October Hill

Catapulted into the political epicenter after 18 hours of travel, the patriotism is super palpable in Beijing. Over the next four days, I tip-toe around religious topics and some seemingly very personal political topics ( IMO: the influence of Mao is still totally alive.) But everything else is fair game and multi-questioned; mostly revolving around my age, nationality, why I'm traveling alone and my hair-of all things. What, bleach blond isn’t the norm? Nope. Many people: mostly school girls giving peace signs, and tiny toothy old men, the lingering ladies and then…the eye-ballin' creeps-every country’s got ‘em. (tip: move swiftly and loudly if persistent.) Well, they’ve never seen anyone with blond hair, ever. It only got super weird once in the History museum in Shanghai. Started out fairly normal, they gesture to ask if I'll take ... read more

Just a few pics to get us started...... read more

Alaska was the trip to complete the North American adventure voyage...(that's why I feel like I gotta keep moving, since it took me 31 years to cover that much ground, and to think that North America is only a fraction of the globe, if I kept my current pace, I would never get 'er done before I hit 65 in which I time I wanna be taken out back and put down with diginity gawd damnit.) ...wow, does the period go before or after the parathethesis...what if the paranthesis was properly plural? Alrighty, now that I've spelled parenthesis wrong three times already and think it's funnier to leave them versus correcting them and had two incredibly long run-on sentences, I can move on. So, my last place to visit in North America and I get to ... read more

I do declare...Pug owners are the best! Lindsay and Lucy (pug owners of course) took Heather and I to Portland's 9th Annual Pug Crawl hosted by Mac Tarnahan's Taproom to benefit the Oregon Humane Society this spring, celebrating "Pugstock", Pugs, Peace & Love. This was a legit 'festy' with vendors, contests, music, fashion show, a pug kissing booth, doggy massages and beer, of course. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of putting costumes on dogs, however I think they all actually really liked it. This was so much fun and I'm for sure going back next year! ... read more

I'm totally scared of birds. My mother has an infinite fear of the feathery friends and she instilled shear panic in me dating decades back, when my dad and I tried to save a fallen baby finch with a broken wing and my mom wouldn't let me touch it, or open the shoe box to give it more food or water despite it was crying for its baby momma, insisting it had rabies. (Do birds get rabies? I never thought to ask her then and it's possibly sadder that I don't know the answer now. Not sadder than making the word sadder up though.) I'm pretty sure that the reason my mom hates birds is either her sister or dad or both of them, used to chase her around the yard with a chicken after it ... read more