2017

First off, hello! It's been a little while hasn't it? 

I think my every other year curse is finally broken. It seems like for the past few years I've been on a cycle of good year followed by bad year followed by good year and so on. Dare I say it, 2016 and 2017 were absolutely incredible!

A lot of pretty amazing things happened this year. From seeing what seemed like a thousand music shows, to climbing trips, to traveling domestically and abroad, 2017 was incredible. 

After getting back from Australia (technically that was at the end of 2016), I started working at Planet Granite again and got a semi "real person" job as PG Portland's Marketing and Events Coordinator as well as becoming a supervisor and a few other "upgrades." I absolutely love my new job and it's been going very well. Plus, the earliest I normally go to work is 11am and I set a lot of my own hours. It's pretty hard to beat that.

In March, my buddies Brandon, Logan, and I drove roughly 12.5 hours down to Bishop, California for a week long bouldering trip which ended up being probably my favorite climbing trip I've ever been on. I also got to see/climb with one of my favorite people, Kyle, who had moved to California in January but was able to meet up with us for the week.

Bishop

Bouldering is hard

A few weeks after getting back from California, I had a quite the crazy time. I went to Las Vegas and played around for a few days, including a day trip to the Grand Canyon. After that, I headed to Fort Collins and ate/drank my way through the old college town. I also made it down to Denver for a day to see a bunch of old college friends which was great. I flew back to Portland to work for a few days and then went up to Seattle with my buddy Mitch to see Deadmau5 which was hands down the best show I've ever been to. Cross that one off the bucket list. After being back in Portland, a few days later I drove back up to Seattle then bussed it to Vancouver, BC followed by flying to Los Angeles after that. Phew! Good times.

Deadmau5!

Grand Canyon

Some months later in July, I somehow ended back down in Australia! Yet again, massive thanks to Aunt Cindi for the flight hookup! It was a pretty mellow trip but great to catch up with people I hadn't seen in almost a year. As corny as it sounds, I had a bit of a realization regarding certain people after getting back which, although a bit disheartening, was needed. Hopefully I can make it back in 2018 at some point.

Fast forward to October, I achieved full on adult status by moving out of the parent's place. I'm now living in NE Portland with 2 awesome roommates and a dog and am absolutely loving it.

Also in October, Brandon, Logan, and I did a Smith trip and met up with Kyle again which, although too short, was great as always. 

At the end of October, I went up to Canada for the second time in 2017 with my friend Kara to see Deadmau5 yet again. Twice in one year? I'm perfectly okay with that. 

Come December, Kyle, Brandon, Brandon's friend Tommy, and I went down to Red Rocks just outside of Vegas for a week to climb and have all the fun. And have all the fun we did. We even got to seem some old friends that had moved to Florida earlier in the year. I love those guys so much and appreciate them like none other. Can't wait for our next trip which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later.

Love these guys

So although the world turned into a bit of a pit this past year, on a personal level, I'm doing very very well. I hope everyone learned from and enjoyed 2017 as much as I did. 

Here's to 2018! Already excited for the first few months as some of my favorite Aussies are coming to visit in January and February.

Happy New Year!

Good times with great friends

Good times with great friends

Good times with great friends

Good times with great friends

That's all for now. Bye.

Marion Bay

What an absolutely fantastic weekend!  I've been in Adelaide for about four and a half months and haven't really gotten the chance to leave the city until now.  Liam's family owns a beach house at Marion Bay, a town that feels very similar to Pacific City, about three hours drive from Adelaide, and invited me to come hang out for the long Easter weekend.

Very early Friday morning, Liam and buddy Kieran picked me up and we made our way over to the tip of the Yorke Peninsula.  After unloading the car, we drove around Innes National Park, taking in some amazing views of the coast and occasionally getting out to walk around the beaches.  During the drive, I saw my first wild kangaroos and emus. 

Seal

After some lunch and more sightseeing, we met up with 2 others and had a little beach time, Frisbee and all. 

When the sunburns were starting to develop, we all went back to the house and had a delicious barbecue followed by a few adult beverages whilst playing games.

So good

The next day we went back into the park to explore some more areas.  

Later that night, we headed to the local pub in Marion Bay and watched the Adelaide Crow's first AFL game of the season.  At the pub, a girl came up to Liam (who was wearing a CSU jumper) and told us she was from Boulder, Colorado and went to CU when she was in school.  Small world.  

Back at the house, I annihilated Kieran and Liam at Foosball followed by more activities.

Cape Spencer Lighthouse

Jetty

Easter morning, Liam cooked us a massive breakfast, we cleaned the house, and headed back to Adelaide. Before getting in the car, Liam found a huntsman spider which I didn't snap a picture of but you should probably look it up if you don't know what they are.

Such a fun and relaxing weekend with great friends and so nice to be able to see more of South Australia.

In other news, it was a bit of a close call but I have a new place to live!  I checked out 2 houses on Sunday last week and really liked the first one.  Lucky for me, I was asked to move in.  The place is in the southeast corner of the city.  It's a shorter walk to work which is nice and very close to the tree lined Hutt street. I'm officially moving in today. This will be the 4th place I've lived in 4 months so I'm really hoping this will be the last move for a while.

That's all for now.  Bye.

24

It was inevitable.  I have now entered the mid twenties.  I got to celebrate a day early this year seeing as March 2nd in the US is March 3rd in Australia.

Part one of birthday celebration happened last week on Saturday.  After spending some time at my place and eating delicious food, Vlad and I headed into town and went on quite the bar crawl.

Only picture I had of the night.  Sorry, Vlad.

Wednesday, my actual birthday, was very relaxed and a great day.  I got to spend time with everyone I wanted to see (that don't live 9000 miles away) and have some nice chats.  Liam, Vlad, and I started by getting food at Nordburger which is very similar to Little Big Burger in Portland.  After a few card games back at my house we headed into town for some ice cream and beers.  Charlotte and her housemate Destiny met up with us a bit later.  Liam had to head home since he worked the next day but the rest of us walked back to my place, made chicken quesadillas, and quietly laughed until pretty late into the night.  It was such a fun day and one of the best birthdays to date.

That's all for now.  Bye.

I Got A Job!

I got a job!  Well, technically speaking I got another job but the new one is more than once a week.  I was sent a text on Tuesday this week asking if I could come in for a training session for a new ice cream store opening on Saturday.  The place is called Scroll.  The owners were in Thailand and saw how the street vendors sold ice cream and got inspired to start a business.  The original is a pop-up in Melbourne but this is their first real store.

What is Thai style ice cream?  Basically you pour the ice cream liquid (cream and some other "secret" ingredients) onto a really cold plate. You then move the liquid around and it starts to freeze and turn into ice cream.  Once it reaches a certain consistency, you spread it out in a thin layer and then scrape it off the plate. This causes the ice cream to form rolls.  It's kind of like making scrambled eggs but not with eggs and using cold instead of heat.  

Below is a video of how they make it in Thailand:

Depending on the hours/pay, I am almost for sure going to stop work at the club which will be a nice relief. It's really exhausting working there and I'm getting pretty sick of being covered in unknown substances all night. Last night I worked at Scroll and then immediately worked at the club.  It was an almost 13 hour work day between the two so I am pretty tired today.

In other news, I'm loving my new living location.  The neighborhood has a great vibe and the house is close to town and another main shopping/restaurant street called The Parade. Getting this job means I hopefully won't have to stress about money too much anymore and I will have something to do during the day.  What a great week!

Stroll through the park on the walk into town

That's all for now.  Bye.

I MOVED TO AUSTRALIA!

Well there's really no eloquent way of saying this.  If you haven't figured it out from the title...

Holy crap this actually happened!

I moved to Australia! 

Such beautiful prose.  But let's rewind a couple of months...

Last July I visited Australia and fell in love. My original plan when I left the states was actually to stay in Oz but due to a number of circumstances, that didn't happen.  When I got back to the states, I wasn't happy.  The whole return trip I was thinking about how much of a mistake I was making coming back.  Returning to the same day to day life as before was pretty disheartening.  I couldn't imagine doing it for much longer and continued to research about moving to Australia.

The initial research began before the first trip.  I had a general idea about the logistics but really started the studies about two weeks before I came back to the states.  I was looking at places to rent, job offerings, how the visa worked, and lots of other little important details.

On September 5th, I applied for the Work and Holiday Visa. About 45 minutes later, I got an email saying my visa has been approved. I broke out my last package of Tim Tams and the celebration/minor freak out began.

A tip I found rummaging through online forums was to get certain certifications before looking for work. A few days later, I earned two certificates that basically allow me to serve alcohol/work in a place where there's gambling in Australia.  The "courses" were both online and incredibly easy. Some of the information was actually mildly interesting since laws are a bit different country to country.

Quite the setback presented itself in the middle of September when I took a bit of a fall and fractured part of my spine. I was out of work for 2 weeks which took a hit to the finances and I wasn't sure how long it would take to be healed. Would I be mended enough by November to travel for 30+ hours? Would I be able to carry a decently heavy backpack without keeling over? Luckily I made a speedy recovery and felt comfortable enough heading over with the almost healed injury.

The last major step was figuring out how I would get back to Australia. When I went the first time, it was pretty much the peak low season which made return airfare relatively cheap. As it was getting more towards southern hemisphere summer, that was no longer the case. Lucky for me, my magnificent Aunt Cindi happens to work for Delta and was able to hook me up with some ridiculously cheap tickets. Thanks Cindi! You're amazing!

There was a fair amount to do beforehand

The only caveat to the cheap airfare was I had to fly standby the whole way. Flying standby, you have no idea if you're getting on a flight or having to wait hours or even days to try for the next one. Since I didn't have a deadline to get to Australia, this wasn't that big of a deal.

A few days before leaving, I had to get my phone ready for use abroad. This seemed like an easy process but ended up being a huge pain. Basically, AT&T sucks. Long story short, it's still getting figured out.

"Down low" goodbye party. Thanks to whoever took this. Already missing some of the best people I've ever met.
Visit me!

On November 11th, I headed to PDX with my fingers crossed. I was able to make the flight to Los Angeles but the flight to Sydney had a bunch of people on standby with not a whole lot of seats available. Flying standby was a new experience for me. It's a very odd feeling not knowing if you are going to be flying.

Names of what I assumed to be standby travelers going to Sydney began to be called, allowing them on the flight. I knew my name was fairly far down the list but there was some hope. Each time the intercom turned on, the stomach got some butterflies and the heart pounded. Then it happened. The wonderful sound of the gate agent saying "all standby passengers have been cleared." I made the fight (and even scored a window seat)!

My cheap Delta ticket got me to Sydney but after that, I was on my own. After the wonderfully refreshing 15 hour flight to Sydney, I made my way to the domestic terminal and checked for flights to Adelaide leaving later in the day. That was also a new experience booking a plane ticket at the airport for the same day.

When I arrived in Adelaide, my buddy Liam who I met at CSU picked me up from the airport and we made way to his place.  That was it.  I made it through the weirdest traveling experience I have ever done!

Side note, huge thanks to the Rella family for letting me stay with them for a bit!

Now at this point you might be thinking, "But David, why didn't you post this stuff when it was actually happening?" Well, rest your curious little head because I'm about to tell you:

One night in late August I came up with the crazy idea to keep all of this on the semi-down low so when I got to Australia, I could surprise Vlad.  This happened today/yesterday depending on when/where you read from.  It's not very often you get to shock someone who lives on the other side of the world by showing up at a bar and saying "hey." Special shout out again to Liam for helping me with the surprise and to everyone who knew what was going on and kept the secret!

So what exactly am I doing? To be completely honest, I don't really know. Basically my visa allows me to stay in the country for a year traveling around and working. The only limitation to the work is I can only keep a job for 6 months at a time. The hope is to work in some sort of hospitality setting but I'll pretty much take whatever I can find. I'm starting in Adelaide since I know a few people but am open to moving around. After I get settled/readjusted, I'll start looking for hostels to stay in or possibly a place to rent, depending on the job situation. Other than that, I'm just going to see where things take me. 

Yes, this is slightly terrifying. Moving to the other side of the world without a job lined up, without a consistent place to stay, and without a massive amount of funds to live off is nerve-racking. That being said, I am not the first person to do this. Not to be too boastful but I consider myself to be pretty smart, self-sufficient, and resourceful. A massive part of my research before heading over was reading about other peoples' experience. If they could do it, why couldn't I? This actually is a once in a lifetime opportunity (unfortunately US citizens can only get an Australian work visa one time) and I really have nothing to lose. I can do this.

So yeah, here we go! This is going to be insane. I'm predicting heaps of good times, a few struggles, and the most adventurous year of my life. I'll try and post on here as much as possible. Same ways as always to stay in touch so please do (except I'll have an Australian phone number so you'll need that for the iPhone things)!

That's all for now. Bye.

David Down Under - Going to Australia!

Let's just start this out with saying I've gotten amazingly lucky with alliterations.

The time has finally come!  I booked the flights back in February and since then, I'm pretty sure time has stood still.  The bags are (almost) packed, passport is located, tickets are printed, and although the mental readiness of traveling over 30 hours hasn't been achieved, I'm heading to Australia!

Leading up to today, what an awesome week!  Last Saturday I climbed in a competition at ClubSport.  I hadn't competed since freshman year of college and didn't climb that well but it was fun!  I got to climb outside with some friends on Wednesday at French's Dome which is always a good time.  

Friday night, as a semi-early goodbye, some friends and I went to the last summer session of Camp Jones (AKA my friend Hannah's house) for card games, hide and seek, late night chats, and a fair few festive beverages.  I'm really going to miss those guys!  

Not going to get too political on here but wanted to say good job to the USA for getting some common sense and finally granting marriage equality this week.  If all that wasn't enough, a new Harry Potter play was announced to be premiering in 2016.  What a week!

Over the last few days I've tried to shift my sleep schedule so I'm not hit too hard with the 16.5 hour time difference (yeah the extra 1/2 hour is weird to me too).  We'll see how that works out.

So what's the overall plan?  I fly to LAX tomorrow and have a lot of time to kill (which will likely be spent gorging myself with In-N-Out) before the long flight to Sydney.  I'll be getting into Adelaide in South Australia on the 1st (local time) and the next day going back to Sydney (mildly long story).  After a few days there, I'm headed to the Gold Coast and then back to Adelaide.  At some point, I'm going to Melbourne for a bit.  Other than that, I'm just going to play it by ear and see how long the funds last.  Hopefully I won't have to resort to asking people to give me money online.  

The 3 most important goals I set for myself in Ireland seemed to work out pretty well so I'll be applying them to this trip as well:   

• Don't get deported

• Don't get arrested

• Don't die

I'll do my best to post every week like I've done in the past but no promises.  

With all that said, goodbye USA.  Australia, here I come!

That's all for now.  Bye.

Back in the Fort

Dry your tears, I'm back!

New Belgium trucks are everywhere.  CSU stickers cover the back of cars.  There are restaurants as far as the eye can see.  Where must I be?  After a far too long 10ish months, I'm back in Fort Collins (at least for a visit).  Just a forewarning the main thing I did here was eat so there's going to be a lot of food references and pictures.

My flight was quite early Wednesday morning but got me to Colorado around 9:30AM.  After taking the shuttle up to Fort Collins/CSU, I headed straight for my old house.  Doing the walk back from campus, despite the finished construction projects and all the college students looking way younger than I remember, felt very familiar.  I was keen to see my old house and really wanted to go inside.  To quote the Trunchbull, "who's in my house?!"  To my surprise, the entire outside had been repainted and looked a whole lot nicer than it did when I lived there.  It used to look a little dank on the outside but the inside was glorious.  Now the out matches the in.

The old house

I then headed down Remington towards Old Town.  There were a lot of finished construction projects and new houses that hadn't been there before.  Old Town Square was under some major construction which was a little sore on the eyes but everything else was about the same.  After lunch at a new place called Illegal Pete's, I walked to Alley Cat to steal their WiFi and charge my phone for a few minutes.  

My next stop was the new student center which had been under construction since my junior year (I think) so it was nice to see it done.  

From the student center I made my way over to the other side of campus where I did the youth mentoring program and then headed to my old freshman dorm.  There were a few brand new dorms occupying what was previously a parking lot near my old dorm.  It made the ancient Westfall and Durward look a little out of place. 

To continue my tour of nostalgia, I made my way past where I lived junior year.  There was a massive amount of new apartments along the way.  City Park was next on my walk.  I found a bench and laid down for a bit before heading to the oval followed by going back to Moby arena.  That was a lot of walking with a semi-heavy backpack (found out later it was about 8.5 miles).

Once my friend Kerry got off work, we headed back to her place to catch up.  We got my favorite FoCo pizza, Krazy Karl's, for dinner and after some Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart, we called it a night.

Best pizza ever

The next day, Kerry and I headed to Odell's Brewery to go on a tour.  Neither of us had been on this tour and although it was only about half an hour, it was interesting and we got some free beer at the end.  When we finished the tour and looked outside, it was snowing (which it did off and on for the rest of the day).  Awesome.

Kerry had to go to work so I stayed at the brewery for a few more minutes until my old roommate Heather arrived!  We headed to our old house again and then to where she used to work.  Our next destination was the oh so delicious Mary's Mountain Cookies followed by the place I went to every Thursday last semester: Fuzzy's.  We called it a night after that.

Odell's Tour

Mary's cookie

Friday morning I met back up with Heather and we had a delicious breakfast at Lucile's.  There are three main breakfast places in Fort Collins and this was the one I hadn't been to yet.  They specialize in Cajun food which I haven't had a lot of but it was quite tasty.  

After stuffing ourselves, we walked around campus for a bit and headed to Road 34 to shoot pool.  Later that evening, I had dinner with my friend Mary at the amazing Cafe Mexicali followed by an incredibly fun night out in Old Town.

The Oval

This morning, Kerry and I headed to Old Town to eat breakfast at Silver Grill, another of the amazing breakfast places in town.  We got some sort of lemon poppy seed french toast which was delicious and, of course, one of their massive cinnamon rolls.  While we were waiting to eat, I finally got a shirt with a Colorado flag on it.  It seems like it's a requirement to have something with the state flag on it if you live/lived in Colorado.  I've never seen people so into their state flag.

Silver Grill

Tonight when Kerry gets off work, we are headed to the cider bar, Scrumpy's, and playing some board games.  Good times.

I sadly head back to Portland tomorrow afternoon.  It was great to be back in Fort Collins.  I'm still a little conflicted as to if I miss the town or if I miss being in school/the activities that come with being in college/the people.  I think it's a combination of the two.   

Anyway, special thanks to everyone who made the effort to come up to visit from Denver and especially Kerry for letting me stay at her place!  It was great to see everyone!

That's all for now.  Bye.

So Long, Farewell

Well this is it.  Post number 52.  

I have now successfully created new content for this blog every week for the past year.  Not trying to be too boastful but I think that's quite an achievement.  I believe it was around July or August I made the decision to do this for a year and as of today I have officially done it.

That being said, this will be the last weekly post.

It may not appear so but making a new one of these every week is actually quite a bit of work.  Some weeks it's much easier than others but thinking of an idea, writing, editing, taking pictures, choosing pictures, editing pictures, etc takes a fair amount of time.  If I'm going to be putting in the time to make these posts, I want them to be interesting to me.  Nothing terribly exciting is happening right now and so it's not as fun to create new posts at the moment.

That being said, I don't want this blog to die.  

So what's next?    I'm not going to be posting every week but if something new/fun/exciting happens, I will put something up.  That could be in a few days or it could be in a couple of months (hopefully something new/fun/exciting happens sooner than that).  I'm headed to Colorado in less than 3 weeks so that will likely be next.

I'm also going to stop with the stupid song titles because that was a horrible idea for so many reasons. 

Even though this isn't goodbye, I do want to say a big thank you to the people who found the time to read and interact with me through this blog.  I continued writing it after leaving Colorado because I wanted it to be a way to keep in touch with people (which sort of worked) and went from there.  It always makes me happy when someone mentions they read something on here.

Thanks again for reading.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Heigh Ho Heigh Ho It's Off To Work [I] Go!

I'M EMPLOYED!!!

I'm going to be working for Planet Granite Portland and I couldn't be more excited!  This is the job I interviewed for in May and got the offer on Wednesday!  When it opens, I believe the gym is going to be the eighth largest climbing gym in the US.

There was a preview event on Thursday for those who work/live in the Pearl District.  It was my first time going into the gym and I was overwhelmed.  This place is amazing!  I've been to a lot of climbing gyms around the country and I honestly think this is the coolest one I've seen. 

Being in the gym before the walls are climbable is kind of like putting a kid in a room full of candy and telling them not to eat anything.  It was torturous.

Although the walls are finished, there's still a fair amount of construction that has to get done before opening day.  For anyone interested, here's a virtual tour of the gym:
    

Planet Granite Portland Virtual Tour from Planet Granite on Vimeo.

That's all for now.  Bye.