So, I'm your standard-edition Canadian digital nomad except the 45-year-old version.

I'm in my fourth year of global travel and I do it slow-and-steady-style.

I'm a writer by trade and my hobbies include photography, cooking, and people-watching. I'm not an adventurer, but I do love experiences.

My best travel experiences include hanging out with village ladies in Turkey while making bread, being lazy in small-town Morocco, having a Roman coliseum all to myself for a windy November morning, surviving major surgery in Albania, living in a traditional teak house in a fishing village of 2,000 on the Mekong River in Thailand for two months, and just those small, random moments where, for a tiny slice of life, it feels like I'm the luckiest person in the world.

I've had a lot of bad luck during my travels but they've played a huge part in making me realize how lucky I am to be still living this life and having these opportunities.

I'm here to potentially meet people from time to time, preferably locals, who can introduce me to real life in their towns. I do write about my travels both on my blog and for commercial interests, so I'm looking for angles that the average passerby doesn't experience.

If you're a local and have interest in practicing your English, I've taught English conversation to immigrants for years and I'd be happy to be your sounding board. (That's an idiom for you!)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I'm honestly not interested in staying with anyone, but I've heard about the connections people make, and I'm really wanting to have some more real experiences in the places I visit, particularly with cooking, the food scene, and agriculture, because I've written about these things for magazines and it's a personal passion.

Interests

Writing, photography, walking, cooking, cycling

• writing
• photography
• cooking
• walking
• traveling
• cycling

Music, Movies, and Books

Oh, man, "the list." Hmm. Hunter Thompson was a huge writing influence. Paul Theroux. Travelogues. Pat Barker. Jim Crace. British stuff. Travel stuff. Opinion. Biographies. Observation. Lots of non-fiction.

Movies: Indie but not obscure. Funny, but not slapstick. Dark, but not oppressive.

Music: A much more wide variety than I thought I liked. Travel's been interesting for that. :)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Sold everything I owned after achieving the dream apartment, leather sofas, view of the city, and traded it all in for travelling. Now I live out of a duffle bag. Oh, right, that's why we're all here, I guess.

Okay, then: Hung out in Pula, Croatia's Roman Coliseum for 2 hours alone on a windy day. Then I watched Gladiator that night and regretted not throwing my arms up and shouting ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

And, you know, getting major surgery alone in Albania with an 8-week recovery time was pretty ballsy.

Teach, Learn, Share

I want to learn Spanish and Italian, I can teach some cooking, I can do some editing, talk about how to write better or just start writing.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Writing, editing, cooking tips (wrote a cookbook), photography basics. Travel stories, of course.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Laos, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, United States