Autodidactic line cook slash manual laborer. Currently moving to Madison, WI to study Traditional Chinese medicine and massage.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I've slept on many many couches in my life, sometimes through this web site. Hostels/motels/the bushes/camp site/back of a truck/etc are all fine but can be pretty impersonal. Sometimes impersonal is exactly what you need, but meeting people while traveling, however brief the encounters, tends to be the better experience. I love the concept and think it facilitates a very real need--fostering community, enabling travel through areas you may not otherwise find an easy place to sleep in... basically creating alternatives and connections in a world that needs more of them.

Interests

I've had a lot of interests in my life and as time goes on they seem to be narrowing down to a few central ones. I enjoy working with food--cooking, fermenting, baking, growing, dumpstering, giving away for free--and studying various forms of healing. I'm trying to get back to my artistic side, which, besides the ways it sneaks out into other things, has been dormant for a while. I like getting outside and hiking, walking aimlessly around cities, and biking, when I have a decent beater bike. Lately I've picked up chess again and usually play a few games online in the morning or at night. I'm also usually tinkering with a few practical, DIY type projects, either building new things or fixing old ones. And then, above and beyond it all, is astrology, which I've studied for about five years.

• books
• cooking
• gardening
• chess
• traveling
• cycling
• hiking
• backpacking
• spelunking
• rivers
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Blues, soul, ambient and weird noise, bad pop, a few singer-songwriters, some punk and metal, etc. Movies of all sorts (I especially like documentaries, Russian, and Korean). Mostly non-fiction books, though there are a few fiction ones close to my heart.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Listening to an Amish guy and an Eskimo (his choice of term) guy intensely debate each other on the train somewhere in the Midwest was pretty entertaining.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I'm quick to lend a free hand to any kind of project people have going on and I also love cooking for and with others. I'm always down for a good conversation.

Countries I’ve Visited

Ecuador, Mexico

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States