Sorry for the long absence... this may be a hodge podge of story telling, but they're all pretty entertaining stories none the less.First off, I'm thrilled to say that I've been awarded a $2,000 scholarship award from NOLS for my trip to India. I'm tremendously proud of what I wrote for it and may post it later on. Before, I did have my doubts about whether I was going to be able to go, but I feel that if NOLS believes in me, I should do my darndest to get there....

Our first day of vacation was almost 20 days ago (holy cats!) and I've procrasinated to the point where I know I'm going to have some difficulty remembering everything that we've done... but I might as well give it a shot, right? I got out of the field a couple weeks back when someone from work comes up to me and says "Nate's taken the next shift off, do you want to take it off too?" A little taken aback by the news, I decided to join Nate on whatever c...

My first week in the field was an adventure to say the least! The kids out there run the gammut of crazy and cool and most of them are just plain teens. My first day and a half started off as a rollercoaster. First with an awesome game of hackysack, then into turmoil when the group basically refused to hike and work as a team... the consequence? Well, we ended up putting them on separates (no interaction but only 10 ft away from eachother) for 36 hours and ate di...

The training was absolutely amazing and emotional, I'm also happy to say that we're both been accepted to the program and will be starting right off the bat! So much has happened and has been realized, I'm not sure I should go into too much detail when describing what we went through... I'll try to keep it short: We were given the week to experience the desert through the eyes of a student. Our first 24 hours were spent in silence which was both meditative and a...

This is the next (but maybe not final) chapter in the story of my bike: After my story spread to my friends and family, I really felt amazingly loved with the number of free (Jeff and Heidi will always have a special place in my heart) or on-loan bikes offered to me, you guys are absolutely amazing and I love you for that! Maybe I knew that this fiasco wasn't supposed to end that way because this is what happened next... My dear friends at the Cycologist, the b...