travel

Remote Year Darién - Is This a Conclusion?

Many of my fellow remotes have already written something about their experiences during the year and come to some conclusion about the meaning of it all. The honest truth for me though is that I don’t know what it means to me yet. My experience was very different from most of the people in our group, and yet I can’t help but see that some of the things I’m slowly coming to conclude align pretty strongly with others.

RY Darién Update - New Years in Bogota

Happy New Years! First of all, welcome to 2017. 2016 was an interesting year for me in many ways and a really positive experience, I hope the same can be said for all of my readers. I’m writing this from my apartment in Bogota, Colombia as I begin Month #8 of Remote Year - Darién. When I think about last year and what sort of theme it represented in my life, I can only categorize it with the term “Discovery”.

RY Darién Update - September Interlude: A Love Poem for Pastéis de Nata

Where Have I Been? It’s been awhile since I’ve last written anything here and I apologize for that. I’ve had a few people ask me when I was going to post something again. The truth is, I’ve been spending a lot of time working. When I haven’t been working I’ve been reading and sometimes thinking, although reading quite a bit more than thinking. I’ve thought a lot about the experiences I’ve been having on my journey and what it means to me as a person, what it means to us as a group.

RY Darién - Belgrade Day 16

Hello all! I’d greet you in Serbian, but the fact is I haven’t really learned any in my journey yet. The people in Belgrade speak English very well and start learning English in the equivalent of kindergarten, so it’s not really an issue here. This is going to be a short introduction for a rather long post and then I’m going to get right into it. I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks writing with pen and paper or sometimes with my phone or laptop whenever the mood strikes me.

RY Darién - Prague Day 32

Dobrý den once again readers. When I set out on this journey I originally intended to write at least one blog post a week. It seems its more difficult to keep with that schedule than I thought it was going to be. For those of you waiting for my next update, I apologize for the delay. Right now my schedule as I travel is pretty much filled with work during the week and I use the evenings in the weekend to write.

RY Darién - Prague Day 14

Dobrý den once again readers. This post is going to be a bit different from my last. I’ve had a lot of different things go through my mind in the last 10 days. I would say that in general for everyone in my Remote Year group that this first month is a period of discovery. We’re learning more about who we are, what our tolerances are, and what we really care about in life.

RY Darién - Prague Day 4

Dobrý den readers. It’s been a whirlwind the past 4 days, but also very cool. I’ve met and forgotten the names of so many people over the last 4 days. If you’re reading this and you’re one of the people I’ve met, I am apologizing heavily in advance for my bad memory for names. I’m sure I’ll ask your name many times during this first couple of months. I am going to heavily compress my stories, but I have a few surprising or interesting things I wanted to share that I thought were worth telling, and a handful of pictures.

Trip Preparation Update - The Day Before My Flight

Super short update. Tomorrow is the big day I fly out. Between flight time, layovers, and time zone changes I will be traveling for 26 hours straight. Leaving 8AM from San Antonio, Texas, USA to arrive in Prague, Czech Republic at 10:30AM (or thereabouts) local time. 7 hour layover in JFK, 8 hours to time zones, and the rest is in the air. Illness Update I’ve basically fully recovered at this point.

Trip Preparation - 7 Days Left

This is going to be short, just a quick update on how things are going. Illness Update The medication I am taking has caused some bad side effects. I’ll spare the details, but I think I may have it under control. I am following up on Monday with the ENT specialist to check everything out, and then I am going to get my Hepatitis B booster this week assuming I am safe to do so.

Trip Preparation Update - 10 Days Left Packing List and Todo List

So, it’s almost time to depart. Just 10 days left in the US, and I’ll be on way for my trip and off to meet 74 strangers (hopefully soon to be some friends) to gallivant around Europe and South America. It’s a bit daunting at this point and definitely feels real. Honestly, I don’t feel like I have enough time left to do all the things I need to do so my anxiety is in overdrive.

Trip Report - New York City

This will be pretty brief, but as many of you know I was in New York City last week on business all week. It was all around a blast. Just wanted to share a few brief photos from my week. Sorry about the quality, I took these with my phone rather than bringing my real camera along. Long story short while this was my 8th time in New York City, it was my first time visiting Brooklyn and it was my first time getting a chance to check out some of the city.

Setting up OpenVPN on CentOS 7 using DigitalOcean

Introduction Why Bother? As should be abundantly clear from my prior writings I am about to leave on a trip for a year. During that time I’ll likely be making use of numerous public Wi-Fi access points, not to mention whatever dodgy cellular providers are available in each location I travel to. As part of my overall stance on privacy, its essential I take steps to secure my communication while traveling, the primary of which is using a VPN for basically everything on both my laptop and my phone.

Trip Preparation Update - Insect Precautions

Howdy all. This will be a mixed post today. The first part will cover a quick update to all the things I previously had in flight preparing for my trip, and the second part will be a summary of the intensive research I’ve done on insect and mosquito repellents and other precautions. Several folks on the RY Facebook groups have been asking questions about what to do for mosquitos while in South America, and I have also fielded some direct questions from folks about the Permethrin-embedded clothing that I bought.

Michigan Trip Report

I apologize for how belated this trip report is. Several people have been clamoring for a more complete write-up of the trip than I gave on Facebook. We’ll start with the beer and end with some interesting photos and a story about one forlorn Camaro and a fragmented wild turkey. Beer During the course of my trip, myself and my buddy Jon Kelley managed to hit several breweries and get t-shirts from the tourism folks in Grand Rapids, which apparently styles itself as “Beer City”.

Trip Preparation Update - Deux

I apologize I haven’t posted the later parts of my Macbook setup instructions yet. I ran into the chicken-and-egg problem of wanting to use my new Macbook to write my posts. I am happy to report that I am now writing this post on my new Macbook and it’s to a point where I can start writing the rest of the article. I will do that later on. First though, a quick update regarding trip preparations.

Trip Preparation Update

Itinerary Update First, before I get into the rest of what I’ve got sorted out this week for my trip, the itinerary has changed for Darién. The Remote Year staff reached out to everyone who has been accepted to Darién to notify us of the change earlier this week, citing safety concerns about Turkey and Bolivia. The new itinerary is below: Prague, Czech Republic Belgrade, Serbia London, UK Lisbon, Portugal Rabat, Morocco Valencia, Spain Mexico City, Mexico Bogotá, Colombia Medellin, Colombia Lima, Peru Córdoba, Argentina Buenos Aires, Argentina Preparing to Travel When I left you last week I was still figuring out insurance, waiting on my US Passport to be sent to me from renewal, and considering my options for some other essential items for travel.

I have been accepted to Remote Year

I’m in! I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been accepted to join Remote Year as part of the Darién cohort starting on June 1st, 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic, and returning to the US in June of 2017. I’ve been looking forward to doing international travel and participating in the digital nomad lifestyle for many years, and since I now work remotely its presented the opportunity to make that dream a reality.

Five Colorado Photo Faves

In October 2014 I moved from Texas to Longmont, CO in order to experience the amazing beer culture in Colorado. While there, I fell in love with the mountains and natural beauty of the state and rekindled my interest in photography. These are just five of my favorite photos I took while in Colorado. I hope you enjoy. 1. Reflections of a Mountain Morning This photo was taken in Longmont, CO near at Golden Ponds Park and Nature Area around 10AM one weekend morning.