CURRENT MISSION

Just recently figured out that everyone sees only a small bit of the whole picture -- so to try to see what many different people's views looks like. Also to eat as much delicious, interesting food as possible. Oh, and world peace.

ABOUT ME

One of the things I love most about travel is the shift in the way things feel in a little while after you arrive in a new country/culture. At first everything looks strange, the buildings seem the wrong shape, people are behaving strangely, everything seems foreign. Then, after a little while, the realization occurs (again!) that, no, this is exactly the way everything should be, it's all normal, this is just the way things are here and yes it's different from home but really just slightly different solutions to the same problems: how to live, eat, dress, make a living, get along together, and live a good life.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Just starting out, but I'm looking forward to hosting CS'ers and helping them experience Boston and the U.S.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I started couchsurfing due to poor planning when I was 15 years old. My two best friends in high school and I decided to bicycle from Los Angeles to San Diego where we had friends. A late start and one too many flat tires on the road and we didn't make it by nightfall. A guy we met (he was bailing out his friend at the police station!) offered to let us sleep in his car parked in his driveway. Not the most comfortable night's sleep but actually kind of fun.

My first official couchsurfing experience, with Mayamoo in the San Francisco bay area (across in the east bay) was wonderful -- a great host and fascinating person.

Interests

Anything outdoors -- hiking, bicycling, kayaking, skiing, swimming -- also appreciate fine arts and folk arts, very much a foodie, experiencing and cooking. I'm a lawyer by profession, I appreciate the fairness and the search for truth that is the basis of the profession when it is done ethically, and it's ability to empower people who would otherwise just get muscled by richer or more powerful interests. I'm also an amateur inventor and designer and have a few designs that have gained patents and that I'm starting new businesses based on.

• arts
• culture
• humanities
• design
• dining
• cooking
• traveling
• outdoor activities
• hiking
• kayaking
• skiing
• swimming
• emergency services
• history
• law

Music, Movies, and Books

A very wide range, I like to experience the variety of life.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

How to choose -- the world is "so full of wondrous things..."

Teach, Learn, Share

A practical skill about working with conflict, which is my job as a lawyer -- I am still learning this myself, and just beginning to see its power in resolving disputes. Early in my career a mentor told me a saying by Jean Lafitte, who was a French nobleman but who risked his life to fight on the side of the new American country and was a hero in America's war of independence. Lafitte said that in the history of war, more fortresses have been taken by rowboats than by gunboats. When working with a conflict, I always try to approach it with a rowboat rather than a gunboat.

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