Sawadie Ka

Greetings from Thailand! You know...I haven't left the country in nearly 5 years so I was extremely overdue for a nice dose of cultural diversity, realizing that the rest of the world does not necessarily operate like we do...as was evident by my first day in Thailand, riding on the back of a motorbike taxi, passing cars in head on traffic. So I've been here for nearly 2 weeks now, we traveled around Bangkok for a few days and then bought a ticket to Krabi (after one crazy ride on a tuk tuk). We then caught a long tail boat to Ton Sai, a beautiful place surrounded by amazing limestone formations, a climbers paradise. A place where you can climb beautiful stalagtites right off the beach and be in the ocean within minutes. It's freakin amazing!

So the first day in Ton Sai, we (Charlie and I) were walking down the road and immediately run into Suzi and Jared from Anchorage. A few days later, I ran into Sam (who I met in Red Rocks this December). Last night, I opened the bungalow door to find Tim and Eric from Anchorage. we've run into 5 more friends from Anchorage last night. AK is representing in Ton Sai....reconfirming how small of a world we live in.

Anywho, I tried to upload a few videos but the cost and quality of internet is ridiculous. So those might have to wait. Here's a few photos from the past few weeks, I'll try to post more as soon as I get to decent internet (assuming that ever happens).

And I'm out

Whew (as I wipe the sweat off my brow)....my bags are packed and I'm ready to depart. I'm extremely happy to have that taken care of. It was a meticulous process of delicately placing (jamming) tons of stuff into two duffel bags and a backpack. Here's a list of what I packed. Which ended up packing down neatly into this:

My next post will likely be from Asia.

My first blog

I'm the man on the mountain, come on up. I'm the plowman in the valley with a face full of mud. Yes, I'm fumbling and I know my car don't start. Yes, I'm stumbling and I know I play a bad guitar.

What a great start to a new year! So I finally rolled back home to Hotlanta last night after 3 months of meandering through the northwest. It was kind of surreal to finally pull into my parents house with the Subaru that has been my home base for the past 3 months. I finally unloaded the rubber totes, folded the curtains one last time and placed them to rest on top of the spare tire. It's time to do something different! Although as I was unpacking my bags last night, I kept having memories from my road trip flashing through my head. What an awesome 3 months...here's the first set's shenanigans.

Anchorage -> Barge -> Seattle -> Portland -> Eugene, Redwoods -> San Fran -> Redwoods -> Tahoe, Salt Lake -> Moab, Denver -> New Orleans -> Anchorage -> Denver -> Vegas (after a few hurdles and one large boulder) -> Denver -> Atlanta -> Denver -> Louisville -> Atlanta. Some serious sandwiches....here's some pictures.

On to the second set...so in 3 days, I've got a one way ticket to Bangkok. The plan is to cruise around SE Asia for the first month and a half; climb and explore through Thailand and Laos. Then in early March, my buddy Charlie and I are going to shoot down to Singapore and pick up our bicycles that we've been tweaking for the past few months. Then we begin pedaling towards Laos, where we will reunite with Spencer and Breckan (who are currently teaching English in Bangkok). Then we will join pedaling forces; stand in a circle and touch our chosen pedals together and out of a whirlwind of smoke, summon Captain Planet...well not exactly that cool but you get the idea, we're going to pedal further. So we've kind of adopted a philosophy of no preconcieved routes or schedules.....well more like a kind of hot spot/push pin tour with no concrete route or schedule getting there. The kind of play it by ear mentailty that is lacking in too many bicycle tours in my opinion. i.e. If we arrive in Tajikistan and beautiful women greet us with palm leaves and peeled grapes, we might just stay for a while (just an example). Anywho, I'm excited about the simple interactions with people, breaking the language barrier with a smile, swimming on pristine beaches, seeing and riding through extremely cool terrain, eating a diversity of international food, riding elephants, getting in shape, laughing, getting to know Charlie, Spenc and Breck, and the list goes on. So that's the idea behind the blog. I'll update this with pictures and stories as the travels unfold. And sorry if my writing sucks...it's the engineer in me.