Fraser Island, and the Power of People
Just off the coast of Australia is the world’s largest sand island. Basically, a massive sand bar covered with plants, animals and freshwater lakes. It is staggeringly gorgeous. For me, though, I’ll...
View Article1770, Lady Musgrave, and the Joys of Unintended Consequences
I hate being bored. There is no greater fear in my life than being bored. I wasted years of my life on work and the outskirts of absolute boredom, and I refuse to waste any more time. So with a passion...
View ArticleAustralia: Ending on High Note
I fled 1770, days late and angry, a little after 1 in the morning. The moonless sky rich with stars as if beckoning for better things beyond. It would be almost 20 hours before I’d stop. Twenty hours,...
View ArticleLondon I Love
London grew in fits and starts, bound for a millennia by the slow crawl of humanity. Population density was requisite for a city 300 years ago. As roads began overflowing with humans, horses, sedan...
View ArticleSweden in Summer…
…is colder than LA in the winter. Ok, not really, but it’s close. Technically, this was my third trip to Sweden. I’d spent an afternoon in Malmo on a work trip to Copenhagen, and then the trip that...
View ArticleFesta Brasileira
The party explodes from the darkness like a joyous firework filled with food and music. Dark dirt roads had stretched for miles. Suddenly, this. Hats and dresses. Lights and colors. Twirling and...
View ArticleBrasil Aventura
The first stop was the hospital. On a ninety minute layover in Panama, I found some free WiFi, and got this message: “I’m hospitalized.” My friend Thaynara, who I met last year in London, traveled with...
View ArticleBordeaux and Toulouse
So close, yet so far. Bordeaux is one of those French names that everyone has heard. Maybe not everyone could find it on a map, but it’s undeniably, and so recognizably, French. This leg of Around the...
View ArticleHermosa España!
Wow. I had no expectations, and little knowledge, of Spain before I arrived. My language classes in school were French, and my Western Europe adventures to this point had been largely Anglo-French....
View ArticleOn Expectations of Happiness
When you’re travelling, no one wants to hear you’re depressed. When I started this grand adventure, just shy of two years ago, I was in a pretty weird place. Weird, and not great. I’ve written before...
View ArticleUnintended Interstitial and the Torment of Lost Time
Everything is fragile. Including me, it seems. I heard both of the bones in my lower leg break. I didn’t know that at the time, of course. Two pops not much louder than the cracking of a joint. It...
View ArticleThe Beauty and Wonder of Japan: Part 1
Magnificent. It had been a rough few months. After getting sidelined by a broken leg, I spent nearly 3 months laid out at home. It was challenging. Then, in late April, I got the all clear from the...
View ArticleThe Beauty and Wonder of Japan: Part 2
On which I eat all the ramen. I was several weeks into my Japan adventure, and it hadn’t been going great. Sure, the people were lovely, the country was great, and the food was awesome. So what was the...
View Article“You’re lucky to be alive.”
So said my surgeon, more than once. In all of medical history, fewer than 180 cases have been reported. Just 30 in the last 60 years. Before 1950, it was upwards of 87% fatal. Thanks to modern...
View ArticleLife and Death and Luck
It’s weird. It’s weird having been so close to death. I feel like a fraud talking about it. I don’t really feel like I was close to death at all. I can look at the numbers. I can look at the rarity...
View ArticleVienna Vienna
Little City, Big Heart There is something about this city. It’s probably my most visited place after London and Tokyo. And yet, I’ve written nothing about it. A strange discrepancy for someone who...
View Article50 Country Countdown: Part 1
Adventures, adventures, adventures. I’ve got a birthday coming up. One with a zero at the end. I had started writing a melancholy post about life, the universe, and woe-is-me everything, and I bored...
View Article50 Country Countdown: Part 2
The Adventure Continues… If you read Part 1, you know what’s coming in Part 2, namely, mooooore! But first, a quick word about counting counties. There’s no specific way to do this. My criteria to...
View ArticleTaiwan
#50 Taiwan was my 50th country, and what a wonderful surprise. Well, maybe surprise isn’t exactly the right word. It’s not like I had negative expectations of Taiwan. If anything, I expected it to be...
View ArticleSomewhere round halfway
Well… how did I get here? David Byrne was 28 when he recorded “Once in a Lifetime.” 28 seems like a lifetime ago. I guess it was. A lot has happened in the last 12 years. My friends from then are...
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