This profile should actually be labeled, "Gretchen and Dave Schreiber" as we generally travel and host as a pair.

In any case, Greetings! Although my profile does not reflect it, I have privately both surfed and hosted travelers (friends-of-friends, acquaintances, and etc.) since I was a teenager. I was raised in an open-door home and have worked to keep the tradition since then.

At 18, I was accepted as a Rotary exchange student to India. At 21, I moved to New York City. I completed my undergraduate from Hunter college, moved to MN in 1999. I earned my MN and WI teacher's certification in 2007 and taught for a year before going to work in my husband's business.

My husband, Dave, and I share currently share our house with 3 of the kids, a cat, and what seems like about a million mosquitoes. We had initially been unable to host due to a (now deceased) mentally unbalanced pet and family health issues, but have been able to do so more often recently. You are always welcome to ask and I will do my best to respond!

Dave is a long-time employee at Mactech, Inc. a small Machine shop/field Machining business here in Red Wing. He, too grew up in South Dakota. He studied accounting in college, spent a decade in Iowa working for various firms there before joining Mactech and moving to MN in 1997. We met through friends in 1989, kept in contact over the years, and were married in November of 1999. He brought three beautiful boys to the relationship and we added two of our own not too long after that! He enjoys riding his Moto Guzzis (me: have a license, but am not proficient or confident), playing StarCraft on the PC (me: more Dr. Mario/Yahtzee), dark craft beer (me: Michelob Ultra Light), cooking (he cooks with love, I cook to transport calories to bodies...) and listening to music of all kinds (on that, we are in agreement), especially live bands.

We both love traveling, meeting new people and socializing, although until recently, we have not had much opportunity to do much! Now that the "littlest" kids are out of high school, Dave and I are beginning to reclaim the independence and spontaneity we haven't seen since the late 90's!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Dave and I have a friend in South Dakota who is an avid Couch Surfer. She has hosted many travelers as well as having Surfed a fair amount herself. A couple of years ago, we "inherited" a couple of bicycling Couch Surfers from her as one of them had been injured and they needed transportation and a place to stay for awhile. It was a very good experience. I told my folks about my experience, my friend's experience, and the Couch Surfing community and they took to it with gusto! My parents were in a position to host travelers and so signed up on the website. They have both hosted and Surfed since then. Both Dave and I have been impressed with the positive experiences they have all had and have recently decided that we could all benefit from joining this community, although I am not certain when we will be able to officially host guests

Interests

We love music, in particular live music, and have delighted in introducing our kids to the concert-going experience. I am an avid reader (primarily fiction, although I'll read the back of a cereal box, if nothing else is available) and am rarely without a book or my smartphone e-pub book app. We enjoy traveling, meeting people from the States and all over the world. My husband loves to cook and I love to sample his creations! We all love the great outdoors, even though we don't do much hiking or camping. My husband rides motorcycle a lot and I sometimes ride with him. Lately we have been enjoying sampling the profusion of craft beers being produced.

• cats
• dogs
• fish
• books
• folklore
• concerts
• cooking
• pub crawls
• traveling
• eating out
• socializing
• music
• live music
• outdoor activities
• fishing
• camping
• hockey
• business
• teaching

Music, Movies, and Books

My current favorite album is El Oso, by Soul Coughing. (This changes about every other week or so...) My current favorite band is Chinese Man. Perennial favorites are the classics; Muddy Waters, the Beatles, Led Zepplin, Bowie, the Smiths, the Dead Kennedys, Beastie Boys, Tool, Massive Attack, Chrystal Method, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Yorke & Radiohead, Public Enemy, Tenacious D and so on. I listen to pretty much anything except country, and even then... Dave tends to veer more towards the down house tempo sound, although he is much more likely to have heard new music than I.

My favorite books of all time are Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, The Stand, The Fountainhead, Ender's Game, Outlander, and Morgan's Run. Authors that I can think of off the top of my head are Sharon Shinn, Orson Scott Card, Tom Robbins, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, ee Cummings, Hunter S Thompson, Harlen Coben, and Jeffrey Archer. Like I said, I'll read about anything. Nothing has really blown the doors off recently. My kids are getting old enough that they are starting to read classics that I re-read and get to experience anew!

We don't own many movies. Some of my favorites are Out of Africa, Natural Born Killers, Amelie, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Torch Song Trilogy, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The British Animation Invasion (1991). Dave's include some of the above plus Falling Down, Fight Club, and Portishead's NYC Roseland Concert.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I learned to drive stick-shift in LA.

Teach, Learn, Share

Mitakuye Oyasin means, loosely, "we are all related" in Lakota. It expresses the sentiment that everyone is interconnected in some way and that we all have much to give to and to gain from others.

What I Can Share with Hosts

We can share our experiences, knowledge of places, humor, sense of community, family, and gratitude.

Countries I’ve Visited

Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan

Countries I’ve Lived In

India, United States