Frequent Miler on the Air - Podcasting on the road: trials and tribulations | Coffee Break Ep106 | 5-18-26

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Blogging on the road is pretty easy, but podcasting from the road is a different story. In this episode, we'll talk about how. (01:12) - Internet issues(05:39) - Microphone issues(14:27) - Improvised laptop stands(19:38) - Lighting issues (dark hotel rooms, cars, etc.)Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast NetworkFrequent Miler Beginner's Guidehttps://frequentmiler.com/start-here/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Today's coffee break, podcasting on the road, trials and tribulations. Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. For years, I was a blogger, not a podcaster, and same. for Nick. And, you know, people often think that life for a blogger is great. You could go sit out on the beach with your laptop and, you know, bang out a poster too. But reality isn't that

easy because you have basically sun shining in your eyes. You can't see the laptop at all. There's a lot of things get in the way with that. So that said, blogging on the road isn't that difficult. We can get it done. Just might have to stay in our hotel room to do some of the work instead of being out at the pool or at the beach. However, podcasting can be a challenge on the road. So we're going to talk about some of the things that we've had to overcome while podcasting while on the road. Yeah. And remember, wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this video. Give us a thumbs up. Leave us a comment. We appreciate that. All right, let's dive into this. Internet issues. First of all, we've had Internet issues sometimes.

So if some of that has been, sometimes it's just a poor signal, it depends. on the hotel Wi-Fi if we're on the road. For me, even when I'm at home every now and then I'll have internet issues. So some of the old podcasting tools that we used to use didn't work so well, right? Yeah. So, you know, there are tools designed to help with internet issues where what they do is they record locally on both sides. And that way, even if it's a really bad internet connection, it stitches the two sides together.

and then you should have like perfect audio for your podcast. When we started the podcast in I think 2019, we tried some of these tools and it was kind of a technical disaster. We would record whole episodes and not be able to, you know, fully upload the files or whatever and just lose, actually lose what we were doing often or often we had to just restart because the thing would crash. So that was really problematic. Tools have gotten much better since then. But, you know, that's the type of thing that that happens a lot. Now, the other issue with bad Internet is that the way we do things now is we record everything we do locally so that, again, we're on, you know, a, you know, a, We actually record over Zoom, and we'll get to that in a few minutes about why we do that. But Nick and I are generally in different places when we're recording, and we set up Zoom to record the audio files locally. So, again, they can be stitched together and sound really good. But the thing to keep in mind is then we have large audio and video files local that what we do is we upload to a Google.

Google Drive for then Kerry to do the editing and get it ready for a podcast format. So obviously, sometimes that upload can take a very long time for a bad internet. But one thing that you might not, it might not ever occur to you. And it often fails to occur to us when we're planning is like we'll be on the road and realize, okay, we've got this much time before we've got to head out of the hotel to go to the airport, for example, and we'll get the podcast recorded in time. But then two things have to happen. Zoom does this thing where it converts the files into a format that it can basically that you can read. And that can take quite a while. I can take like 15 minutes, depending on how long

our show is. And then, of course, then we need to upload those files to Google Drive. So if we're running out the door, we're kind of stuck. And so we have to figure out how to quickly get back on internet when that happens and make sure everything gets uploaded. And it's just one of those like little things that you wouldn't think of normally. Well, yeah, and part of it is that we have a pretty quick turnaround usually on our podcast. So our weekly show, the long full length weekly show, we try to record that on Thursdays and it publishes on Fridays. And part of the reason for that is so we can talk about what's new. You know, what's happened this week. And kind of cover current topics as much as possible. But that also means that Kerry has very little time

to edit that and get it back out. So we really do need to get it uploaded as quickly as we can. So yeah, sometimes that is certainly an issue. And me living in a rural area, I don't have the world's fastest internet because there just isn't the fastest internet available where I am. And so even when I'm at home, that can sometimes be a challenge. Certainly when we're on the road, that can be a little bit harder than it sounds. But again, I think part of that is, like I said, the quick turnaround that we're able to do and that Carrie is able to kind of turn around and put out for us. So we're very thankful to have that and lucky that we're able to turn out these episodes as quickly as we can. But it does require a little planning sometimes and some luck from the

internet. But internet issues aren't the only thing. We've had microphone issues. We've had so many microphone issues. We'll touch on several of them, but definitely not all of them. One thing that happens to us every now and then, used to happen a lot when we were getting started as podcasters because we didn't know what we were doing, but is that whatever software we're using, whether it's Zoom or something like Riverside, whatever, sometimes we don't double check that the software is using our podcasting microphones. And then it defaults to, for example, the laptop built-in microphone,

which sounds awful. Sometimes it'll default to, if we use a video camera that has a microphone, sometimes it'll default to that, which also, at least in our experience, sounds awful. So we record a whole episode, we think it was great,

and then Kerry's like, ah, your sound was terrible. We're like, what? Yeah, that's just, again, not really about podcast. on the road. It's just part of podcasting. One of the things we have to be careful about. Yeah, absolutely. You might think you had that episode recorded and, you know, done and all finished and then realize, uh-oh, it just doesn't sound any good. So that's, that's potentially an issue.

And we have tried to standardize a lot of these things by having the same microphone and the same camera so that we could avoid some of those issues that we've learned over time that sometimes Maybe one is different than the other. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter which one is better. It's just the fact that they're different enough that it doesn't sound or look right. And so we've tried to standardize as much of that stuff as possible. But every now and then, your voice has come through. It's true.

So I think the reason for that is I have a laptop that I don't use for podcasting anymore, but where the, you know, the slot to put in the USBC connector must be a little bit loose or something's happening that the microphone isn't connecting properly or whatever. So anyway, that's the, I don't know if that's the reason, but since I stopped using that laptop, we haven't had that happen again, but it's crazy when all of a sudden, my voice is like, you know, I can't tell on my side that's happening because that, not listening to, you know, myself through the computer. But that is really bad one.

It's like that. And if you didn't get the reference, Bain is a villain from Batman. And that's kind of how he sounds. So if you didn't catch that reference when I did it, that's what it was from. Yeah. And, you know, another thing about the microphone is that when we travel, actually, somebody just asked me when we were recently at an event, do I bring all the podcasting equipment every time I travel?

And I said, yes, but that isn't necessarily true because it means you have to remember to bring all of the podcasting equipment everywhere you go. And so I was in Hawaii on vacation or something. And I realized, oh, no, I didn't bring my microphone. And we have to record a podcast. So luckily I was in Hawaii. So I went to Best Buy figuring I can probably get a good podcasting microphone. So I found one that looked like it had pretty good reviews. And I spent the $100 on it or whatever.

got back to the hotel, plugged it in, felt all excited that I had solved this problem that I had created so that we were going to be a okay to record the podcast. And then... It was awful. Yeah. Nix just sounded terrible. And it's so discouraging. Again, when we record these, like, you know, what we think are good shows and the sound comes out that bad. It's, it's terrible. And I think we had to do, like, a number of things, including and Ask Us Anything Live. I remember doing something like that as well. Um, similarly, recently you had a situation where you couldn't find your mic when you were in Europe. And so you had to use a little, um, Lavalier mic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even know.

Somehow it just got misplaced in the room and I tried to tear the room apart looking for it and I couldn't find it. Of course, later on that afternoon, my wife came back to the hotel room and found it in two seconds. But, uh, but I couldn't find it when we needed it. So yeah, I had to use a lavalier mic. I carry a set of those that I bought from Dell with a Dell credit at some point in my bag now that can plug into my phone so that I can record audio for like a voiceover on a reel or something when I'm just on the move. And so I had to use one of those for a podcast or two here or there in order to solve that quickly because again, we usually record our coffee breaks on Mondays and publish on Tuesdays and our full-length episode on Thursdays and publish on Fridays. So if I get to Monday or Thursday and I've got a

problem, it needs to get fixed right away. So we've had to kind of adapt. And actually, the lavalier mic was also kind of interesting because I only have two USBC inputs on my computer and the sort of dongle for the lavalier mic is a little wide. It's too wide for me to plug two things in like my camera and the lavalier mic at the same time. So luckily, I have a little USBC extension cable that I carry with me that I bought with another Dell credit. It was a filler to use. up the whole credit. And I had to use that and plug the dongle into the end of the extension just so that it wouldn't take up too much space. So there's all those little things that, again, you know, nobody would ever think about if you, uh, if you're, if you're sitting at home and you're like,

you know, I should do a podcast. There are all these little things that you probably would never consider that you'll run into at some point. And yours will be different than ours probably. But, uh, but another issue we've had sometimes, anyway, when we're on the road, especially, is background noise. Yeah. I mean, you know, sometimes you end up, uh, uh, but, but another issue we've had. podcasting from a airport lounge or from a hotel lobby or, you know, just there's all kinds of things, places where you can't control the noise. You know, are they going to turn on music overhead, or people going to come stand behind you and talk loudly? All of these things are possible. We find that Zoom, so our microphones do automatically filter out some background noise,

but not enough by themselves. And we found that. Zoom does a really good job of filtering out most of it. And that's why when we've tried out other tools that are specifically for podcasting, like Riverside, even though Riverside supposedly had a feature for filtering background noise, it didn't do nearly as well. So we'd hear like just weird random noises in the background. And that would, again, be an unfortunate thing that kind of messes with the sound. Yeah, I really have to give credit.

to Zoom because the noise filtering is impressively good. I don't know why it's so much better, but there are times when, you know, even when we have our team meetings, when Carrie's dogs are barking and she, she apologizes. And I had no idea that there were dogs in the room.

I didn't hear anything at all. So it works out really well. I will give Zoom some credit there for podcasting on the road in the sense that it does cut out most of that type of distraction. I'm going to give a couple more stories about that. So there have been times where, I live near a train track and there'll be times where the train whistle is so loud. I can't hear what anyone's saying over Zoom, but no one on the Zoom call can hear the train, which is just unbelievable.

Another time in a team meeting over Zoom, I tried to play a song on my phone. I put it in speaker mode and held it like near the microphone, but somehow Zoom decided it was background noise and the team couldn't hear it at all. So things like that. So it really does a fantastic job of that. Yeah. And we do, by the way, when Greg said that we record locally, we record our video and audio locally, but within Zoom settings, if you're going to try and do this on your own at some point, there is the ability to record the audio files separately.

And so we each get a separate file that's only our voice and recorded locally. because, you know, if you record locally, but it's recording both my audio and Gregs, obviously Gregs is coming through the internet. So it's using the cloud there somehow. And then that may affect the quality. So we have it split out so that Kerry can then put them back together. And they'll both, you know, the timing will be the same, obviously, because they were both recorded locally. There's no lag from the internet. So I think that makes a big difference in the sound quality of the podcast. For sure. All right. We'll be right back after this. Jamie writes in love the show but I have no idea what you're talking about please help

that's true well this can be confusing and luckily for you Jamie we have a beginner's guide that can help you want to go to frequent myler dot com slash start here to check out our full beginner's guide and we're back so the next topic we're going to talk about is around how to position our laptop. When we're on, when we're on the go, here's a thing. We publish our podcast both in audio and video form. And so in video form, we've learned that lighting and camera position are important. And so talking about camera position for a second, the ideal is to have the camera about head height, but just maybe a little bit above. just a little bit higher in order to make the video look good.

And sometimes that could be a challenge because, you know, if we're in a hotel room or wherever and the, you just put a laptop on the table with a webcam on top of it, it's probably going to be too low and it's going to be looking up at the person. And that's very much not ideal. So we've had different approaches to solve that until we finally got travel, until we finally started traveling with laptop stands. Yeah, and now I just bring my laptop stand everywhere, and that way I can try to keep it pretty standardized in terms of how high it is. Although there are also times when maybe a desk is just too narrow or something, and sometimes I've had to use a separate stand.

So the camera that we use has the ability to attach something so it'll sit on top of the laptop screen. But there's different attachments also. So there's one that has a screw attachment that I can screw into the tripod of my Insta 360. And so then I can, you know, raise or lower it as need be also. But before we started bringing these laptop stands that mostly make it pretty easy, there were times where I was stacking up a stack of books and trying to find exactly, the right height, the right number of books for my laptop to be high enough for the camera to come through, right? I mean, you came up with a few different things, I think, over time. Yeah,

yeah. So several times I've been in hotels where the trash can is rectangular and I would actually just put it up on the table sideways and put my laptop on top of that. I should, I want to just mention one other thing before. There is a problem. If you put the, the video camera separate from the laptop, So if you mount it like up higher than the laptop, then when I'm like if I did that, for example, then when I'm looking at Nick, if I want to see, you know, act like I'm actually talking to Nick, which I'm, you know, I'm doing right now, then if my camera was up here and my, and my laptop was down, it wouldn't look like I'm talking to Nick. It would look like I'm talking down at his belly button or something.

So another thing I do is I put the zoom screen that shows Nick as high up on my laptop as I can so that it's close to the camera. All right, back to ways of positioning the laptop now. My favorite approach ever was to when I was in a like Airbnb type of place, I found that using the ironing board. was great as a laptop basically because you can raise and lower it. You know, the ironing boards with legs, you can adjust to whatever level you want. So I would adjust it high enough so that the laptop would be at the right angle. Downside is it's very wobbly. So if you have to type anything, then all of a sudden the whole screen is shaking.

Yeah, yeah. And that's actually become my go-to method in a hotel room, specifically for what Greg said there, the ability to adjust the height. find that really useful. So if I'm in a hotel, I'm normally using the ironing board nowadays in most cases. But what I do to make sure I don't touch the laptop in those cases is I'll use a Bluetooth mic or rather a Bluetooth mouse and I'll keep the mouse like on the chair or bed or whatever beside me so that I'm not touching the ironing board stand at all, at least ideally. So it won't wobble. Like you said, if you have to type, it's still a problem. There are also times though where I

haven't had the laptop in front of me at all because really what matters is the camera here for the camera and the microphone for recording this, not always looking at the computers. So there are times like when I've recorded on the road from a car where I have the laptop set up in the row of seats in front of me and the microphone on the back of a seat that's in me. I record from the back seat. And so I have the microphone set up on the front seat and my laptop in the front seat. But but everything, you know, the equipment that I need for this in the backseat. And so there are times when the laptop may not even be in front of me, although those are fewer and farther in between, but there are times where we've had to really improvise. And speaking of that, that brings us to

another whole set of issues, which can be lighting issues. Yeah, yeah. Again, since we published this in video format, we want the video to look good. And when you're in a dark room or a dark car, as Nick is known to be, either very early in the morning or very late at night, you know, it can look pretty awful. So, you know, it'll look like we're in witness protection or something because there's this, like, dim figure with just darkness behind them. And so, you know, we end up worrying about things like, oh, is there a bright window at your back? Because in many hotel rooms, if there's a desk, it's very likely there's a window behind you,

or at least behind into the side. And they might not have good blackout curtains to block that out because if you have light coming from behind you, that's going to mess things up. And getting enough light in front of you and above can be a challenge, of course, as well. So I've been known to drag lamps around a hotel room, you know, plug them in a different place. to try to get everything right. Yeah, and in fact, that's another thing that I think we've tried to standardize in terms of the lighting we use when we're at home.

We both have a very similar light, I think, so that we get hopefully similarly even lighting on our video, which again, these are things we didn't necessarily consider at all in the beginning. You know, when we started this, we weren't really thinking about any of that stuff. So if you go back and you watch our early episodes, then, you know, you'll notice that none of these problems were addressed early on. And we had all of them. And so over time, there are things that we said, oh, well, we can improve this or we can

improve that. And here's how. But yeah, when you mention the lighting and the light coming in from windows, there's also times when there's no light coming in from the windows that it can be difficult. Like a recent episode we recorded, I recorded from the minivan. We were visiting family and it was a, you know, not a huge house and a lot of people sleeping. And we were recording at what for me was, I don't know, 6 a.m. local. something. I didn't want to wake everybody up and the van seemed like a great solution to that. I'll just go out to

the rental car and record from the van. I've done that in other situations before, but because it was dark outside and the van that we had was black leather interior, everything around me was black. And so Zoom had a really hard time figuring out how to put in the virtual background and where the virtual background should end and the video of me should begin. And so my head, head in particular was like disappearing into the virtual background here and there. And that was a problem. So we discovered that the way around that was if I put on a hat, wearing a hat seemed to solve that problem. And luckily I had a frequent miler hat with me. So if you saw me in a podcast episode at some point wearing my frequent miler hat, that's why. So the Zoom would know where my head was.

Yeah, yeah, because, you know, Nick's hair is black and the background was. So it makes perfect sense that Zoom wasn't able to distinguish between the two, but it made things look really weird. And without a virtual background, it looked really weird, too, because it was just like blackness behind. Yeah, it was just so dark behind me. Yeah. So it looked weird. We did try both. And I had a light in the, I carry a travel light.

We both have the same travel light that we carry when we travel for lighting also. Those are all things that we've, again, tried to standardize so that we can try to get the same. quality no matter where we are. Right, right. But, you know, so we have this little USB powered light, which it can cast like pretty bright light, but sometimes it's not really enough because it can't cast enough light like behind you, like in that situation to really light up the whole, the whole room or car in that case. One solution in the future that we could do is for Nick to go gray so that the contrast will be better between a black background and my kids are working on it right they're working yeah i mean that's something you need to catch up with my approach there doing the best i can doing the best i

can uh yeah and you know when it comes to lighting we've also had a really weird issue where you occasionally record from the same haunted house and it gives us issues yeah there's this place in north carolina that that i go uh every now and then and for some reason every time i've recorded from there. I don't know if it's something about the the window lighting in there that it causes a weird like flashing on the the zoom recording and it's very distracting. We have not yet figured out a way to solve that, unfortunately. I mean, I guess I need to record from a different room when I'm when I'm there in the future. It is remarkably consistent though that the same lighting issue pops up in the same place every time. Yeah, it's really strange. But yeah, so, I mean,

these are all small issues, but we've found ways around them. And there's plenty of other situations. Hopefully, hopefully, if you're watching this on YouTube, we'll have hopefully sent Carrie some pictures, some of our setups from over the years. There were times where I needed my microphone stand to be balanced properly. And I had to fill like a vase with rocks in order to make it happy enough to get the stand balanced out. And there was a time where I had my carry-on bag as the desk, but I needed some space and a place to put my microphone. So I had to extend the, you know, the arm you would normally pull the handle of the carry-on and get the microphone set up on the handle so that I could do that. There were all sorts of different creative things we've had to do over the years. And hopefully we'll

send in some of those pictures so Carrie can include those. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week

or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag, you can send that send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Hey guys, Aaron Miller here from Armchair Explorer, and I just wanted to let you know that our new series is out now. We've got kiteski across Antarctica, Aboriginal storytellers, and the craziest whitewater race in the world. We're going on a bucket list hike across Italy. We're going to the fjords of Norway in search of the Northern Lights and lots, lots more.

Our goal is to take you on the trip of a lifetime every single week. You can find Armchair Explorer on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now and at voyagecape.com. The New York Times named the Fromer's Travel Podcast one of the 13 best for travel. Why did they like it? Well, they said, and I quote, with charisma and candor, Pauline Fromer, discusses the charms and ongoing transformations of places near and far, whether on the islands of Hawaii or on safari in Tanzania. Pretty nice, huh?

We post new podcasts weekly, talking about travel from every angle. I hope you'll tune in.