Last Post in US

Well, it's 3am here in Denver, and I'm still not quite ready yet. I leave in 4 hours. I'll be alright though. I just saw NIN at Red Rocks and it pretty much blew my freakin mind away. Trent Reznor is pretty much the coolest person alive. Anyway, it was nice to be able to take in the site of my hometown from up there in the mountains and enjoy the smell of clean, refreshing air....mixed in with random wafts of reefer smoke, beer, and occasonally puke. I have some pretty cool photo's of it, so maybe you all will be able to see it later. How do I feel right now? Well, I guess I feel kind of moot. I have gone through so many waves of being excited and ready to nervous and worried. But now I've just accepted it. I've said all my goodbye's and am now standing at the edge of one massive life time experience. I don't know where it will take me, but I am 100% ready for it. Bring it on....(finally Mike and I can move into the actual trip blog instead of this pre-trip stuff that no one is interested in...)

Good bye America. I'll miss you.

Less than 24 hours until liftoff!!!!

Well ladies and gents, with less than 24 hours until lift off I have finally packed everything into my bag and luckily, it all fits with room to spare. However, at this point I don't know whether it’s good or bad that I still have all kinds of room. Either way, at this point this is what I have and thus this is what I'm going with. Tomorrow the plan is to leave the home around 1:00, then I get to deal with airports and airplanes for quite awhile until June 1 when we arrive in Ireland.

As for an update of our overall plans for the next year... we have kind of made a loose plan for the next few months. The most interesting part of this planning phase has been planning on being in certain places so that our friends and relatives who are going to be in the area can find us. Plus it's been a slight struggle to coordinate how we are going to do this because the kids who are already there are on such a different time schedule than us. However, I do think we have figured it out for the most part and I’m sure we'll post it online here once we get it all finalized. I don't have much left to say at this point other than say later boys and girls, have a good year in the USA.

Time for an update!

Most of you haven't heard from me in a while. I've been working my ass off to get as much cash as I can before I leave. But at least it has been a good time, the jobs I'm at are really fun and I'm working with a lot of cool people. I'll miss all of them when I leave.

Anyway, Mike and I take off in about 13 days! Wow, even writing that sent a shiver down my spine. I have been getting some great advise from my friends, Don and Linda Wagner, about our planned trip to Morroco. I think we have a pretty good idea of where to go...probably Marrakesh, Fez, and Essouira. I also have a friend who is a cook at the restaurant I serve at, Romano's Italian Pizzaria, who is from Albania. He has been an awesome help hooking us up with his relatives in Athens, Crete, and Milano. He also taught me how to speak a little Albanian, so I can swear at him in the kitchen and no one has any idea what we're saying.

So, I'm really enjoying and living up the days here in good 'ol USA. Now it's time to crunch. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a bunch of sales. One in particular was an adventure sports store in Boulder, CO called GoLite. They had a clearance sale where everything in the store was 50-75% OFF! Freakin amazing. I also have some inside hook ups from Pam Simich and Brian Metzler, who used to work for Ski Racing Magazine and Adventure Sports Magazine. Since these mags feature a lot of top quality adventure brands, they receive a ton of free product promotions and demos. So they hooked me up with some great stuff. Here's an update on all the things I've recently bought.

•Chaco Sandals (incredibly comfortable, really hug your feet)

•Born Shoes, Prophet (Another incredible shoe. Nice smooth Leather, unrivaled comfort, durable, sports shoe yet can easily pass for a nice dress shoe)

•2 Quick dry pant. 1 zip off at the knees to convert to shorts. The other is a solid khaki color Prana Safari brand, common amoung rock climbers, and the pant legs can roll up at the ankles for some extra flow.

•An Eagle Creek money belt. Literally a belt that goes through your belt loops in your pants. On the inside of the belt there is a zipper to fold up money and tuck in. No one can tell you have it stashed away. The only downer is that my Quick dry's already have a belt attached to them so there are no loops. I don't know if I'll be able to bring this but we'll see.

•4 T-shirts from Urban Outfitters. This store rocks. They have these really cool soft solid color t's that make you look great yet doesn't place you out of the crowd. They are only $12 a piece too.

•Some new aviators, a little more stylish but still inexpensive.

•A GoLite waterproof lightweight rainjacket (thanks Brian,) some Spyder spandex gloves, a cool new camelback waterbottle.

•An awesome 60L GoLite Intuition backpack (this deal was amazing, retail = $220, got it for $80!!!! Brand new!)
•for a security measure, I had 6 metal gromits...metal holes...installed into the sides of my bag so I can weave a metal retractable wire lock through the bag and lock it.

•A Tail Feather Hydration Pack, can hold a 3L water bladder with room to spare. (I'll use this as my daypack)

•A few Nylon Stuff sacks and 2 Compression Bags.

•Canon PowerShot A620 Digital Camera, 7.5 megapixel.
•tripod, battery recharger and battery case, a 1GB SD memory card, and an IPOD photo card reader to transfer my photos and store them on my IPOD.

•A 120 GB external travel Hard Drive.

•All kinds of medical first aid stuff.

•shower/toiletries case, travel quick dry towel (it's kinda tiny though...could run into some embarrassing situations), and rubber flip-flops.

•A cheap, but decent looking wristwatch.

•A 8"x8" sketchbook, a pencil pouch with 4 black conte crayons, 3 double tipped sharpies, graphite pencils, colored pencils, pencil sharpener, eraser.

•A pocket size diary/sketchbook/thought collector (someday a great idea will come from inside this book)

Anyway this list is getting a little long. I'll let you all know if I forgot anything. I still have to scan all my important documents and load them up on my FTP website, get an international drivers license, assort all my music and computer programs/files...load them onto my external HD, and create a project brief for my design project.

So I'm out...until the next update!

Brandle

Are you even reading this???

I'm going to go ahead and figure nobody reads this section of the website at this point because of our status still in the states. Because of this i've decided to place a funny picture up that everyone should enjoy... so here it is. Also I'll be doing the graduation dance here in a few weeks so you know that's kind of exciting. Other than that, I figure this part of the site will seem as though it's on a defibrillator until we get real close to the departure time which is like 28 days or something crazy close like that.

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The last pretrip post

So to be quite honest I thought the last couple of days before I left would be a slow, agonising time of counting the seconds until I left. I was wrong. I had been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, but I believe I got everything taken care of and all my stuff packed up. I am currently writing this in Chicago and still haven't found anything I am missing/have left, so that should count for something. Like Aaron, the severity of this trip still has not sunk in, nor do I think I will realize how long a year of traveling is until a few weeks into the trip (I'll let you all know.) So rather than going into what I'm thinking and feeling right now, I will make a vow to keep this website as up to date as possible. If possible I will also try to make small little 5 minutes movies for people to watch, I don't know the storage space on this website, so that may or may not actually happen. However, I will miss everyone so make sure to keep checking the website and I will make sure to post pictures and say what's up. Well, Liz and I are off to China town (here in Chicago) so I best be off. Talk to you all soon... from over seas (play dramatic music).

D-Day

Well boys and girls this is it. I am sitting in my Mother's house after having unloaded the last of my stuff to store. I leave Kansas in about 5 hours and you know what? It hasn't hit me yet.

I am going to be away from family, friends, and familiarity for over a year and as of now I feel as if I am just going on a short vacation. My backpack is packed, my cell phone unlocked, bills have been paid, and goodbyes have almost all been said. This is it. This is the beginning. This is where the adventure starts. I'll be seeing ya.

Quick Backpack update

Quick update on the backpack real fast... today my package from moosejaw.com came. It was the wrong color bag. Because of this they offered to send me a new one for wholesale value. Just in case if you weren't aware wholesale is what the manufacturer (osprey) charges the retailer (moosejaw, altec, etc)... Anyway, it'll end up i get my backpack for 140ish... Hell fucking ya!!!!

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