Travel CV

Born May 24, 1972. Ketchikan, Alaska. I was a humungous baby.

Dad was a rescue pilot for the coast guard. Mom had another baby already and I was a mess so spent first months of life strapped to my dad’s back on boats, planes and helicopters cruising around Alaska. Me crying, him having the time of his life. I think this is when I might have gotten infected with a virulent strain of wanderlust.

Left Alaska in 1974. Dad got a job working on the railroad and so we moved pretty much every year until 1980.

Spent a lot of time in the car and on the train and getting used to new places and being the new kid and learning to fit in in different environments. I was a pretty spazzy kid.

Started taking advantage of the free train passes at age 14 and rode Amtrak trains on every possible northeast corridor route by the time I was 16. First solo cross country trip at 15 on the train.

Learned to sail, sort of.

Learned to rough it.

Learned to busk in the subways of Philadelphia and New York City.

Learned to stowaway friends on Amtrak trains so they could come on trips with me.

1990. Went to musical conservatory for classical flute in the ghetto in Philadelphia. Got mugged a lot.

1991. Dropped out of conservatory and moved to Martha’s Vineyard where I worked as a sculptress and discovered the joy of hitchhiking.

1991. Moved to California. Took full advantage of free train passes by riding every west coast and other major train route with no money, just my flute, busked every major city, visited every major art museum in the US and sampled pizza in every state capital. Hitchhiked Route 1 from LA to San Francisco, later from San Francisco to Portland.

Met Tlinget Indians from the island I was born on in Alaska. Had my first moon lodge. Met coastal Indians in Oregon and did vision quests with them. Learned a lot.

1992. Went to UC Berkeley. Studied Ancient Religion.

Camped out illegally on Mount Tamalpais for 4 months. Used a secret treehouse on Bolinas when I wanted a roof over my head, employed the hot shower and 20 seater hot tub in Jefferson Airplane’s old house on the beach to keep clean. Got real close to nature.

Hiked the coast from San Francisco to Point Arena.

Visited and camped in almost every major national park west of the Mississippi.

Visited every province in Canada.

1995. Graduated from UC Berkeley with highest honors and the promise of a glorious future in academia. Bought a one way ticket to anywhere in Europe through the company, Airhitch. Ended up in Dusseldorf. Busked south from Dusseldorf to Crete over a period of several months. Got a job as a go go dancer in Crete. Learned modern Greek. Took breaks from go go dancing to go hitchhiking around the island, staying in monasteries and translate Ancient Greek religious texts.

Hitchhiked and crewed from Crete to Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain. Got a job as a time share salesperson. Made tons of money, spent tons of money via multiple trips to Morocco and around Spain. Got entangled with Spanish mafia. Escaped. Moved into a lava bubble house that was built and owned by Omar Shariff, then lost by him to a bunch of Argentinians in a bridge game. Worked as a waitress in the café in the lava bubble house. Learned Spanish. Hung out around yacht clubs and caught rides to mainland Spain and Morocco.

Returned to the states and worked in publishing. Book projects I worked on include: Visual Language, Mapping Great Debates: Can Computers Think?, On Amethyst Glass, and The Engineer's Diet. Got some of my own poems published in little magazines .

Went to Ecuador. Went to Mexico a bunch of times for several months at a time. Met and had some powerful experiences with Huichol and Lacondon Indians in Mexico. Stayed in cool palapas and huts and made friends with some wonderful families and individuals throughout Mexico.

Worked at the Exploratorium for 5 years as a techie (built stuff, fixed stuff, ran A/V, coordinated and pulled off huge events, worked in webcasting, made an electronic guidebook to the museum, worked as a researcher and evaluator on 2 major exhibitions then as a content developer for multimedia projects.

Became obsessed with whales and started hitching boat rides to the Farallon Islands to see some.

Learned to fix trucks.

Learned all about electricity, building structures, fixing things.

Built a giant nest and photographed 50 individuals and families nesting in it. Studied nesting intensively. Nest was also inhabited by cirque du soleil. Had an exhibition about the nesting project. Built another nest for a children’s museum in Sausalito. Showed my nest at the Exploratorium during 2nd Wednesdays art show.

Jumped out of a cake a few times.

Made many sculptures out of many different materials.

Chased whales around.

Went to South America. Traveled overland from Tierra del Fuego to Cartagena.

Worked as a commercial fisherwoman in Alaska. Studied orcas around Vancouver Island.

Went to Asia. Played with elephants, tigers and monkeys.

Kissed gray whales. Got spat on by blue whales. Chased but never caught up to orcas. Rubbernecked at humpback whales. Still can't stop thinking about 'em.

Soon, I hope to visit:
Suriname, Tanzania, Kenya, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, New Zealand and India.

Skills: Bellydancing, go go dancing, salsa, forro, the cha cha, Greek dancing, yoga, meditation, Spanish, Greek, Ancient Greek, rudimentary Latin, pidgen English, British English, American English, HTML, new age gobbledygook, understand French and Italian, cooking, fishing (net, pole, spear gun, dynamite), hunting (rifle, shotgun, AK47, pistols), motorcycles and dirtbikes, heavy machinery (forklift certified, tractor, backhoe, old trucks), basic principles of biology and physics, electricity, computer technology, hitchhiking, how to escape from most dangerous animals, scuba diving, surfing, car repair, survival camping (finding water and food, making fire, making shelter, getting help, staying warm, staying sane), sculpture (resin, concrete, plaster, clay, latex, wood, multimedia), rudimentary audio and video production skills, basic sailing (just enough to not sink a ship), landscaping and agriculture, general construction, well versed in all major world religions, voracious reader, award winning writer, published poet, write funny, addictive travel stories, classical musician (flute), well traveled (~20 countries visited and every state in the United States, most of Mexico and every province in Canada), I think just about everything is funny, know the major constellations in both hemispheres, equally comfortable in urban and rural settings, have worked and lived in 3 countries for extended periods of time (more than a year), can talk my way into the backroom of most events and am generally able to get myself upgraded in most situations, can talk to anyone (unless they are blindingly handsome), able to recite poetry until I am blue in the face, good swimmer.