miLE 0 (Take 2) - ATW Trip 2024

Aperol Spritz

Star Alliance Lounge, LAX

Yes, I’m back! Should have kept up on this travel journal, especially in 2023 when I did some fun international trips such as Australia, Italy and Switzerland. Definitely should have kept it going even in early 2024 when I did some great trips within California such as Yosemite and Mammoth. It’s okay, it happens and I’ll come back and show you some of the adventures I’ve been on in the past. But now, I’m excited to share with you what I’m going to be doing on my latest trip- which is going to be a doozy and will cross off a bucket list place for sure!

I’m typing this out while sitting in one of the lounges at LAX sipping on an Aperol Spritz after just popping a high strength ibuprofen (cheers to getting old). With how much I’ve traveled over the last few years I sometimes need to remind myself to take a step back and see how fortunate I am to be able to do what I do. In 2022 I was away from home for 119 days and in 2023 that ballooned up to 133 days! In 2024 I have already been away from home for 47 days and it's only April!

Reef Sleep Experience

Waking up to the sunrise on the Great Barrier Reef - yes in the middle of the ocean!

I am definitely lucky for two reasons. One, I have a great job that gives me both the financial freedom and the flexibility to take trips to so many different places, and more importantly try out so many interesting, unique and thrilling experiences. I am grateful to my boss and my team for supporting me while I am away and it also helps that I try to stay connected with emails and meetings even if that means staying up until 2am some times. It’s a healthy balance that lets me do some amazing things. For example in 2023 I went to Australia for work and I parlayed that into just spending extra time there and having a blast down under! I even celebrated my birthday down there. This picture shows one of my absolute favorite experiences of all time (Reef Sleep) that I was able to do because of work.

But the other reason that I am lucky is to just have the drive and desire for all of these adventures. It isn’t easy to live out of a suitcase and random hotel room beds and I do get exhausted but the experiences, people I meet and the fun stories all make it worth it! As many of you who know me personally know, I’m getting the crazy solo traveling out of the way while I don’t have pets or have many responsibilities at home. That is why I can go off for 3 weeks at a time - which is exactly what I’m going to do on this trip. But I am also glad that I’m pretty flexible and adaptable and open minded enough to try food, experiences, nutcase adventures that are out of my comfort zone. I think that is so important for me personally and such a large aspect of my life. I hope when I meet my future wife, she’ll have that same drive and interest in these “getting to know the world” trips.

Anyways I’m about to board so I’ll keep this short and sweet for now. Where am I off to first? For now it is an important work trip to Bangalore, India where I’ll be until Thursday night.

See you at the next miLE! 

miLE 13,830 - Couldn't Keep Up

I'm sitting here at a restaurant called Javi's at John Wayne airport in Orange County thinking back to about 3 months ago when I started writing this blog and was in Europe and realized that I was out of my mind thinking I could write a post every day while traveling.  It's no excuse but trying to write on this blog with only an iPad with very intermittent WiFi was very difficult.  Not to mention how exhausting every day and night was. 

I'm probably not going to go into as much detail about the end of my Europe trip but to summarize, after Cologne I went to Amsterdam, Ghent, Bruges, Edinburgh and then spent a couple days back in London.  I'm doing the trip a disservice when I say it was amazing.  It's one of those life changing trips that I truly enjoyed in many ways.  I was so nervous about traveling alone but it ended up being the right balance of traveling alone, traveling with friends and meeting friends along the way.

I think what I will do from now on is to summarize big chunks of a trip and not try to do a daily blog.  I'm still planning on doing many more trips - as you might have realized I'm on my way to another destination right now.  It's actually not international but I'm actually still pretty excited about it.  I'm heading to Portland for the weekend to see a good buddy of mine and also check out the 2017 Eclipse that everyone is talking about.  I know it's not quite once in a lifetime chance to see a total eclipse but it's a pretty rare event so I'm super excited to go check it out. 

That's all for now. Boarding in a few minutes.  Like I said I'm not going to commit to doing a blog a day but I will try my best to stay active.  Note that I tend to post a lot more often on my instagram where you can usually see daily pictures.  In fact you can go check out the rest of the pictures from my Europe trip there. Instagram - @milesofmnm

See you at the next mile!