Ilhabela is an island in the state of São Paulo that I first visited a couple of years ago; this time again, I was accompanying my friend Val, as it is one of her places in Brazil and a convenient escape from the big city for a weekend. For me, the heat was difficult to deal with, especially on a long hike we did to a hidden beach, but looking back at the photos, it was worth the effort.
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I have a million places I want to visit in Brazil, and Pipa was one of them. I first heard about it from a mountain guide I had when I climbed Nevada de Tolima, a high volcano in Mexico. He described it as a beautiful beach backpacker destination that was very popular with foreigners—not my typical destination, I thought to myself, but I added it to my travel queue anyway — our expectations are often wrong when it comes to destinations we haven’t yet visited. Two years later, when I was in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, Pipa was also recommended to me as a place to visit as I continued to explore the country, which piqued my interest – it seemed like the universe wanted me to visit Pipa. It wasn’t until this year, though, that I had the opportunity to do so when my friend and Brazilian ambassador, Valquiria, suggested we visit for New Year’s. Great idea! Pipa’s MacGuffin happened to be a concert by one of Val’s favorite musicians, Ivete Sangalo. However, Ivete canceled the show. We weren’t going to another concert anyway in a super well-organized venue. This is not the first evidence I’ve encountered that Brazilians know […]
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After cruising through Canada (Edmonton, Yellowknife, and Calgary), I returned to KC for Christmas. I had the privilege of visiting my brother and his family for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Double holidays, double family, double pumpkin pie. This might become a yearly tradition! I was well-hosted on both occasions, and the opportunities to spend time with my nieces, Caroline and Olivia, and nephew William were very appreciated, along with my mother and step-father. My mother’s birthday is on Christmas, and Olivia helped me find a good birthday present for her, a Stanley mug. Apparently, they are very trendy amongst middle school girls, so I was assured my septuagenarian mother would love it. My mother, in turn, gifted me a funny little man made of felt (see photo, below), which might be an artistic representation of yours truly in a few more years. I would be so happy to have a sweater like he has — it looks very comfortable and warm. Thanks, everyone (especially my brother John), for having me and for your patience in enduring the sprawl of my belongings across the living room, dining room, and stairway as I integrated Amazon deliveries and new gear into […]
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I visited Calgary two years ago and liked it so much that I knew I would come back. I made time for a short stopover after Yellowknife and enjoyed revisiting the same hot yoga venue, restaurants, and asian grocery store (with the biggest Nashi Pears I have ever seen). Increasingly, my favorite destinations are places where I live my daily routine as if I had been living there permanently for a decade. The little differences between each place I stay, like the local gyms, where I buy daily or weekly passes, make it feel like I am transporting myself among various parallel realities (e.g., each with its own local gym offering daily and weekly passes).
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You may already be familiar with the scientific, hemispheric phenomenon known as the northern lights (aurora borealis). If you are not, I describe it as a night-time-sky-thing that is like a shimmery, slowly moving cloud of green or blue. It’s like a night rainbow made of darkness and radiant, translucent clouds of radioactive fallout. I believe a more scientific(-ish) explanation could be that the magnetic field surrounding our Earth, polarized between the northern Arctic and Antarctica, acts as an atmospheric shield protecting the planet from… stuff (“particles”?). Sometimes, some of that stuff hits the magnetic field/shield (like a mosquito in an electric bug zapper) and creates a sort of low-key, mellowed-out, slow-motion melty lava-lamp-in-the-night-sky effect. That’s the northern lights. I prefer to think of the aurora borealis as space magic. It comes from space and looks like a glowing ghost swaying in the sky. I’m mixing a lot of metaphors (or similies?), trying to describe it, which is consistent with the challenges of describing things that are magic, so let’s just call it magic. I traveled to Yellowknife, Canada, to see for myself this space magic. To increase the odds of seeing space magic, ancient texts (the internet) had recommended […]
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Over the past few years, I have been making a concerted effort to explore more of Canada, America’s hat. Edmonton has always seemed like an interesting, blue-collar oil town that I wanted to visit. When I was in Calgary in 2024, I couldn’t fit it into my itinerary. This time around, though, it was a perfect stopover destination on the way further north. I didn’t get much done apart from working. I had tried to get NHL hockey tickets and even decided to invest in some first-row, against-the-glass seats in hopes of using my new camera to catch high-speed action shots. Unfortunately, when I tried to purchase the tickets online, there was an error with the Ticketmaster checkout process that I didn’t realize until game night, a few days later. I had another ticket fiasco, too! I found an orchestra playing Star Wars music in Edmonton, so I bought tickets. In my excitement to secure them, I overlooked that the date was January 11, not December 11. I had bought tickets for the wrong month. The owner of my Airbnb rental was not as appreciative as I would have been if someone had gifted me free Star Wars tickets 6 […]
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On my way into the USA, I spent a couple of nights with my friend, Vince, who hosted me in his mansion. We always have fun eating and drinking too much together. Vince does all the cooking, but it’s okay because I make up for it by doing most of the eating. He is an accomplished amateur chef who has been highly inspired by Anthony Bourdain to both travel the world and become an excellent cook. When I’m lucky, Vince fires up his backyard brick oven to grill steaks or takes out his salt slab to bake chocolate chip cookies. Tiberius (Ti) and Augustus (Gus), Vince’s two Beauceron dogs, are always the additional members of the party. Thanks again for hosting me, Vince. My time at your house really feels like I’m at home, and it gives me insight and awareness into the lifestyle I have forgone (sacrificed?) in order to navigate my own path in life. You are a positive affirmation and influence that someday I might find my own peaceful and happy place with two dogs and an outside brick oven where I can be content to live and also stay.
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My 79-year-old father fell off a horse in October while riding a horse in Wyoming. He broke his neck and had a severe concussion. The path to recovery was a difficult one over the course of the following months. As my brother and sister were stateside, they took on the majority of the support operations along with my father’s wife, while he was nursed back to health by hospital medical staff. It was a grueling and arduous path to recovery for everyone involved. To show support and help orient and align the family to the next steps in his continuing recovery, my siblings and I visited my father in early December. At that time, it was a difficult process to confront the changes in our father and his life since the accident. A lot of good did come from our visit, though I believe most of it was the time my siblings and I were able to spend with each other. Our parents were divorced when I was very young, and my siblings and I mostly grew up apart from each other. My brother and sister have happy, loving spouses and families of their own now, which is a credit […]
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I spent Thanksgiving in Kansas City, Missouri, visiting my brother, his family, and my mother and stepfather. It’s my favorite holiday of the year—partly because it features dishes I rarely eat outside this one meal. I went in with high expectations for pumpkin pie, and, as always, my brother delivered. He also organized a game of Dungeons & Dragons so I could join him and his friends. (For the record, I play a level 3 satyr bard named Lyrican Shadowstrum—a wandering urchin with trust issues and a staff that magically grows flowers.) I’m not great at the quick arithmetic of ability scores, but I love the storytelling, and Lyrican’s floral staff is hard not to like. After Thanksgiving, I hosted Marce for a few days. She’s vegetarian, so she skipped the turkey dinner, but she enjoyed exploring Kansas City—a place most visitors to the U.S. tend to overlook. Autumn made it even cozier, and it was a treat to share it with her and the family. Sadly, my beloved Fujifilm X100T camera—my constant travel companion since 2015—died just before I arrived. I’ve taken over 50,000 photos with it, many of which are on this site. That camera fit my right […]
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To keep my days in the U.S. under 35 in 2024 for tax purposes, I spent a week in Cancun before flying back to visit my brother for Thanksgiving. I went fully “basic” — two different all-inclusive resorts, sun, sand, and cocktails. And honestly? It was awesome. There’s a certain crowd of travelers who dismiss all-inclusive resorts, seeing them as soulless vacation factories where people lounge around instead of exploring local culture or history. I get that perspective but this trip gave me a newfound appreciation for destinations designed purely for fun. When I arrived in Cancun, I hadn’t taken real time off work since my trip to the Seychelles two years earlier. Working for myself means every day off is a day without income, so I kept working a bit during the trip. But when I wasn’t working, it felt like a vacation in the best sense. The resort food was exceptional, the beaches in Cancun’s hotel zone far exceeded expectations (genuinely fantastic), and perhaps most surprising of all was the value. I can’t think of another international spot with such high quality at such a bargain. I did manage a day trip to Chichén Itzá, the famous Mayan […]
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