Life of a Lonely Planet author: Leif Pettersen

It’s easy to idolize the life of a Lonely Planet writer. Or any travel writer for that matter. The life seems a little less glamorous after a peek behind the scenes. Leif Pettersen lets us take a peek inside his world as a Lonely Planet writer in his blog, Killing Batteries.

In 2003, Leif left his job at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis in order to take life on the road and enter the travel writing business. He has chronicled various parts of Italy (including Tuscany and Umbria), Romania, and Moldova for Lonely Planet so far.

His blog offers insight into the world of travel writing, including Travel Writer Tip 152 – “How to eat dinner alone in a restaurant, while sitting front-and-center to an audience of 20 people standing in the rain waiting for tables and not look like a total jackhole”.

During his time in Tuscany this Spring, he kept a tally of a few things he noted about his life on the road, including:

• Number of days on the road: 31
• Number of rest days in that time: 1.5
• Drove about 2,900 kilometers (about 1,800 miles)
• Number of times I did laundry in 30 days: One
• Number of towns visited: 54, (not counting all the little resort-town, bumps in the road I visited on Elba), plus a variety of monasteries, parks, argiturismi and posh hotels/resorts in the middle of nowhere
• Number of bed bug bites: 12
• Number of free WiFi clouds that I found: one, I got single bar of signal to someone’s unsecured WiFi hub when I sat in the doorway to my bathroom, in Albergo Cannon d’Oro in Siena
• Number of people who told me that I had their dream job: 14
• Number of people that reconsidered after spending a day with me: two
• Number of times that I didn’t eat dinner alone: three

Though the lifestyle is no doubt hectic, it has its share of rewards. Traveling the world, meeting interesting people, experiencing the local culture, and an occasional day of luxury:

“As I write this, I am in a white cotton robe, the salts from my hydro-massage bath still tingling my pores, laid out on an adventurously orange couch in a junior suite in the only five star hotel in Palma de Mallorca’s city center. I’m greedily consuming the entirety of the complimentary bottle of champagne that was chilling when I arrived.”

This month, Leif will also be blogging for Gadling about his current travels through Romania. No mention of a hydro-massage bath so far…