The Drop — Vancouver, BC Waterfront
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A couple of weekends ago, I traveled to Vancouver, BC for the Travel Bloggers Exchange (TBEX) conference—a place for travel bloggers to meet and talk shop, as well as meet people in the travel industry. I was looking forward to this because I wanted to get some inspiration, and to meet some of the bloggers, and podcasters I regularly follow.

While there, I stayed at the Samesun Backpackers Hostel. The Samesun is located in the heart of downtown, and features dorm and private rooms, as well as a restaurant/bar downstairs with cheap beer and food. I chose to stay in a four person dorm, and the room was clean, the lockers solid and secure, and the bed was actually comfortable—so much nicer than what I was used to overseas. I shared the room with a British guy who was in town looking for work, and a young Eastern Canadian couple out touring the West. Of course, it is a hostel, and I had the misfortune of being woken up several times during my stay by the young couple "gettin' busy" in the bunk above me. Note: earplugs don't help when the whole damned bed is shaking.... Other than that, I did enjoy my stay at the Samesun.

TBEX

The conference was interesting; it took place at the Vancouver Convention Center, and involved speakers and workshops during the days, and then a LOT of partying and socializing during the nights. There were...

Stars and Headlamps—Memorial Meltdown 2011. 30 minute exposure.
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This is my favorite time of year in the States—the beginning of the outdoor party season. Last weekend I made a road-trip down to California for Goa Gil's Memorial Meltdown—the party I look forward to most every year. The Gil party is the kickoff to the outdoor psytrance party campout season, for me anyway. This year it took place on Indian reservation land near Clear Lake, California, and was a long drive from where I live in Oregon—about 9 hours—but the Meltdown is worth the long hours of driving.

For those who don't know, Goa Gil is a DJ who plays psychedelic trance, or, more specifically, what many consider to be dark psychedelic trance). He's originally from San Francisco, but in 1969 he left for India, where he studied yoga. Eventually he started playing parties on the beaches of Goa, in an attempt to combine yoga and dance (I'm still not sure how that works...). Today, he plays all over the world; I've seen him play many times in...

Before I left on my trip, and while working on building this site, I realized that I had a tough time with getting organized, and getting things done. So, I went on Amazon and started searching for self help books on productivity, time management, etc. That led me to a book called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity—pretty relevant to what I was looking for, based on the title.... I read the book, and did use some of the techniques, but I never fully implemented it before I decided it was time to skip the country and see the world. However, I still think it's a great system, and since I've got a (somewhat daunting) pile of projects to work on at the moment, I've decided to give it another go—this time more seriously.

GTD is a "work-life management system" where you get all of the "stuff" out of your head and into lists of "actionable" tasks. Basically, you do a brain-dump of everything you need to do, or think about, no matter how big or small, and organize it into a trackable system. Get everything written down into lists of projects, which can be further broken down into lists of actual doable steps that can be reviewed often. After doing the initial dump of "stuff", it's amazing to see how many thoughts and ideas have just been hanging out in memory, and nagging at me—each adding a bit of stress, or anxiety to my life. Dumping all this stuff onto lists is an amazing feeling—a sort of mind cleanse.

I decided that keeping piles of paper lists would probably not work out too well for me, and may have been one of the reasons I didn'...

Hello all. Well, I'm back in the US, and living in Eugene Oregon now. Not too long ago, I learned of some family matters that required my presence back home, so I cut my trip short and returned to the US. Actually, I've been back in the States for a while, but have not posted much to the site because, now that my travel plans have been put on hold, I'm not entirely sure what direction to take the site in while I'm taking a break from being on the road. I have a few ideas up my sleeve, so I hope to start pumping out more content in the coming months.

For the time being I'll be working on giving the site a facelift, as well as working on some non-site projects -- more on those later. I do plan to continue with my travels through Asia, and while I'll be taking care of things on this side of the pond, I'll also be planning for the next leg of my journey in the future.

I Hope everyone had a great holiday season, a happy new year, and all that good stuff....

Cheers!