CURRENT MISSION After many years traveling the world and seeking out adventures in travel and science, I have recently embarked on the adventure of raising kids. I am excited to show them the world in part through the lens of couchsurfing. ABOUT ME In an earlier life, I worked on gravitational wave detectors, including LIGO, leading to the first detection of gravitational waves -- disturbances from colliding black holes, a billion light years away from earth. After that I worked on a project to design, build, and tests airborne wind turbines -- a giant flying contraption that generate clean energy (check out this feature film documentary on the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd_hEja6bzE ). Now I work on self-driving big rig trucks. My son Kestrel (age 4½ as of Jan 2025) is currently devotee of the Little House on the Prairie novels -- he listens to the audiobooks every night -- and this has served as a wellspring of new interests: fiddle music, farming, steam engines, the "old days" etc. In addition to this pioneering spirit he sees himself as a budding engineer and loves making stuff out of paper, lego, clay, etc. He loved the Maker Faire, and is begging me to take him to Burning Man next year. He is in a bilingual Spanish/English preschool so we are also always looking for opportunities for him to be exposed to Spanish and try speaking it. My wife Maria is also a software engineer. She loves adventures and learning languages (she became fluent in Japanese and has since studied Bisaya, Estonian, and Brazilian Portuguese). Together we have taken vacations to explore Cement Land and the City Museum in Saint Louis; to noodle for catfish in murky red rivers in Oklahoma; to chase tornadoes and severe storms in Iowa and South Dakota; to hike the West Highland Way from pub to pub in Scotland; to stay in a yurt and experience Meow Wolf in Santa Fe; to see solar eclipses from a remote island in Panama; and the list goes on. (Shortly after we met she commented that my Couchsurfing profile was "more honest" than my OkCupid profile 😂.) When I last updated my profile here in 2014, I listed the following interests: hitchhiking, communal living, math, bicycles, street art, reading (both novels and nonfiction), computer programming, potluck dinners, dogs, geography, the outdoors, photography, science, flying airplanes, watching art films, and learning about history and culture.
Interested in Adventure Sports
Fluent in English
Learning Cebuano
Pioneer Badge
Why I'm on Couchsurfing
HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING I tend to go through phases of hosting and surfing, hosting when I'm settled somewhere and surfing when I'm on the road. COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE Couchsurfing in Yosemite national park on a trans-California hitchhiking adventure. Driving across the U.S., couchsurfing every night: in rural Virginia, in Memphis, on a queer commune in rural Tennessee, in Baton rouge, in New Orleans, in snowy Santa Fe and Alamogordo and desert Tucson. Hosting couchsurfers visiting Louisiana and Hannover has been just as delightful. Couchsurfing adds magic to any journey.
Music, Movies, and Books
films Beasts of the Southern Wild Searching for Sugar Man The Flat Y Tu Mamá También Mulholland Drive - David Lynch Chinatown - Roman Polanski Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino Mitt Liv Som Hund (My Life as a Dog) fiction All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt Norwegian Wood - Murakami Heart of Darkness Neuromancer - William Gibson Catcher in the Rye non-fiction Irons in the Fire - John McPhee The Control of Nature - John McPhee The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson Roadside Geology of Louisiana technical Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics music indie-pop old-time americana (bluegrass)
One Amazing Thing I've Done
Hiked up Mt. Sinai by starlight during the Perseid meteor shower, worked in Alaska for a summer. One of the best summers ever!
Teach, Learn, Share
Currently interested in learning to play the fiddle/violin. My son Kestrel loves animals, engineering, bluegrass, riding his bike, etc.
My Interests
adventure, ant hill cooperative inc, avoiding my homework, being a scientist, bicycling, biking around town, cities, the center for land use interpretation, co-ops, coffee shops, cooking, cooking with my roommates, critical mass, eating, eating yummy food, electronics projects, functional differential geometry, flying airplanes and gliders, hiking, hot springs, hot tubs, physics, postcards, public transportation, reading, scheme, seismology, skinnydipping, structure and interpretation of classical mechanics, snuggling, starting a housing co-op, swimming, tag sales, thinking about physics, travel, travelling the world, watching david lynch films, writing, yummy food.
