Verified
Granite Falls, Minnesota, United States
@paul-drees
Member since 2019
I love bike commuting, and have been doing it in the Twin Cities for the last five years. It's a major part of my identity. I've recently started riding a fixie, which has been like learning to ride all over again. It's been a great time. As I write this, I'm about to graduate from Luther Seminary, with a Master's in Divinity. After I get back from this trip, I'm going to be moving from lovely Minneapolis to somewhere in rural Minnesota. Just a side note: I'm not one of those Christians that goes around trying to convert people. I'll be happy to talk about religion as much or as little as you want, but I promise I won't bring it up. Hope to see you soon!
Interested in Adventure Sports
Interested in Basketball
Fluent in English
Learning Spanish
Why I'm on Couchsurfing
I'm a recent grad school graduate from Minneapolis, MN. As a celebration of this graduation, I'm going to be bikepacking across Europe. My route takes me from Copenhagen to Zurich, then from Zurich to Dublin (with a few ferries in-between). I've did a bikepacking trip in Puerto Rico this past February with a friend, and fell in love with this mode of travel. It's a fantastic way to get to know a country, and the people who make the country what it is.
Music, Movies, and Books
My favorite band is mewithoutYou, but I also love Belá Fleck, Chris Thile, Amanda Palmer, Phoebe Bridgers, Punch Brothers, Sufjan Stevens, Wye Oak, Damien Rice, Fleet Foxes, Florence + the Machine, Denzel Curry, The Japanese House, Johnny Cash, Julien Baker, Meek Mill, Nickel Greek, and William Basinksi. (There's more, but I want to be brief). I'm a huge fan of the works of Queer Theologian Adrian Thatcher, Post-Modernists John Caputo and David Fredrickson, the reformer Martin Luther, and popular authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, Dietrich Boenhoeffer, Kurt Vonnegut, Jared Diamond, Ryan Holiday, and Amanda Palmer. As for specific books, I love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, A Poison Stronger than Love, Siddhartha, The Brothers Karamozov, Player Piano, World War Z, Moby Dick, and Traffic.
One Amazing Thing I've Done
Probably the most recent amazing thing I've done is get hit by a car BUT totally avoid getting hurt. I was bike commuting to work, and the driver wasn't paying attention while they were turning left. I started applying back pressure (I was riding a fixie) and turned the bike so I could hop up on the hood of the car. At the moment of impact, the car was probably going 15-20 miles per hour, and I was around 6-8 mph.
