, 4 min, 626 words
Tags: adventuring
After moving out of New York City in January 2018, I spent a month exploring various locations, a week on a nerd cruise, and then several weeks adventuring in New Zealand. From there I've worked in the outdoors seasonally.
It has been and definitely will continue to be an adventure. Hopefully it will also be fun!
I was always least certain of my plans for early 2018. They fluctuated a ton over the months leading up to 2018. I ended up with three to four weeks of blissfully unstructured time. I ended up spending some time in Utah, learned a bit of Spanish, and played a lot of fun board games.
I learned that there is a major benefit to keeping plans flexible: when an opportunity comes up, you can take it! By some surreal serendipity, I was offered a cabin on JoCo Cruise 2018 – think Comic Con, but on a boat. To be honest, I'd been eyeing it casually for a long time. It had been advertised the last several years by one of my all-time favorite authors, Patrick Rothfuss, and my impression of it was uniformly positive from friends and publications. So when the opportunity to attend came up, I jumped at it, rearranging my flexible plans to make it happen. The cruise was in late February, and a total blast.
After that, I headed to New Zealand for around seven weeks. My aunt, uncle, and three young cousins were headed there on sabbatical, and invited me to come along. Plans involved camping, hiking, biking, and general adventuring. Plus, I helped with a science curriculum for my homeschooling cousins and completed my first few thru-hikes. See this post for an overview of my New Zealand experience.
During summer 2018 I guided kayak tours in Seward, Alaska. It was a simply incredible experience. Training started in late April, and we started our season in mid-May. More on how I found that position and how excited I was about it here. Plus, I blogged about it as the summer progressed. See my Kayak Adventures-related posts here.
For winter 2018/19, I accepted a position with the National Ability Center. I acted as an adaptive ski instructor in Park City, UT, and couldn't have had more fun! You can see National Ability Center-related posts here. I also tutored math and physics and completed my EMT-basic course. Find EMT-related posts here.
In summer 2019, I worked for Anacortes Kayak Tours (AKT) up in the San Juan Islands, in Washington state. Over the course of the summer, I guided a bunch of multiday trips, learned to navigate tidal currents and developed my roll. I ended the summer by planning and completing a solo, 5-day circumnavigation of Orcas Island. I also volunteered with the ever-amazing Fire District 11.
Over this past winter, I contracted with Sea Kayak Baja Mexico (SKBM) for a little bit of everything: guiding tours, streamlining finicky processes like planning menus and prepping food for multi-day trips, honing my GIS talents, and applying data analysis to small business finances. I also learned Spanish and worked on bomb-proofing my roll.