Hello

Hello!  Hi!  This is a blog!  I'm Harry, the person who writes the things and eats the food.

Image unrelated.

More than ever, I'm not entirely sure who this blog is for, which makes any kind of introduction or informational update kind of tricky.  If I don't know you personally or you're not the author of "Potato Pals" googling himself, I'm not sure why you'd be interested, so starting with the basics seems a little unnecessary.  On the other hand, I've made a fair number of friends, acquaintances, and traveling companions over the years, and I haven't always done the best job of keeping in touch, so some explanation might be helpful.  If you happen to go through any of the archives, way back to 2009, this uncertainty of audience has been a constant theme, vacillating between "I'm Harry, an American travel writer and carbon-based life form" and "Hi, Mom!"  I'd like to think that this blog has something to offer, though, even if you don't give any specific sort of damn about me—information, inspiration, entertainment, blurry sunset photos, etc.

And occasional hard-hitting journalism

Since the last post on this blog back at the end of 2014, Jenn and I have (*deep breath*) wrapped up our bike tour in Southeast Asia, studied meditation in Thailand, returned to Kansas, visited an incredible eco-village, biked across Missouri, taught English in Normandy, biked across Bretagne and southwest Ireland, bummed around Western Europe for a spell, returned to Kansas again, started graduate degree programs, and made absolutely no progress in kicking our karaoke habit.  More on these episodes to come (probably).

So without going too much more into the backstory (plenty of that in the archives), here's the most immediate skinny on why I'm firing up ol' Bloggy again: for the next six months, from January until June 2017, I'm going to be teaching kindergarten at an international school in Guinea that I'm going to try to avoid naming to preserve the privacy of my colleagues and supervisors.  This is going to be my first time in Africa, my first full-time classroom teaching position, and one of my final steps in getting my elementary teaching license so I can do more of this craziness in the future.  I've packed my antimalarials and very little else, and I've got a feeling there are going to be more than a few surprises in the immediate future.  Over the next six months, this blog will likely continue to be a mishmash of professional multicultural educator issues, travel pictures and anecdotes, and sundry personal reflections.  There will be puns.

Of course, the main reason I'm going to be restarting the blog now is because for the first time since this whole adventure started, I'm going to be getting into various shenanigans and escapades without my all-time partner-in-crime, Jenn.  This blog isn't just to keep something for posterity (blogs don't have an expiration date, right?), or just to hear myself talk (I do plenty of that already), but to share something of this experience with Jenn, who will be continuing her studies in Kansas while I'm off doing whatever it is I'm about to be doing.

😍

There's a lot to reflect on over the next few days, to say nothing of the next six months.  When I have the time, inclination, and internet access, I'll post something from Guinea.  I'll also try to share some odds and ends from the last couple of years, and I may tidy up the blog a bit if I get around to it.  Forgive the mothballs.

Back to the Grind

So how did the concert go?  Did we get to Shimonoseki OK?  What did we do after that?  Did we eat any more insects?

The answers to all of these questions are as follows: fine, yes, more of the same, not yet.  The long answers, however, will be forthcoming in the next few weeks, as will some practical info about biking in Japan and Korea in case anyone's interested.

In the meantime, though, just to keep everyone up to date: we've made it to Seoul, where we begin our job teaching English tomorrow.  Eleven months ago, we left a good job in The City, (where we were) working for the man every night and day.  Now, we're in another The City, working for a different The Man.  Alas, that means that there will soon be an end to these particular Amazing Tales, and those thrilling stories of globe-hopping and running away from snakes will give way to slightly less-thrilling stories of cute children, grammatical mistakes, and weird toilets.

Of course, the original plan was to take month-long work breaks to fund our greasy, showerless way of life, but considering how difficult it's been to find a single long-term job (to say nothing of buying fancy new clothes to wear to work, such as a third pair of socks), we've opted to pack in all of the capitalist goodness into one long year. In a year's time, we'll have socked away enough cash to get our rubber back on the road, but for now, settle in for more English teacherly goodness.

Until we catch up to the present, expect more from our time in Japan and Korea, followed by the aforementioned protips and some flashbacks to our time in Missouri and California.  After that...well, if we run out of material, maybe I'll just put up some of our old posts, replacing "Japan" with "Korea" and "Godzilla" with "kimchi."

The Plan: Japan

Having returned to Osaka (a.k.a. "The Big O") from the Philippines, Jenn and I were now ready to begin the Plan proper.  We agreed that, though Japan is one of the more expensive countries on our quaint little planet, it becomes much cheaper when a traveler is sleeping in a tent and traveling by bicycle.  Besides, after three years of Japanese study, we felt Japan would be a good starter country for our Asian tour.

So, having paid lots of paper rectangles to have our various possessions shipped to us here in Osaka or back to the States, we were set to give everything a test ride.  After strenuous preparation and route-planning, of course.

Here, we confer with some locals about what is or is not shakin'.

We were blessed by the immigration officials with a standard 90-day tourist visa, which gives us enough time to see a good chunk of the country before having to make a border run to Korea.  Then, assuming our limbs haven't gotten so muscular that we can no longer get out of bed, we intend to come back to Japan just in time for the rainy season to bike a bit more.  Hopefully, we will be working in Seoul again come July, so we'll be filling as much time as we can until then with biking, camping, and assorted shenanigans.

First, like all good adventurers, we thought it would be wisest to take our long-mothballed equipment on a test ride, just a short four-day ramble from Osaka to Nara, then to Kyoto, then back to Osaka.  See illustration.  SEE IT.


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As of writing this post, we've already completed this leg of the trip, so it has made the transition from "Tentative" to "Good Job!"  What is still tentative, however, is the rest of our trip in Japan, which is approximated below:



View Larger Map

Apart from biking, which does tend to get tiresome after a little bit, we've made plans to WWOOF, and have already joined WWOOF Japan.  Essentially, WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) allows us to volunteer at various organic farms (and possibly cafes, artists' communes, hotels, who knows what else) in exchange for food and lodging.  We've been told that it's an excellent way to meet interesting people, learn new skills, see a side of the country that would otherwise be hidden to us, and get free food and lodging.  In addition, we may be stopping at a couple of Zen monasteries to participate in meditation retreats.

So, that about brings us up to speed.  If you'd just gotten used to hi-larious jokes about exotic fruits and dangerous animals, well...too bad.  Hopefully you'll be just as thrilled to hear of such exciting tales of flat tires, rain, and rice farming.  They do have monkeys here, too, so watch out for that.

The Lowdown

OK, so.

This guy:

...and this gal:

...joined forces several years ago and formed this amazing team:

And as the Gaijin Patrol, they have been cutting a streak of awesome all across the globe ever since (well, until recently, across a very specific few corners of the globe).  In Osaka, we educated surly Japanese teens with only a few hundred pounds of crazy, a thimbleful of good sense, and exactly zero years of teacher training.  We did battle with ogres, survived earthquakes, climbed motherfucking mountains of sand, avoided making eye contact with maids, got assaulted by children, found Happy Beach, rocked the roof off of various ghetto bars, and ate bugs one time and it totally wasn't an accident or anything, you guys, for real.  Also, Tommy Lee Jones was there, though that may have been a dream.

At last, when our combined rockage threatened to shake The Big O into the sea, we left for the good of the land.  Having saved our money carefully, we decided that the wisest course of action would be to invest it in further education to better our future career prospects and prepare for the children that we would one day bring into this world.

Then we said, "Nah, fuck it, let's buy some bikes."

And so the legend was born...

Having had little experience riding bikes since our idyllic childhoods in the Midwest, we were relatively new to bike camping.  We had done a fair amount of reading in our apartment in Osaka, and as we studied Japanese and nursed our bruised bodies (children be violent), we dreamed of circling the globe like Travelling Two or Going Slowly.  Realizing that it was far easier to drop everything and be full-time bike bums before having children than after, we decided there was no time like the present and no way like holyshitgorightnow.  After all, though we were comfortable teaching in Osaka, there was little room for growth or challenge.  Sure, we could have stayed longer, saved more money, played more gigs with Raku Three, studied more Japanese, but...well, that would have just been more of the same.  So, clearly: bikes.

The first thing we did with our bikes was to educate ourselves in their maintenance and upkeep so as to better equip ourselves for world traveling.  No, wait, first we put a bunch of sweet stickers on the bikes.  Then the other thing.  The next thing we did was to bike across Missouri, then bike from San Francisco to San Diego.  There will be more written on this, but SPOILER ALERT WE MADE IT.  And so, bikes sufficiently broken in, we flew back to Asia, never to return until we had kicked its ass.

The Plan, in short, is to bike around Asia until the money runs out or we get sick of traveling.  Right now, we are still in Phase 1 of the Plan, which involves very few bikes.  The reason for this break is that, as of press time, it is winter in much of the world, and thus far too cold for bike camping.  So, to wait out the winter, we flew to Seoul to teach more childrens and make a little more cash to support our travel habits.  Since winter still stubbornly has refused to end as of February, we thought we’d blow some of the vacation dough on a trip to the Philippines until it’s warm enough to return to Japan and The Plan, which, if you’ve been paying attention, is to bike around Asia until the money runs out or we get sick of traveling.

That about brings us up to speed, then.  From here, there will be frequent posts about what we’re up to at the moment, periodically intercut with flashbacks to the last few months of travel.  Expect photos, whimsy, and more analogies than you can shake a regulation stick at.  But first, a sample of what else we’ve accomplished since our ogre-battling etc. days:

Adventure!

Travel!

Adorable children!

Beasties, critters, and assorted varmints!

More beasties, critters, and assorted varmints!

More nasty food!

And...

...mysteries solved!