"it's opener there, in the wide open air..."



.....and it begins. Most of you know this, but here's the scoop - I'm taking a break. I miss that feeling I had a decade ago - when I traipsed through Europe spreading the Gospel According to Baseball - that liberating caprice of constant travel. I've lived in San Francisco doing corporate jobs for nearly 11 (great) years, and I have it on very good authority that both will be here when I'm ready to come back.

So now I'm going to spend the next six months surfing from town to town, country to country, continent to continent. It's not a mission to find myself; I've pretty much got me pegged by now. Instead, I hope it's a time to give myself the space to be myself. One giant push of the reset button. Getting back to where I once belonged and all that jazz.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~ ancient philosophizer, Markus Twainus

My goal for this space is simple: tell cool stories from my travels that make you jealous keep you interested. I'll write when I can, and I'll try to keep the social media posting and pretentious-quote dropping to a minimum. Can't promise anything, though. Luckily, I won't be in Blighty long enough to pick up that weird/fake British lilt I came back with last time, which is a win for all of us. Of course, I just called England "Blighty" like all the Limeys do, so, again, I can't promise anything.

Hope you'll check in every so often to join me on the ride. I'm flying to London this afternoon, and here's the rest of what I know: I'll see great friends in the coming days and months, I'll see three continents (maybe more), I'll see Sweden and Holland and Turkey, oh my! I'll volunteer in Cambodia and dive in Thailand; eat madras in, well, Madras, paddleboard in the Bosphorus, and search for distant relatives in Lithuania. If Boom Bands are playing in Hoi An, Zurich, Oslo, and Mumbai, it's a good bet that's where you'll find my two dancin' feet and... me.

It's gonna be a hell of a time.

Note: You can also catch me on instagram at @kevin_aug, where colorblindness meets photo filters. The pics all look good to me, at least. Just like my wardrobe.

Note 2: my SF phone number will be disabled for the next six months. If you have an iPhone, you can still iMessage me as normal (and FaceTime too) through the magic known as the Apple ID. Also, if you get a random iMessage from a foreign number you don't recognize, odds are it's me. If you have an Android or other phone...sorry, but we can't be friends anymore. It was fun while it lasted.

I kid.

In that case, we can resort to old-fashioned email, Whatsapp, or Facebook Messenger (an app you should definitely download - it's free and supports my nieces' college funds. On that note - please use Square for all mobile payments and encourage your local food truck, taxi driver, and Girl Scout selling cookies to do the same. Thanks.). I also have a Skype account using my email address, which is how I plan to meet all the babies due in the next six months. But I expect to be off the grid much more than on. Blissfully.

See you on the flipside.