It has been almost two years since I first decided to take an extended career break to travel the world and overall just do whatever I wanted for a year or so. Originally I had a month-long trip all planned out to visit Iceland, The Netherlands, and Belgium. The plan was to leave my job in April of 2020, go on my first trip, then just wing it from there.

Of course, that didn't go as planned. I ended up canceling everything and never giving notice at work.

I didn't hate my job, and in fact, there were things I really liked about it. But, leaving the mindset of, "Just another month of work to go!" after a year of build-up was hard, to say the least. It also didn't help that there was a global pandemic going on.

I lasted until September.

Ideally, I would have waited until things were better with covid, but between my original plans to take a break months ago and the pandemic going on for so long, my mental health was far from great. I'll also admit that it was a little depressing working for OpenTable when no one could actually go out and eat.

I was cautiously optimistic though. Personally, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and figured I could reasonably do some domestic travel towards the end of the year. I also figured we'd be rolling out vaccines early 2021. For the most part, I was right.

A Rough Start

So, I was free. I could do whatever I wanted! No longer did I have to sit inside and work every day!

California decided that the Pandemic just wasn't exciting enough though, so it introduced some fires. While some of the very post-apocalyptic days we had here in SF were rather incredible looking, I was primarily relegated to my apartment with the air filter on full-blast. Also, thanks to covid, I couldn't (responsibly) travel anywhere to avoid the smoke. The cherry on the top was having no where to go to avoid hearing my ex-partner on meetings all day.

Between the fires and some surprise medical issues, my luck was pretty shitty. However, both of those things did eventually pass.

Early Post Apocalypse

As soon as the fires calmed down, one of the first big things I did was a 3-night camping trip in Tennessee Valley. With just being a short half hour drive from my San Francisco apartment, it was a pretty easy first adventure while still being mindful of the pandemic.

I did a bunch of hiking and sat and drank beer all night looking at the stars. It was great!

Apart from that, I spent a lot of time walking throughout San Francisco and just overall trying to restore my mental sanity. It was interesting seeing how the city slowly came back to life during my walks.

I also may have eaten way too many sandwiches from Deli Board...

It wasn't until December that I actually did any traveling.

My ex-partner and I spent a month near Joshua Tree National Park. She'd work most days while I'd go out hiking. I even ended up driving out to Death Valley.

2021: A Rough Start

I'm not interested in talking much about it publicly, but my partner and I ended up breaking up after that trip. This was really tough and also put into question what to do next.

Continuing my collection of misfortunes, I somehow hurt my foot while driving back from Joshua Tree to San Francisco. So, for pretty much all of January, I could barely walk. Normally my partner does most of the driving, but I ended up renting a second car so I could bring back the excessive amount of beer I had cellared at The Bruery. I stupidly didn't take many breaks, and the next day, my foot was not very happy.

On the bright side, being confined to my apartment yet again gave me the motivation to finally finish the plumbing for this blog. It was nice to dive deep into a project again, despite everything else.

A Crazy New Adventure

The plan was always to keep an active home-base in San Francisco. However, our lease is ending at the end of April and it would have been financially unwise for me to pay for the apartment solo to not even be there much. Given that, I decided to move forward with the crazy idea to put all my stuff in storage and effectively live without a home for the foreseeable future.

The past couple months have been pretty busy. There was a lot to do in terms of logistics around leaving the apartment, storage, taxes, finances, etc. I've also been trying to downsize all my worldly possessions to fit in a 6 x 7 foot storage unit (that I'm also sharing with my now ex-partner).

It hasn't all been chores though. I've still been doing tons of walks around San Francisco. I also ended up renting a car for several days to do sightseeing and hiking: I drove down highway 1 and hiked Sunol Regional Wilderness. Also, much to the dismay of the residents of Palo Alto, I even hiked through Foothills Park, which had previously only been open to Palo Alto residents.

Starting May 1st, I will effectively be homeless. Everything should be in storage by then and I'll have picked up my car rental. I'll be spending the next 6 months driving around the US, with a focus on camping and hiking.

Stay tuned! Once I'm on the road, I'll write a bit more about my route and plans.