Chance Encounters

The day started out sort of slow.  I went to sleep late and got up late.  I had planned to go rock climbing but plans needed to be adjusted.  No big deal.

Off to the gym for some exercise.  I ran for 17 minutes, talked with a personal trainer I want to start working with, and then went and changed to swim some laps.  My shoulders and arms were a bit worn out from Thursday's session so getting those muscles warmed up wasn't much fun.  I swam six (or seven) warm up laps then stopped for a minute or two to stretch.  Then I swam again, and I just kept swimming...total of about 24 or 25 laps.  Felt good by the time I was done.

Oh! So, the triathlon suit I got for Christmas was too small...as in my youngest sister probably couldn't fit in it-small.   So we returned that and ordered two different sizes of a different suit..but still cool looking of course!  So, one of them worked!! I squiggled my way into it lol... goodness those things are snug!

After the gym, I was going to head to work for a little while because there was some invoicing stuff needing attention (if I'm ever going to accomplish my branch manager's challenge to get three invoices done and submitted in 2 weeks).  I accepted the challenge; however, getting three invoices out when you have 10 subs invoices to collect, review, and then have mailed to you all on time is no small task.  I'm not sure I can do it but with branch managers and financial managers leaning on me (and encouraging me) to get these invoices prepped and out the door, I may have to exceed my expectations again....it's happened a few times lately.  Anyway, got some invoice cover letters laid out, progress reports drafted, etc.

After work, I decided I would try a new Thai restaurant.  I have a thing going where if I work on a weekend, I take myself out to dinner afterwards.   I usually go to a place on 56th St up near central park.  Mistake.  This new place on 28th and 3rd didnt compare.  :-(  

Anyway, on my way to the restaurant, I was walking and just happy to be... to be present, I guess.  I was passing a few Women's march ladies with signs and whatever.  I was walking and a girl asked me as I was passing by if I would buyy her demo CD.  Initally I said no thanks and breezed on by.  But immediately after I physically passed her, I turned around and said "I'm sorry I shouldn't have said no automatically."  She seemed happy that I said this.  We ended up chatting for a minute.  She's trying to get a record deal as a hip-hip artist.  She's on Youtube and the photo on the CD showed: Young Atlantic - Grind It Out ft. Prada.  So you should go check it out!!

I turned around and talked to her because I would have wanted someone to do that for me if I had been handing out copies of my dad's EP called "Tomorrow's Yesterday" (currently available on iTunes and Amazon).   The thought has crossed my mind to have some CDs made and spend some time handing them out/selling them to people on the street.

On another note, I have plans in the works that will be set into something a bit more flexible than concrete but less flexible than a maybe!! I'll be putting deposits down on the start of my international adventures with my first paycheck in February!  Want to know what these things are!?! Of course you do!

So, I am going to trek in to the Mount Everest base camp with a Sherpa tour guide!  That'll be a 2 week trek in and out.  After that, I'm going to do a volunteer internship in Bali working on a micro-renewable energy project as well as sustainable farming without pesticides.  Super exciting, right???  I have other concepts of what I want to do and places I want to go, as previously written in another blog post, but the order of those, beyond these two things, is yet to be determined.

I feel like there was something else I wanted to tell you all but it's escaping me...

The weekend train into the city usually stops at every single station between Denville and Penn Station.  It did on the way to the city... but did it stop at my station on the way home?  No... so my car was only about one mile away, so instead of paying for an Uber, it was in a nice part of town, so I decided to hoof it to my car.  Was on the phone with my dad the whole time.  Probably worried him sick... I'm sorry.  It's just that after running, alone, in the dark for Ragnar in October, well, I gained some confidence.  

Plans change.  Not really better or worse, just different.  Going with the flow and it'll all be great.  

Oh, the last thing I wanted to say... considering doing crowd funding for the micro-renewable energy volunteer internship project.  I'm not sure I want to, but I'm thinking about it.  It would definitely help prolong the internship and enable me to do perhaps another internship in a different place... I saw one I wanted to do in Nicaragua.   But a savings can only last so long with even with the best budget... so, I don't know.  You might see a crowd funding page from me, or you might not.  I haven't decided.  

Good night folks.  

Training Has Begun

I went to the gym for the first time since before Thanksgiving today.  It felt amazing!  I told my senior project manager and my project partner Adam, also a staff engineer, before they both left for vacation, that when they return I will be leaving the office by 5:30 eat least 3 times a weeks so that I can prepare sufficiently for my second Ragnar Relay at the end of April and my very first Triathlon which is at the end of May.  Got to build up to these things.  

So I just wanted to see how painful it was going to be getting back into the routine, and to my surprise, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  I was able to run for 10 minutes straight. Then I had to walk for a couple minutes, then to finish off I ran more of a sprint for a minute.  After than, I said hello to my personal trainer who I haven't seen since before Thanksgiving, and then headed to get changed for a nice lap swim.  

I haven't swam in I don't know how long.  I was no speed demon in the pool this evening, but I wasn't expecting to be.  I just wanted to see if I could swim my usual 5 non-stop to warm up the right muscles, then stretch for a couple minutes, and then swim 15 more.  And I'm glad to say, I was able to do it.  

So, now that I know that, for me it's all about improving time/speed, and endurance.  

When I got home, I opened up birthday presents to myself: I got a Live Infinitely Hammock (I think it was supposed to come with straps so I followed up on that) and a Bear Butt 10'x10' rainfly with straps.  The Bear Butt had great reviews so I nabbed it.  Love both of them.  Thought about pulling them both out in the living room, but as usual, the evening was flying by and I need to get to bed so that I can operate properly at work tomorrow.  

The last thing: I'm pretty sure I'm going to start off my international travels with a trek into the Mount Everest Base Camp with a local tour guide that I found through some internet research.  We've been chatting back and fourth.  It's a 14-day trek into and out of the base camp with 2 acclimatization days each way.  Who wouldn't say EPIC!!  Yup, I think that's the right way to kick it off... don't you?

Ok, have a great night everyone.  

Stop looking at my bear butt!! (hahahaha - I'm cracking myself up).  

Boring Day? Make Travel Plans.

Today was pretty boring.  It was my own fault I didn't have any plans made in advance.  I could have done something outside; it was a sunny beautiful day. But I'm usually a hard-charging, gotta-go-gotta-run-gotta-work-can't-stop type of girl.  Always busy, always doing something.   Oh well, I do need to slow down sometimes.  

Tomorrow I'm going rock climbing with one of my friends from work.  Looking forward to that.  Also, I do my grocery shopping; normal adulting stuff.  

Anyway, this evening I started reading my "No Shortcuts to the Top" book and that got me thinking about a trip to the Mount Everest base camp.  How awesome would it be to see the mountain from pretty close, but not too close.  The thought of it is thrilling.  

My first google search came up with one travel company with treks to the basecamp; that was a little more than I wanted to pay.  The second search on google came up with a more reasonably priced trek.   

The more I look at this traveling, the more I become convinced that I'll definitely need to supplement my savings with a little work while I travel which is ok; as long as I can find a job somewhere, I'll be fine.  

But I have been having some misgivings, not cold feet (it's too early for that), but just wondering if all of this is another one of my pipe dreams.  A lot of talk but no follow through.  But I keep telling myself, NO!  I am saving, I am preparing, I am doing my homework, and laying out a working plan that can change.  This is going to happen!  With or without company.  I'll find people to travel with.   Or maybe I won't and manage to find amazing places and talk to people that I wouldn't otherwise do if with a group.  Who knows.  

Has anyone done seasonal or temp work while traveling?  Can you make any recommendations?  I saw this one link online (from my Lonely Planet book section on finding work) about travel writing.  Apparently, you can sign up with this program, become a travel writer, and submit your articles to different published magazines and get paid a decent sum for it.  That sounds interesting.  I think I could write a pretty good story if what I was doing was exhilarating and epic enough.  

That's why I have to start my trip in Taiwan where my friend is.  I'm pretty sure I could learn a lot about solo travel from her.  

7 months seems like such a long time right now.  Sooner than I think and longer than I wish.  

Please feel free to give your comments and recommendations for tour companies or groups or work placement or anything!  Looking forward to hearing from the international traveling community!  :) 

Happy New Year!

Last week, I was able to leave work at a generally reasonable time each day which was nice.  I'm admittedly a workaholic.  I've been working 50 +/- hour weeks regularly.  Had a few 60+/- hour weeks thrown in there, and only one week working a total of 71 hours over 7 days.  I've worked 14 or more days straight when I was taking care of my main project while assisting with putting together major report deliverables for another big project.  

My senior project manager is back at the office after a long vacation.  So, people are telling me I can now relax which is partially true.  I did have an anxiety dream about his return one night last week though.  There is a ton of work to be done and if I think about it all at once, it gets me very overwhelmed.  

Why am I telling you this?  Well, this week, on those early evenings when I had time to do stuff when I got home, I went through my notebook list of sensational places (I think anyway and reportedly so in the travel book my mom got me) to visit and input them into an excel spreadsheet.  I wasn't joking;  I love a good Excel spreadsheet.   Now, I can easily manipulate the order the locations are in so that they make sense geographically.  But this list will remain fluid.  I'm not setting anything in concrete with this travel.   

So, I literally just counted the number of countries on my list.... how many are there?  39!  I didn't think it was that many!  I've outdone myself.  :-/  But I'm not going to narrow it down.  Why would I do that?  They're still places I want to go and anything is possible!  Especially if I work along the way to supplement a budget that will probably be slightly less than ideal; but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  

Today, REI had a "garage sale" and it was my first time going to one.  I'm usually on top of everything.   I am always surprised how many people are in New Jersey and show up to things.  Well, I had to park probably 500 feet or more from the REI store and walk there... no big deal.  I walked up to the store, and there's people lined up halfway around the building!!! Holy moly!  REI had everything laid out in the parking lot.  I thought for sure there would be nothing left since I was at the end of the line.  As I was walking up, they opened the sale and the front-liners flooded into the area and started grabbing stuff to check out... sleeping bags were the first thing a few people grabbed.  There were clothes, coats, all types of shoes (hiking, boots, etc), bike racks, roof racks, tents, a lot of nice backpacks to put little kids in to carry, and some random small miscellaneous items.  I opened up a small two-person tent and the poles were different than I was expecting.  Nobody came with me so I felt pretty silly there looking at these poles not knowing exactly how to set up this tent.  I'm a camper!  I love camping and I don't know how to set up this tent?!?  Unspeakable.  So I quickly wrapped it up to put it back into the bag and while I was wrapping it, I saw the reason it was returned... a small rip in the tent fabric.  So, I stuffed it back into the tent bag, and moved on before I could feel anymore out of place and awkward.  Everybody was in such a rush and if you know me, you probably know that I don't operate so well under a rush.  

I did happen to find several little goodies that were such a bargain and that I'll use:
- ENO Hammock straps that are usually $60+ for $18
- A pair of long-johns which I didn't try on, but they looked like they would fit and were the same price as the straps.  
- A USB rechargeable tail light for my touring bike.  When I looked at this item, I thought it probably doesn't work or have the batteries which is why it's on this table so cheap.  I pressed the on button looking straight at this red LED, and BOOM!  It works!   Nabbed that little thing.  Hope it holds up.  I'm counting on it.  
- A cotton sleeping bag liner that said someone had used it once and didn't like it.  It had its little bag, really needs to be washed as there is some stuff from the outdoors dried up inside (hahah), but it should work brilliantly.  Hoping it's not terribly uncomfortable.  But for $10, I was willing to make that bet.
- I got a small wallet-thing that said RFID on it, so I assumed it's for your credit cards to protect from any fishy scanning devices.  It was missing its small carabiner; big deal, I can get a small one to clip it somewhere.   
- I found a perfect pair of black cycling gloves which I nabbed for my friend Zach.  He doesn't have any.  
- A pair of wool-lite socks for running in. 
- And a book called "No Shortcuts to the Top; Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks".  Should be a good read.  I'll let you know.  

After I had purchased my garage sale items, I went, moved my car to the REI parking lot that now had open parking spaces.  I wanted to go back into the store and look at sleeping bags and backpacks.  My Dad gave me an awesome gift card to my new favorite store and I'm saving it for when I have to buy the more expensive items.  It'll help take the shock off of an impending substantial investment.  I basically know which backpack I want: the Osprey Aura with the Anti-gravity mesh for where your back and hips meet the pack.   It was super comfortable at least the first time I tried it.   It was better than the other two I tried.  Please, PLEASE, if you can recommend backpacks, please comment and let me know! 

I decided it was too soon to make a big purchase.  What I really need to do, and plan to do in March or April, is schedule a personal shopper appointment where an REI employee will talk to you about your travel plans and help outfit you for the adventures to come.  That's going to be fun!  

So, then I got home and was feeling pretty tired.  I made a yummy lunch and settled on the couch with my laptop, tea, and water.  My Grandma gave me an Amazon gift card for Christmas, or maybe my birthday...so since I bought hammock straps, now I need a hammock and also a rainfly for not-so-good weather. Can you guess the name of the rain fly brand?  It's a Bear Butt!  The reviews on Amazon were great.   It'll be small, light, and comfortable for the bike trip.  Those will come in the mail Tuesday.  Maybe I'll try to set it up myself and show you.  But let's not get ahead of myself.  

After that was settled, I fell asleep and took an amazing ~2hour nap.  Why didn't I 
appreciate naps as a kid?  Naps are awesome.  

I had more to say today than I thought I would.  Two hours to the new year and I'm up later than I planned to be.  This has happened for the last few years.  I intend to go to bed and somehow I just get to doing something and end up staying up till midnight.  

Does anyone know how to get around without travel guidebooks?  I mean, you can't carry a guide book for every country you want to visit, so how do you do it?  This is where a big blog following would be helpful, ahaha.. I'll have to work on that. I looked through a Lonely Planet guidebook for Nepal.  Pretty interesting, but I had spent enough money already and decided that item could wait.    https://instagram.com/p/BOtK1QrDFhG8ITO9qziVWCuW-B0IffJap8-Neo0/

For now, good night, and Happy New Year.  

The Plan, The Goal, The Life

I have always wanted to travel.  Not just for a week or two; no...I mean long term.  There are so many beautiful places in the world, so many adventures to be had, so many people to meet, and stories to tell.  

My older sister and I spent some time together with church friends in Dickendorf Germany.  This was years ago.  We spent a total of six months (3 months sometime between October 2004 - January 2005 and 3 months between October and March 2005-2006) living and working in this tiny little town.  Did I miss home?  Not at all.  Did I miss my family?  Maybe a little, but my older sister was with me so it was great!  Did I want to go home when it was time?  Not at all.  Yes, I do love my parents!  It wasn't a lack of appreciation or love for my parents that made me not want to come home.    

I also seem to pick up the German language relatively easily.  I remember more German from way back when than I can Spanish from hanging out with my Puerto Rican friends regularly.  No I don't know why. 

I've been fortunate to travel quite a few other places; Puerto Rico (a few times), Panama (seen the Panama Canal), India (short term study abroad to study Indian step wells/step ponds between New Dehli and Ahmedabad/Patan), and other places that I can't recall at the moment.  

This quest has been a long time coming.  I graduated from Syracuse University in August 2011, bought a new car in October 2011, and therefore had a pretty good amount of debt.  So, I worked my butt off, lived at home for a couple years and put as much money as I could possibly spare down on my loans.  I successfully paid off all my debt in October 2015.  After that, I rewarded myself with a two-week vacation touring the eastern coast of Australia - Epic!!  After that, I paid back some money that I owed my dad, paid some car insurance, and finally in July of this year, 2016, I was able to start padding the savings account.  

I moved closer to the Big Apple and now live with a roommate to keep costs down.  I work crazy hours and bring home a good paycheck.  I'm able to save a good chunk of money each month.  

So, what's the plan, you ask?  Well, my brother is marrying a lovely young lady in mid-August.  That is my time-frame for saving, preparing, gearing up, cutting loose, and shaking the city dust off my feet! 

Adventure Part 1: Right after my brother's wedding, I will begin my adventure with a national park bicycle tour with my Dad.  We'll do this for approximately 2 months.  That will be mid-August to mid-October.  

Adventure Part 2: Overseas
I have been building a network of friends from around the world; either through college, travels, work, and whatever.  I'll begin my trip in Taiwan to visit my amazing kindred free spirit Nina.  Pretty sure we'll have a blast together as I get my international travel legs back on!  After that, well the world will be at my fingertips.  I've been building a list of places to visit; I don't expect to see them all, but they'll be a place to start and I'm sure along the way I'll meet amazing people to travel and share amazing experiences with.  Along the way, I'll do my best to post amazing pictures, stories about my travels, stories from people I meet, and whatever else.  

Lots of preparation to do.  But I need to know the balance between preparing and just heading out and doing these amazing things!  Anyway, 31 weeks and 3 days until this adventure begins but who's counting.

This Christmas, my mom gave me a couple Lonely Planet travel books to help my preparation.  Last night I went through and made a list in my travel notebook of the places I want to see.  Tonight, or this week, I'll organize those places into a semi-geographically sensibly ordered listed in an excel spreadsheet (who doesn't love a good spreadsheet?!?!). Side note: I love excel.  Literally.  

One other thing to kick this off - REI is now my best friend and a store that has become a financial hazard.  I can't go there too often because it's like a little kid in a toy or candy store; everything is so exciting and gosh, I could just go nuts!  But a little later next spring, I'm thinking March or April (if I can wait that long), I'll set up an appointment for a personal shopper to help me pick out what equipment I will need for this epic adventure.  

Two smaller adventures before all this happens: I'll be tackling my second Ragnar Relay in Richmond with my work team in April and my first olympic distance triathlon in May.  Training has yet to begin; this will happen shortly though, once my senior PM gets back from vacation.  

Suggestions, helpful tips, words of advice, and such things are appreciated!  

Here's just a few pictures of recent and not-so-recent adventures. 

De-stress bike ride this past fall.

On the way to Oak Creek Canyon in Sedona, AZ with my best friend for a camping trip.

Off-roading overlook in Forest Lakes, AZ.

Sunrise in Phoenix, AZ this past Sept. 1st, 2016.  

De-stress bicycle ride this past fall.