do these simple moves. I am not a good dancer at all. I spent my whole life thinking that I was a good dancer. You're a good dancer. Um, but I should have remembered when I was. Seven years old trying to memorize Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation, and it was so hard and I couldn't really do it, but I did practice every day with my videotape.

Britt: 36:15

Uh, there's also, it's real easy to get to Santa Barbara and Ventura there, so if you need to get away for a little bit or just want to check something else out. There's a great kids' museum, the Moxie, and that's in Santa. Santa, Barbara, Santa. Mm-hmm. Kids loved it. Would highly recommend that. Uh, there's a guitar center, there's a Sizzler, there's all the, uh, I don't think chain shit that you probably don't want to go to. That's not an oh hi, but if you're feeling like you need some Chipotle, you get it over

Lindsey: 36:45

there pretty quick. They're long term. If you're there long term like us, then you might need a target. Right. But if someone was gonna plan this as a trip and. Wanted to do more than a weekend. You could easily fly into LA and then drive and do like Ventura, Ojai Carpenter, and Santa Barbara and have a great week long trip and maybe not even go into LA if you didn't want to, but if you do want

Britt: 37:11

to, it's pretty easy. We each both went to LA separately a few times. I went to hang out with a friend and record music. Lindsay went to do a

Lindsey: 37:19

dance party. I went to Daybreaker, which I've always wanted to go to. It was beyond my most fun, super cool expectations. I'm so glad that I was there when it happened and I le had, I left Ojai, I think it started at 7:00 AM and I left oh high at like five 30 in the morning and got there right on time. Had a great time. Tell'em what Daybreaker is. Daybreaker is a sober. Early morning dance party that started in New York, maybe 10 years ago, maybe more. And sometimes they're silent where you read, wear the headphones and dance to a dj and then sometimes they're not. But it became, this started in New York and then just became this thing that now they do parties all over the place and they go on tour and it's so fun and super special to. It, it like hits all my things that I loved about being a 17 year old raver. Mm-hmm. Except without drugs and alcohol. Part of my raving ex, my raver experience. I was a sober person. Um, but maybe I, I was probably like more scared to dance sober when I was 17. Now I don't give a shit and I think it's really cool. I love what they're doing. Awesome. And so I went to Daybreaker. When I saw it was happening, I was like, I gotta go. And

Britt: 38:41

then the next day they were doing it in San

Lindsey: 38:43

Francisco or like two, yeah. Two days later. And I almost was like, we should

Britt: 38:46

go. Yeah. We almost left at like 5:00 PM Like let's

Lindsey: 38:49

just drive through the next, let's just go to We Real, we really wanted to go to San Francisco and we were right there. The boys wanna see the Golden Gate Bridge. They wanna see Alcatraz, they wanna see all, and we love San Francisco. So we, we thought we were gonna fit it in, but then like we really just felt more like staying put in Ojai. Yeah. So, and that actually felt really good. That's something I wanna talk about more maybe on another episode, is just knowing when we're, we're traveling so much. That you don't have to do everything right, because we really could have been like, we're in California and this is the chance, so we need to pack it all in. Right.

Britt: 39:29

And we've talked about it before our, especially the boys, they need off days. They

Lindsey: 39:34

need a lot of off days. They need a lot of off days. They're honestly, we've started this podcast talking this episode, talking about how we are kind of annoyed right now. They're like, Awesome right now. Yeah. Yeah. They're being kind and helpful and so sweet. And it's because we're just kind of chilling, but I mean, imagine being eight years old and your parents taking you to a bunch of old temples. You're just like, I do not care.

Britt: 39:59

Yeah. BA in Bangkok, they were definitely, were way less interested in leaving. That's a big dense city too, but.

Lindsey: 40:07

Well, yeah, but I'm, each life is more their life.

Britt: 40:09

Japan. Yeah.

Lindsey: 40:10

Oh right. Yeah. Japan's. Yeah. It's nice here. We haven't done it yet, but there are some temples that we are gonna go to. But it's nice to have the place where you can be kid and then also go do some boring adult shit. Mm-hmm. Museums, temples. Yeah. Uh, which I had this grand idea and illusion. When once I got to Asia that it was just gonna be all temples and like sitting in places where we're all meditating. You love free. I think I forgot that I'm traveling with three kids. When I saw it in my mind I'm like, oh my gosh, we're gonna be amongst all this culture and we are not in the way I thought it was gonna be because. The kids have a very short attention span for that, as they should as eight year old people. Mm-hmm. All

Britt: 41:06

right, Lindsay, so here's the point in the episode where I ask you, would you live in

Lindsey: 41:09

Ojai? Yeah, for sure. If we are gonna, there's two. I would totally live in Ojai. I love it. It feels like it has everything I need except for maybe two things. One, it's not, even though it's only 30 minutes from the beach. I feel like we should live closer to the beach and that might be wrong. I'm open to things changing. The other part is I feel like it's our time to not live in the US again. That might not happen. I'm open to the right place. Oh, I feels like the right place. If we, if we live in the us, that's where we're gonna live. Or somewhere in the vicinity. Yeah. I know that it's cool to not like California right now. It's very cool to shit on California and I don't live there, so, and I know that every place has its problems. I don't actually live there yet. When I live there, you'll probably hear me shitting on it. There's taxes, there's this, there's that. But it's great. I love Ojai. I also love LA and I know that's not cool either. Yeah, it's not cool to love la, but I love, I think it's getting cool again, right? Is it getting cool again? I don't know. Who am I? I don't know either. San Diego. Love it. Long Beach. Love it. Dub all stars. Love'em. I love that statue of Bradley Nolan Long Beach. The one that's next to Snoop Dogg's statue. Just kidding. But I love California and if we live in the US that's where we're gonna live. So suck it. If you don't like that, you can just, you can move to Texas. Be one of the people that moves to Texas. Great. You can have it. Yeah. Have Texas. I'll take your spot in California. Now I have a different question for you, Brett. Ooh, mayonnaise or mustard. My question for you is, would you live in Ojai?

Britt: 43:00

Absolutely. 10. Outta 10. If I had the chance, if like somebody called me tomorrow and was like, Hey, I have a job for you doing something you really love in Ojai, I'd be like, yes, absolutely. I'll fly there tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. Uh, y and the two, the two things you mentioned, I feel the same about. I do feel like it's close enough. You're right to the water for me. Yeah. That's not a deal breaker at all. Also. Yeah. I would love to live somewhere in another country. Yeah. Too. But we'll just see. We'll just see. We'll, we'll see what calls to us. Yeah. But, um, I do have a, a deep feeling that we were probably gonna see Ojai sooner than later. Yeah,

Lindsey: 43:40

that's probably true. But we can't go there tomorrow. Can't do it because we have tickets somewhere else. We already have plans and the next place we're going is

Britt: 43:52

Melbourne, Australia, baby. Yeah,

Lindsey: 43:54

we're going into winter.

Britt: 43:56

Yeah. But winter where we're going is like 50 to 65. To me, that sounds badass. I love good jacket weather. I like the warm shit too, but if, if winter is 65 degrees, sign me up, baby. That's true. That's true. Beautiful beaches. The best music. I'm so excited. Yeah. Can't

Lindsey: 44:14

wait. It was very high on Brits list and even the way that we decided to go to Melbourne happened very, um, magically and organically. We have not been into planning ahead the last couple months. Trip fatigue really since we left. Yeah. We're having trip fatigue. So we planned from Bangkok. We planned to come to this island, Koosa Mui, which we're gonna tell you all about in another episode in Thailand and without a plan after that. We just knew we were gonna stay here for a week or two. And when we knew, okay, we need to sit down and plan where we're gonna go, we thought we were gonna go to Bali, that's what we thought we were gonna do next. And we kept looking up Airbnbs and looking at tickets. And it just all the while

Britt: 44:56

thinking, is this right? Should we be going to Bali? Is that where we want to go? Is that what's next? And we're both feeling so fatigued that we're like, I don't care. Or not that I don't care. I just like, I don't know what feels right, right, right now.

Lindsey: 45:08

Mm-hmm. It's not excited about anything. Yeah. At moment's hard

Britt: 45:11

to tune in, which again, sounds totally fucking weird. Cause we're sitting in a beautiful place where we can just book these tickets to go to the places we want to go and we don't, and we're having trouble doing that. Yeah. Sounds like a non-issue, but, um, we're working through some shit.

Lindsey: 45:28

Yeah. Travel fatigue. I think it's real. Yeah. And. So when we sat down, we said, today we have to know where we're going next. We sat down, we looked at tickets, assuming we're going to Bali, we were gonna book this Airbnb, and we just kept looking at things and the places didn't feel exactly right or something. Brit looked at flying to Melbourne and it was relatively easy direct flight there from Bangkok. We looked at Airbnbs. There was a ton. We found a perfect spot. The first one you looked at, the first one I looked at was like perfect for kids, right by where we wanted to be. Very affordable price, magical number. If anyone gives a crap about 6 66 and everything was just like, we can take this flight. It's easy, it's cheaper. All of the stuff lined up. So then we said we're going to Australia. And Bali will happen when Bali happens. True. And for now we're gonna be in Australia. Yeah. I don't know where we'll go after Aust. We'll be far farther away from any place being in Melbourne. And That's fine. So that's where we're going. Yeah. It was meant to happen. Yeah. And

Britt: 46:45

thanks again for listening. I know we tell you that every time and we are very grateful. If you guys have any questions or just want to talk to us, get in touch info. Can we start over podcast.com or at, can we start over? Pod on Instagram. Hit us up. Let us know what you think. Give us a rating. Give us a like, give us a view, smash it. I don't know. Whatever the kids are doing these days, do it for us. All right, we'll

Lindsey: 47:11

talk to you soon. Thank you. Love you mean it. Bye bye bye.