1) Where were you born? Kansas City, MO. I only lived in Kansas City for a year before we moved to the quiet suburbs of Overland Park, KS. Overland Park provided my childhood friends and I with many sprawling backyards and trees to hide behind.
2) If you still live there, where would you rather move to? If you don’t live there, do you want to move back? Why or why not? I don’t live there anymore. I’ve been out of the confines of Overland Park since I left to go to college in Lawrence, KS. I don’t picture myself ever living in Kansas again, though it might be fun to have a house in Lawrence, which is a small college town with more charm and character per square mile than Los Angeles has in fifty square miles (or more). Don’t get me wrong, I love LA. Two words pretty much sum up why I wouldn’t move back: weather and ocean. While I miss the severe weather of Kansas, like thunderstorms and tornados, that’s just one of the reasons for visits.
3) Where in the world do you feel the safest? I feel safest in Lawrence, KS. The locals are some of the most neighborly and kind people you will ever meet. There are active neighborhood associations, people watch out for one another and you can feel safe leaving your door unlocked. A close second would be in a tent in the mountains.
4) Do you feel you are well-traveled? I feel fairly well-travelled. I’ve been to probably seventy percent of the U.S.,including spending time in the mountains of Alaska. It always strikes me a little odd that people don’t get more excited about some of the beautiful places that exist in the U.S. I’ve also travelled to England, France, Poland, Israel and Egypt.
5) Where is the most interesting place you’ve been? I can take this one literally or figuratively, but either way I don’t have a definite answer, so I’m just going to choose one of the many interesting places I’ve been, Alaska. I spent four weeks backpacking 150 miles through the southern Talkeetna mountain range. The range begins near Denali (Mount McKinley - tallest mountain in North America). I was with 20 other people, including a medic and two highly-trained mountaineers. The trip was through an organization called National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). I am one of the few people that will ever get to see the parts of Alaska I saw, simply because no one goes into the remote areas that we passed through. There was no sign of human existence. It was probably the most physically and psychologically challenging time of my life. In addition to getting a crash course in outdoor education and survival, I received quite an education about myself as well.
