RADIO HOST KNOWS WHY WE TRAVEL
Hit the Road by E'Louise Ondash

This article appeared in the Coast Newspaper in San Diego area.

Ask radio host Sandy Dhuyvetter about the nature of travel and she’ll tell you that it is something greater than just getting from one place to another. It can be an instrument for fostering peace.
“Traveling is a much more profound activity than the average person thinks,” said the Encinitas resident who hosts several weekly radio and television shows about travel. The main broadcast, “Travel Talk Radio,” airs from 8 to 9 a.m. Sundays on KFMB-AM 760, as well as on her Web site, www.traveltalkradio.com.
“Travel is an opportunity to be an ambassador for your country ... an opportunity to extend a hand of friendship, and respect the environment and the diversity among people. If we can do that, it’s difficult to go to war.”
Dhuyvetter can certainly speak about the virtues of travel from experience.
These days she’s off to London one week, Boston the next. Then it’s on to Las Vegas, over to Lake Havasu City and across The Pond again to exotic cities like Budapest to gather material and interview guests for her weekly broadcasts.
“The hardest part is schlepping around all of the broadcasting equipment,” she explained, “but we have some of the sturdiest luggage in the world that is made for military use. It allows us to take our cameras and other technical equipment without the fear of damage.”
Husband Patrick Peartree sometimes lends a hand.
“When he’s with me, it’s a breath of fresh air. It allows me to relax a bit knowing that we have all the components of travel taken care of.”
The kids sometimes join in, too.
“My biggest joy is when we travel with our children – Eric, 17, and Michaella, 13,” Dhuyvetter said. “I’ve taken them to Aruba, Germany, Austria and many places in the U.S., and we have planned about three other trips together this year. The gift of travel gives them incredible life lessons that create a worldly wisdom that can only be gotten while away from home.”
The kids lend a hand in the business, too. Eric edits audio and digital video, and Michaella mails out prizes to listeners.
“Bringing the family in on the business is truly one of the best benefits of this work,” Dhuyvetter said, and keeping it simple is the key to managing the schedule.
Her day often begins at 4 a.m. when she joins “Shalom Radio” for a travel segment on the show that targets London’s Jewish community. Then Dhuyvetter walks 3.5 miles with her husband to the Coaster station where he catches the train to his job in Old Town. After breakfast with the children, she works on production and broadcasting in their home office, which facilitates staying in touch with the kids.
Thursday evenings are reserved for her “real therapy” – playing the accordion with bluegrass musicians at New York Pizza in Encinitas. The group has been together for a decade.
Dhuyvetter’s business creates interesting opportunities close to home, too. She was on deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway as it made its way from Coronado Island to its new permanent home, Navy Pier in San Diego. It is now the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum.
“We got some great [video] footage as the ship went into San Diego Harbor,” she said. “It was an incredible experience.”
It also was a reminder of how great it is to live in San Diego County.
“San Diego is a true treasure. Certainly, other regions are incredibly beautiful, historic or have some other draw, but we are where the combination of weather, economy and opportunity can’t be surpassed.”
Dhuyvetter came to broadcasting circuitously. Her background is in technology, and it was her know-how in this arena and her incessant curiosity and creativity that gave birth to “Travel Talk Radio.” It began broadcasting on the Internet in August 2001.
“I’d been working in the Web community since the early ’80s,” she explained.
On her resume: working for director George Lucas and developing three of the first Web sites that offered credit card transactions for online purchases.
It was after developing a Web site for the Santa Barbara Convention and Visitors Bureau that Dhuyvetter discovered that she could marry her multi-media career with her love of travel.
Thus the Web site broadcast was born, and only four months later, in December 2001, “Travel Talk Radio” began broadcasting on KFMB-AM.
Launching both shows just before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks might have seemed like an inopportune time to promote traveling, but just the opposite proved true.
“Travel news had now become more important than ever,” Dhuyvetter explained. “The audience was hungry for it because traveling to see family or to do business was now a major decision for the consumer. We had terrorism, disease and economics, all of which were threaded into the travel industry. Plus we had destinations that were reinventing themselves and needing visibility.”
Because of Sept. 11, “travel really is all about the experience rather than the destination, and ‘Travel Talk Radio’ connects our audience with the experts and resources. The shows introduce a mix of travel topics, including regional, national and international. We want to facilitate communication between tour operators, travel agents and consumers.”
The radio show and its archives can be heard anytime by visiting www.traveltalkradio.com.
Dhuyvetter also produces several other segments for radio, television and the Web:
– A guest spot on “Through the Night Show,” a London show that airs on the Web site from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. PST Saturdays.
– Travel segments for CNN local news that air in North County 12 times Wednesdays and Thursdays on Channel 30.
– A continuing update of traffic conditions between Southern California and Las Vegas provided by the California and Nevada departments of Transportation that appears on the Web site.
– “15 minutes with Sandy,” a Friday Web broadcast that stays on the server for a month. Listeners can sign up for newsletter alerts.

E’Louise Ondash is a freelance writer living in North County. Tell her about your travels by writing to ondash@thecoastnews.com.