Chapter I: The Lake Breed
My adventures are heavily focused on all things water. In, on, under, over, or near it—it makes my heart sing. I suppose it was written into my DNA. Growing up and living on a small inland lake in Michigan was where I discovered my playground. One day when I was three years old, my parents were busy building the lake seawall and completely lost track of me. Lo and behold, I came dogpaddling out from right underneath the dock. It was the 1970s; kids were allowed the freedom to hurt themselves and get lost. Nobody gave me a lesson. Nobody was holding my hand. There were no lifejackets involved. You could say I had the sea in my blood from day one.
Throughout my childhood, that wanderlust for the unknown was fueled by my parents. Every year, they would pack us up in the old station wagon—riding way in the back with no seatbelts, of course—and we’d head off for three weeks to campsites all over the eastern United States. By the time I finished high school, I had visited every single state east of Michigan at least twice… mostly sleeping in a pup tent, sometimes a pop-up. I could tell fun stories about adversity overcome until I am blue in the face.
Chapter II: The Corporate Nomad
During college, I was too dirt poor to really go anywhere. I had to work my ass off just to get through school entirely debt-free. But that grind led me directly into a post-grad career in information technology and cybersecurity consulting. Suddenly, I lived for 6 to 30 months at a time all over the US, boarding a plane 50 weeks out of the year. DC, Manhattan, San Francisco, LA, Dallas, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston… the list went on for the better part of a decade.
I grew so comfortable on commercial flights I could sleep there just as soundly as in a bed. Honestly, I didn’t even have a permanent bed—just three boxes of belongings split between LA, Chicago, and NYC, with my closets shipped to me on demand. But my true home base remained right back at the lake in Michigan where I first learned to swim.
Chapter III: The Nepal Pivot
“Wanna Go To Nepal?”
Then one day, in the middle of a gorgeous summer evening, the phone at the lake rang. I picked it up and heard: “Bill… it’s me Pat!” Pat was an old friend from my interning days at General Motors who had taken a buyout to travel the world for a few years. He asked me straight up, “What are you doing over Thanksgiving?” I thought about it and said, “Nothing.” He shot back: “Wanna go to Nepal?”
What?! But I thought again—why not? I’d never really been anywhere international, and I love a crazy plan. That was the spark. I didn’t have this travel blog back then, but landing in Bangkok for my first international destination without a connecting ticket in hand—just praying a late-90s travel agent actually got the physical ticket issued and delivered to my hotel—was a wild awakening.
“My first night in Kathmandu, the ‘nice tourist hotel’ felt so rundown, cheap, and overwhelming that I spent the evening terrified, trying to figure out a way to fly home the next morning.”
I stayed. And it ended up being one of the most visually stunning trips of my life, cementing a lifelong traveling partnership with Pat and introducing me to one of my oldest friends from the Netherlands. That was the true start. The rest, as they say, is history.
The Field Protocols
The Traveler’s Assets
No corporate sponsorships, no pre-packaged resort loops, and absolutely no hand-holding allowed. The standard kit deployed on every expedition remains completely unchanged:
- Heavy-duty 35L submersible dry bag
- Unlocked cellphone and an array of SIM cards
- A good guide book
- The original unwashed Michigan M-Hat
34
Countries Tracked
7
Continents Traversed
200+
Dives Completed
1
M-Hat Intact