A little preamble to start us off. I woke up this morning a little after 5 am to do some audio recordings with Jody on the beach in the Outer Hebrides in northern Scotland. We’ve been up here for almost a month now and there’s been a lot of time lately to ponder the scope of the expedition thus far: 50 countries, 50,000 miles, circumnavigation, etc. It all comes to an end in less than 3 months. Which begs the obvious question: “what’s next?” I suppose the best part of that question, and at the same time the most unsettling is the unknown. I’ve never been very good at stillness; I’m not much for contemplation. It’s something I’ve struggled with my entire life. I have to keep moving- have to be accomplishing something. To date I’ve had over 40 different jobs, more than one for every year I’ve been alive. Bartender, wildland firefighter, Outward Bound instructor, commercial fisherman in Alaska… I even had a brief stint after University in a suit and tie working for a small corporation in Boise, Idaho. It was there; at the age of 22 I learned the best lesson of my life. It wasn’t what I wanted to do; that’s a monster I’ve never been able to tackle, but what I didn’t want to do.



I was dead broke, living in a windowless basement of a grungy house with an alcoholic roommate. Without any real plan I’d moved to Idaho thinking a buddy and I would open a pub. To pay the bills I was waiting tables at night and working full time during the day at a small manufacturing facility. After college I’d planned on backpacking and climbing in the Andes for a year in South America. My trip lasted less than two months. I’d found it all way too easy wandering around mostly aimlessly without a care in the world and wanted to come back to the “real world” and see what I was capable of. I wanted more challenge.


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