Every January I choose a theme for the entire year.  It serves as a way for me to nicely package my resolutions, goals, and intentions for both personal and professional life.  With a bit of thought, I decided that my theme for 2026 would be “get outside.”  This meant a few different things for me.  On the most basic level, it’s just a reminder to get out fishing more often, spend more time on my bike, and to just enjoy the outdoors.  Professionally, it meant focusing more on the environmental work I do.  It was also motivation for me to take the time to get out of the country on an international trip, which is something I’ve put off for a few years because I’ve been too busy.  Most importantly though, get outside is a push to get outside of my current patterns of behavior so that I can start imagining something new.

The last bit has been something I’ve been thinking about for a while.  I moved to Nashville 12 years ago and that’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere in my adult life.  I’m also entering my tenth year at the Maddox Fund and my seventh running API Tennessee.  Maybe I’m feeling my age a bit or I guess you could say it’s burnout, but it’s also the fact that there continue to be new ways the world keeps people suffering.  All this has got me feeling a bit stuck lately, so I’m hoping that a bit of time away from it will help me come back refreshed and approach the work in new ways.

I officially leave the country on September 18th and I’m aiming to be back in Tennessee around Christmas.  My goal is to tour around Asia on my bike while doing a bit of fishing.  I’m sure that my plans will change a bit as I go, but I’m loading up my trusty Marin Four Corners and hoping that my legs will be enough to get me through all I’m hoping to bike across in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

I’ll actually start my trip with a bit of rest by going to Indonesia with my wife.  I’ve never been before and I’ll be meeting her extended family for the first time.  We’ll be there for about two weeks with most of it being in Jakarta, but also spending some time with her family in Bandung.  From there, we’ll head to Taipei together for a few days to check out a bunch of cafes and eat a bunch of food.

My wife is going to leave me in Taiwan where I’ll start a huandao –an “around the island” trip.  The trip goes along Taiwan’s Cycling Route 1, a designated route that runs around the circumference of the country.  I’m hoping to do all this in about two and a half weeks, taking my time to just the landscape and to squeeze in a bit of fishing.

From Taiwan, I’ll be heading to South Korea to bike the cross country route from Incheon to Busan.  I never made the time to do this route back when I lived in Korea so it’s been on my list since I left the country back in 2014.  In some ways, this part of the trip will be a bit of a homecoming – returning to a place that I called home for five years.  It’s also where I started my career as an English language teacher fresh out of college.  I’m going to be spending a bit of time on the bike just reflecting on my own professional career.  I’m also going to be trying to do a bit of camping and fishing here along the way.

The last leg of my trip will be in Japan.  I have a few different cities I plan on visiting while I’m there, but I’ll mostly be on the island of Shikoku trying to complete an 88-temple pilgrimage.  When I first started planning what I might do while on sabbatical, the Shikoku Henro is actually the first thing I landed on.  I thought about walking the whole thing like a lot of pilgrims do, but decided to do it by bicycle so I could see more of Asia.  My intention for the pilgrimage is to reflect on life and clarify what it is I should be doing as I start a new decade in the work.

This all probably sounds a lot more structured and purposeful than it really is.  Not all of this time is going to be spent in deep reflection and I have some loose plans to meet up with friends and just be on vacation.   I’m actually feeling a bit underprepared around it all too.  I probably could have done a bit more research and I definitely should have more of my lodging booked, but whatever.  Having to wing it can’t be that bad.

I’ll be bringing some cameras and have a bit of time for writing so if you want to follow along my journey, you can follow me: