I think big, and I get wildly excited about roads less traveled. If there’s an option that is strange, beautiful, and hard to reach, I want to go there. I want to sleep under different stars and feel the night air of unknown places against my face. When I travel, I come alive and I notice the myriad ways that things can be: I see anew, I am opened and expanded, and new and robust ways of thinking take root and grow. I have traveled to 21 countries and I have a lot more to go, and I know my one deathbed regret will be that I didn’t get to visit everywhere I’ve imagined.

My mottos are “Never trade money for experience” and “Sooner rather than later, because you never know how much time you have on this beautiful earth.” I have been a motorcycle messenger, a NYC art slave, a roadie, and after a long stint in tech (where I tried and rejected a few of the common options like being management and owning real estate), I am on my way to becoming a life guide and shamanic practitioner. I want to use life coaching and shamanic ideas of vision quest and rites of passage to help people design trips that will shake their foundations and change their lives. Trips that will wake them up to the grandness that is possible.

My job (when I’m in an office) is User Experience designer, which means I’m always looking at things from the user’s perspective--whether that’s a mobile phone app or more often, people’s lived experience in the world--and working to improve it. Wherever I go, I try to understand the people and the place where they live, and operate from there. How can I improve their user experience of me? How can I bring all of myself, and also my Americanness, to new places and connect? How can I build the bridges that we all so desperately need in order to survive on this increasingly crowded planet?

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I want to meet new people and understand the places I visit from a local's perspective.

Interests

I have driven literally hundreds of vehicles, including off-road 4x4s, motorcycles of all kinds, 24-foot box trucks, music tour vans (and a tour bus, for a few minutes), and not a few crap hatchbacks… sometimes off-road. One of my favorite cars ever was my 1.2-liter Toyota Tercel SR5 4wd that I got for $900 and drove in some pretty stupid places. I have taken performance driving classes and off-road rally driving school. I have driven off-road in a hatchback off-road in the Sahara, and in a jeep in the mud-rutted roads of the jungles of northern Thailand. I make a point to drive in every country I visit, and when I lived in London for 8 months I drove bands around London, the UK, and Europe in a giant UPS-sized van on the wrong side of the road and never once had an incident. Driving is one of my great joys.

• books
• photography
• solo travel
• travel
• systems design

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I learned to do aerial silks at the age of 46.

Teach, Learn, Share

My job (when I’m in an office) is User Experience designer, which means I’m always looking at things from the user’s perspective--whether that’s a mobile phone app or more often, people’s lived experience in the world--and working to improve it. Wherever I go, I try to understand the people and the place where they live, and operate from there. How can I improve their user experience of me? How can I bring all of myself, and also my Americanness, to new places and connect? How can I build the bridges that we all so desperately need in order to survive on this increasingly crowded planet?

What I Can Share with Hosts

Housework, light handyman work, basic tech support for computers and devices, errands, food prep.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

United Kingdom, United States