The scale read “51” then a sec­ond lat­er as if read­ing my mind “dang I thought it was 50.4 lbs.“ it read “50”. Don’t know how I got it all in, 2 wet­suits, 200′ of rope, web­bing, rope bag, har­ness, 2 full size back­packs, canyon shoes, sleep­ing bag, tent, clothes and lots of oth­er ran­dom gear. (Although half of my har­ness and my hel­met are in my over­stuffed car­ry-on. Safe­ty first.)

Duf­fel with all my gear.

Flight to Italy.

A day and a half, 3 flights and 3 secu­ri­ty check­points lat­er I land­ed in Tri­este Italy. “Every­thing is so green here” I thought, gaz­ing out the win­dow at the for­est that whizzed by, imag­in­ing where I could set up my tent some­where hid­den in the trees we drove past. “Stealth camp­ing” peo­ple some­times call it. That is, camp­ing some­where you aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly sup­posed to or is not express­ly a “camp­ing area”, but in such a way that you are hid­den out of sight and don’t dis­turb any­one, usu­al­ly set­ting up your camp late in the day or even just after dark and leav­ing first thing in the morn­ing. It can be a great way to trav­el if you have the gear. Being able to make your home almost any­where affords you so much freedom.

As it were I was here for work. Two weeks on a cruise ship doing a bunch of screen visu­als. We would set sail in Tri­este Italy the next day, even­tu­al­ly arriv­ing in Barcelona two weeks lat­er, with many ports in between.

I spent the pre­vi­ous month or so get­ting ready. Packed up all of my stuff (includ­ing just about 3,000’ of rope) and put it in my friend Scott’s attic (who was nice enough to store my stuff while I’m gone).

This is the trip I have been dream­ing of for the past 10 years of my life, when going on a trip around the world became a pos­si­bil­i­ty. Hav­ing been raised in the Sea Org of Sci­en­tol­ogy I couldn’t real­ly just up and trav­el. Well that is until I left when I was 21 (But that is a sto­ry for anoth­er day). I have been plan­ning and dream­ing of this in some form or anoth­er since I was 21. Now it begins! Now I will see the world!

Tri­este, Italy.