Where were you ten years ago? Can you imagine ten year ago you dropped into your current life? It's an interesting exercise that I encourage you to spend some time thinking about. What Alice Forgot is a look at someone else going through this exercise, out of necessity, and is a quick and fun read. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is a fun easy read. Alice falls and hits her…
After spending my first day in Norway sleeping, I roll out of bed and down the hill to the National Day parade. Norwegians are dressed up in their finest traditional clothes or their best suits, everyone is waving a flag, and the sound of a drum corps echos throughout the city. Everyone is out. I hear a Swede complain that Norway is just so much more crowded than where she lives.…
I was disappointed by The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey. I wanted to like it. I actually enjoyed the story and I still recommend reading it. Casey is a great writer who makes her audience feel involved with her story. However, I had an uneasy feeling about her involvement in this project from the beginning of the book and the epilogue only confirmed my fears, that her presence on the islands…
What the hell am I doing? I'm sitting on the floor of the Bergen airport at 1am trying to reattach my rear derailleur. I've done this dozens of times before but my sleep and food deprived brain can't make sense of the problem. I google "how to install a rear derailleur" and "what should a rear derailleur look like" and watch several videos before my free wifi disconnects. Eventually I get…
A piece of gear so omnipresent that I didn't even list it in the first several iterations of my pack list because it'd be akin to writing out wallet or water. Buff keeping the sun off my neck and sand out of my face in Joshua Tree The classic style Buff is arguably the most versatile piece of gear that I own. I generally wear it around my neck to keep…
I will start this off by confessing that I'm not much of a music fan. I enjoy going to concerts every once in a while but I rarely listen to music on my own and when I do it's generally just whatever happens to be on the radio. Due to my ambivalence about music I refused to pay for a music streaming service. When I found an album I enjoyed I…
This is the story of a man who rides his bike across the country and you won't remember the riding. I think that's generally how bike touring is: you remember what happens between pedal strokes. The Memory of Running is the story of Smithson (Smithy) Ide of East Providence, RI. He has spent the last two decades drunk, fat, and alone. His mentally ill sister disappeared decades earlier and his parents…
Susan Casey's The Wave is a story that will make you think about how changes in the world's oceans have far reaching effects while leaving you amazed and terrified. Casey approaches the story of giant waves from the perspectives of cutting edge surfers, the shipping industry, and scientists, successfully telling the global story of how increasingly large and frequent giant waves affect human civilization, as well as what it is like…
I've become a bit of an expert at reading travels blogs over the last few years and I find that there are a few levels of detail and most blogs focus on one of these levels. Some are practically turn by turn directions of a location, some are more thematic, and others are in the weeds of their tools. As someone looking for inspiration I am drawn towards the thematic posts,…
When I mention to people that I'm going to ride my bike around Scandinavia this summer the first question they usually ask is if I'm going alone. When I say yes the reactions tend to be split. The first group reacts somewhere along the lines of, "that's awesome and I wish I was that brave" while the second is closer to "aren't you scared that something bad will happen to you."…