Motherland

We began our decent into Astana, now the capital of Kazakhstan, and I could make out her colorfully glowing streets. The city is young and very modernized. The high rises and monuments where up lit with many different colors reminding me a bit of the strip. We refueled and dropped off passengers and continued on for another hour to Almaty.

The customs agent had a difficult time accepting my freshly issued U.S. passport. She looked at every page, scrutinizing the authenticity of it. I had just been issued new passport and the threads holding the pages together were a bit frayed and the glue holding the threads together ran up one of the pages sloppily. She left her both for several minutes to consult with 2 others in neighboring booths. She hesitantly put the final stamp of approval on my paperwork allowing me to continue on to baggage claim.

After I got my baggage my Uncle, brother, and a friend of his greeted me just passed the gate and we headed to my uncles flat in the city. I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours and woke up early to watch the hustle and bustle of the city 4 floors down below me. It was overcast and had been raining, but the clouds could not hide the massive mountains to the east. The dark clouds tried to blanket the slopes but their darker outline still came through and I was reminded of my fascination with mountains and rivers. I was born here. I was born at a precursing range that eventually lead to the great and mighty Himalayas. The thoughts of what my life would have turned out to be had I not left started to enter my mind. 

Over the Pond

Flying over the deep blue waters of the Atlantic I couldn’t help but forget of the travels that will take place in the next two weeks. They where replaced by a journey that I dream of far ahead of me. I have a dream of sending my daughter off to college, getting a sail boat and sailing the world. The wispy clouds that I saw below would one day be clouds above. The turbulence that tossed our Boeing 777 about will one day be high and stormy seas. The cloudy horizon from which the sun was born will be replaced by ocean as far as the eye can see. The course on which my plane is traveling will possibly be a course that my wind filled sails will take me. I am landing in Frankfurt in 1 hour or so and am comforted by these ever so vivid visions of what I plan my future to be. We are nearing land and passing Ireland just to our North. I can only imagine the feeling of excitement and accomplishment that seeing land after goings weeks of just seeing water must bring.

I will need to make sure to catch sleep on the flight from Frankfurt to Almaty, watched 2 of the “Hobbit” movies and got none so far. Looking at the map on the screen ahead of me I see many cities that I have yet to visit. London, Brussels, Rome, Madrid, Bucharest to name a few. So much traveling and exploring I have done so far, yet so much more left unseen and untouched. I have a map of Oregon and the United States hanging in my office to remind of the places I have been, the people I have met, and the experience each has brought me. They also remind me of the places I haven’t been. When I get back I will hang a map of the world to fuel my hunger for new destinations, and keep what has already been discovered fresh in my memory.

We began to make our approach to Frankfurt Airport. The German Countryside looked quite pleasant from the air. The fields were irregular (although what is regular?). In the U.S. several fields will usually have a farmhouse assigned to it. Here the fields dominated the landscape and bullied the collection of houses into a bunched farm village every so often. The streets disobeyed the intention of engineers and followed a direction that the landscape and elevations dictated. I imagined driving, or riding, through the quaint little towns. Have several hour layover and then off to Almaty.

A trip 25 years in the making

Chasing the Horizon

Kazakhstan 7/3/2015

Here we go again. Last time I wrote of my travels I was doing a cross country trip across the U.S. and a little bit into Canada. Since riding my Harley (Cindy) nearly 10,000 miles I have looked at life differently. I value the simple things far more in life now. Previously I was obsessed with money and success just for the sake of itself. The social scene, the clubs, the who’s who and what’s what seemed to guide my life choices. I am so blessed to have been able to go through this transformation to where I am now. I am me now. It’s a great feeling to be yourself. Traveling is eye opening. It is soul shifting. It is life changing. This day last year I was spending my last day in Moab Utah. I had overstayed from what I had originally planned and was nervous about all the riding I needed to do to get back home to Atlanta Georgia. Overstaying was well worth it, but that’s a different story.

I now embark on an international trip. Traveling to Kazakhstan for a week, then off to Germany, and wrapping it up with Czech Republic and the beautiful city of Prague. I have Lots of exploring and adventuring to do, but first hours of flying. Look forward to do things worth remembering and writing about. I hope to light a little fire in people souls to find themselves as well, find themselves out there somewhere, where the boundaries of our comfort zone ends and where life happens. Special thanks to my high school friend Michelle for planting the seed of travel way back when, and my Tiara for inspiring my simple life further.