A Series of Fortunate Events

The following is my attempt to trace the train of travels that brought me to this week:

It all started in the summer of '99. I went to Austria for 2 weeks and then came home only to turn around and go to Alaska for two weeks. So be it, I was 9 years old, but I still say that it was one of the best summers of my life. 

In the spring of 2010 my two best girl friends, Caroline and Amber, registered to study abroad in Milan and Bath, respectively. I was super excited for them but knew that I would be majorly missing out if I too did not get to study in another country during my undergrad career. Against my parents wishes I registered for the Spring 2011 semester at the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Business Uni) in Vienna, Austria.

In early October 2012 Caroline called me and said we should consider going to The Yacht Week in the British Virgin Islands. Two of her friends who she had met studying in Milan would be on the trip and as TYW veterans, they highly recommended her attendance. Felipe Athia, if you ever see this, we are eternally in your debt.

 A few days later I put $5000 down in hopes that the two of us could find a few other friends who also shared our love of travel, adventure, the sun, the ocean and rum drinks. Believe it or not it was not hard to find people who fit this description. Two short months later the 6 of us were on airplanes en route to Tortola by way of St. Thomas and a few different US connecting cities.

Docked across from our boat The Sea Haas on the first night was a catamaran full of Chilean guys, who were from there on out referred to as Chili boys by Kitty. I spent a lot of time with these guys and have kept in close contact with one named Pepa.

My manager told me I needed to take vacation during September and I was considering multiple destinations. Last week Pepa said that I should come to Chile. I looked up flights and started thinking. I decided I was going to Chile.

I called Caroline on Sunday and told her to come to Chile with me for the week in September. I booked my ticket Monday morning and she booked hers a few hours later.

Long story short, the more you travel, the more you want to travel. The more you travel, the more people you meet and the more opportunities you have to visit other places in the world. If you haven’t felt this internal spark ignite, I suggest booking a trip as soon as possible. If you have traveled and do not feel the over bearing urge to keep moving and keep exploring, well then, God Bless America, I’ll see you when I get home.

Traveler's Digest

I read online blog posts every day at work. Many of them are about how young people should quit their desk job to go out and see the world. This is a highly appealing yet highly romanticized notion.  

There are many ways to see the world. There are hitckhikers, rubbertramps, occasional travelers, avid travelers. There are those that romp around the jungle and there are those who stay at all inclusive resorts. I’ve never hitchhiked and I have never ridden in the first class section of an airplane, but I think some combination of the aforementioned is appropriate throughout ones’ life.

From a young  age my father taught me fiscal responsibility and my mother instilled in me a love for travel. The problem I have with many of these articles I read online is the problem I have with many people my age and America in general. People spend more than they earn. People do not save.

I highly suggest traveling on a budget as you will experience the world in a way that you will miss pent up in the spa of the Ritz anywhere. I've bussed across more of Europe than I would like to recollect, stayed in hostels with bunks of 20 girls in one room,  and some rooms as low as $8 per night. I've also spent time in some pretty extravagant hotels in different places around the world. They are different experiences and both valuable.

What I also suggest is being a productive member of society at a young age, which also enriches your understanding of the world. I siphoned money off of my parents for a solid 22 years (shout out to Lisa and Gregg on that one), but I am out on my own now, for the most part, and enjoy being able to take the trips I want to take on my own dime.

I am currently reading two books; Jimmy Buffet’s A Pirate Looks at Fifty and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. Buffett’s book is the story of the trip he and his family took for his 50^th birthday, while Into the Wild is a biographer’s take on the journey that young Chris McCandless took across the US, a bit into Mexico and back up to the Alaskan wilderness. Both men sought adventure and both found it, but in a different manner and for different reasons.

For one, Jimmy Buffet is worth around $400 million, flew his own planes around and has connections to many people in many countries, note Bob Zimmerman and the Water Pearl. Chris McCandless donated the few thousand dollars he had, ditched his car, burned his small cash a hitchhiked across the country acquiantin himself with others along the way. This is obviously an extrapolation and hyperbole of the point I am trying to make, but Jimmy Buffett came home and is still worth hundreds of millions, and not to be insensitive, but Chris McCandless is dead.

Back to the articles I read online- they do not necessarily inspire me to travel, because I have felt the pull to other places since I first traveled internationally in 1999. These articles cause nothing but resentment for my job. They make me think, “yeah, I should just quit.. get out there and travel and come back one day and figure it out.” This is foolish and I know it. This is why I am going to stop (actually I won’t stop because this is how I fill the gaps in my workday) reading these articles, but I am going to start reading more books.  Maybe they will be books about traveling or maybe they will be books about bondage. Kidding, I already read 50 Shades series and they were lame. The goal is to read offline.

There is also a goal to travel and also a goal to write. Perhaps there should be a goal to also constructively contribute an amalgamation of these goals to the world wide web, but then again I don’t want to become the blogger(s) who made inspired this post in the first place.

A Pirate Looks at 23

I always want to start a blog or write a blog or whatever you do to record your life musings online. I read blogs every day and most of them have a purpose. I have for months searched for a purpose to write a blog. I considered several themes around which I could have written and I have now settled on a somewhat Seinfeld inspired blog.

Seinfeld was a show about nothing and it was wildly successful. I am not aiming or hoping for this blog to become wildly successful, but in the same way that Seinfeld was a show about nothing, this blog too, will be about nothing.

I shouldn’t say this blog will be about nothing, but much like my mind it will likely be much meandering of thoughts, babbling of ideals, and ranting about nonsense, punctuated (hopefully) with some moments of true reflection, soul searching and revelation.

What do I call this blog of mine? Ideally something relevant, something that speaks to my mantra, that speaks of travels and aspiration and adventure. I am sure the title will change over time, but a URL is forever. Please find currently www.myroaringtwentiez.com aptly titled in the year 2013, “A Pirate Looks at 23”.


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December 17th, 2013 amendment
I had a blog a blog before this. I am not sure at the time that I created this why I chose to switch platforms and blogs, but for insight into my slightly younger self; http://deployhikers.blogspot.com/