Biting The Bullet

Motivations for extended travel

Fri, 31 May 2013 00:45:48 +1000

jaccccc: Travelling solo for 10 months has left a massive impression upon me, the lessons from...

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:45:27 +1100

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” - Henry David Thoreau

undr: Jessie Tarbox Beals Fifth Avenue at 25th Street,...

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:24:21 +1100

undr:

Jessie Tarbox Beals

Fifth Avenue at 25th Street, 1905

even hidden by fog and time, the flatiron is straight up delicious.

“When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and...

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:15:21 +1100

“When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat-Moon

I don’t dream frequently like others do.

I lie down, and I sleep. It’s a skill that has served me well in my travels.

But lately, I have been dreaming a lot more than usual. And when I wake, I recall dreams about far away lands, places I’ve never been to before, and people I’ve never met.

It’s been so long since my big trip in 2010. My feet are itching to take off on my next adventure.

prettyclever: Linzie Hunter (via Veerle)

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:30:24 +1100

prettyclever:

Linzie Hunter

(via Veerle)

Borough Market | London, UK. So much food, so many memories :)

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 12:45:23 +1100

Borough Market | London, UK. So much food, so many memories :)

East London market snapshots

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:45:16 +1100

East London market snapshots

nickgerber: Wrong Place - Right Time chi-town i miss u

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:23:39 +1100

nickgerber:

Wrong Place - Right Time

chi-town i miss u

Dubrovnik, Croatia. Only spent a week here, but what a glorious...

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:30:12 +1100

Dubrovnik, Croatia. Only spent a week here, but what a glorious week it was. Would jump at the chance to go back again, and go exploring beyond the coast.

Asolo, Italy. What a pleasure it was to get an insight into...

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:45:36 +1100

Asolo, Italy. What a pleasure it was to get an insight into small town life in rural Italy. I still have great memories of cobblestone streets, vines growing along medieval buildings, drinking locally-brewed beer, and enjoying the entertainment provided by the wandering choir…led by the town mayor!

Photo

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:30:22 +1100

Loving going through old photos, especially of The City. ...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 12:45:25 +1100

Loving going through old photos, especially of The City. Can’t wait to get back…hopefully at the end of 2013! :)

Photo collages are one of my favourite ways to reminisce. ...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:53:20 +1100

Photo collages are one of my favourite ways to reminisce. Can’t believe I’ve been home for two years.

beenthinking: It feels like I’ve been home forever. Which is...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 14:15:13 +1100

beenthinking:

It feels like I’ve been home forever. Which is fairly ridiculous, given that over the past four months my “home” has been stacked up and drifted two thousand miles west like a continent. But the thing is, a mega grocery mart in California is a mega grocery mart in Minnesota. Traffic and English and ease and the relatively familiar are the same here as they are there as they would be anywhere in these 50 states, more or less. By which I mean that my feet remain restless, my heart is ready for something truly different.

When my father turned 60 this spring, I said: Let’s do something big. And, where in the world do you want to go? Northern India, he said and so I’ll fly to meet him and my brother in Delhi and seven or eight days later, just about the time we have moved through Rajasthan and also from delighting in each other to murdering each other, C. will join us as a very welcomed distraction for the next two weeks north by northeast. And maybe a little south? It’s hard to say. There are few plans and four sets of vibrant, detailed day dreams and I cannot wait to see where the compromises will take us.

So in a few days, I’ll zip up my backpack and do that bend and swing - that favorite hoisting up and over, after which everything you need (more than you need, really) is carried on your back. Under your own steam power. And there are no laptops or telephones, little vanity and few tethers home.

It’s hard not to grin while I write this and so I’ve stopped trying. I never feel completely at home here, you know? I think these feet were legitimately built to wander. It’s been 18 months since the last big trip to Colombia and that probably doesn’t seem like very long, but it’s a bit like holding my breath. Out there - anywhere - is the big exhale. Better, even, the big inhale. Out there, I feel my best self rise back up. Calm back down. I find myself again and my place - in a far backseat to the other 6,999,999,999 people in the world and what they’ve carried and what their parents carried and the thousands of glorious years of battles and faith and ruin and heritage and culinary ingenuity and victory and pilgrimage and uprising that nip me down to only this: Insignificance and Blessing.

How lucky we are that the world is this big, that we might never reach it all.

I can hardly sleep at night thinking of the colors and the pace, the spice and the noise, learning the melody of a city I don’t understand. Watching a thousand miles of your countryside roll by like ribbons, like filmstrips. Catch me up, I’ll yell! Just praying the world will comply, just waiting to be overwhelmed. And I’ll memorize everything I can so that one day, when we are very much back home. Weighed down by the glories and the weariness of this domestic life, I can pull that packet out and wrap myself in its colors like peace.

"If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much..."

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 13:30:02 +1100

“If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as...

beingblog: “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 12:45:12 +1100

beingblog:

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

~Terry Pratchett from A Hat Full of Sky.

Photo by Sioen Roux. (Taken with instagram)

though i rarely update this blog these days, i can tell you that the desire to travel still burns brightly within. but i am struggling with an enviable dilemma - i am so content here, but the wide world beckons…

littleredroom: canon ae-1 caffeinated leaf I rarely let a day...

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:15:35 +1100

littleredroom:

canon ae-1

caffeinated leaf

I rarely let a day go by without a sip of that glorious black nectar. With older tastebuds, appreciative of the interplay between bitter and sweet, I genuinely enjoy exploring how different beans, roasts, and brew methods can transform the taste of coffee.

But there’s more to it than that. There’s a love of coffee for the opportunity it gives me to slow down, to step away from my desk, to indulge in a moment for myself. There’s fascination with the way coffee and culture intertwine; picture all the thought leaders and history makers that have changed our world…how many have planted the seeds of their most fertile ideas at a gathering over a cup o’ joe?

And of course, there’s coffee as a reviver. On bad days, it serves to mask the worst parts of my personality that surface when I am lacking sleep and lacking perspective. On better days? Coffee revives memories. The smell of espresso is a comma, a pause, punctuating memories as phrases from the most full and fulfilling years of my life so far.

And so to the cup pictured above. Lovely texture, a delicate rosetta. Though not my usual drink of choice (I’m a doppio kind of girl), this black and white snapshot is filled with character in every bit of grain and noise. It just takes a glance and in an instant, I think of London. Yes London! Not historically the mecca of coffee, but in MY history, it is…in a way. Coffee and London means weekends, familiar accents, corner seats, shelter from the hubbub of Oxford St, sometimes new friends, sometimes solitude.

Maybe I am romanticising this too much. But now you know that coffee is more to me than just a jolt back to reality.

"This City now doth like a garment wear."

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 09:24:53 +1000

Since arriving in London early on Wednesday morning, I feel like I’ve been going at a...

typeverything: Typeverything.com ‘Life is Either a Daring...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 03:00:05 +1100

typeverything:

Typeverything.com

‘Life is Either a Daring Adventure or Nothing’ print by LLKoOLReL.

pauloctavious: Love riding the first seat of the train....

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:01:06 +1100

pauloctavious:

Love riding the first seat of the train. #chicago

love the L. missing chicago.