"Grab a Towel; The Universe Awaits" HasTowelWillTravel's Profile

Updates

10/22/2012: I can't believe it has been over a year since I've updated this site. It has been a busy, busy year. With the doctoral studies still moving slow, I've been forced to work really hard on that, so it's been less time for travel. I did make a (working) trip to Alaska and North Dakota, so if I can manage I will get some reviews up on that. And news on the horizon: I will be teaching a workshop in Chile in January, and spending a couple weeks in Ecuador doing research, so that will be exciting.

The biggest news is that I recently got married (another reason for the busy year). I've been so lucky to find a wonderful partner that is wonderful, fun, smart, and that shares a lot of interests. Sarah and I will actually be headed out to Belize for our honeymoon, to get some diving in and enjoy the jungle as well. So, if you have any recommendations, let me know!

A Bit About Me

Riding out a sandstorm, waiting for the sunset

I am currently a Ph.D. student studying medicinal plant chemistry. This is a fabulous discipline, as it involves chemistry, medicine, anthropology, botany, and travel. It has already led me to Ecuador, Alaska, North Dakota, Kenya, and Bhutan, and trips to Chile and more of Africa are in the works. I am ecstatic to be studying this arena, and am looking forward to completing more studies as time goes forward.

In my spare time, I enjoy exploring the great outdoors. I am an avid backpacker, hiker, biker, and kayaker. My idea of a great weekend is hopping off to a local mountain and roaming around for a few days.

There's much more to me than I can fit in this tiny space, so I will leave it at that, with an open invitation to all to come and meet more of me...

Why a Towel?

Always have a towel at the ready

"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

Favorite Travel Quotes

--"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be." Douglas Adams

--"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts." Mark Twain

--"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as a fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life." John Muir

--"I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange. " Dale Cooper (from Twin Peaks)