As you can see...

....I'm a terrible poster. For one thing, I don't post enough and for another, my posts can be quite boring!!!

Someone's boring me. I think it's me.

Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953), in Rayner Heppenstall, Four Absentees (1960)

(Obviously Dylan Thomas didn't work where I work :P)

Moving on, as some of you might know, I've been riding my bike home from work a few times a week. It usually works out to only one (which isn't a few) but I have the intention of much more. Unfortunately, it is not always up to me.

The bike ride home is something like 17 miles. Wait I will check google!

Yep, 17.3....

Today I will be doing my 4th attempt.
My first attempt didn't go so well. I only made it 11 miles in 2 hours!!! Turns out my tires were kinda flat.

My second attempt was much better. It went by quick and I made it all the way home. I made it into Gulfport in about and 1:45. Maybe a tiny bit less cause I had to stop and put air in my tires and then I walked the bike for a while cause my feet cramped up! :P But my goal was accomplished. At that moment I knew I could ride 17 miles home from work.

Attempt number 3....I made it home but it was hard. I think this trip was 4 days after the last one and I was tired. But I made it home in two hours, so that was good.

The red blob is apporximately where my house is and my work is all the way at the top of the red line.

Anyhow, my goal is to do it almost every day (everyday seems almost too much)

I'll up date you on everything tomorrow.

Thanks for reading. Elaine

 

“I have been very happy with my homes, but homes really are no more than the people who live in them.”- Nancy Reagan

3 yrs ago, I moved to Brno, Czech Republic from my native Tampa Bay area, Florida. I've repeatedly gotten the question 'Why the Czech Republic?' 'Why Brno?' or the most exasperated of people ask 'Why'd you leave FLORIDA?' Wondering how I could leave my sunny homeland for the dirty, cold ex-communist CZ.

The long and short of it is, there is no clear answer. I wanted some adventure. I wanted a new life. I wanted to try something new. Make something of myself. Do something fun and cool. I wanted to live in Europe and the CZ seemed like as good a place as any.

And Brno has been a great place. I couldnt have picked a better place or time to move here.

It seemed like it was fortuitous. I met great people. Jobs were a plenty.

Friends: I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a website called Couch Surfing where people request to stay at your place while they are traveling. The site also has city forums where people in the same city can communicate different things about travelling or events in the city. This is where/how I met the majority of my friends here in Brno. And some of my best friends have come from here. I always say my first year here was a drunken miasma of choas. I barely ever taught sober and I went wild and crazy.

Job: I came here with the intention of getting some experience teaching. I had thought that I wanted to be a professor. Now, Im not so sure. Im not really sure I will ever know what I want to do but right now, I dont wanna teach.

So, I got my TEFL cert and started teaching all over Brno. Maybe describing how teaching english in the CZ works should go into a seperate post. Its a complicated story but well worth the info for future teachers.

My original plan was to stay 1 year, if I could. I didnt have much faith in my abilities to survive away from my family. Im kinda irresponsible or something like that. Maybe distracted and careless is a better description.

But 3 years later, Im still here and thriving.
I realized though that I need to go home and see whats what.
I tell people all the time that I can do what I want, go where I want. I have no kids, no house, nothing holding me to any particular place. So, I will go back to the one place where I do have family and see if I can still call it home.

This is my journey back.