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Living on my bicycle for a year instead of going straight to graduate school. I bicycled across the US each summer for two years, and the next summer took a fu
by japhyr 14y ago
Living on my bicycle for a year instead of going straight to graduate school.
I bicycled across the US each summer for two years, and the next summer took a full year off. I rode from Seattle to Maine, down to Florida, over to California, and all the way north to Alaska. It was the classic "find yourself" adventure of a 20-something. It has grounded me in everything I have ever done since.
Facing a grizzly at four feet, alone in the middle of the Yukon, really does put everything else in perspective for the rest of your life.
Programming: Build something that people use, and start freelancing. I am not a full-time programmer, so I could have gone the rest of my life only programming for my own intellectual satisfaction. But I watched my dad pass away never having polished any of his projects, and that made me commit to releasing code. Programming has been much harder, but much more satisfying, since I made that decision.
Freelancing has let me ease into using my technical knowledge professionally, while maintaining my day job as a high school teacher.
- eshvk 14y ago> Facing a grizzly at four feet, alone in the middle of the Yukon, really does put everything else in perspective for the rest of your life. That sounds incredible! I am going to sound incredibly stupid but that would be something to experience. Details?
- japhyr 14y agoI was heading north on the Cassiar Highway in BC, a mostly dirt road which parallels the more heavily-traveled AK highway. I had been seeing black bears every day from a fair distance. I was on a flat stretch of road with grassy banks. I saw a matted-down patch on my right and thought to myself, that looks like a bear slid down on its butt right there. Then I glanced to my left and found myself face to face with a grizzly. It's funny, I knew what I was supposed to do from reading and talking about bears. But it was my experience responding to stray dogs that had trained me in how to respond. I just stayed calm and kept pedaling, same speed. It stepped into the road and huffed in my direction, but it didn't start chasing me. I have kept that moment in mind during every "stressful" situation in my life since then.