A million miles in a thousand years

Right before I started my sabbatical, I read a great book called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The premise of the book is that the author, Donald Miller, has been approached by movie producers to write a screenplay based on his book Blue like Jazz. In the process of writing the script, Donald realizes that he isn't living a "great life story" and that if he were to die he wouldn't leave any sort of legacy or be remembered for doing anything that great. Driven by his faith in God and a desire to make a difference in the world, he sets out on his second chance at life the first time around by doing things like riding his bike across country for a charity as well as starting his own nonprofit organization.

Needless to say, I found the book inspiring. I also thought it was perfect timing that I read this right before I started out on my own journey at living a better more exciting life. I only went 30,000 miles in 6 months, but I like to think it was a start. I set out on my travels because I thought it was going to be a cool way to learn more about myself, which it definitely was, but more importantly I realized that all of this isn't about me at all. It's about God. And all of these experiences he has given me these past months were to help me grow in love and faith and learn better how to serve Him. I am set to start nursing school in a few short weeks, and while I know it won't be easy I feel like this is the purpose He has had for me and maybe it will be my start to begin living a great life story and making some sort of difference.

Hopefully I will be able to continue to travel along the way, but I don't know if I will ever be able to top these past 6 months. While I have gone to beautiful places and done all sorts of exciting things, it has been spending time with my friends that has been the best part. Thanks to Kels, Jess, Adrienne, Blake, Lauren, Scott, Matt, Caroline, Ashley, and Bennett for making the time truly enjoyable. Its been a great adventure and hopefully there will continue to be more to come. Because the "great story" of life, after all, is all about the journey and what you choose to do with it.

J Hole... I hope this is what heaven looks like

My sabbatical is quickly winding down, so I decided what better place to end it then in Jackson, Wyoming. I have visited lots of places the past couple of years, but I have to say that Jackson Hole is by far one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. For those of you who have never been, I will let the pictures speak for themselves....

Tetons

Jenny Lake

Tetons again (pretty sure that's God peeking through the clouds)

We also ventured to Yellowstone where we saw some great wildlife, Old Faithful, and tons of old people.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

bison

While the views were gorgeous, the wildlife was cool, and my friends were hilarious the highlight of the trip was finding a guy who hooked me up with these blasts from the past...

Who knew they still made Blu Blockers?!

The only word to describe these is bitchin

Nashville Flood

I am sure everyone has heard by now that the state of TN has endured massive amounts of rain which has resulted in destructive flooding and caused Nashville and surrounding areas to be declared disaster areas. Those of us who are here are glad that the national news and federal government finally decided to report on everything that has been going on... 3 days late. At first we figured that the oil spill in the Gulf and the attempted bombing in New York were more important stories, but then after talking about it we realized that it must be because President Obama doesn't care about white people. Those people who thought Kanye's comments about President Bush during Katrina were ridiculous can sense my sarcasm.

All kidding aside, this is by far the worst natural disaster to happen in the state of TN. The Cumberland river is still cresting, Broadway and most parts of downtown are still submerged in water, and thousands of people have lost their homes and personal belongings. I am so thankful that everyone I know is safe and that we can all say that we have survived the TN flood of 2k10. We ventured downtown yesterday and I am posting some pictures below, but they don't even begin to show the devastation.

Titans Stadium

2nd Avenue

I really do love this city and it has been great to see the whole community come together to help everyone that is in need. I know without a doubt that Nashville will restore itself back to the great city it is and the community will be stronger because of this. If anyone is interested in volunteering here is a link to Hands on Nashville http://www.hon.org or to donate http://www.nashvilleredcross.org

Wake up Call

I know I normally blog about some adventure that I have currently gotten back from, but today I had a bit of a wake up call just sitting at my computer. The following link is a blog post about a guy that I passed by every time I went to five points in college, and I never gave him a second thought. I like to think now that I am older I may have treated him differently, but maybe that is just hoping. The act of kindness and love that was shown by a complete stranger to this man is something that I think we all strive to do. This story brought tears to my eyes not because of the way it ended, but because this is the kind of love that Jesus so often speaks of put into practice.

http://www.asauroratravels.com/2010/03/we-move-through-our-days-usually.html

SB 2K10... Virgin Islands

Even people on a sabbatical need to enjoy a spring break, so I decided to head down to St. John and enjoy a week of sun, fun, and hiking. My week pretty much consisted of this......




We also spent a few days in St. Croix enjoying beaches, driving around in the rainforest, and kayaking.

Eastern most point of the United States

After a fun week of beautiful views, it was time to come home. Until SB 2K11.... the next best thing to living in the Caribbean is having a friend that does.

Greekin it

We set out for Athens and the Greek Isles last Monday and it didn't take long to figure out that the Greeks like to do 3 things: sleep late, drink coffee/eat at a cafe for hours, and not do much of anything all day... activities that we liked to refer to as "greekin it".

We spent our first couple of days in Athens doing the typical tourist thing and seeing the sights and the ruins of the ancient city.

obligatory pose in front of the parthenon

After awhile, we soon realized that all of the ruins start to look alike and that once you have seen one you have seen them all. We decided to rent a car and get out of the city for the day and make our way to the coastal town of Sounion where we found what of all things but... more ruins.

Adrienne and Blake in front of the House of P (Temple of Poseidon)

We "greeked it"up at a cute little restaurant that sat on top of a peak that overlooks the Temple of Poseidon and then enjoyed hiking down to the water and seeing the Temple of Athena. After two days of seeing the sights, we were ready to set out on our adventure to the Greek Isles.

We arrived in Mykonos on Wednesday and decided to rent a car so we could explore. This in itself proved to be a great adventure because we were the only tourists on the island so it was hard to find a car rental place that was open, and when we did find a car Adrienne's stick shift driving skills were definitely put to the test on the hills and backroads. After making it to some of the beaches, stalling out a dozen times, laughing incredibly hard, and almost dying once we decided to return the car and take a ferry and spend our last day on the island of Tinos.

famous windmills in Mykonos

After spending two week in Europe eating delicious food with the best travel buddies I could ask for, it was time for me to come home. I arrived back in the States last night and will probably spend the next few weeks "greekin it" until my next adventure.

Just call us Harry and Lloyd

We arrived in Nice late Monday night and our main mission was to ride mopeds along the coast into as many different cities as we could. As always with traveling, you can't count on the weather but thankfully on Wednesday it was a warm and sunny day.... perfect for mopeding.

We drove west along the French Riviera from Nice into Antibes, Cannes, and St. Raphael and saw the most beautiful views. Anyone who has ever seen Dumb and Dumber can only imagine what mopeding up giant hills looks like. For those of you who cant, let me give you an idea...

somehow for 8 hours Adrienne and I fit on a moped that was clearly made for 1 person

Lauren's was a bit roomier

Red Rocks along the Coast



why not do some yoga?

Ironically, the next day Nice got more snow then they have in 20 years. We decided to make the most of our day and take a train into Italy and get an authentic Italian meal in a cute little port town called Ventigmilia. When you can't tour around a city, the best thing to do is eat your way through it.

Our last couple of days we enjoyed going into a small port town called Ville Franche, where we had a picnic lunch right on the water. We also made our way into Menton for a lemon festival and back to Antibes for a Chocolate festival. We arrived back in Geneva late last night and are flying into Athens tomorrow. Hopefully we can have a repeat of mopeding fun in the Greek Islands...

Skiing in the Alps

I arrived in Geneva early Saturday morning (1am US time) and Adrienne and Lauren were so sweet to get up early and greet me at the airport. We took a bus right over the border into France to their cute little town of St. Julien. After taking a little bit of a nap to try to beat the jet lag, we went back into Geneva to celebrate Lauren's 25th birthday with some delicious gumbo and some of their international friends.

The next day we decided to drive up to Les Contamines in the French Alps to go skiing for the day. I was a bit nervous because as everyone knows I have the worst luck and I didn't want to break anything that would ruin the rest of my trip. Thankfully, it had snowed the day before and the powder on the slopes was absolutely amazing. We ate our lunch right on the slopes and were able to enjoy the beautiful view from the top of the mountain. After I gained a little bit of confidence skiing for a couple of hours, I decided to upgrade to a little harder peak and I had the best fall of my life that unfortunately no one was able to enjoy but me. Thanks to a kind French man, I was able recover one of my skis that flew off and somehow ended up on the other side of the mountain. Fortunately, I finished out the day with no major injuries and was in good shape to continue on to the rest of our adventures. Next stop Nice....

Apparently Nashville is blogable

It only took me 4 weeks after I packed up my belongings that I made a trip back to Nashville. Its weird how you don't realize how much you like a place until you leave it, or I guess I should say how much you will miss your friends until you don't see them everyday.

My friend Caroline had a group of friends from college coming into town for the MLK holiday, so I decided to drive up last Friday and spend the weekend. Before I arrived Caroline asked me if I had anything I wanted to do while I was in town. My list consisted of:
- eat at Marche
- test out my new hiking sticks at the Percy Warner trails
- take a trip to target while enjoying a diet coke from the snack bar
- draft with Caroline
- get a haircut

This is the list of things I actually did:
- ate at Which wich, Cafe Coco, Yolos, and Paradise Park (their sweet potato fries may be the only thing that comes close to the deliciousness of Marche)
- tested my sticks on the hardwood floors of 2207 Natchez Trace
- took a trip to Tootsies, Red Door, Roberts and the Stage
- read every article in the past 3 months issues of Cosmo
- I actually did get a haircut

And by far the greatest thing I did was find my soulmate in the form of this guy

Who knew it would be a singer of a band at the Stage who plays the conga drums?

Even though I only got to cross one thing off of my list, I had a great weekend and laughed incredibly hard the whole time. I will eventually get to do all of those things when I go back for another visit to make the singer fall in love with me, and pick up the pivot head razor I left in Caroline's shower.

Colorado.... I can't believe we are really here

I set out to Colorado last Thursday with Kelsey to celebrate the new year, ski, and see the sights. Our planned itinerary was to meet our friends Jess and Tristan in Breckenridge for New Years and spend some time on the slopes, head to Boulder for a few days, and then end our trip hanging out in Denver. As anyone who has ever traveled knows, sometimes things don't always go according to plan. Some people may blame this on bad planning/timing.... we chose to blame it on the altitude.

After getting off of our flight, Kels and I took a long shuttle ride to Breckenridge which was made even longer by the drunk lady on our shuttle that insisted we stop for her to "go to the bathroom". The shuttle driver said that unfortunately their were no rest areas on I-75 and that the only bathroom for us to stop at would be this place

Kermitts Food & Spirits (with famous homemade chili)

After getting back on the bus, Kels and I both realized that the drunk lady hadn't only gone to the bathroom in the bar but she had in fact also bought a 40 to bring on the rest of the ride.

We finally made it to the house in Breckenridge where were going to be staying for the next couple of nights and we waited on Tristan and Jess to get back from the slopes. Unfortunately, the girl we were staying with decided the house was getting a little too crowded and that we needed to find a hotel at 5pm on New Years Eve in Breckenridge. We decided that this girls neurotic and inconsiderate behavior can only be explained by one thing.... the altitude.

Thankfully, we found a great hotel in downtown Breckenridge right at the base of the mountain with a beautiful view. We had some other friends from South Carolina meet up with us for New Years and we all had fun dancing to the DJ at the hotel bar with fist pumpers from the Jersey Shore.

After spending a few days on the slopes we decided to make our way to Boulder. Thanks to Tristan, we were able to find a free ride but we got caught up in a little bad weather on the Loveland pass and were stuck in heavy traffic. 4 hours later we finally arrived in Boulder. By the time we got there, we were anxious to enjoy the city by going to a few places downtown for the night. Unfortunately, the bouncer at the first bar decided that Kelsey's ID was fake and he proceeded to tear it up. Getting into a brawl/shouting match with the douche bag bouncer can only be explained by one thing..... the altitude.


The next day we ate brunch at a local restaurant and spent most of the day walking around the shops of downtown and admiring the beautiful view of the Flat Iron peaks that the city sits beside. After touring around the city, we decided to head back to Denver where we spent our last two days enjoying the city and quite possibly the most delicious cup of coffee I have ever had.

After spending five days at 5000 feet, I was ready to get back to life at sea level where things are seemingly a bit more normal. But I sure am going to miss blaming everything on.... the altitude.