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I've been a serial traveler since 1999. After a short time in a place, I ask, “is this home?” The answer to which is obviously, “not yet.” So, paradoxically, I move on. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a normal life, with a fixed home, but I could never choose just one place. Itinerant wanderlust is a delightful predicament.

I work remotely as a consultant and software developer. It is good work, enjoyable in the right doses. Building automated systems is satisfying for me; I love the idea for machines to do all the work, so humans can do meaningful things.

Traveling great distances by bicycle is my special place. It's even better when shared. I co-founded Wheeled Migration, a company that takes groups on multi-week bike tours that explore the cultural, historical, and natural landscapes of California. I've never had a more rewarding experience than taking groups into shared adventures.

My partner, Alma, has taken me deep into Buddhist lands. We have spent months in retreat at monasteries in India, Nepal, Thailand, Myanmar, and in the West, receiving teachings from living masters. I haven't found anything more meaningful than exploring the nature of reality through meditation. I wish I had renunciation to practice more; I'm still very mundane.

In a previous era, I lived in Paris where I established squats, founded an arts cooperative, published a literary magazine, and organized theatre and cabaret events. That all came about with friends I met while living at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Some us went on to set up Atlantis Books in Santorini, where I spent a year swimming and selling books wearing nothing but a kilt.

More of me online:

• WhatsApp/Signal: +15306244410
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/com
• Photos: https://flickr.com/qcom
• My company: https://www.strangecode.com/
• Warm Showers: https://www.warmshowers.org/users/quinncom
• BeWelcome: https://www.bewelcome.org/members/quinncom
• Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/users/show/123031

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Travel today is often a function of consumerism. The markets are incentivised to satisfy travellers’ expectations, and our experiences are converging into a comfortable, transactionally-efficient world of monoculture designer hotels, hipster cafés, and app-powered rides and meal delivery. As long as money is the medium of exchange, you will repeat the same premium-mediocre experiences. Without money, sincere relationships become not just the mechanism for facilitating travel, but the goal of it. Hospitality networks like CS are defined by this shift, and are optimal for facilitating relationship-based travel.

Interests

• arts
• writing
• cooking
• fitness
• yoga
• meditation
• mountaineering
• sailing
• business
• cartography
• economics
• history
• languages
• sociology
• software
• urban exploration
• bicycle touring
• communities
• infosec
• late-stage capitalism

Music, Movies, and Books

So many great book memories from the minds of: Bruno Schulz; Knut Hamsun; Theodore Zeldin; Italo Calvino; Howard Zinn; Charles Mann; David Harvey; Carl Sagen; Wade Davis; Yuval Noah Harari; Richard P. Feynman; Robert Pirsig; Henry David Thoreau; John Muir; Bertrand Russell; Miguel de Cervantes; Haruki Murakami; Cormac McCarthy; Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Radio is undergoing a renaissance by way of podcasts, and I listen to many. These are some of my favorites: The Long Now Foundation; The RSA; CBC Ideas; Rough Translation; Team Human; Hardcore History; Radiolab; 99% Invisible; Theory of Everything; Darknet Diaries; Bellingcat; Ear Hustle; Gastro Pod; Hidden Brain; Cautionary Tales.

I will watch and usually enjoy any film with an IMDB rating 7 or higher, but I take particular joy in old and/or surrealist films.

Music: just everything, including silence. Lately, I just open Hype Machine and click play.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I rode from Spain to Greece with Alma on a tandem bicycle. We had zero problems for the entire journey, then after we arrived to our destination (Oía, Santorini), both wheels on the tandem exploded! We did couchsurfing nearly the entire journey, with a different host almost every night. That was a lot of smiles, pasta, farewells and hugs!

Teach, Learn, Share

With enough skill on this planet to solve anything (e.g. sky-crane on mars‽) and having manufactured enough objects already to live on for the next few hundred years, do we really need more than to simply share?

I can offer advice on how to quit your job, guide you in yoga, tai chi, and meditation, cook huge breakfasts, give business advice for lazy people, consult on the internet and software development from my experience running Strangecode, and having grown up in a junkyard I've learned to fix almost anything with a piece of lint and a soldering iron.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I've been fortunate enough to live in many places around the world and have learned to travel well. I love doing dishes. I'm also good at taking people on adventure who need abduction. And sneaking into your house and leaving treasure maps baked inside fresh pastries at your bedside.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, Colombia, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Scotland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

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