I am terrified- TER.RI.FIED- of heights. I’ve had panic attacks while stuck in traffic on elevated freeway overpasses. On any given suspension bridge there’s an 80% chance you will find me crying and scooting my way across in a pitiful army crawl. Hell, I scream when other people get too close to the edge. (Why?! Why […]
Day #11,580 1/2 {New Year’s Eve 2013}: There was one Saharan activity to which I’d secretly most been looking forward. Riding a camel is just so Classic Desert, is it not? Mr. M’s adorable mother Mama Betty somehow got the idea that her children and their multifarious luggage would be chartering camels from the edge of […]
Days #11,399-11,400: By some turn of witchcraft, it takes less time to get to Iceland from NYC than it takes to make my usual pilgrimages home to LA. Four and a half hours after leaving JFK, Mr. M & I touched down near the barren, moonscaped town of Keflavik. Mood: Stellar. While Icelandair has the […]
Day #9,467-69: After 40 hours of traveling from LA to DC to Senegal to Johannesburg, the newly married Mr. M & I touched down in the city of Durban on South Africa’s eastern seaboard. It was midnight and the first time my feet had ever stood on foreign soil. My first night abroad was not […]
The bike is a grievously underrated mode of transportation. For four years during veterinary school, I used my trusty bike Samson (normal folk name their bikes, right?) as my primary means of getting about town. While biking everywhere limited my fashion choices (let’s be honest- rectally palpating cows doesn’t necessarily lend itself to super-cute miniskirts […]
You can smell Rotorua, a lovely town tucked into the northwest corner of New Zealand’s North Island, long before you can see it. Rotorua is best-known for two things: its crown as the adventure sports capital of New Zealand and its extensive network of hot springs… hence the looming, sulfur stench. Day #10,288: Mr. M […]
I firmly believe in the importance of starting each year off right. Maybe it’s the tiny bit of writer in me and the infinite allure of the blank white page (now screen?). But I refuse to become disillusioned by the overblown hoopla of New Years because I reeeeally want new beginnings to mean something. This […]
Day #11,055: When the morning starts out like this, you know it shall be a Most Glorious Day. Mr. M (sick with a sore throat and head cold, poor thing) & I awoke to the sound of waves rippling on the rocks below our balcony and parrots chattering in the palm trees above. Sarie, mother […]
If there’s one thing that scares me more than losing a toe to a piranha, it’s the threat of regret. After a day spent eating grubs and swinging on jungle vines and visiting with pink river dolphins, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling of wanting to swim in the Rio Negro. So as the sun set over the tea-colored Amazon, in I went.
Day #10,294: The alarm went off an hour before the wet winter’s sun rose in Punakaiki, New Zealand. I wanted to visit the Pancake Rocks at sunrise, when high tide meant the famous Punakaiki Blowhole would be at its blow-iest. Armed with a giant umbrella and two paper cups of surprisingly delish hotel room coffee […]