News

August 1, 2026 Headlong Flight

There's a thought that's been rattling around in my head with increasing frequency lately, and it's this: at no point in recorded history have we been this collectively, this homogenously close to the frontier of what's actually possible. Not just scientists in labs or engineers in black sites or billionaires with their toys. All of us. Right here, at the keyboard, on the road, watching from rocket launch viewing areas or on some sort of live video or replay, every day, most humans.

I find this extraordinarily exciting. Almost magical. At times, like I hopped in a time machine and skipped ahead.

The AI tools alone are staggering to consider. A few years ago, access to something that could hold a sophisticated conversation, help you think through a complex problem, write code, synthesize research, or draft a legal framework was maybe available in specialized form in labs and high-tech companies. Today it's largely free, rapidly improving, and sitting in everyone's pocket. The ability to see, listen and read/write the way we humans do. It took decades for the internet to expand and then become polluted by bots and relentless marketing, and this feels like a hopeful revolution. Moving fast enough that you can watch it happen in real time. Consider the scale: in 2015, roughly 3 billion people had internet access. By 2020 it was 4.7 billion. Today it's 6 billion, representing 74% of the entire human population, all increasingly able to access the same tools at the same time. ChatGPT launched in November 2022, reached one million users in five days and 100 million within two months, a consumer adoption record at the time, and immediately triggered a global race: Google fast-tracked Gemini, Anthropic launched Claude publicly in 2023, Meta opened its Llama models to the world, and China's DeepSeek arrived in early 2024 sending shockwaves through the industry by matching frontier performance at a fraction of the cost. Since that 2022 starting gun, over 199 tracked frontier models have been released across more than 10 major AI labs, with the monthly cadence of major releases having roughly quadrupled since 2023 alone. And we ALL have access to ALL this technology!

Space rocketry has gone from the domain of nation-states to something with the cadence of a startup. The last Space Shuttle flight landed in July 2011. What followed was nearly nine years of silence from American soil, during which 38 US astronauts rode to the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz rockets at $86 million a seat, a $3 billion arrangement that was politically uncomfortable and operationally fragile. SpaceX ended that embarrassment in May 2020. In 2015 there were 87 orbital launches globally for the full year, a number that had barely moved in decades. In 2025 there were 315 successful ones, nearly one every single day. Reusable boosters landing themselves with a precision that still seems computationally impossible even after watching it happen a hundred times. Each year the bar rises. Each year the thing that amazed you last year is now routine.

The car you drive today is likely negotiating lane changes, reading signs, and keeping its distance from the car ahead without your hands on the wheel. Full autonomy is no longer a thought experiment; it's a regulatory question. GM launched the EV1 program in 1996, produced a small fleet for lease only, and quietly killed the whole thing by 1999. It broke my heart to watch. Tesla sold its first Roadster in 2008. Last year, Tesla alone delivered nearly 1.8 million electric vehicles worldwide. And Tesla is just one data point now: in 2024, 92% of all new cars sold in Norway were electric, 58% in Sweden, and 48% in China, which also sold 11.3 million EVs in absolute numbers, the largest market on earth by a wide margin. Meanwhile Waymo, Google's autonomous vehicle spinoff, was completing 50,000 driverless rides per week in May 2024. By March 2026 that number had hit 500,000 weekly across 10 US cities, with plans to expand to 20 more cities and internationally to Tokyo and London by year's end. The car, as we know it, is finally heading towards being a legacy product. I’ve experienced nearly silent downtown centers and riding in a self-driving car, and they were glorious.

Air travel is perhaps the most taken-for-granted miracle of modern life. In 1975, roughly 207 million Americans took a flight for the year. In 2024 it was 900 million, in the US alone, while 4.5 billion passengers flew globally, with roughly 100,000 commercial flights departing somewhere on earth every single day. It blows my mind! The price tells an equally remarkable story: a cross-country flight from New York to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s cost the equivalent of about $3,500 in today's dollars. That same flight today runs closer to $150–300. A Los Angeles to Boston ticket that cost $915 in 1978 fell to $120 by 2024, in inflation-adjusted terms. We board a metal tube, get a bad cup of coffee, and wake up on the other side of the country or the other side of the planet. It is not instantaneous, but it is, in every meaningful sense, teleportation. And we collectively treat it as an inconvenience!

Drug development is perhaps the quietest but most profound of all of it. For context: the previous record for fastest vaccine ever developed was the mumps vaccine in the 1960s, which took four years. The typical vaccine development timeline runs 10 to 15 years. The COVID vaccine went from pathogen identification to emergency authorization in under 12 months. That achievement, built on mRNA platform work that had been quietly advancing for years, has now unlocked a framework applicable to cancer, rare disease, and aging itself. The outcomes are beginning to roll out in ways that would have been read like optimistic fiction a decade ago.

I grew up with Popular Science and Popular Mechanics on the coffee table, the Jetsons on TV, Clarke and Asimov on the shelf, and with 2001 and Blade Runner on VHS. There was a version of the future they described, not the dystopian parts but the parts about what humans might do with enough intelligence and enough tools, that felt perpetually 30 years away. A safe and sadly distant aspiration.

The “future” has arrived. Simultaneously with and without much relative fanfare for what is occurring. In some sense, if you wake up in the morning, clear your head, and think for a moment about what has transpired in the past 10 years, the future just sort of “showed up”.

"All the highlights of that headlong flight
Holding on with all my might
To what I felt back then
I wish that I could live it all again" -N. Peart

July 17, 2026 In a Vapor Trail

Stream of Thoughts: Rush's "Fifty Something" Tour

Watching a fan-shot (and edited, multi-viewpoint) full concert video on YouTube as they are currently on tour and I have no plans to attend a show.

Overjoyed that they opened with Xanadu, my favorite song. Way to grab my attention! In all the history of concerts I've attended or watched on video, my eyes would spend most of the time focused on Neil. This time, I find myself focusing on Alex and Geddy, taking only occasional glances at Anika.

The Limelight lyrics resonate deeply: "I have no heart to lie; I can't pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend." It seems to underscore my feeling of her on the drums, sitting in the space where Neil lived. I do notice many of the compromised flourishes - such as a descending fill instead of an ascending fill, and the glockenspiel not being present or played (the backing keyboardist in the shadows provides those parts now). These subtle differences are omnipresent; my mind picks up on every single one, and it leaves me a little disappointed. Anika is a fine drummer, and I think it's best said (and thought of) that Anika is Anika, and Neil was Neil. "That's how it is – how it's going to be."

Geddy seems to have maintained his vocal abilities and range. It is rare for an aged vocalist to perform without autotune, heavy reverb, or mic-distancing to cover up a loss of capability. It's also great to see the use of the classic instruments and the freed-up stage movement for Geddy, thanks to having a keyboardist off to the side.

Overall, things just don't sound quite as "tight," likely due to a multitude of factors. The timing feels off at times (for instance, Freewill is played at a very fast speed). The experience is just amplified given the 40 years of near perfection that you get used to - perfection you aren't even fully aware of until a change occurs. It's all somewhat jarring, though it would perhaps have less of an effect in a live stadium setting.

On one hand, 90% of it is still all there. But with Rush, it was always 99–100%, every time, every year, every decade. Yet, there are moments I smile seeing those two masters back on stage, clearly in their element and rising out of tragedy for a second time. Is it better to have than to have not? Probably.

Now a lovely vignette of Neil's voiceover recollections with drum solo video playback. Followed by a video montage while Bravado is performed. Emotional for sure.

La Villa Strangiato is always a treat, so nice to have it in the set. Again, hearing - but trying not to notice - the missing accents, a different characteristic of a flam, so many tiny things. Noticing that the big-screen livestream doesn't show much of Anika, whereas it would always spend a lot of focus on Neil. Again, just this ever-nagging sense of a giant hole where the star of the show used to reign.

Another treat with the rarely performed Vital Signs, after some words on Neil's monumental lyrical contribution to the music.

Nice to hear Alex's backing vocals on The Temples of Syrinx. He continues to stay mostly “in his own corner” stage right, tethered telepathically to the beat and that bass. The staging, lighting, and effects are high quality, as usual. The trio of 2112 songs feel tighter overall. Geddy is remarkably youthful in his movements, clearly enjoying the ride.

Some sort of front stage digital scrim provides extra dimensions occasionally; however, the intrusive, extensive framework makes it seem clunky. The drumming continues to all too often feel blurred together, missing Neil's sense of micro pauses and punctuation that created the intricate framework upon which the rest of the performances fit perfectly.

The songs keep coming up roses, well-chosen.

Red Barchetta, Dreamline, and another absolute joy to see tackled live, Natural Science.

I'm watching this part of the show on a second night, so may have a slightly different outlook. Given the gloriously technical nature of the drum parts, I can't help but tune into and occasionally watch and listen for the many tiny percussive touches, but they just don't seem to be there. It's hard that I shouldn't be tuning into that and just enjoy seeing the boys, but I can't help it. It’s a well-worn habit. Many times, now, I feel the urge to pull out some of the DVDs of past concerts and watch them. I'm really yearning for Neil's performances. Essentially, as I predicted, it's hard not to watch and want the reproduction to be exact even though you know it's not going to be. So, I just want to rewatch all the old concerts now. I push down the urge and mentally queue the potential.

There are a couple of angles where I smile watching Geddy and Alex just enjoying the hell out of themselves.

Now there is another brief vignette of Neil with some reflections of his, with some footage of a lovely, intricate drum solo section. Followed by the moving Time Stand Still with surprise appearance of Amy Mann. Alex seems to stare steadily ahead for a minute, perhaps thinking of and missing his friend for this moment.

Red Sector A, a rare setlist song next. Missing the electronic kit and special sounds it produced but it’s not too upsetting overall.

YYZ now. Impossible not to hope for authentic drum fills, which are obviously not attempted. Wise choice but surely a letdown for every drummer in the audience. A weird feeling arises, as it would be about this time of the show and this exact song which would potentially launch us into a glorious new drum solo. Knowing there will never be another one hurts. Again, the desire to pop in a prior show, maybe his last, to watch the solo. Perhaps in the not-so-distant future. I quickly research to recall the legendary solos’ stylized names: The Rhythm Method (1988–1997), O Baterista (2002), Der Trommler (2004), De Slagwerker (2007), Moto Perpetuo (2010), and The Percussor (2012). Gifts to future generations of percussionists.

And now the oh-so-appropriate last song from the last album and last he played, The Garden. The perfect last song in so many ways. Emotional to watch and hear. "It's a measure of a life." Indeed. Neil.

Tom Sawyer now, of course. She seems to please the audience with the most well-known drum fills in rock history. Seem muddy to me, but I'm resigned to "how it is" at this point.

Encore, By-Tor and the Snow Dog. That makes the playlist perfect. The drum fills are the closest match so far. Happy for her.

I still feel as I have when the announcement was made and the 5 years of tremors leading up to it: I am at peace with how it ended and accept that it’s all just “a vapor trail” now. I don't need more performances. But I know they do. They have more to give and create. This was a necessary step back into the limelight. I just don't foresee enough new writing to create a future show that doesn't include Rush songs. So, I'm happy for them, for the "closure" this brings, for the joy they get from doing it. "The caravan thunders onward." "The watchmaker has time up his sleeve."

Afterward.

As for me, I feel a growing pull to return to their music and experience it again with the Professor guiding us through his surgical precision and masterful craft. I long to watch his movements in old concert footage, and I have plenty to choose from. Instead, as I head out on the road for a while, I queue up their catalog and move from A to Y (there is no song title beginning with Z) skipping a few along the way as I relive decades of music etched into my brain. Every drumbeat either leads the way or sits near the front of my mind, because that was, and always will be, the center of my experience. A flood follows the release of that long-held pressure in listening. Over the ensuing couple of weeks, Rush dominates my music listening. That leads me deeper down the rabbit hole: revisiting source material, comparing variations in quality, and buying newer remasters and remixes to strengthen my personal collection. Next, I’ll return to the drum kit, perhaps seek out era-specific drum kits to download, and attempt to play along as I did in the “before times.”

And so, as the boys are reborn in performance, I am reborn in my experience. If they compose new music and I hope that they do, I will tune in. If they take that on tour, I’ll consider attending the Lee & Lifeson Band show.

“Fading away, like an hourglass, grain by grain, swept away like voices in a hurricane.”

January 29, 2026  End of Things

Thing 1: The last continent: Antarctica—oftentimes the last continent visited by those fortunate enough to go. For me, the last degree, too: 89 to 90 south. Yep, made it to the South Pole. If you want the full buildup, see the Oct 19 and Dec 26, 2025 posts below. The expedition itself was a real test, but the only tears came at the very end, skiing into the Pole.

The interior honestly feels like another planet—this strange contrast between the semi-commercialized “fun” at Union Glacier camp (skydiving, fat-tire biking, scenic flights) and the absolute emptiness of the polar desert (the 89th degree and the final ski to the Pole).

It was mentally and psychologically tough in a way that’s very different from mountains, and physically challenging too—though not as brutal as big peaks like Denali or Ama Dablam.

On Jan 8 I was dropped off at the 89th degree by ski plane;  8 days and 70 miles later on Jan 15, we arrived at the bottom of the world - no more to go. I suffered through low back pain and an upper respiratory infection for most of the way. Nine people started (two groups) and four of us finished. The rest were extracted (in two waves by a specially modified Toyota overland truck running on Jet A fuel from the pole - lucky for them as a ski plane evacuation costs $110K. I have a little lingering frost nip on the finger tips. Our "final four" team members are really nice people - I got lucky in that way. [pics below]

Thing 2: A trusty friend put out to pasture. Bye bye beloved beast of burden. You dragged me down. You clung to me, sweating and swearing. You held me hostage to sacks of gravel, concrete weights, and bags of water. You broke me down so I could build back better. I hated you. I'll miss you. I love you. Farewell old friend. You have reached the end of your road and I must continue on a little more. The other that takes your place will never travel as far as you did these past 30 years. We did it all - together. [pic below - trusty training pack]

Thing 3: 2025 --  year in review:

• visited New Zealand for extended period, the Milford Sound was a standout among many other experiences

• climbed some new international destinations: New Zealand, El Salvador, Croatia

• rafted two new rivers, the Soca and Tara

• Sailed the Saronic Gulf

• Toured Metolius (climbing gear manufacturer)

• rock climbing in Croatia, Albania, and North Macedonia, Yosemite CA and Smith Rock OR

• world's largest tree by volume (General Sherman), world's second largest tree by volume (General Grant)

• first AT Ski Touring outing (Snoqualmie WA)

• New Years eve in Santiago Chile

• visited 8 new countries: New Zealand, El Salvador, Panama, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina , Montenegro, and Albania

• visited 3 new National Parks (Pinnacles, Kings Canyon, Channel Islands) and 4 new National Monuments (Sequoia, Fort Ord, San Gabriel Mountains, John Day Fossil Beds), and proper visit to Sequoia NP

• 2 new 50 NA Classic Climbs: Cathedral Spire and Mount Conness (Yosemite, CA)

• live music: AC/DC, Live, NIN, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Start Making Sense, Grand Ole Opry show

• 240 days travel

• read 40 books (and DNF 2)

It was not without its trials and tribulations. I seemed to have a dark cloud from October through November. It is this way with me sometimes. Laughably bad: first ever new car lasted 14 days before a giant deer inserted itself under my front clip. Eight weeks and $17K later with a paint job that doesn't quite match, I'm driving it again. An oncoming vehicle decided to sideswipe a few of us the other day and clipped my mirror (minor/no actual damage) just to hammer home this might be a cursed car. Fun fact: 6,400 deer incidents in PA in 2024, $35M in repair bills -- we are in the top 5 states with this plague. Please eat more venison and sponsor the hunters! My wallet was stolen from one of the rental cars I had —it included my passport card, so I had a lovely week replacing all of that stuff. My passport fell out of my car during the process (used it for ID for the replacement card), eventually showed up mailed to me from Dept of State with mysterious letter and staple in it. Went through 6 weeks of Dept of State dumb-assery to finally get assurance that it was actually still valid (2 weeks before go time to Chile). Two duffels of camping, climbing and travel gear stolen from my rental car in Portland took about 40 hours of work and $5.5K to fully replace. Sprained my ankle to the point of chronic sprain -- PT and rehab ongoing. There were many more, almost daily challenges to deal with -- hopefully the next dark cloud period is far in the future. [pics below]

"You can do a lot in a lifetime, If you don't burn out too fast, You can make the most of the distance, First you need endurance, First you've got to last" -N. Peart (Rush)

July 30, 2025  Going with the Flow

Tomorrow I head off for morning yoga. It's a weekly ritual that I have done for so many years now I decided it was time to trace back and try to find the origin. With some orientation help from my journal and then triangulating on the calendar (yes, I have Google Calendar entries back to mid-2005), I am fairly certain that January or February 2011 was my first session that started the weekly habit.

Referring to old emails I know I tried yoga for the first time in late 2007 at Schoolhouse on the South Side as I recall. A one-off, thanks to encouragement from a girlfriend at the time. At that time yoga was still a very niche thing for us Pennsylvanians. Nationally, in the 1990s, yoga started to move beyond the counterculture and New Age movements and into the mainstream, with VHS tapes and DVDs making it more accessible for home practice. Brief research reveals that in 2001, approximately 4.3 million Americans practiced yoga and by  2003 that grew to 15 million, so a rapid expansion which including studios and retail stores as it seemed to be becoming an industry. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the number of businesses classified as Pilates & Yoga Studios increased from 18K in 2005 to 22K in 2010 and the number of Americans practicing yoga had grown to 21 million. 

Us eastern US folks in general, and amongst my friends, were still thinking yoga was just "stretching with mysticism". And it was mostly women - it took balls (literally and mentally) for a guy to unroll a mat in a yoga studio where you were almost guaranteed to be the only male there. I had plenty of friends assuring me of the deep merits of the practice and I sensed there was something more.

From my email history it looks like I was being pressured to try (again?) in late 2008, 2009, and 2010, and I was not taking the advice. It was becoming more adopted, mentioned in outdoor clubs, studios opening around the city. I was doing a log of rock and ice climbing and mountain biking. I recall being aware of my body being sore often and the muscles tight. I think in the back of my mind I knew that I had reached that point in life where you needed to actively stretch, before and after activity otherwise, well, you just wouldn't bounce back like a teenager!

The ECP was definitely listing yoga events so the Pittsburgh outdoor community was clearly gaining awareness. I think the climbing community might have seen the value in pairing stretching and balance work between the climbing outings. It felt like an engagement was in the works. I was struggling with joblessness at that time, and I believe I returned to work in January or February 2011, and it to an office in downtown. I can't recall exactly what the impetus was for going but I suspect I knew that I needed to fit in something to get back in the groove of workouts while doing the weekly grind and some sort of critical mass of my community of active folks assuring me it "was for guys too".

So I found and attended a convenient class I believe at lunch time. I remember there was a male instructor and that did a lot for my confidence in showing up to a room full of women. I recall really liking his style and learning that we were doing vinyasa "flow" style and I thought it was so much better that just forming shapes. No mysticism elements were included and I felt like I had a serious workout afterwards. It had clicked with me and I felt I now understood the fervor. My (different) girlfriend at the time was suspicious and accusatory of my motives and I remember thinking "well, that just makes me want to establish a boundary and stick to this - my intentions are pure and I'm keeping with this new flow!"

By March 2011 I was clearly committed to keeping the practice weekly as I see I was looking for alternative locations for when I didn't get to fit in a downtown session.  I recall my two attempts at hot yoga. It was really hot. A pool of my own sweat and the threat of slipping off of a balance move and crashing to the floor was just not for me. I hadn't learned about using a mat towel. So I swore off that style.

By July 2011 I had bounced around and tried different studios. I was getting a sense of styles, jargon, and important qualities of instructors really made the difference. Names would often be mentioned with accolades and reverence. The scene was sorting through the dabblers and superstars were rising to the top, drawing devotees to certain studios.

By August 2011 I had landed at Yoga Hive and found the entire staff to be high quality. It fit my need by having classes in the hour after the end of typical workdays, and it's been my go to every since.

Well, it might not be perfectly correct, but it's close enough. I'll consider February 2011 as the start of the weekly practice that has lasted up to now. That's 14 years and I can be proud of that. Admittedly, when I'm travelling (much more lately) it is not possible to keep the weekly commitment. I do my best when on the road and I'm straight to the studio within the first two days of returning to Pittsburgh. I can say that it's not something I just like to do anymore, it's an absolute necessity at this stage of the health span.

And, that I continue to try new things and expand the experience. Tomorrow, hot yoga! I kind of like it now, occasionally, when I don't forget the mat towel. :)

The light in me honors the light in you, dear reader. Namaste.

It's not how fast you can go

The force goes into the flow 

If you pick up the beat

You can forget about the heat… -N. Peart

May 8, 2025  They Call Me The Workin' Man

At this point in life, much of what it may possibly be is now in the past. It's a lot of years, decades in the rear view mirror now that my past eras almost seems like they belong to another person (I guess I sort of was another person) in my mind. Ages and phases have piled up and memories get buried. I have spent the last five years or so doing a memory walk to try to recall as many books I read and found it to be fun slowly mining out the data. Every time I think the vein is played out, I'll dig up another bit of ore. Sometimes I check the records and find that I had already (re-) discovered it. It's an enjoyable experience when it's a new discovery as I polish it in my memory and place it on the "shelf" of records.

ALL of my time working for pay is hopefully in the past and my "professional phase" work history is on LinkedIn. I am sometimes taken a bit by surprise with my own work history when some odd job or period of my working life comes up in conversation. So it occurred to me to apply the same idea as the reading recollection and take a mental journey to try to recall all of the jobs I've done, mostly for pay but I also decided to account for the volunteer ones as well. Almost instantly I was struck by how many this was likely to add up to and the vast array of roles I found myself in. 

Details are certainly going to be fuzzy in the earlier half, and exact timings aren't really important to me, so some guesswork applies. Here's what I recall as of today of all the jobs I was ever paid to do:

1. Babysitting, cousins and maybe others, 5 years

2. Newspaper delivery, a small local paper around my neighborhood, 40-50 customers, 3 years

3. Lawncare service (grass cutting, weeding, misc. yard work), 5-7 clients

4. Foodland and Duritza's, grocery stock boy, 5 years

5. High school, computer class final project black market, 1 or 2 years, 6-8 clients

6. IUP, computer lab assistant, 2 years

7. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, legal assistant, 1 year (1989-90)

8. Allegheny Power/Energy (now First Energy), Business Systems Analyst, Project Manager, 9 years (1990-99)

9. USWeb/CKS/marchFirst, Associate Partner, 1 year (1999-2000)

10. IronBridge Partners (venture capital firm), founder and partner, 1 year (2000-01)

11. Three Dimension Systems, Director of Operations (owner/partner, CIO, Corp. Secretary and essentially jack of all trades), 10+ years (2001-11)

12. Mad Evolution, video production company, founder and  partner, 16 years (2000-16)

13. Campos, focus group participant, 2 days (2008)

14. Edwards Drums Instruction, drum instructor, 1 or 2 students (2008)

15. Chiropractor practice, IT service contract work, 3-5 days over a few months (2008)

16. US Census, census round 1 and group home round, 1 year (2009)

17. Discover Organizing, professional organizer, et. al., 2 years (2009-10)

18. House rehabs, hourly laborer, 2 clients, 2 years

19. Scouting COPE (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience) program, assistant/instructor, 2 years (2012-13)

20. CIBER, Business Analyst, Project Manager and Solutions Architect, 1+ years (2010-11)

21. Giant Eagle / Pyramid Consulting Group, Sr. Consultant / Project Manager, 1+ years (2011-12)

22. FHLBank Pittsburgh, Sr. Systems Project Manager, 9 years (2013-22)

Volunteer jobs:

23. The Trust, Band Manager,  3 years (1992-1994)

24. Exploring (Engineering and Technology post), Chairman and Leader, 3 years (1991-1993)

25. Hunter's Hideaway, Webmaster, 2 years (1998-1999)

26. Winter Morning Pictures, Second Assistant Director and Production Manager, 3 years (2007-2009)

27. ARTEZ (Allegheny River Towns Enterprise Zone) Board of Directors, Board Member, 10 years (2008-2017)

28. Habitat for Humanity, laborer, 5 days (2015-2022)

29. Explorers Club of Pittsburgh (ECP), officer (3 positions), committees and instructor (mountaineering, rock climbing, backpacking, and mountain biking schools)

That is way more than I would have guessed from the start! Hopefully this list will also experience an occasional new nugget unearthed from the memory pile.

It seems to me I could live my life

A lot better than I think I am

I guess that's why they call me

They call me the workin' man. -Alex Lifeson / Geddy Lee 

March 13, 2025  Year in Review (2024) and Seven Months Catchup

As I do every year as it winds to a close, I reflect upon the places gone, experiences, and mainly bright spots to remember. There were also, as always, lowlights - which I'll not put here as they're often too personal (for me or others in my life). Overall, 2024 was again a fantastic year. Travel, exploration, and adventure continued to be the focus:

• 293 days of travel

• 9 new countries visited, 1 new US national park, 2 new national monuments

• Guatemala: Antigua and climbed/summited Acatenango (view Fuego eruptions), lake Atitlan, Santiago (volcano), Tikal

• NYC: saw Starry Night by Van Gogh (MoMA)

• Norway: ice climbed in Rjukan, Oslo: saw The Scream by Munch and many other sites, Bergen, Rosedal, trolltunga, fantastic food (bread, cheese, fish, salmon, meats, sweets, cider, etc.)

• Stockholm Sweden: the Vasa, Abba, modern art, and Nobel museums, palace, old town, cinnamon rolls, 40th country

• Copenhagen Denmark: Opera house

• Scotland: Stirling, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, climbed 2 munroes, Islay distilleries

• Colombia: Bogota, Guatape, La Carbonera, Teyuna - "The Lost City" 4-day trek, Suarez river rafting

• Italy: top to bottom, Dolomites

• Malta and San Marino : briefly

• Mountain: Mt. Whitney via East Buttress (see Climbing Resume)

• Mountain: Mt. Russell via Fishhook arete

• Algonquin provincial park Ontario Canada canoe packing

• Argentina, Chile: Patagonia, Torres del Paine W Trek, Ushuaia (southernmost city, penguins, Terra del Fuego National Park), Cerro Fitzroy, Cerro Torre, rock climbing

• Easter Island

• Rafted three rivers: Suarez River in Colombia, Snake River Hells Canyon section, Rio Manso in Argentina

• Downhill mountain biking at Whistler and Squamish, BC

• Hiked the West Coast Trail, Vancouver Island, BC

• US Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Craters of the Moon NM, Hagerman Fossil Beds NM, CA Pacific Rim National Park Reserve

• Some cool stuff: Total eclipse -amazing!, bungee jump (highest in the Americas), skydiving (fourth time), eFoiling (super fun), sailing ASA101 course and certification

• Live music: Queensrÿche, Sabaton, Judas Priest, Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie, Illumishade, Visions of Atlantis, Korpiklaani, David Gilmour (Circus Maximus, Rome), Iron Maiden

• Fancy feasts: SAGA (NYC), Stallen (Oslo), Savage (Oslo), Maaemo (Oslo, 3 star), Aira (Stockholm), AOC (Copenhagen), Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen), El Cielo (Medellin, Colombia), Retrobottega (Rome, "selected"), Lorelei (Sorrento), Sapio (Catalina, Italy), Azafran (Mendoza, Argentina)

Enjoyed a LOT of reading (see Books section) with the three standouts being Valuable Humans in Transit by qntm, Food Rules: An Eaters Manual by M. Pollan, and The Psychology of Money by M. Housel. Also highly enjoyed This is How you Lose the Time War by A. El-Mohtar and M. Gladstone, A companion to Easter Island by J. Peterkin, This is your Mind on Plants by M. Pollan, Eight Billion Genies by C. Soule, What's Expected of Us by T. Chiang, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by N. Gaiman. Thanks to friends that continue to recommend enjoyable reads. I also spent time importing most of my lifetime of reads to goodreads - follow/friend me there if you'd like more detailed reviews.

It's hard to believe I've been in this house for four years already and it's almost three years since I left the working world. It simultaneously feels like a long and short time ago - the brain definitely toggles depending upon how I frame up the recollection.

I've managed to get a good amount of large goal planning for 2025 and continue to update my Now page to that effect.