Welcome back to my long-defunct blog!
For the folks who haven’t been following along with me personally, after I returned from South America at the end of October 2023, I tried to settle down and it didn’t work out. Between 10/2023 and now, I’ve done some traveling, including:
New Orleans (conference + extended stay)
Buffalo (wedding + Niagara Falls)
Manhattan (friends)
Pittsburgh (friends)
Callicoon, NY (solo hiking/working trip)
Shenandoah (long weekend glamping)
Detroit (brother)
Italy: Florence, Mantua, Rimini, Cerignola, Vieste, Lake Como, and the Dolomites, along with several shorter stops and day trips over a 6 week period
First of all, if your first thought is “Wow, that’s a lot of traveling in a year…” then we are very different people.
Secondly, I miss the digital nomad lifestyle a lot more than I miss being a tourist. I miss needing to figure it out day to day—from making a community for myself in a month, to figuring out how to make healthy lunches at home using as much unique local produce as possible, to getting the right medicine from a pharmacy in Spanish. I don’t miss traveling abroad nearly as much as I miss living abroad. I miss doing it solo, too, with no one’s preferences but my own to guide me.
I am a very go-with-the-flow kind of person, and I have a tendency to get complacent because I really can be happy in a whole lot of circumstances. That leads to me letting life pass me by and bending to other people’s wishes a lot of the time. In the moment, I’m genuinely happy to do so, but then I look in hindsight at, say, the past year of my life, and I realize that I haven’t even really been in the driver’s seat.
Nomad life forces me to be active. Nothing happens if I don’t make it happen. I know, because I’ve had periods where I languish in my room and order Rappi (Latin American Doordash) for days at a time abroad. Not a very fulfilling experience, but you face the cause and effect dead-on and realize that you’re the only one who can do anything about it.
Of course, chance encounters and luck lead to some of the most memorable moments of any trip. I’m reminded of the proverbial advice “Rise early, work hard, strike oil.” It’s a whole lot easier to get lucky when you take active steps to put yourself in a position to do so. I’ve never been one to hesitate putting myself out there, and there’s no lifestyle where you’re better rewarded for doing so.
What Next?
On Wednesday, I leave with my brother Matt on the first leg of a roadtrip west to Cody, Wyoming, a small town about one hour east of Yellowstone. The plan is to work by week and hike/camp in Yellowstone and Grand Teton by weekend. We also hope to stop to see some friends and family along the way, notably in Pittsburgh and Detroit.
Matt is also temporarily semi-homeless and works remotely. More importantly, he’s thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, and I’m really excited to take in the natural wonder of the American West with his massive experience to guide us. Perhaps most importantly, Matt is the person with whom, by most counts, I’ve shared the most of my life with (we’re one year apart). Most of that time was fifteen plus years ago, since Matt has spent his adult years in Boston and Socal. We’re both really excited for the chance to make our home city proud with some renewed brotherly love.
Cody has plenty of cool history attractions, among which I’ll highlight the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and a firearm range with a working historic firearm collection, which allows you to shoot things like flintlock rifles and Gatling guns.
But the main attraction will be getting OUT THERE every weekend in nature. Yellowstone in November can drop 11 inches of snow at the drop of a hat and gust at 40 mph pretty readily, which is a feature, not a bug, as far as the two of us are concerned. And we’ve got some training to do for future adventures.
And After That
I plan to be home for the holidays from Thanksgiving to Christmas, then leave for Mexico City to ring in the new year. I’m excited to connect with a good friend from grad school, eat incredible food, visit Teotihuacan, and dance salsa and bachata while I’m there. I’ll stay in Mexico City through the month of January, before heading to Ecuador.
In Ecuador, the highlight of February will be attempting to summit at least one, and hopefully both, of the volcanoes Cotopaxi (19,347ft or 5897m) and Chimborazo (20,549ft or 6263m). Both of my brothers will be joining for this. The volcanoes are much higher than I’ve ever been before—my previous max would be the Mirador de los Andes outside of Arequipa, Peru at 16,000ft or 4910m, and I didn’t even hike there. Once you hit about 18,000 ft, there is 0.5 atm of pressure, which, in layman’s terms, means that there is half the available oxygen at sea level. Chimborazo and Cotopaxi are about as easy and non-technical as a glaciated mountain at such altitude can be, but that doesn’t mean they don’t kill anyone. We’ll have a professional guide and great equipment, and I’m taking my training for this very seriously. Training is one of the main goals of the Cody/Yellowstone leg of the adventure.
Before the climb, I’ll spend some time acclimating in Quito, which I skipped in my last Ecuador trip, and I’d like to spend some time in Riobamba before I move on to my next destination, Cuenca, where the journey started last year.
In Cuenca, I’m mostly excited to see my people. I made so many genuine connections with people on my last trip there, and I’m really excited to reunite with them and forge new bonds. I’m also excited to return to Parque Nacional Cajas, this time with the goal of tackling its most challenging hikes.
I’ll be back in the US in time for a family vacation to Hilton Head, South Carolina in mid-April, but my exact dates and itinerary on the way home are pretty uncertain. I have a conference in Detroit in May and one in Minneapolis in June, so I’ll be stateside for at least those three months, but I’m not exactly sure when I’ll be where, except for the fact that I want to do some nomading within reason within the U.S. as well. After the June conference, I will spend some more family/friend time in Philly. After that, I’m leaving my options open.
After all, it’s never been “this or that.” It’s “what next?”
Lots to look forward to!
Let's go! Excited to follow your digital nomad adventures.