CURRENT MISSION

Live life to its fullest potential.

ABOUT ME

Where to begin? I'm rather eclectic.

I guess that the first thing that you should know about me is that I'm a Christian. While I get along fine with people who aren't, it pervades every aspect of my life and makes me the man that I am. Love is a mystery to me, but God is steadily teaching me how to love other people more than myself.

The second great passion of my life is definitely engineering. If you hang around me long enough, you will find that I think of everything in engineering terms and analogies, from relationships with the fairer sex to dancing. I am blessed to get to do what I love for a living, but I still love to tinker and build in my spare time.

While I haven't been dedicating as much time to it recently, I also have a passion for politics. I'll talk policy and related philosophy with you for hours on end. I'm very conservative, but as with my religion I get along fine with people who disagree because their intelligent insights challenge and grow my own ideas.

Beyond that, I am very much a dabbler. I do a lot of dancing - Lindy Hop (early swing) and blues - and I started and teach the group for it in Panama City. I love to cook, and took some classes that greatly improved my skills in the kitchen. I read a lot over a breadth of topics, and I've tried a lot of things that I can do tolerably well, but with no great level of skill.

PHILOSOPHY

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Well, I haven't yet. It's currently June 8 in Santander, Spain, and the conference I am attending ends tomorrow, at which point I plan to go to Burgos for the night, then explore Spain for two days, and end up in Bilbao for two more. I was planning just to shell out for hotels, and that's still my fallback, but some friends convinced me to try this.

When I travel, I hate being a tourist. As a tourist, you see all the sights that you are supposed to see, and not much else. You end up at all the restaurants that advertise most effectively and pay a lot of money for food that most of the locals probably never eat. As far as ways to explore a city, that's fine, but I'm not out for fine.

I like to go to cities where I know someone there who wants to recommend things to me. That way, you make it to all of the beautiful and interesting places that the tourists miss. You find hole-in-the-wall restaurants that are amazing and truly reflect the culture. You become more immersed in wherever you are, and that is what I love to do when I travel.

I'm looking forward to my first experience, and hope that I can return the favor back in the US.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None. I just joined this site during this current trip to Spain.

Interests

I kind of put all of this under the "All About You" section above. I guess that I more or less define myself by my interests. Not sure what that says.

• culture
• dancing
• dining
• cooking
• politics
• traveling
• blues
• hunting
• scuba diving
• rock climbing
• engineering
• religion
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

My taste in music is far too eclectic to narrow down into a manageable list of artists or titles. Likewise for books, but a little easier. Lately, I've been enjoying Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis, Orson Scott Card, Lewis Carroll, and J.R.R. Tolkein.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I haven't gotten to travel much, but I have done some fun things. I've been rock climbing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and seen a rainbow end in a lake at Yellowstone National Park. I've done street dramas in Venezuela and spent the night on a mountain outside of Caracas. I've explored London and biked through the English countryside from Salisbury to Stonehenge. I've hiked the Appalachian Mountains in various spots and summitted the tallest peak in America east of the Mississippi. I went elk hunting in Colorado in November and scuba diving in the Virgin Islands in April. Now I'm in the middle of my first adventure in a country where I don't speak the language fluently, and so far I'm having a great time!

Teach, Learn, Share

I love to teach what I know, though I am not entirely certain how qualified I always am to do so. But whether hosting or hosted I would happily share my skills in:
- Dancing (Lindy Hop and Blues)
- Cooking
- Engineering
- Political/theological debate/discussion
or anything else I've dabbled in and can remember enough to share. Just ask!