Grew up in the Mid-West of the United States! My life has revolved around athletics, I played football and basketball growing up in a small town in Ohio and continued playing football into college. After college I pursued a career in finance for a firm located outside of Portland, OR. Even though my day job involved sales and marketing, I still took advantage of the beautiful pacific northwest; where I learned how to backpack, snowboard and mountain bike. That's what drove my interest to New Zealand, after being introduced to the outdoors I wanted to embrace a entirely different culture that revolves around it. So after two years of saving up funds for work I finally accumulated enough money to pursue my dream!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

To dive into the culture! I've only been outside the United States a few times in my life. Even though I may not be a world travler....yet :) I still love to learn about new ideas and traditions, also some cooking tips!

Music, Movies, and Books

Books:
When Air Turns into Breath
East of Eden
Whole30

Music (artists):
Chris Stapelton
Brett Eldridge
The Lumineers
MGMT

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

This past October I climbed my first mountain!!! Mount St. Helens, which is found in Washington, US. It is a epic mountain, set along the Cascades and sits just outside of Portland, OR. It erupted recently in 1980, which wiped out a majority of the mountain so the summit was only 8,000 ft......but I'll still count it ;) . It started with a 2 mile trek through the forest at sunrise (around 7am), submitting the mountain around 1pm and ending with a 4 hour scramble down, finishing the day around 5pm. It was a long exhausting day but the beer afterwards never felt better!