Workouts Around the World: My Favorite Spots
Most Recent Addition: Nov 30, 2022 | Original Publication Date: February 3, 2019 For as long as I can remember, I have loved athletics. If you ask my dad, he’ll probably say it started between the ages of 3 and 5. Sometime around those ages I developed a love for watching football, not typical for toddlers. Apparently, I was able to sit still, watch and understand the complicated game, and even comment on the plays. I used to live for Monday Night Football and would often fall asleep on the living room floor as the games ended late on my […]
Seizing the Eye of the Storm
Vietnam: May 11, 2021 – June 26, 2021 | Hoi An, Da Nang USA: June 27, 2021 – July 28, 2021 | California, Arizona, Chicago Mexico: July 28, 2021 – Sept 12, 2021 | Merida Spain: Sept 13, 2021 – Dec 11, 2021| Valencia, Xátiva, Sevilla Mexico: Dec 12, 2021 – Jan 23, 2022 | Guadalajara Jan 23, 2022 @ 12:54 pm CST: I just received a text message that brought a tear to my eye. Not a tear of sorrow but a tear of pure joy and appreciation. A message that seemed to bring together a bunch of emotions bubbling up in me in […]
Silent Hypocrite – The Rubik’s Cube of Life
“Take a look at my body, look at my hands. There’s so much here that I don’t understand…Contempt loves the silence; it thrives in the dark with fine winding tendrils that strangle the heart. They say that promises sweeten the blow but I don’t need them. No, I don’t need them.” – Natalie Merchant | My Skin There’s a moment that I remember like it was yesterday and yet it happened nearly 23 years ago. It was a moment that would serve as a catalyst in one aspect of my life, while also eventually igniting a series of moments I […]
Escaping to Reflections in the Rice Fields
Vietnam: Sept 18, 2020 – May 11, 2021 | Da Nang, Saigon, & Hoi An May 11, 2021 @ 3pm – Hoi An, VN: My body has been tied in knots for about the last 10 days. It’s culminating in this moment – one that I never expected but slightly envisioned. We’re feverishly flipping through our phones and painstakingly penning every place we visited over the last 14 days. This is the reality of life and travel during the COVID era in a South East Asian country. Just three days ago I had no idea I would even be in […]
Good Mourning
Da Nang, Vietnam: May 1 – Sept 8, 2020 | Lock down II: July 28 – Sept 5, 2020 (including trips to Hue and Hoi An) Waves run aground in their never-ending dance with the sandy soil. To the naked eye (outside of changing tides), the shore generally appears absent of turmoil. Yet, it’s nothing but an illusion, as it’s always in constant change. From second to second, it’s never the same. The smattering of feet, the wind, the waves, and curious hands, all make their mark to alter the perceived balance of the innumerable pebbles of sand. Such is […]
The Whispers Before the World Screamed
North America: June 12, 2019 – July 28, 2019 | Montreal, Chicago, and California South East Asia: July 30, 2019 – May 1, 2020 | Taipei, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand Lisbon, Portugal – June 10, 2019: Two glasses of beer – one dark and one amber. The glasses are adorned with a gold-colored imprint that reads 1927 but the scene is 92 years later. In the background, a white sailboat slowly glides across the calm foot of the Tagus River, below clear blue skies and set before the silhouette of the dry foothills on the Setubal peninsula just south of […]
Europe 2019: Six Stops, a Second Grader, and a Selfie
Europe: May 9 – June 12, 2019 | Including trips to Italy, Croatia, Germany, Montenegro, Spain, and Portugal May 9, 2019 @ 11AM: It’s almost mid-May but yet it feels more like early March. It’s gray, chilly, and damp, very much unlike this same day six years ago. That day, I was wearing layers but it wasn’t due to the weather – well at least not the weather here. That day, we sat in this same spot, on these same steps, looking out towards the city of Rome. We had arrived to the Eternal City 10 hours earlier, yet our […]
Spain – Season 4: Beauty Beneath the Ashes
Valencia, Spain: March 10 – June 10, 2019 | Including trips to Murcia, Xàtiva, and Sevilla “…See the slow-receding faces dissolve to black, no traces.” – Natalie Merchant, “Giving Up Everything” Three minutes – the final 180 seconds of a 24-hour journey traversing distances that used to take world explorers several months to complete. Now it only takes a day, and in our case, little more than 16 hours spent in aluminum and carbon-fiber tubes flying six miles above the earth and traveling at speeds just under the sound barrier. Three minutes to culminate our third season circling the globe […]
Vietnam – A Letter of Love & Litany to Saigon
Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City (“Saigon”): February 5 – March 9, 2019 It’s been nearly 100 days since we said goodbye. At that time, I needed my space. I needed time to process the last 31 days of what had taken place. I only see you once a year but each time the experience is so jolting that I need to make my peace, learn my lessons, and find ways to love you again. I loved you before I ever met you. I became enraptured by your history, your resolve, your potential, and the words you speak. I studied […]
Noah – A Tapestry of Words
I can’t draw but I paint pictures. I mix words to create colors, weave threads, and give texture. Though I’ve had my struggles in life with the words I speak, it is with words that I weave fabrics of the pictures in my mind. Like the purest forms of art, writing is all about feel. It starts with an idea – a brief spark of electricity in the mind that starts to turn like a wheel. Sometimes that spark ignites and flutters out, other times it hits and builds. Most times, I find that I have to place it in […]