Travel Blogger Spotlight: Keith Savage 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me

We’re back again with your favorite feature, “25 Things You Dont Know About” your favorite travel bloggers, modeled after US Weekly’s famous section where celebs dish about random facts in their lives. So that’s what we do here, we help you get to know your favorite travel bloggers out there. This week I’m featuring Keith Savage. Keith is a freelance travel writer and creator of Traveling Savage, a site dedicated to exploring Scotland. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he enjoys the frequent dram in between trips to Scotland and is in the process of writing his first novel. Now this, you may have already known, but here are 25 fun facts that you probably don’t!

1. I quit a good job to travel, and I didn’t have to get divorced or sell the house to do it.

2. I’m a nerd and proud of it (See nerd card acquisition date 2001/2002: I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in the theater 11 times).

3. Single malt Scotch whisky is a passion of mine that I engage in with academic zeal.

4. Scotland is something of a Mecca for me, and the focus of Traveling Savage.

5. I studied creative writing with an emphasis on poetry and psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

6. I was born, raised, and have lived my whole life in Wisconsin.

7. My mercurial disposition and rejection of half-measures means I’m constantly diving headlong into new interests, for better or for worse.

8. My coworkers are three cats: Pip, Fingal, and Maddie.

9. I have visited approximately 40 distilleries in Scotland – still so many to see!

10. At various points in my life I have written poetry, designed games, played ice hockey, and studied Krav Maga.

11. I find the idea of a bucket list to be misguided.

12. I’m in the process of a writing an historical fiction/fantasy novel.

13. I spend hours before each trip crafting a playlist that will set the mood of my travels.

14. While traveling, 99 times out of 100 I’ll spend my money on drinks and food rather than on souvenirs.

15. I am troubled by the carbon footprint my lifestyle, and the lifestyle I espouse, has on the earth.

16. I believe it’s important to understand one’s quest; I’m still discovering mine.

17. I would be happy to engage in countless hours of intellectual discussion about Radiohead’s music.

18. I’m a seasonal eater, so each summer for the past two years I ate an 80% raw/vegan diet based around green smoothies. I’ll probably do it again this year.

19. I dislike road trips in the USA but I love driving around Scotland.

20. I almost died in a sledding accident when I was 13; the question of whether or not I have brain damage is not to be broached.

21. Most of the traveling I’ve done for Traveling Savage has been solo travel, a style I’m not particularly fond of.

22. Ancient standing stones are perhaps the most wondrous things in the world to me.

23. I am of Scottish, Italian, and German descent.

24. I have visited Scotland on eight separate occasions in the last 10 years.

25. On every visit to Edinburgh, I have to eat Karahi Murgh at Kebab Mahal just off Nicholson Street.

Be sure to keep up with Keith on Twitter too! He’s great fun! I mean, how could he not be? He’s the Scotch king!