People love to travel, being one of them I should know. Yet I can't help but feel that our love for travel and discovery puts us in danger of doing too much too soon; and, in so doing losing some of the magic and anticipation that comes with each trip. Sure the world's a big place and it would be beyond presumptuous of me to claim that I've done it all (whatever that means). What I can say with a fair amount of confidence is that I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to follow my travel bug: sundowners on a pier in Honduras; reaching Everest Base Camp among tears of happiness and exhaustion; drinking my way around Ireland / France / Italy / Kentucky...; partaking in a cut throat tuktuk race around Kathmandu; seeing the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. While each experience is different and I guarantee you there are hundreds more (OK, that was bragging. Sorry); the point I want to make here is that no matter how much traveling you do and how many countries you manage to tick of your bucket list by the time you hit 30, the feelings you get from these moments have nothing to do with being away from home. Instead we get these feelings because be really let go and live. So yes I'm lucky, but am I really luckier than someone who has travelled less and yet still 'lived' and embraced new experience closer to home? It would take a lot for me to voluntarily give up traveling yet in recent months I've come to appreciate the travel bug closer to home. With a summer free to do as I pleased, I've made more new friends and discovered new places in my home city than I ever thought possible. 

W is for Bourbon

It didn't take long for the Irish in me to show it's true appreciation for triple distilled corn, barley, and rye (or wheat but we'll get to that later). Only 26 years. There is a somewhat romantic story to my discovery of bourbon, but the shortened version will suffice for now: I moved to America. OK, so that's not all that it took; prior to America there was a road trip around Ireland, and once in America there was the lure of a golden plaque upon completion of a now infamous Georgetown bar challenge: drink the entire bourbon selection at Old Glory (some 92-100 bourbon's) in under a year. I did it in 2 months.

I'll be the first to admit that all this started as a fun adventure driven in part by my sense of adventure, in part my boyfriend's incessantly loveable quest for expertise in everything, and in part procrastination. What better way to put off those final term papers than to drink 100 bourbons? Helping us along the way were a liquor store where we've become part of the wallpaper, a Bourbon entrepeneur famed in DC and Kentucky (but not in between), and a Bourbon ignorant bartender at a New Orleans themed restaurant that will remain nameless for reasons that will become obvious in due course.

Challenge nearing completion, said boyfriend and I packed up the car and headed for Kentucky. Just us, a tent, 15 hours of NPR podcasts, and the prospect of an entire state dedicated to the production of bourbon. One could say the rest is history; truth be told history is still in the making and my love affair with bourbon has only just begun...