It's been a while ...

Ser with potatoes from the garden in Soldotna

I last posted here over eleven years ago. 

I have never managed to be a blogger except while traveling. In 2009 I first started penning my internal monologues online while on a long bicycle tour. Today that site is a an abandoned rambling jumble of context-less text among broken Picasa links. More recently, I did manage to put together a different, somewhat professional looking work portfolio type site at benjamin-meyer.net ... 

I started the page we read here in 2011 intended as a journal of paragliding sites. For a few years my free time revolved around seeking places to fly. I haven't flown for a few years now; something about living in places not especially convenient for it, or maybe just have had other priorities. My wing still sits at the foot of my bed.

Since I last posted, I have: started and finished a master's degree in Fisheries from University of Alaska Fairbanks, started and ended a long term relationship, worked at ~150 events as a balloon artist, bought a house, had two dogs, lived in Soldotna, Alaska and worked for a small local environmental nonprofit for five years, sunk countless time and money into converting an old bus into an RV, packrafted a remote river in the Brooks Range, officiated two weddings, been in one car accident, split some firewood, smoked a few sockeye, became certified as a yoga instructor, did not learn to play ukulele, and slept 4,157 nights. 

Why did I not get around to writing about any of this? 

Mom, and dad, with an odd hat ...

Travel is the catalyst. It must by why I am writing here again. In two weeks I am flying from Seattle to Frankfurt, continuing to by train to Berlin, then to the Polish border at the small town of Kostrzyn nad Odra. I plan to spend a few weeks walking east on foot from there. See next post for details.

In 2025, perhaps online writers must explain why they are using an outdated platform like Blogger, which like Picasa, Google is sure to toss to the dustbin of internet history any day now. My ideal website would consist solely of local-server hosted, version-controlled black and white text with occasional links to external images on GitHub. Perhaps I'll migrate to that someday. For now, this is still a functional way to communicate outside of the ensh***ified sphere of social media or algorithmic platforms. If you are reading here, you've chosen to do so, and I am flattered.

So I will be writing again here over the next month or two. I present it all here, centralized, prepared for full ingestion into the singularity as a sacrificial offering to Roko's Baselisk. Don't google that.

Just like Willie, can't wait to be on the road again.