For the last 15 days I’ve been traveling across America with a few people to try to raise money and awareness for the victims of Superstorm Sandy. You can support our amazing cause at www.r-u-n.us. We are almost in Utah and our goal is to reach New York by June.

We haven’t been getting much reception since we’re either in the forest or in the desert or an old mining town that barely has any wifi. I’ve posted a few photos I’ve taken on the journey at www.rucksackvillage.co.uk mostly for the fact that the site supports high res photos as opposed to the 500px wide ones on this site.

Hope you are all doing good!

James

I’ve spent this whole year shooting digital and faking it to look film. I’m going to continue shooting digital but I will start shooting with real film again and this cross country trek is a good excuse to return to the good old days!

In the previous post I mentioned that I’m leaving my day job. Jason Lester invited me to join him on a cross country run spanning from San Francisco to New York. The mission is the help out the victims of Hurricane Sandy. I’m not the type of person to get excited to do things before I actually do this but for this I’m pretty stoked already. Please check out www.jasonplester.com for the good stuff.

I’ve always preached in the most annoying of ways to people about how they should stop being so practical and “realistic” in terms of what they do every day. I’m specifically talking about jobs, jobs that people do to get money so they can do what they really want to do. Anyways, I’m finally taking my own advice and leaving the corporate world in about a week. I’ve definitely enjoyed working where I worked and the people I got to work with are pretty amazing. As much as I hate the idea of a corporation where everything answers to money, I’ve realized that my day to day has more to do with relationships and interactions and a lot less to do with corporate greed. I will be bummed out the day I leave, since the people I got the honor of working with, were my family for the past six months.

My mom asked my what my fear was in life and I told her that my fear is to live in a straight line. What is a straight line? It’s the path I’ve been going my whole life: graduating high school, going to college, graduating college, getting the most epic job straight out of college, make money, etc etc. For me it works if it makes you fully happy, fully being the key word. I don’t hate my day job, I don’t hate where I live, but for now, I just prefer a bit more and since I will die very soon, I might as well squeeze that little more out of life. And so I will.

This guy will be going on an epic trek in the near future so I made some straps to keep it from falling behind.

A really sick bench.

The Goonies mound superimposed on grass to make it look semi Stone Henge.

There’s always light, just keep going.

There were sunny bits and rainy bits and the rainy bits were not really bits but more like giant blobs.

Really sick look out south of Cannon Beach.

Hello Pacific, you are perfect.

Oregon, show yourself more often to us stuck in the city/suburbs. I am pretty correct in a sense that it’s so much better near the sea.

Listening to Hawaiian songs while packmaking inspired this doodle.

For some reason I had the urge to draw Annie.

I seriously have doodled in so long and tonight was a great night to break back into it. I’m not much of a dancer although my feet and head do start moving to any beats I might hear. Doodling with color is my way of expressing music, or maybe only when listening to hypem.

I found some treasure when I was in Portland. This place is alright after all!

Originally I was going to make a backpack out of the fabric but I’ve decided to keep it as a reminder to take care of things, and repair them when they start to wear out. I just saw a poster that says there’s no such thing as throwing something away because it has to go somewhere on this planet.

So I’m not posting any pictures of my packs or the progress in sewing on here but I will be posting RV graphics I’m playing around with.

I’ve decided that from now on, all of my packmaking adventures will be posted at Rucksack Village. Please visit www.rucksackvillage.co.uk to stay updated on that front! I’ll be using this blog for everything else. Cheers!

I was going to hunt for a wax seal kit this weekend in Portland. Yesterday I headed over to the South East, a part of town I’ve never been and I quite liked it. The Mill End fabric shop down there is insane. I’m now locked and loaded for the pack making I’ll be doing for Spring Break. I ended up not going shopping for the wax stamp and sealing wax because I realized that I could just use coins and crayons. I’m really pleased with the results. We should all be writing letters by hand and sealing them with coins and crayons.