Jan
26
2010

4 Years Out of the Cubicle

Get out of the Matrix and escape!

Get out of the Matrix and escape!

Today marks the 4 year anniversary of the start of my world travel.

Hard to believe, but it feels like just last week that I shook my manager’s hand as she walked me to the door at IBM and relieved me of my ID badge.

I walked down those steps toward my car like I had done every day for the last 7 years with a torrent of mixed emotions. I turned around at the bottom and stood for a minute in the cold December sunshine just wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

Mistake or not, good or bad, I knew that whatever was going on in that instant was truly life changing and my legs were wobbly with adrenaline.

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Posted in Ramblings |
Jan
20
2010

Earthquakes in Yellowstone

Earthquakes in Yellowstone - are these buffalo screwed?

Earthquakes in Yellowstone - are these buffalo screwed?

The end of the world as we know it?  I feel fine.

Since this past Sunday, there have been 469 earthquakes in Yellowstone National Park!

Yikes.  After I decided in 2008 that I needed to see a little bit of my own country, I drove out to Yellowstone to see what all the fuss was about.

What I found, and wrote about back (Yellowstone National Park) then was a ticking geological time bomb.  The entire park is actually the caldera of the world’s largest plugged volcano and there is an immense amount of activity going on underneath the tourists’ feet.

The land has actually been pushed upward by 8 inches in the last 4 years due to the building pressure.  That same pressure makes new geysers and hot pools pop up all over the park daily.

Now with 469 little earthquakes in Yellowstone being a sure indicator that something out of sight is brewing, it makes me wonder if I should be bailing out early for that Thai island….and all this time I thought I had until 2012 to have fun. :)


Posted in Ramblings |
Jan
15
2010

Alive in 2010

Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia - someplace warm!

Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia - someplace warm!

As one of my long time readers recently pointed out via email - “Greg, you’re running late”.

No kidding!  I am home, and alive, and as my blog here quietly festers in the cobwebs of the internet I have more to write about than my brain can send to my fingers.

The last two months of 2009 were spent on buses running all over South America without connectivity and the last month has been spent catching up with family and things at home after being gone for most of the year.

I have been busy earning some travel cash for this year writing while at the same time trying to put my mind somewhere that it isn’t 16F degrees!  I recently started writing blogs at Today.com and Examiner.com.  The Examiner.com blog pays by pageview and is a fun network of writers so far.  If you know how to write a blog I’ve got info here on how you can apply. They pay with Paypal so you can do it from the road.

The plan for this year?  I’ve been asked that question via Facebook at least 20 times since the new year.  Well, let’s just assume that the impossible happens and I hit my budget target:

Plan A:

Get an apartment in Malaysia (which I’ve already scouted out) probably in Kuala Lumpur (not far from the island in the photo above) - putting me within minutes and a cheap AirAsia flight of Indonesia, Papua, and even India.  I would stay put for a while, do my work from there, and use KL as a base to finish exploring Asia - particularly Papua and New Guinea.

Plan B:

Watching the new Everest show on Discovery one night put a serious bug in my head for Nepal.  So I would return to China, brush up on my Chinese, finally see Tibet because the border was closed last time I was there, climb something big in Nepal, then filter my way down to India.  This option takes more money because I will be on the move. A lot.

Plan C:

I pour sand out all over my bedroom, turn the heat up to maximum, let in some stray dogs, and hire some indigenous people to walk around nude with machetes to convince myself that I am actually in the jungle without having to buy an expensive plane ticket.

Shall we take a vote?  Either way, it is going to be a damn good year and even after 4 official years out of the cubicle now, life is still good!


Posted in Ramblings |

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