reading things like this make me want to leave now. 
make me regret not learning skills earlier. 
make me wish i was more outdoorsy.
make me wish i could just leave and not worry about money. 
reading things like this pushes me closer to leaving. 
closer to buying a ticket. 
one way. 


"I had never heard of the Kaveri River until I decided to walk across India. I could only squeeze a 6-week trip into my calendar so I cast my eye southwards down India’s triangular shape until I reached a latitude I reckoned I could get across in the time available. And that is how I spotted the holiest of southern India’s rivers. This was starting to sound like an adventure: I would walk from the mouth of the Kaveri on the east shore of India to its source in the mountains, and then drop down from there to the sea on the other side.

And that was it. I deliberately chose to do no more planning or research than that. I flew to Chennai, asked someone which bus I needed to take to get down to the mouth of the Kaveri, and I began walking. Adventure is a state of mind. It is an attitude. I wanted an adventure, a journey, a challenge, not a holiday. By doing no research every day would be novel, unexpected and exciting. Every day I would need to seek out food and water, somewhere to sleep. I was travelling light too. Carrying your bag for 600 miles encourages you to pack light. But I also wanted to be travelling light as part of my quest for a simple, pure, uncluttered experience"

-Alastair Humphreys, Walking through India 

oh the places you'll go

how did i never read this book as a child? my bookshelves were dominated by robert munsch.

it's not now

today i've been running around doing errands. one such errand on my list consisted of paying $89 to a dentist so he could tell me that i need to pay $1500 for a crown replacement.
when i hear $1500, i see 'ticket to mongolia' or 'dental work'.
this got me thinking about money. how much i have, how much i need to travel, how much i will make before my contract is up. this thought process ultimately lead me to make a pro/con list.
i started with the pro's and con's of waiting to go on another adventure a little bit later, like maybe another year or so.
PRO's of going later:
-more time to earn more money
-more time to learn russian (i've been taking russian lessons since november!)
-more time to learn to use new gear
-more time to organize country visa's (china, russia, the stan's etc.)
-more time to get fit before i leave (HA)
-more time to research the countries i want to travel to (visa prices, restrictions, hitching laws)
-more time to read blog's, articles, or books that people have written about the places i want to go

CON's of going later:
-it's not now

imovie

my laptop is basically a very expensive facebook machine.
recently i have wanted to start fiddling around with it and learn more about what it can do.
after watching countless travel documentary series, i knew i wanted to incorporate video into my next trip somehow.
so while looking through my pictures from christmas break, i noticed that there were some video clips. some accidentally, some real ones. so with my first attempt at imovie (an application on mac computer's that enables you to edit film) i was able to mash up what little video clips i had. so this is my first go at it.
hopefully more to come!

book of the week

so this weeks, actually this months book has been 'the long way round' by ewan mcgregor and charley boorman. charley and ewan write the book so that you follow them from planning process, to the road, on  trip of their dreams.
before i started reading it i knew it had been made into a documentary series. and last night i found it on youtube and i haven't been able to stop watching. i want to do something like that! i want a room of my own, walls lined with maps of countries i've dreamed of exploring. so i guess i just need a producer and a network to back me. that's my only hurdle in this otherwise flawless plan...right?

polar bear dip CHECK!

on january first this year i checked off another item from my bucket list.
the polar dip!
i completed this one with my best friend margaret!
check out the video above and read the attached article below!

kings county advertiser article

clean up make up

ever since i was little, whenever it was time to clean my room (which usually came on a sunday, although it  needed to happen everyday) i would start out strong and quickly get distracted. i would sort piles. dirty clothes, rugby gear, archie comics and makeup. it was when the makeup pile started to grow in size that i experienced problems. it would start innocent enough, with a little root beer flavoured lip gloss. but then as soon as i found some eye liner or moms reject mango coloured lip stick it went steadily down hill. before i knew it i was sitting in the middle of piles of sorted junk covered in a horrible combo of colours.
i became reminded of this when tonight i accidentally drank three cups of coffee and then decided to tidy my bathroom. so now i am sitting alone in my bedroom, jacked up on caffeine thanks to an instant coffee scooping miscalculation, covered in so much eyeliner that i could give a racoon a run for its money.