Vancouver has always been the only destination I’ve considered for the past few years to spend summer near. Last year unfortunately was a bit of a bust due to the weather, but I managed to spend four months around the Vancouver area back in the summer of 2011. I came back from Argentina at the end of June and spent a month in my home town, and am now in Yaletown for the remainder of August. Vancouver’s English Bay For the first time in ages, I don’t have any travel plans at the moment. The main reason for that is because I am scheduled to have surgery on September 7th to finally correct a fractured ...

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done any sort of update on here, and I thought now was probably a good time to do one. I’m back from South America, and have been staying in Chilliwack for the last month. I just checked into an apartment in Vancouver’s Yaletown, and will be staying here for all of August. I haven’t lived in Vancouver for at least three and a half years I believe, so it will be nice being right downtown again. I currently have no concrete travel plans, other than a stirring desire to see Europe some time in the fall. I haven’t planned anything or purchased any tickets, so right ...

I picked up a new book while camping this weekend, Lords Of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. Given that I can usually get through most books in a few hours, I’m a bit surprised that I’ve spent nearly a full day reading this new book and still have about half to go — so it must be fairly large. Lords Of Finance Lords Of Finance is essentially a history of the modern financial system, with emphasis on the major players throughout the years. I’m currently reading about the Great Depression, and some of the decisions that led up to that. It seems pretty clear that nobody really understands ...

While I own several guitars, I previously have never attempted flying with a guitar. A quick Google search on the Internet reveals a lot of confusion about the process, as well as a few horror stories about damaged or stolen guitars. An infamous story of breakage ended in a viral internet video known as “United Breaks Guitars”: When I was in Argentina in 2011, I ended up having more free time than I thought I would have. In those moments, I really missed having access to a guitar that I could pick up and play. I went down to a local guitar store thinking I would buy something cheap, but it’s definitely ...

To be honest, it still feels a bit strange to be using the “Argentina” category on this blog again. When I left in March of last year, I wrote my final entry and had not envisioned coming back so soon. But as I mentioned in my previous post, after being away for a while I started to miss some of the better parts of this city, as well as some of the friends that I have here. Buenos Aires was my first trip that I set out on in January of 2011. I was still a very green and naive traveller, not really knowing what to expect or how I would deal with new situations. Back then many of my experiences ...

In just a few days I’ll be leaving for the city of Buenos Aires again. As people who read this blog know, I started off this great travel adventure of mine last year in that very city. At the time I was a pretty green traveler, and struggled with the language and figuring out how the city worked for the first month or so of my trip. I was frustrated a few times, and a little disheartened with how hard it was at first to meet people. But I eventually overcame most of those obstacles, and probably grew as a person in the process. When my three months were up in Argentina, I was looking forward ...

I’ve been spending a bit of time talking to Dale recently about life, careers, and where we both want to end up in the next few years. During one of our recent iChats, I was reminded of this Mexican Fisherman Story I heard a few years ago and managed to track it down. After I showed it to Dale he suggested I post it up here, because it has a fairly important message in it. An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality ...

Back when I was in Thailand, Scott and Sam gave me the official invite to their wedding in Cape Town, South Africa for March of 2012. I was actually really excited about visiting Cape Town, but after leaving New Zealand I was pretty much out of money and had a lot of expenses back home to deal with. But I decided it was important for me to go, so I bit the bullet and purchased a $1,500 plane ticket to Cape Town, South Africa, leaving from Las Vegas (flights are always quite a bit cheaper out of the United States, and I was going to be down there for my mom’s birthday anyways). Journey Cape Town ...

Without a doubt one of the hardest aspects of life on the road is saying goodbye to people you care about. Maybe it’s just a person you had an insightful conversation with at a bar one time, or maybe it’s someone that you spent a few weeks with traveling around a foreign country. But with that final hug (and it always comes unfortunately) comes the bittersweet knowledge that it will likely be quite some time before you get to meet them again. I spent eight months on the road this last year, and in that time met many great people. Since being home in December, I have watched on Facebook as one ...

When I went to Argentina in January of 2011, I had two cameras with me: the Canon EOS 40D and some type of Canon Powershot. I left Canada with the idea that it would be a pain in the butt to carry around a whole pile of lenses, so I took only a 28mm prime lens. While it ended up being relatively light, having only a single focal length lens significantly impacted my ability to take the photos I wanted to. Other than one or two shots that turned out well, I didn’t really walk away from Argentina with the photos that I thought accurately represented what it was like to be down there. The Canon Powershot ...

I decided when I got back from New Zealand that since I was going to be stuck at home for about four months I might as well try and get back in shape. Prior to all my surgeries and that bad infection I got that time in Vancouver, I was actually pretty skinny. But between all the recovery periods and the hardcore antibiotics I was on (vancomycin often causes weight gain in people and animals, probably because it wipes out a lot of the beneficial intestinal bacteria), I somehow put on a pile of weight. It also didn’t help that I ate primarily restaurant food for most of last year while traveling. I ...

As many people know, I suffered a few facial fractures back in 2006. The primary result of that incident was to put my cheekbone slightly out of alignment, as well as the complete destruction of the bone under my left eye (other than maybe a 1mm ledge on one side, there’s literally nothing there any more). I had one surgery back in 2006 to put my eye back in the right place. It improved things slightly, but still left me with a droopy eye and some residual double vision. About six months later the surgeon did a CT scan, which ultimately looked like this: The surgeon concluded at the time that ...

A few people know already, but I’ve been considering getting a set of braces or possible Invisalign sometime in the near future. As a kid I had approximately two years of orthodontics between the ages of 14 and 16, but since then my teeth have slowly shifted. It’s at the point now where if I don’t do something soon they are probably going to revert to what they looked like as a kid (not good). The good news is that they haven’t really shifted *that* much yet. So I am hoping that the treatment time I need will be relatively short. Since I pretty much spend a lot of my time by myself in coffee shops, ...

One of the biggest surprises for me over these past two months is just how dull and depressing things can be in the winter when the weather is sour. I’m not normally one to walk around with my head down, but I’ve had quite a few days where it’s been hard not to feel a tad melancholy with all the rain, snow, and the early darkness that comes from the winter. Since I left in January of last year, I basically haven’t experienced winter here for two full years. Stated another one, I’ve had the luxury of experiencing two years of spring, summer and fall, and it was pretty awesome. I have a distinct ...

I was reading about the Rio Theatre and their liquor license issues over at http://www.miss604.com. To summarize, the Rio theatre applied, and was granted, a liquor license for their movie theatre. Their intention was to have limited showings of movies where alcohol could be served to adults. The BC Liquor Control Board has now placed a restriction on the license which essentially means they can’t use it to that effect anymore (not without cancelling regular movie screenings). Many people know that I spent eight months of this last year traveling around the world. Without a doubt, BC (and Canada ...

I set out to create some free Facebook header images the other day based on the eight months of travel I did in 2011. While I’ve customized them a bit further, I thought I would release these basic versions in case anyone else would like a new header. Simply click on each photo to obtain the large, properly sized Facebook header image. Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, Argentina Cape Reinga, North Island, New Zealand Ko Pee Pee Leh, Thailand Oahu, Hawaii, United States Running Gentoo Penguin, Ushuaia, Argentina Wish Lantern, Northern Thailand Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina Yaletown, Vancouver, ...

Back in the summer Future Shop had a sale on the extended BlueRay versions of the Lord Of the Rings. Given that they were basically 50% off and that I know I eventually wanted to buy a BlueRay player, I decided to buy a set. Now that I’m back in Canada, I went out and finally bought a BlueRay player. I sat down over the Christmas break to watch a few of them, and I can say without a doubt that the quality of the films in excellent. But what seems absolutely incredible to me is how each disc has 5 or 6 crappy trailers that you are forced to watch whenever you put one of the discs in. The disc menu ...

In the fall of 2010, I decided I wanted to set out on a big travel adventure. At the time I had become a bit bored of life in Chilliwack, and wanted to take advantage of the fact that I can work anywhere with an internet connection and actually see some of the world. I sold most of my furniture at the time and put the rest into a storage locker. And almost exactly a year ago, I boarded a plane and headed to South America. Natalie and Bruno in Wellington I spent approximately eight months of this past year living out of a suitcase, bouncing between apartments and hostels, working from little remote ...

Now that I’ve had time to reflect on my time in New Zealand, I thought I would post an update with what I thought of the country in general. First, New Zealand is gorgeous. I didn’t get a chance to visit the South Island on this trip, but I made my way from tip to tip of the North Island. One thing that’s pretty amazing there is just how green the grass is. We have green grass in Canada, but it’s more of a florescent green in New Zealand – it’s pretty surreal. It’s like what grass looks like when you bump the saturation up on a typical grass shot in photoshop, except you don’t have to do that ...

As many people now know, I’m back at home in Chilliwack. I left Wellington a little over a week ago, flew to Auckland, and caught a flight back to Vancouver. I was always planning on being back for Christmas, but decided to leave Wellington a bit early to get back home and sort a few things out. I have a few more posts to write about the last few months of travel – I’ll try and get those done over the Christmas break. But people keep asking me what my plans are, so I thought I’d detail those a bit here. First, I decided a few months ago that going forward I wanted to have a home base somewhere ...