A new GoPro, library card and future travel plans

25/1 - I need to thank my parents for gifting me the ultimate sidekick to adventure: a GoPro camera.

Today was the first day I took it out and tested it. There's a large hill on the northeast part of Porterville where cell towers are located. It's tall enough to overlook the whole Valley and show parts of the mountains, so I stuck the GoPro to my forehead, hiked, took some video and snapped some pictures.

Just like over the summer on the motorcycle trip, using the GoPro was a blast. While playing around with it, I learned I could download the app on my iPhone and control the camera from there and look at the pictures and videos on the screen using the wifi signal. It's a trip to do that and the angle of the camera lens was especially cool.

The last time I hiked this hill in 2014, it and the surrounding area was brown from the drought. This time, it was a deep, luscious green will tall, healthy grass. It's beautiful! I had never seen this area so green before the rains came. Thank you, El Nino.

The future is filling up with travel plans again. At the end of March there are zero sports in Porterville for about four days. I see that as a perfect opportunity to go somewhere I've never been to in the United States. And right now, I'm most interested in visiting Chicago because of the many opportunities to engage in art and culture, eat some great food and visit some famous stadiums such as Soldier Field and Wrigley field. It'll also be another opportunity to Couchsurf.

In May, I'll visit my 17th country: Mexico. I have a friend who will meet me in Mexico City and drive me to his family's home in Tampico, a beach town on the east coast. He informed his family and they're totally cool with it. In fact, it sounds like his family welcomes his visiting friends with open arms. So spending my birthday on a Mexican beach and using Spanish for a week sounds damn good to me. The dates are finalized, but I have not bought a ticket yet.

I have nothing in the works for June, but I received an email from Kaichi High School in Japan today, inviting me to work with their students for a week in London again. Luckily, this happens late in June when there are few sports happening in Porterville, so getting time off should't be a problem.

And of course, my paid vacation begins in the middle of September. While that's the middle of football season, I'll still take time off to go visit friends in Boston, Philadelphia and New York City. Either that, or go visit a friend in Taiwan or Japan. The possibilities are endless here as there are so many places to visit and not enough time.

Before living in England, I never thought of seeking out opportunities for short traveling adventures. My mindset has shifted; looking for opportunities and small blocks of time to travel has now become regular practice. Probably the best thing about 2015 is how I now have a reason to go abroad every year, like to speak English with Japanese high school kids in London.

I like this new lifestyle that will plague me forever.

On a more mundane note, I have a library card for the first time in many, many years. I'm using the resources in the Porterville Library to study for the ASVAB, the test on which I need to score highly for the Coast Guard application.

Airport adventures, a crab fisherman and Belgian beer

3/1 - The travel day from Dublin back to Porterville on Saturday was worthy of its own blog. The biggest lesson for the day?

Ethiopian Airline sucks. Never again. My first experience with the airline in Los Angeles was no fluke.

After trying to sleep in Dublin Airport for five hours, the airline wanted to verify my payment card. I used a different card to pay for the flight, but that account is closed now. The woman at the desk told me a person would be over in two minutes to verify the card, so I moved to the side to wait.

Forty-five minutes later, still no one had helped me. I was visibly annoyed at this point, pacing back and forth and knocking on the counter with my knuckles. I sarcastically asked the check-in lady, "should I just come back another time when it's less busy?" The fact an Irish guy named Eddy was going through the same thing, but in his case it was more than two hours of waiting, should make the airline ashamed of itself. Eddy was fuming, at one point calling the check-in people assholes to their faces.

Once someone finally made their way over to help us, the whole process took less than five minutes. It was shockingly bad customer service. United in our combined mistreatment from the airline, Eddy and I formed a brief friendship. I found out he is the captain of F.V. Stella, a fishing boat in Alaska. This is the exact kind of boat you see on the television show "Deadliest Catch." We talked about it for a few minutes, and I gave him my business card after saying I'd love to try crab fishing for a season because there's a sense of danger there (it also pays incredibly well).

After completing the 10-hour flight back to Los Angeles and putting up with a screaming brat who actually lay face down in the isle a few times just screaming at the top of her voice, I had one more travel hurdle to overcome, and this is where the story really gets interesting. Since my flight was delayed an hour because of the terrible customer service, I missed my Amtrak bus to Bakersfield.

I bought an Amtrak ticket for a bus leaving Union Station, but I didn't know how far that station was away from LAX. I had a travel plan; it was just badly planned and executed. Since I missed my first bus, I called Amtrak and changed the ticket to a later bus which was about an hour later. After waiting for the shuttle to Union Station (which costs $7), I realized I'd be late for this one as well.

After another call to Amtrak to change my bus to a later departure, I found out the later departure was sold out, so it was either this bus in less than an hour or I'd have to find a place to stay in Los Angeles for the night. After a moment of brief panic and a "what am I supposed to do?!" to the person on the phone because I had to get across Los Angeles in about 40 minutes, my head cleared.

From that point I was forced to use my last and most desperate option to get across the city: a taxi. Luckily I had a good driver, an Ethiopian man (coincidence?) who zoomed me downtown and to Union Station in 25 minutes, five minutes before my bus left. After running through the station, frantically trying to figure out where my bus was, I made it, breathless and sweating. All things considered, the $60-plus fare to get me there was worth it, but that was one close call.

The bus trip to Bakersfield and train ride to Corcoran were uneventful besides the fact I sat next to a man who had been released from prison that day after a three-year stay. He had nothing with him besides the sweatsuit on his back and a few papers. I let him use my phone to get a ride from the train station because I'd want someone to help me if I were in his shoes.

I was happy to be back in Porterville that night, something I won't say too often. It was a long, expensive and stressful day, but it was also filled with crossing paths with fascinating people. Having an adventure and a good memory sometimes begins in the airport terminal, so the fact the day was difficult is no problem. I'm not angry; it's a great story!

4/1 - Despite being jetlagged, I visited some friends in Visalia on Sunday. To their house I brought my favorite beer: Trapistes Rochefort No. 10. I was pleasantly shocked to find it in a BevMo in Visalia. Though the bottle wasn't aged for more than a year like the one I had in Wales, this was still a damn good bottle of beer and well worth this $8-per-bottle price tag. It was a great way to spend a Sunday back in the Central Valley.

The rain jacket I took with me to Ireland absolutely reeks with the combined odor of wood smoke, sweat, dirt and manure. I unfolded it at the dry cleaners on the counter, and the odor made me take a step back. It served a useful purpose and I'm fortunate to have had it, but, damn, that was an awful smell. Fortunately, I have no pictures of the smell.

New Years in Dublin, Irish music and fellow Americans

30/12 - The journey into Dublin and to my hostel couldn't have gone smoother.

Unexpectedly, the bus dropped me off in the center of Dublin; I thought I would have to get a bus from the airport. I only had to walk five minutes to get to the hostel, which I saw from the bus. And as with being in a large, bustling city, I was itching to get off the bus so I could explore.

I'm in a 6-bed dormitory, and besides one drunk Irishman who came in at 3:30 a.m., I'm the only person in the room. But today I just wandered around, ate a falafel and felt at peace with the world. Dublin has been super chill so far, and I have nothing but good things to say about the city and this hostel. 

My hostel, the John Gogarty Hostel, sits above the pub named after the same person. It gets very busy in the evening, because there is live Irish music for about 12 hours every day. This pub has had a different vibe to any other bar I've experienced because of the fact most people sing along with the musicians and are committed to the song. It's very lively.

1/1 - My stay in Dublin has not followed the theme that began this trip to Ireland, namely, there have been no snags, snafus or fuck-ups, besides the fact I lost my room key (it was free to replace). It has been, forgive me for being cheesy and cliche, a perfect end to a perfect year. 

Dublin, particulaly my neighborhood, The Temple Bar, is incredible. The nightlife is perfect. Inside every pub is live accoustic music. Sometimes the music is fantastic, but the price of being packed into the pub like sardines and getting knocked around by others navigating through the crowd, such as on New Years Eve last night, isn't worth staying for. 

My favorite pub, The Temple Bar, is chaotic to say the least. It's always filled to capacity, there's always live music and every available space is taken up by something, whether it be pictures, foreign money, a large Santa Claus clutching handfulls of candy canes, police/EMT/fire badges from many different countries, lights and many other things. 

Luckily I was able to celebrate the New Year with Jessica and Emily, two Americans I met in my hostel. We spent the afternoon and evening drinking IPA and cider, but we drank smart by eating plenty and drinking water. It's always refreshing to spend a holiday with someone, especially when they're from the same country as you. 

I wandered around Dublin yesterday, stumbling across the National Gallery and  Little Museum of Dublin, so my day featured much more than just the drink. I even got a haircut and a beard trim from a barber; there are few things better than a good haircut in a strange city. Dublin is turning out to be one of my favorite places.

Today was more wandering around, but I did take a tour of the whiskey museum, had an Irish coffee and saw the new Star Wars movie (which was excellent). I saw more examples of why Dublin is so enjoyable: it's very colorful. There is so much street art on building walls that gives the city so much personality.

Despite the one hiccup of losing my key card and my shoes getting soaked through with so much rain, the trip to Dublin was a massive success. The trek to Ireland couldn't have been better, either, even with some of the cringe-inducing horror stories of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines system or being presented with the idea of getting deported from Ireland. It was a balance of complete opposites, with farm work in lonely northwest Ireland to raging New Years Eve parties in a big city. Considering my plan wasn't to come to Ireland until a week before departing, I think I did pretty well for myself. 

With it being 2016 now, I won't bore you reflecting on 2015; you've already read plenty of times about what I've done, where I've gone and what I've accomplished. But I will say this: moving to England and visiting 16 countries in 2015, and all of the stories that came from that, made me more confident in myself. Despite how arrogant it sounds, this past year has made me a much more interesting person as well. It made me realize I can do anything; it doesn't matter how many miles away from home I am or the language barrier of that country. Adventure never stops. 

So here's to 2016, a year in which hopefully my travels will continue and one more person will be inspired by the contents of this blog. That's my New Year's Resolution. 

Remember, an adventure begins as soon as you open the door. But for me at the moment, adventure means waiting in Dublin Airport for five hours in the middle of the night, flying for 10.5 hours and then spending several more getting back to Porterville. At least I'm not sick with the flu this year.