I am a soon-to-be weary traveller leaving behind his comfortable hometown to see the world. I've been working non-stop for the last year and trying to be good with money to afford some serious vagabonding time. I'm going to go as far as it will let me. I've been working for the last 8 years as a parts/repair technician for major appliances (washers/dryers/refrigerators/stoves etc.) and in a restaurant for the last 3 years. Bussing/barbacking/bartending. Out of highschool and during college, my friends and I all talked about traveling the world some day, but of course the years went on and nobody really started planning anything. Now I know if I wait for them I'll never do it, so here I go.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I'm Couchsurfing for the same reason I'm sure most people do - it's the best way to meet and hang out with locals in any given area of the world. I know people also say because it's cheap, but so are hostels. When I travel to an foreign land, I don't want to hang out in a resort surrounded only by other foreigners to the area, and never really experience anything about the local culture. Sure, when I go to Paris I would be crazy to not go see the Eiffel Tower or visit the Louvre, but I don't want to do that as part of a tour group while wearing my fanny pack and complaining about the hotel's continental breakfast. I want to hang out with people who live in the town. I want to listen to their suggestions about what to do in their city. I want to go to their local dive bar and listen to the crazy bartender tell stories. What's the point of international travel if not for cultural exchange? If you came to my town, sure I may suggest doing some touristy stuff in San Francisco, but really I would prefer to take you to my local haunts & meet my friends. I think that's what Couchsurfing represents to me. I realize there are some instances where literally just needing a couch to crash on for the night may be what happens, but that's not the goal.

Interests

I have a lot, and I'm sure I could max out the character limit in this without breaking a sweat, so I will spare you the long-winded version. First and foremost I love learning things about new places and new people. I love art, especially film. I know there's a section for the specifics below, but more generally I love film because it's an amazing mix of pretty much every other form of art. The visuals are fine art and photography. The score is music (obviously). The acting is performance art. The dialogue is writing. It's awesome. Sure, a lot of it isn't so great, but when it's really good, it's my favorite. I love all those other things even when they're not in a movie. I love music. I love reading, although I haven't had the time to do so much as of late. I would never refer to myself as an artist, but I am trying my hand at getting decent at being one. Mainly in graphic design/fine art. I have a Wacom graphics tablet that I'm learning to use with programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Painter. I couldn't fit it into my backpack, unfortunately, but my sort of end-game in this trip is to live in Taiwan with my cousin for a few years, so I'm going to have the family ship it to me once I'm there.

• arts
• culture
• writing
• performing arts
• design
• graphic design
• photography
• acting
• breakfast
• wine
• beer
• flying
• boating
• clothing
• trivia
• reading
• traveling
• music
• backpacking
• animation

Music, Movies, and Books

There isn't enough room in this box for all of them, so this is very, very abridged.

Music: Paul Simon, Megadeth, De La Soul, Arcade Fire, Tycho, Slayer, old AFI, Talking Heads, Pete Rock, Prince, Dwight Yoakam, Howlin Wolf, Ramones, Wu-Tang Clan, The Sisters Of Mercy, Bad Brains, The Pixies, Miami Nights 1984, The Whispers, Hank Williams (I & III), AltJ, Massive Attack…..there are too many for me to write without feeling like I'm making a Myspace profile.

Movies: The Shawshank Redemption, The Thing, Inglourious Basterds, There Will Be Blood, Raising Arizona, The Delicatessen, City Of God, Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski, City Of Lost Children, Dirty Pretty Things, Big Trouble In Little China, Talk To Her, Battle Royale, Drunken Master (1 & 2), DIE HARD (1&3), Frailty, I Saw The Devil, Goodfellas…. again, too many!

Books: Cloud Atlas/Ghostwritten/Number9Dream, Blood Meridian, In Cold Blood, The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, Animal Farm, Still Life With Woodpecker, The Road, The Stand (unabridged), Stiff/Packing for Mars…. and way more that I want to read!

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Well, I haven't really done anything amazing yet, I'm actually starting it right now! When I first started planning this trip I was very anxious about flying, convinced I was going to die horribly in a plane crash. I flew with no trouble at all the first 20 years of my life, but fore some reason recently it started freaking me out more and more. So I figured I would make my way to Taiwan by land or by sea. Now, I could have just sailed straight to Taiwan (I'm from California, after all) but I figured I wanted to get into adventures before ending up there, so I'm going the long way around the planet. Eastbound. So I've been on a variety of trains over the past two weeks as of the time of writing this (sitting in a bar at Union Station, Chicago). I'm about to get onto another one and head to New York for a week. I was going to stay with another cousin there, but turns out she's staying on someone's couch right now too, not sure whether or not she even wants to stay in New York or move somewhere else. (I know at this point I'm going to be using Airbnb on such short notice) Anyway, from New York I'm taking a cargo freighter ship to Algeciras, Spain (right across from Gibraltar). It's going to take about 20 days (for real) to get there, and I've never been on a boat before. So my amazing thing I've done hasn't happened quite yet.

I have survived an amazing thing, but I didn't have any part to play, except not being killed. Car accident where my friend's eye was gouged out by a metal bar that then pierced all the way through the back seat where I had been sitting about 15 second prior when I decided to move to the middle backseat for what reason I have no idea. Sort of morbid, but it was amazing. And my friend lived! But now he's one-eyed Nick. :\

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm not entirely sure what this title means. I guess I could "teach" something like… if you can, store wine upside down or sideways so the wine is always in contact with the inside of the cork and doesn't allow it to dry out. Or, never hook up a clothes dryer to more than 15-20 feet of venting unless you're going to add a booster fan. Too much venting makes air (moist air) back up in the dryer and makes your clothes take way longer to dry. I'm not sure what I can learn in this profile section. I'm open to possibilities! But I feel like the profile itself is not going to teach me anything. Oh well. Share? OK, I just learned that the first empirical evidence that Einstein's theory of general relativity was accurate was when some astronomers waited for a solar eclipse to happen, and took pictures of the stars immediately behind/to the side of the sun without the bright-ass light of the sun obscuring them. They compared the stars' positions to their positions in other pictures taken without the sun there, and they were all just barely in the wrong place. This proved Einsteins theory that massive amounts of gravity, like what our sun has, actually will bend light that travels close to it, giving us a distorted idea of where things are from certain vantage points. Basically a gravitational lens. Pretty neat, I think. Also, pink peppercorns are not actually peppercorns, but some sort of berry. Yeah, mind blown!

What I Can Share with Hosts

My enthusiasm for learning and sharing new things with other people. My ability to remember random facts about random things that makes me sometimes great at trivia. I was born and raised in the heart of American wine country, so I guess I could tell you all about that if you're ever interested in visiting, or moving there. Also, the best beer in the world comes from my hometown! Pliny the Younger is a seasonal triple IPA made at the Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa, California. I haven't personally checked, but I'm personally positive that it's the best. I could tell you all about that! Spoiler alert: they serve it in a small glass because it will get you drunk quickly!

Countries I’ve Visited

Mexico

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States