This is Peter and I sitting on a mountain outside Dublin overlooking the Sea. We went so far that day as the sun was setting we realized there wasn't time to get back to town the way we came...so we pressed ahead hoping to hit a highway or something. There was no good place to go down...so we just picked a spot, jumped a few fences and chased a flock of sheep. We were passing through a small farm talking about how funny it would be if someone saw two dirty foreigners appear out of the hills laughing hysterically when, of course, we came up on a rusted trailer. The family was in the backyard sitting around an old oil drum with a fire in it, trying to keep warm. They looked like they had never really seen people; no teeth, like out of a movie....it was so incredibly absurd I did what anyone would've....I acted like it was completely normal for two muddy strangers to be coming down out of mountains with no servicable road into someone's fenced off backyard on a gray misty afternoon. I opened the gate for Peter, showing them that I was still a gentleman, nodded my head smiling, passed within 2 feet of them, and out the other gate through their frontyard onto the highway. They never said a word....I don't think they knew how to talk. |
Wadi Rum is really small. I met the whole "town" like the first day. I was warned tourism was a government affair by people dressed in uniforms who may have wanted money and then there was a literal flock of dusty arabs in djellabas telling me that it wasn't true and if I just came with them (and not the 400 other people telling me the same thing) you could get a better desert trek for less money. It was like swatting at flies on a hot summer day. Everytime the police came they scattered, only to come back...like flies. Before I knew it I was swept up in the madness, conscripting tourists to go out into the valley on my word that it was legitimate, even though it probably wasn't and they just heard what they wanted to anyway. All day we spent out there in the desert, mountains melted by heat, baked red, and purple, like watercolors in the rain shimmering under an oversized white sun, bouncing along in a 70's vintage Toyota Landcruiser, passing wild camels and Beduin tribes. At sunset, after a meal, our guide left us in a small cave. Everyone looked to me for assurance that they wouldn't all die out in the desert. They wanted me to tell them that the luggage they had left back in Wadi Rum would be safe. Luckily the guide came back the next morning, and everything was cool, at least as far as that was concerned. I had to leave the next day cause the beduins all figured out I was making them money so they wouldn't leave me alone. I guess there is such a thing as being too popular. But it was really pretty. |
This is Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea in Israel, my room, and that's my roommate Timo Petanen. If you ever get a chance to live on kibbutz...do. Its really too much fun; the stress there being on the too part. I found the Israelis to be great people and I miss them sometimes. |
I don't ski as much as I used to but it sure is fun on hot summer days. I've jumped out of a plane several times, but I tell you, wakeboarding is the closest thing I've ever felt to flying. It was my job; I taught about 12 kids a day. I think I heard every excuse imaginable for not being able to ski. They came up with some shit I couldn't even believe, and I had to laugh.....kids are great at making up lies, but terrible at making them believable. Nearly all of them ended up skiing; you just have to know how to push people's buttons. |
This isn't the same lake but it is at the same camp I lived while teaching water skiing. Everything was so pretty and all the kids were always running around laughing and stuff. Easy place to forget about things that bother you. |
I'm pretty sure this was me in Cambodia. It was definitely after Nepal, because I had a beard then and I wasn't nearly as tan. I also think I recognize the shirt I'm wearing. I tried to wash it in Thailand and it fell apart so it couldn't have been there. It was some kind of loose knit rayon. I only paid 2 bucks for it anyway. |
This is Kibbutz Ein Gedi. The natural spring that is up in those mountains in the background is a place in the Bible. If I would've turned the camara in the opposite direction, it would be a picture of Jordan and the Dead Sea. |
This is Pokhra in Nepal. Its at the end of the Annapurna Circuit. I was so tired after trekking through the mountains it was nice to chill at the lake for a while. I met two really nice guys; one from England and the other from Germany. You can't really see them but the people in the bottom right hand corner of the picture were washing their clothes. |
This picutre isn't as important as the girl who took it. Sometimes you just meet someone and you know they're one of a kind. This girl.....wow....I really can't even describe it....she had flavor. She could be quite and shy one second; brash and offensive the next. She would make a scene in a public place just because things had gone too smoothly that day. She lived like she was the star of a movie drama. |
While living in Taiwan I took some Kung Fu classes. This is my apartment and the other guy is Peter. The same one from the first picture on the page outside of Dublin. We turned the living room into our room and that veil you see is our "door". We rented out the rest of the house to chinese college students. I think they just wanted help with their English, but we didn't care. They were very private and easy to live with in alot of ways. We got the red fabric cut special from a local store, went into the mountains, hauled back a bunch of bamboo on our scooter (we looked ridiculous carrying all that bamboo riding double) and lashed it together with burlap rope we found in the trash. It was funny. The cord you see sticking out from under the drape is from my computer. That thing kept me sane when it started to rain......and didn't stop for about six months. I still look half way respectable in this picture at least. I eventually lost a bunch of weight and got really pale. We quit the Kung Fu. It was gay. |
You probably recognize Monte Carlo. I included it because its a nice picture. I dropped my camara shortly after this was taken, and, of course, it broke. I wasn't able to buy a new one till I met an old friend in Athens that let me borrow some money. |
Thailand has the best beaches in the world. This picture was actually taken near where they filmed the movie The Beach, about two weeks after the film crews had left. There were a bunch of stories running around about the shit Leonardo DiCaprio did while he was there. I also met a dive instructor who'd gone to school with Alex Garland (the dude who wrote The Beach)....said he didn't know anything about travelling, that he'd never really left England except for one Spring Break trip to Thailand. Don't know if that is true or not. The same dive instructor told me he'd been living in South East Asia for the past 6 years on royalties he got from pictures he took in the Amazon rain forest when he was 16. Sounds possible I guess..? |
This is Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan. The picture really turned out well. |
This is some of the group I met while doing the Annapurna Circuit. We spent almost a month together on and off. This is the highest point in the Trek and as far as I know its also the highest point on the planet passable by foot (without climbing gear). Its higher than the peak of the Matterhorn in Europe and I must admit the altitude really affected me. There were two people we started with that weren't able to finish because of altitude sickness. I met a dude in the Katmandhu airport that had to be helicoptered out cause of fluid in his lungs or pneumonia or something. It was rough. |
This is my sister and I at Christmas...two years ago I think (much more than that now, but I'm not changing the page). She studies interior design and should graduate soon if she can pass math. |
In my opinion Salamanca has the most beautiful plaza in Spain. I am a little partial as I lived there during one of the best times of my life, but that doesn't mean it isn't the prettiest. It makes it better when you have this mental map of everything that surrounds the plaza in your head....with bars as the major landmarks...of course. |
These are some of my friends from school in Salamanca. They were all 18, 19 and 20. I was 25, but by the end of my stay in Spain I thought I was 16 again. This was taken in San Sebastian in the north were it rains alot. It rained later that day. |
This picture has two parts. This is me drinking on the roof of a "hotel" in Morocco with some people I met, chilling with my own djellaba I'd bought in Marakkech a few days before. That dude was a philosophy major at Oxford (I think). We had some great conversation and I still talk to him occasionally. The girl went to school with me in Salamanca and I haven't spoken to her in a while. The next picture is what we were looking out at as we drank wine and snacked on cheese and bread. |
Lets be honest. It doesn't get any better than this. That was a great night among many of the great nights I had while going here and there. I miss travelling, the way it made me feel, and the amazing, unique people I always seemed to meet. |
Yep, that's really me. This is at the bottom of Chile on Glacier Gray two day's hike from just about anywhere. I don't usually do stuff like that, but I couldn't resist the idea of climbing on a glacier. I'm from South Carolina. When someone says "skiing", I automatically think water skiing, not snow. Everyone else was bundled up in their weatherproof Columbia jakcets and all I had was what you see me wearing. It was cold. Imagine standing on a big ice cube all day long and you'll have a decent idea. |