London

This is a place holder until I have time to actually write and go through the pictures from London

Dublin

I am sitting in the common room at our hostel in Dublin with our French Canadian friends, Beatrice and Melissa.

Last night we went down to the Temple Bar for dinner with the Canadians.  We met a family from New Jersey and had a great time talking about travel  and trying to get through some language barriers.

Whitney was very tired after dinner and went straight to bed. I stayed up and watched Irish tv (a show with weird puppets) and helped Melissa practice her English.  Beatrice ended up going out with our waiter for a few hours.

Today we are going to take a bus tour around Dublin.  The New Jersey family was leaving town and had 4 extra passes to the hop-on-hop-off bus tours so they gave them to us.


Pictures coming soon. The internet here is too slow to upload them

Traveling Lite

Im doing a bit of my pre-packing for my trip.  I am leaving on Monday but I have something to do every day until then so I wont be back at my apartment  ... so this has to get done now.

Here is a little inspiration:

This is my backpack. This is the only baggage I am bringing.

This is the large part of what I am putting in that bag.  I haven't done any compression packing on the clothes yet so it will fit in a much smaller space in the bag when I do.  The blue towel (upper middle) is a camping towel that dries super fast, weighs nothing and packs small. It's like drying off with a Sham-wow. The black in the upper right is a cycling jacket that has all the same properties as the towel but it keeps me warm.

I have a hat because I can't sleep in the airport when it is bright, so I put it over my face.  I am also wearing my barefoot shoes.

The folder has my passport and all the confirmations for my trains and flights. This information is duplicated in my iPod and the black notebook.  Everything else is just there to feed my techno-addiction

Bring On The Learning Revolution!

The man is a great speaker and a great advocate for education.  If you haven't read any of his books you are truly missing out on a great insight.

(I didnt feel like setting up my camera, so I just used my webcam)

I have only read this book of his, unfortunately.  It is called "The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything."  If anybody would like to buy me a birthday or any other holiday present, his other books are at the top of my list

Scrap Box

Jenn took me to the Scrap Box in Ann Arbor yesterday on our way to the local couchsurfing meeting.  She needed supplies for the summer camp she is teaching and I just like to build things so she thought I would like it too.

I found a tub full of Altoids tins.

Im going to bring two along with me when I travel next month to hold the types of money I am not using.  I will have to go between Crowns, Pounds and Euros.

The third is holding an old iPod that I use as an external hard drive.

I also found some picture frames and old National Geographic magazines.  One of them had this cool advert in it so I cut it out and put it in the frame and it looks nice.

How to Make The Perfect Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich

... or in this case, Peanut Butter & Honey.  This way keeps the jelly from soaking through the bread or making a mess in your lunch box.

Cover both one side of each piece of bread with peanut butter.

Put a big glob of Jelly, Honey, Marmite, Nutella or whatever. Do not spread it around.

Put the two pieces of bread together and push the area around the crust together, making a bit of a pocket.  Enjoy!

In Preparation:

It is not often that I buy books, I am a very cheap man.  After seeing this book recommended in another good book that I read (and bought) recently I thought it might be worth checking out.

What I found was a man who shares many of my ideals and sense of adventure.  What I havent found yet is new information that will help me at all.  I guess if I hadn't already done the barely planned backpacking around the other side of the world I might get more from the book.  I still have about 50 pages to read, we will see what that brings.