The Winter Move: Backpacks, Books up, & Leaves.
I am getting all this anxiety with all the current events. Big (like the CO-VID virus breakout - which people are buzzing to be the new HIV) ones, as well as small (tiny changes that wreak havoc on the daily). I have started a new social blog - which links to my other soon-to-finish design site.
(Stay tuned.)
It used to be this page, which i made in 2013-ish - and turned into two magazine pages (filled to the brim of ideas for the trolling).
But, i am about being able to take a branding decade-review / site-mind and bring that to a higher more fun stage - and if not, we can always crack on with another blog in its place, and not break the cohesiveness of the positive perceptions.
In the meantime, i am currently reviewing some series of tech startup services-turned app- turned company, and seriously find that the landscape has now turned the investors in a tizzy (as an avid startup-employee-on-watch since the early 2000s).
I think we would see the next few months on a quiet buzz with content, and middle phase of the early-to-late stage startups built in teh noughties, and pivoted in the tens, and now scaled to the twenties.
I, on the other hand, would probably stick to writing-as-a-reprieve from the heat of funding sears and just use this as an umbrella for walk-in consults, review, and the odd-recommendation tidbit page.
I am glad the glacier months are nearly over - and we are in the midst of blossoming in spring time again.
Books:
So before all the ice melts, here’s my BookList - i have subscribed to an annual challenge for voracious reading, here’s my profile if you fancy a follow: @krissn.
Backpacks:
To stash in a selection of keen backpacks (i am on a shopping mode for them - rucksacks are hard to really just “casually come by” and there is no one go to backpack shop i tend to honestly say).
And,
Leaves:
My real travel bug kicks in its asynchronised heads up around the months of the sun. April-August in some parts. So, if i were an avid traveller - i feel a wish list coming on - and had a gazillion billion trillion bucks, i would do this from a January snowed-in winter planning:
Q1: Jan-March
Plan - and get equipment / gear for activities (swimming, snowboarding, skiing, etc.)
Go:
• Skiing - would love to hit the slopes in the obvious places like Swiss Alps with a curled up hot chocolate, and cosy wrap in tow for the fireplaces. But, also Japan & Korea have really good places in the mountainsides. (I would also either have a friends’ lodge and get them insane thank you baskets, or book a ClubMed retreat for them). Or maybe, just hang out in demure swimming outfits, aprés-ski - in those things i will probably never dip in - Ofuros.
• Snowboarding - usually done somewhere in Alberta or Calgary in Canada, with loads of heights, views, good weather and non-melting ice.
• Spa (winter) Lodge-chill in Australia or New Zealand - since we live 6 hours away, i think this is the most green-positive or carbon-credited or eco-friendly, without the feeling of being so as my friend would say, a total pobresito.
• Summer Lodge - tropical countries or California wouldn’t be as cold as say, Colorado this time of year. And there’s Asia, where it’s always going to be warm, unless you’re in Nepal, and Tibet would always be that much favoured than a jet ski lodge in your parent’s backyard northern lakes.
Q2: April-June
Plan - i have a two-month ahead planning (at my lead), and either do backups in my phone and diaries in case i leave something behind accidentally or in drastic eras, actually get nicked my calendars. (Like, seriously - who does that?)
• Sands, on the beach coves - this becomes the really hearty arrangement for every summer travel list: where to summer? There’s an endless array of choice, but for the green-heads like me, i choose local more - because i tend to hate plane rides that end up with needing a choice of: a 24-hr sleep-log revive OR a hit-the-sands when you land 7hr-or-less drive / sea-plane ride.
• Surf - Australia, there’s the West and there’s Mexico, and there’s Asia where you have really good waves and cheaper rates for the kind of surf that you don’t have to bring your checked-in long board in the haul to. Also, consider where the pros hang: are they going to tourist-infested or in their buddies’ beach coves where they can get freebie rooms or villas for the rate of a surf lesson?
• Scuba - Australia is down under with anything to do with the Ocean or the sea - it is always a cage-dive pat-the-shark month in April, but the rates do apply. So, an escape for me would be a balance of happy-tradition-and-not-the-cliché crowd.
• Colorado - sometimes, we swap lodges because we want hot in the winter, and cold in the summer. And when we are fickle past 50, we just do that since we’ve been in that swivel chair for too long.
Q3: July-September
(When, officially summer to midsummer actually starts.)
Beyond the Asian continents, there is a mad-highway for people rushing to places that are pre-booked from the year before, and avoiding the regular-locals where they actually have housing in places in europe we don’t really see on the daily, or in our tea-time casual chats.
• The Hamptons - this is a freak show, almost as much as Florida. But this falls under the “traditional” more than the adventure. Also, cheaper. Since your house is going to be cheaper, unless your parents moved to Malibu or the North Carolina coastlines.
• Greece, or the Maldives - i’ve been imagining these coastlines since junior school breaks, and the buzzing of tourists who were tired of finding a place to rent in Italy without the use of Trenitalia backpacking route (not the point, on bivouacs, btw) this year. Also, a good place for really good olive-oil rubs, post-sun. Bring your aloe, long wraps for dinner, and onesies please.
• Italy - this is my favourite go to, still. I have loads of reasons, but not the obvious ones - refining the palate has been the goal for repeat-travelers and it’s mostly because you can’t really take in all the fresh air, limoncello coolers, shots of caipirinhas, tons of carcioffis-fennel-endive salads, coffee and pizza, and nightly venetian-town, cabo-summer-like being at home here for only the three months - too short, too short.
• Disneyland - this is a go-to for young to teen kids, slash reward for those straight A buffs, who’ve been slaving away at health-food-lunchboxes on the daily. (That would be me). And this just lets the kids know that there are happy people elsewhere, pumped up with sugar, and balanced out on their other-beach-house-resort-going-lives with boring mum and dad, and their old and boring globe-trotting friends. (That would be me). Also, if you were single, it gives you an excuse to expend all your hard-earned bonuses towards a video compile of vomiting all the sugar intake throughout the park, or just because, green is a really good colour on you this year.
Q4: October-December
Planning trips here are more fun, sometimes.
• Back to school, no-school-run Weekends - having no kids to spy on, makes for loads of time on un-busy mums. And mostly, FB mums are just lame - keep to your schedules and be busy with other things - like laying out the kids’ futures by working out how cool they would be in changing climes: how much carbon credits are their accounts going to amass - in the lifestyles that they would choose - in choice out before them? Doing this over a quiet balcony café, overlooking the latest cerebral curations of your Tate Modern director friend would be more productive. Trust me.
• Shopping for thoughtfulness’ sake, in a Christmas Village - they usually have this in Europe, but christmas school breaks are out in November, which lets everyone calmly get a flight in - for home village festivities, or if you’re staying in, there will be a good stretch to imagine how a summery Christmas would be like.
• Thanskgiving with the Aborigines in Australia, & probably looking for it in small neighbourhood cosy coffee corners - because their Christmas is not your Christmas, and sometimes, it’s a tad bit more fun when you’re slapping on sunscreen when everyone else is getting winter face guard heavy-slather moisturising it.
• Writing in Cosy Lodges, with warm socks and a drink in hand - I went to Bali in November two years ago, and this was the real steal when the weather, beach waves, non-rainy-coat attire, and not a lot of people equals “just you at poolside” and waitstaff being more attentive.
So, wherever you are now in your planning stages - i am pretty sure i’m a lot more disorganised (my mum-group at tea are totally disgraced by me), you will imagine these happy travels in a non-gangēd drugged-up stressful way, in about the two-month lead time (if you’re a parent, or two), or less (if you’re seriously life-choiced-single, or post-marriage-separately-single and needing to choose a travel-buddy, no pressure) - on what really makes it fun (and in your heart, you know what that is), and then the how will just follow.