For all the positive habits homeschooling introduced into my life, one that I find myself struggling with in adulthood is a crippling inability to turn down playing outside in unseasonably nice weather – especially in fall, when you know any glowing warmth of sunshine could be the last of its kind for the season. So Warsaw’s fairly average conditions last week were a boon in my focusing on work while there. A cloudy and windy Monday-Thursday I spent meeting with the engineering team for Container Engine – the Cloud product I design for – and was largely either in my hotel or at the office. Despite the rocky start of waking up horrifically jetlagged at 2:30AM on Monday, overall the time was fiercely productive.
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Shi Shi Beach Backpacking / Labor Day Weekend
So you know the United States, right? Shi Shi beach is the essentially where you end up if you go as far up and to the left in the US as possible. Well, OK: technically the official NW-most corner is a few miles north of there – Cape Flattery – but since we visited that too I’m lumping them together and counting it.
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Cross-Country Road Trip
“Breathtaking” gets thrown around a lot, and for many experiences which do not, in fact, literally take one’s breath away. It’s the first word that comes to mind to describe my driving 4000 miles from Saratoga Springs, NY to Seattle Washington over a span of 12 days with my friend Rachel, but it’s not quite the right one... For one, with the exception of the several seconds immediately after hooking a cutthroat trout in Glacier National Park, my breath remained unmistakably with me. For another, it didn’t so much get “taken away” as it did altered. Smoothed, like freshly washed sheets spread out on a mattress.
Read MoreIceland
Unfastening my seatbelt, I contorted myself around and pushed back groceries and sleeping bags to set up a high-efficiency mobile sandwich-making station while my good friend Josh manned the helm of our Renault Kangoo 5-speed diesel. A late shuttle pickup meant we were a few hours behind schedule, but now out on the open road the “kilometers” slid past and carried us easily into our six-day road trip around South Iceland.
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España
As a rule, I don’t listen to in-flight announcements. Nothing useful is ever communicated, and ignoring them makes me feel rebelliously superior to all the people frantically scrambling to remove their headphones so they can hear what the wind speed is at that particular location.
But this flight, August 24th American Airlines 741 from PHL to Madrid, something was announced that changed the course of my life...forever.
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New Zealand
“Aotearoa” is the Maori name for New Zealand and means “Land of the long white cloud.” Flying toward Christchurch to begin my two weeks in the country, some of that emblematic veil parted enough for me to see through to the jutting Southern Alps beneath. We were descending now, so I really needed to get started on my customs declaration form and begin internally debating with myself and justifying my answers (“Well, what is a true wilderness area anyway? Surely I haven’t been in any of those...”), but I was transfixed: the most superlative-worthy scenery I’d ever had the fortune of appreciating was there before my eyes – I’d made it!
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Wilsons Prom by Motorcycle
With nothing scheduled for the day and my friend Bec’s Ducati at my disposal, this was one of those deliciously serendipitous times when the elements for an outstanding adventure seem to materialize out of thin air. Sunday night I got home and thought about where I could go as a destination. After a brief moment of consideration it came to me: Wilsons Prom!
Read MoreTwo-Wheeled Sunday Funday
Beach Road wiggles its way up the coastline southeast of Melbourne and efficiently connects Beaumaris to the CBD. With a commitment of face-painting for a kids’ event from 1-4PM to start architecting my day around, I’d tentatively committed to brunch in the northwest suburb of Moonee Ponds, and decided this was the day to put the single-speed through her paces and pedal my way up the coastline to Melbourne.
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Southern Hemisphere Springtime
I’m stretched out in the brilliant mid-morning sun currently flooding my friend’s backyard. Can’t believed I missed the first day of my first ever Southern Hemisphere Spring (Wednesday), but I’m making up for lost celebration now. My first few days in Melbourne didn’t feel very Spring-like, and I couldn’t put my finger quite on why. I realized after some time that for one thing, nearly all native Australian vegetation is evergreen, so there’s not the dramatic starkness of an Upstate NY winter. And secondly, because Spring for me necessarily means melting snow: a liquefying cloak of the landscape drizzling through muddy courses to ice-jammed rivers. Here there’s rain, but not the Vernal Equinox transformation from gingerbread-house frosting to brown squishy terra.
Read MoreLand Ho! Australia at Last
Why hello again, Melbourne.
It’s a Friday morning, and in some circadian shenanigans my body decided six AM was an appropriate weekend hour to get up. After a few futile minutes of staring at the ceiling trying to let sleep again take me, I begrudgingly decided to maximize this early start to the day. Oolong with Tasmanian honey in hand, I step out into the cool morning air and walk the five minutes from where I’m staying to the Seaview ‘shops.’
24 Hours in Hawaii
A long enough Hawaii stopover to get in a bit of tropical adventuring before buckling up and scooting the last 16 hours of travel time toward Melbourne? Sign me up! I wasn’t able to get out exploring outside of Waikiki as I’d [over-ambitiously] hoped, but I’d still rate the experience as a successful attempt to maximize my short stint on Hawaii’s most populous island.
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