Early days of travel
Travel bug Looking back at this first big year of travel, I remember how alive and excited I was to explore Europe. An interviewer recently asked my what made me think I could paint a mural on the side of a farmhouse, working 30 feet up a wall on scaffolding. It was an excellent question […]
Open Hearted Travel
It was March 2023. After years of perusing Workaway listings and dreaming of spending a month in a foreign country, the time had come to spread my wings and take the leap. I had quit my job in the pump industry and thought I was retiring. It turned out that I would take a new […]
Headed Home
The Polar Steps app showed me that I was away from home 256 days in 2024. Just reading that number caused me to stop and think about my life a little. Was I really traveling that much? I was. I had spent three months in South Africa, 3 weeks on a road trip with friends […]
Full Circle – Closed too soon
My friend Linda died today. We had been friends since our sons were in the same 2nd grade class, thirty years ago. I miss her and my heart is breaking. This is our story. I have been trying to write about other things but every time I sit down to write, I am overwhelmed with […]
Gili Islands, Indonesia
Change of plans After searching flights and hotels and beaches to come up with a great combination of price and experience for the two weeks before I met my son, Brian, in Taiwan, I completely threw in the towel. Between the rainy season in the region, challenging transportation to the beaches in Thailand and the […]
Different Normals
Mae Klong Railway Market The narrow, crowded, market street is divided down the middle by old train tracks in a brick lined roadbed. An 8-inch curb leads up to a sidewalk, maybe 5 feet deep, where vendors have tables and baskets of everything from trinkets to vegetables. A woman sits on the ground, huge knife […]
Time to change continents
It’s been about six weeks since I left on my no-return-ticket trip. Tomorrow, I will take the train to Frankfurt, then fly to Thailand the following day.
Stepping away from geography for a minute, I have taken on a new project.
Hello from Movizar, Spain!
I am staying at a large, unfinished farmhouse for my first workaway stay in Spain. First was supposed to be only but it turned out that things weren’t exactly as advertised. Nothing bad here, no gross kitchen or weird personal dramas. There just doesn’t happen to be any work for me, other than a few […]
National Parks Road Trip
Of the 63 National Parks in the US, I have only visited 15 of them. On my fuzzy list of things to do after retiring, visiting more of them seemed obvious. How hard could it be, really? They are all within driving distance, right?
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The bravery of caring
Lyn Chalmers started Locky’s Legacy wildlife shelter 16 years ago. It is named after a little Brushtail possum who passed away overnight unexpectedly in his sleep. Locky’s Legacy is located approximately 10km north of Pakenham, Australia and covers approximately 5.9 hectares of hilly, native bushland with a dam and a creek running through the end of […]