CURRENT MISSION

To experience as much of the world as possible in far too short a time.

ABOUT ME

I grew up in a small town in the middle of a big state in the middle of a big country. Almost all of my friends and family remain in Oklahoma, but after escaping home for college, I'm not sure I'll ever make it back. While home will always be where my heart lies, I've developed a love for travel and experiencing different worlds. Like Jules in Pulp Fiction, I now want to walk the earth and have adventures. During my final two summer breaks from school, I ran a massive house-painting business so that I could do just that. I painted over 100 houses and dealt with almost as many terrible painters and angry homeowners. Now that I've finally made enough money, I have embarked with Ellie, my lovely girlfriend and fellow avid traveller, on a three-month whirlwind tour of Europe and Southeast Asia. We'll touch down in San Francisco on December 18th. Here, I'm taking another potentially soul-crushing job that I hope will fund our next series of adventures.

PHILOSOPHY

I love to laugh and to make other people laugh. I like working hard and making myself feel worthwhile. I like feeling good and doing things that make me feel good. I value honesty and integrity. I try to avoid making judgements and hate being judged. I consider myself a pretty normal human being, more or less.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

For now, we are exclusively on the surfing side of the project, but once in the Bay Area, we definitely plan on doing some hosting as well.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None yet :(

Interests

Watching and playing sports: soccer/football, American football, basketball, tennis, squash, golf, and pretty much any other competitive activity involving a ball played on dry ground.

The internet: nytimes.com, theeconomist.com, youtube.com, slate.com, espn.com, freechess.org, reddit.com, hulu.com. I probably spend half of my life in the US online. Always looking for new sites to waste my time.

Technology: My iphone, my macbook, my kindle, my noise-canceling headphones, and every other cool gadget I've ever seen but couldn't afford. I'm a wannabe tech geek.

Subjects: History, ancient history, American history, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, economics, and pretty much all other social sciences and humanities.

Miscellaneous: Hiking, chess, thinking, painting houses, dogs, self-discovery, nature, other-discovery, parties, eating, drinking, and sleeping.

• dogs
• humanities
• partying
• drinking
• technology
• chess
• traveling
• painting
• hiking
• surfing
• sports
• basketball
• american football
• soccer
• tennis
• racquetball
• golf
• anthropology
• business
• economics
• history
• psychology
• social science
• squash

Music, Movies, and Books

My leisurely tastes are based on my acceptance of the fact that stuff typically becomes popular for a valid reason. Although I'm always looking for stuff that should be popular, I don't like looking that hard.

All music that sounds good, including but not limited to some songs from the Beatles, Sublime, Postal Service, Julieta Venagas, the Rolling Stones, Mozart, Lady Gaga, Justine Timberlake, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Oasis, Beyonce, the Roots, Kanye West, etc.

I'm a snob about movies. I almost always agree with critics, even the most pretentious ones. Go to rottentomatoes.com and look up the top-rated movies of all time. I think that's a pretty accurate list from what I've seen. I also love anything Jud Apatow has every created that doesn't star Will Ferrel.

Some books by Kurt Vonnegut, Leo Tolstoy, Malcom Gladwell, John Girsham, Ken Follet, F Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Krugman, Tolkein, etc..