Pennsylvania - New Jersey - New Orleans

Pennsylvania for more barns in June.

4th of July - New Jersey. Specifically in a pool. In a pool for 4 days straight.

End of July - New Orleans for an amazing unique wedding involving a downpour of rain, shutting down streets for 2nd line dance party, music, and old friends.

Realized upon returning from New Orleans, my brain functions differently when traveling. There's no dwelling. There's less purpose / need for constant productivity. I feel constantly in motion but don't have to think about that. I live in the moment while traveling, without even having to remind myself to do so.

1st Barnwood Shoot - Indiana, West Virginia

First note: March - Went to VT and sugared and made a HUGE snow fort. 3 hours of non-stop digging. As adults, we made the childhood versions of ourselves extremely impressed.


April into May - Winter into Spring - 10 days on the road

Ohio for a night, Indiana for 4 days, Upper West Virginia for 3 days, lower West Virginia for 3 days. Or something like that.

Didn't realize there were such secluded places in the middle of the U.S. 45 minutes to get to anything. Some spectacular spots!

Traveler, Nomad, Vagabond, Gypsy, Homeless

6 months & 2 weeks on the road / living out of a backpack / not having a place of my own / not paying rent. It’s been over half a year since I gave up my apartment.

Explaining what I’ve been doing is really hard. People ask where I moved from. Easiest answer? Nowhere. Most confusing answer? Nowhere. Maybe “everywhere” is more appropriate, but I doubt solves the confusion.

My insurance company for my camera / other equipment called every month asking for my new address. Yes, keep my mailing address my parents, yes please still insure my storage unit, no I do not have a physical address. Month 6 another call came in, they had heard back from some higher ups and needed my physical address where I was living. After 6 months they still couldn’t figure out that I was living nowhere! Did they want me to call every week or every day with an updated address? There are other things too that require living at a physical location. Like voting. So then, where do you belong if you travel all the time?

I was so excited about getting all of my belongings out of storage, but as I unpacked box after box (actually, I had packed in garbage bags due to the last minute rush of my moving in July), I just felt a feeling of panic. How did I have so much, so much that I didn’t need for half a year. What’s the point? And now all of sudden I can no longer pack all of my possessions in less than an hour and be on a plane to somewhere else with no trace left behind.

CHI-LA-SAN FRAN-PORTLAND-SEATTLE

November. 1 month by plane-car-bus-plane-train-boat!-plane

Two of the most common questions, ones I don't have easy answers to:

1. Where are you from? (aka Where do you live?)
2. Why are you in town? 

Simplest, most honest answers, but apparently the most confusing:

1. No where. (everywhere) 
2. Not sure, biding my time, made up a few excuses to do some things and see some people.

This is my record for living out of a backpack (well, except for when I was 2 and my parents backpacked for a year). It looks like I'll get an apartment again in February, making it 6 months, which is half the year!

A few notes:

1. Regardless of what time of year, ALWAYS bring flip flops to LA.
2. Stop buying white shirts, on the road you only do one load of laundry - colors.

COLORADO - NYC - NEBRASKA / S. DAKOTA - NYC - ILLINOIS - STL - NYC - VT

Squeezing a lot of states into one post - but that's fitting, since I squeezed in a lot of states into a few weeks. 6 in 3 weeks. About 8 nights of not consecutively sleeping in the same place.

Wedding #4 was middle step brother's in Colorado. Maybe the biggest most organized one (wedding planner for the day) I've been to thus far. What do weddings =? A lot of hard work and details.

Back to NYC for 3 days in time for screening World Circus at the Coney Island Film Festival.

Then, off to Nebraska - or what I surprisingly learned - South Dakota! I knew I was on a job for a week in Nebraska, but what I didn't know was the hotel was just over the border in another state.
A week in the middle of no where, land of vegetarian options being "tomatoes" and a town of 1,000. 10,000 visitors descended on the corn fields for the History Channel show. Golf carts, some outdoor work, and production = happy me, even though days started at 5am and 12 hours were spent with another bout of food poisoning.

After a 17 hour day of shooting the live show, which started airing literally before we were done editing, I realized I was headed back to NYC and hadn't reserved a couch to sleep.

3 days in NYC and then off to the last wedding of the year - #5!
(With a quick stop in Springfield, IL for a family hello)

This one was for a friend who I have known for 20 years. Insane. We used to play spy games and she was my first movie making buddy, when at eight, I bought my first video camera. This wedding was full of friends I've known forever and their parents. It was a wedding of visual doubles - so strange who we all become and getting a glimpse of it a little in advance.

So, after 5 weddings I think the only thing I was surprised to learn is I didn't hate them, they weren't as stupid as I thought they'd be - among other nice thoughts.

2nd half of Peru Trip

Hiked El Morro from the "easy" side. Kenya came with us again, last time she was MUCH smaller and ran up the whole way in flip flops. 

Packed our evenings with meetings and dinners and drinks with friends. Even in the middle of the jungle it's a busy social life :) Love it. 

Got sick for the first time since visiting Peru - I sure had been lucky all those other times, because it wasn't a fun day. 

I came back to fall time in NYC and the cab driver yelling at me. Oh right, welcome home. Without a place of my own I hung out on a Brooklyn stoop with my bags in the fall weather until a friend got home with keys to another friend's place to stay. Sure am lucky. 

Three days and I'm off again. NYC has become my go-to layover city. 

Peru Trip #7

I skipped a year visiting Peru, but I’m back. Before I leave it always seems like such a hassle, and then the second we land in the jungle and take off in the car from Tarapoto, I feel home. The heat makes sense. The colors and crazy moto taxis - they just feel calm.  Everything is the same…but this time not. Little things, like the Lima airport doesn’t have their game show red light / green light random security system for searching bags. Peurto Mirador Hotel no longer has a switch for hot water you have to turn on 30min before you want to shower. There’s a new beer, Tres Cruces, but it’s still just as cold – colder than anywhere I’ve ever had beer. But the rest is the same, we arrive at the hotel with the group of 8 doctors and are greeted by Luis - hugs and then “Okay, 7min and then we leave for Yantaló .” And we’re off, pack well, because filming starts 10min before you’re ready. Straight to Yantaló for the usual tour of the clinic, and the shock of pulling up and seeing the progress was even more than usual. It’s SO BIG!

I always forget how grateful and impressed and inspired I am by the people who congregate to Yantaló,  instigated by Luis. There are always late night dinners, a table full of over 20 from around the world. It’s 10pm and we’re eating and drinking pisco sours. The doctors wake up at 6am and perform 6-8 surgeries in a day. I think josh and my days are hard, carrying around cameras, they’re cutting people open and saving babies! To us filming is fun, to them surgery is fun. Everyone at the table is brilliant, whether a 25 year old student from Lima, President of a hospital from the US, or top surgeon from France, everyone is laughing, and drinking, and completely happy. 

I’m not 100% sure why we're all here, but pretty much all of us will be back, or have been returning- again and again.