| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | When I was younger I was in a boys' choir and we went on world tours once or twice a year. In my first year we went to Cuba twice. We played a baseball game with a children's team in Havana and I remember we were defeated by them. After that, we exchanged gloves and hats and got to interact with them. It was my first time really interacting with other people my age that spoke another language and lived in a drastically different culture. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I closely identify with my sister, even though we are very different in a lot of ways. She was always incredibly focused on succeeding in her chosen science field (pharmacology), while I was always more captivated by culture and mechanics and have had a wide variety of interests. Despite our different lifestyles (she has never left our hometown area, while I travel every chance I get) we still have a great relationship and provide invaluable experience, knowledge, and advice to each other. Our conversations almost always wind up with us both seeing the world in a different way; it is something that makes our relationship incredibly refreshing and valuable. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | The character trait I admire more than anything else is self-reliance. By this, I don't mean being able to survive shut off from the world, but I believe in Emerson's concept of the world. People who avoid conformity, question everything, and follow their instincts, ideas, and beliefs. To me nothing is more damaging to society as a whole than perpetuating habits or ideas for no other reason than their establishment as standards. The people I know that do this are not necessarily the most successful or outwardly happy, but they are the most admirable and ultimately the most useful to human culture. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | I have always had an affinity for exploration and would often bring my friends around on hikes or adventures in the woods to find abandoned things. Once I brought some of them out to an old viaduct near a railroad and told them the story of the "ghost train" - a mythical story about a train that derailed. The story went on that every once in a while, on a full moon, the ghost train rides the abandoned tracks again, identifiable by the air horn sound it made. Little did my friends know that there was another railroad a couple of miles away. I did my best to play the story up, even though it didn't seem like anyone believed me. Then, right on time, the train from the other tracks down the river blew its horn and everybody froze. It took the whole car ride home to convince them that I knew that there was going to be a train horn all along and I was just trying to scare them! |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | This is almost a trick question for me; one of my goals in life is to ride my bike across every continent (well, maybe not Antarctica). I'm captivated by the idea of travel and have an inherent urge to stand on every piece of ground on this Earth. That said, I'll mention the bike tour idea that has been grabbing me recently. I'd like to fly to Lahore in Pakistan and ride through Islamabad to the Karakoram Highway, the highest road in elevation in the world. This road leads through the Hindu Kush Mountains, near the border of Afghanistan and into Tibet, following the Indus River at times. From there I'd ride across the desolate plateau, through the lake and river areas, to Lhasa, the forbidden city. Both the highway and Tibet have rich, interesting histories and I would love to talk to the people who live in such a unique, spiritual environment. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I'd like to pass on to my children my constant wonder at the world. In a way I feel like I never made it entirely past childhood. The world is still a fascinating, engaging place and no matter what is around me I can't help but be engulfed in whatever I'm doing or wherever I am. I can only hope that any other person I care about would find the world an incredible place and never want to stop learning or exploring. |
