Hey there beautiful people!

Buckle-up...it's gonna be a long read :)

I've never been one to send out an annual holiday card with a photo and list of highlights of the year. But, 2022 has been a transformational year for me, so I thought I'd catch you all up with what's been going on.

Let's actually start back in 2020, when COVID landed and we all went into lockdown. Quarantining was the right choice, and I strictly observed all quarantine protocols for 2020 and 2021. I was first in line to get my initial COVID vaccine and have been rigorous in keeping up with my booster schedule. While I'm sure I have been exposed to COVID along the way, I have been fortunate to have not had a noticeable bout of it (whew!)

In November, 2021, I hit the big 50! I was fortunate enough to have a bunch of good friends travel far and wide to celebrate it with me here in San Francisco, culminating with a ginormous feast at Harris's Steak House surrounded by so many dear friends.

Ok, let's skip ahead a bit. By Spring of this year, I was feeling, well...not great. More specifically, during quarantine, I really got into a sedentary lifestyle: just sitting around all day, and eating and drinking out of boredom being stuck at home. By Spring of this year, I had really packed on the pounds, and was up to nearly 250 pounds. All that tailored clothing I had accumulated over the years...none of that came even close to fitting any more. I was pretty unhappy with the state of affairs.

So, I made some significant changes starting in the summer!

Fortunately for me, my employer decided that my whole team is "remote", which means that we can go total "digital nomad" if we want. So that's what I did. Starting in August, I just hit the road and didn't come back home unil October 31st!

The first half of August was spent in California, availing myself of Amtrak's Coast Starlight train visit Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Paso Robles. I stayed with Eric & Wendy (and fam) in Santa Barbara, with Airbnb's for the other stops. After a brief stop at home, it was off again, this time for 10 weeks! I took the Amtrak California Zepher train from Emeryville to Denver. It was a 2 day trip, and I booked a private room with a little fold-out bed for the one night. The first day was in beautiful California scenery, climbing from the Bay Area up through Tahoe and into Nevada; then overnight through Nevada and western Utah and wake up outside Salt Lake City. Day 2 is meandering along the Colorado River, cutting through the Rocky Mountains, descending into Denver in the evening of the second day. Spectacular!

While in the Denver area, I got to visit with Scott & Amy and fam for a week where I truly experienced how hot it gets there in the late summer. I was not prepared for 90+F days in late August! On a Sunday, we packed up their kids and did a day trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park, which totally lives up to the hype! I even got a little light-headed up at the 11,500 foot visitors center at the peak.

From Denver, I flew direct to Montreal, Canada. Montreal was on my "to visit" list for a long time, and I figured that September would be the perfect month to visit — catch the tail end of the summer, but before real Autumn weather arrived. I rented an apartment on Airbnb and spent the entire month of September there. I loved it! It was fun to explore on foot, and discover which parts of French culture permeated Montreal life, and which did not. When I first arrived, it felt very French: with everyone around me speaking French, and cafes and boulangeries easy to find. But when I sat down for my first dinner at a local restaurant, holy smokes, North American portion sizes! The first bowl of poutine I ordered, which was their smallest size, could have easily fed a family of four.

Those portion sizes aside, this is when I really started my fitness journey. Since I was still ostensibly working West Coast hours, I could wake up early in Montreal and spend the morning exploring on foot, then return around lunch time, work through the afternoon, and then a little more in the evening as needed. The flexible working hours afforded me the time to "get my steps in", typically at least 3-4 miles each day. But it didn't feel like a chore, as I had this whole new city to explore and discover.

My apartment was at the far end of the Gay Village — yep, you read that right, the LGBTQ+ neighborhood in Montreal. I appreciate their directness in naming :) It felt very San Francisco in many ways. It was also great for walking, as most neighborhoods had their main street closed off to car traffic, so you could really take your time wandering around w/o having to dodge lots of cars.

I hit most of the cultural highlights while there: Old town Montreal, wOlympic Stadium and Park, BioDome and Insectarium, Botanical Gardens, Montreal Museum of History, Museum of Fine Arts, the hike up to the top of the Kondiaronk Belvedere, and the utterly fantastic BioSphere — an enormous Bucky Dome.

Also, while in Montreal, I took a weekend trip up to Quebec City. Just a 3.5 hour train ride each way. The "old city" part of Quebec City definitely feels like a chunk of 18th Century Paris was cut out and dropped onto North America, with parts of the old city wall dating back to the 1600s. It was a perfect tourist weekend, with old, winding streets to discover; views of the St. Lawrence River; and lots of delicious food and drink. Speaking of food, I had an excellent meal at L'Orygine, where all their food is grown within 100 km of Quebec City. I love tasting the regional variations. The wines were mostly from the Finger Lakes Region of New York. Although there is a wine industry in Quebec Province, I tried some and they were not very good. So, I was glad that L'Orygine was sourcing wines from a better region.

By the end of September, it was time to depart Montreal...but where to go to next? I was thinking of visiting Maine, or somewhere in the Northeast, since it would be October and hopefully I could catch some fall foliage and indulge in fresh-caught lobster. It turned out that staying in Canada was easiest and I wound up headed for the Maritimes — Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I stayed in Halifax for about 10 days, and to be honest, 4-5 would have been enough. It's just not that big of a city. There were for sure some cool things to see, especially along the waterfront, but not enough to fill a 10 day itinerary. A highlight was booking a day tour out to Peggy's Cove, one of the many fishing coves dotting the Nova Scotian coastline. I wouldn't even call it a fishing village, as there are only about 30 permanent housing structures in the cove. Only maybe a dozen families live there year-round. Peggy's Cove is known for its lighthouse, perched atop granite rock formations that were carved out by glaciers thousands and thousands of years ago.

The other highlight of Halifax was the seafood! I made it my mission to eat a full-on lobster dinner each and every single night I was there — mission accomplished! But, as decadent as the whole steamed lobster was, the oysters is what really stole the show. So fresh, right from the ocean around Nova Scotia, and shucked exactly how I like them: with just a little squeeze of lemon. It's like eating the sea.

Oh, and I almost ran into Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — quite literally! I took the ferry across Halifax Harbor, to the small town of Dartmouth. As I was strolling along the main drag, I noticed a group huddled around the entrance to a restaurant. I figured that maybe this would be a place to stop for lunch. As I approached, I realized that the small crowd were all men dressed in dark suits, and they all had those "secret service earpieces". Just as I was thinking, "what's going on here", Justin Trudeau comes bounding out of the restaurant, walking right in front of me, passing me by to his car and travel entourage parked around the corner. Then off he went. I couldn't believe I could casually get within a few feet of the Canadian Prime Minister. Had this been the US, I would have been tackled to the ground 100 yards away from the President.

Now, my time in Halifax was concluded, but it was not time to leave Canada just yet. I spent the next week in Toronto. I decided to see what it would be like living in one of those high-rise condo buildings in the heart of downtown, so I booked one via Airbnb for the week. The location was fantastic! Right next to the CN Tower and all that downtown Toronto has to offer. Oh, and when I checked-in, I discovered that I was on the 55th floor of a 65 storey building! The views were simply outstanding.

That said, the high-rise condo building lifestyle was not entirely to my tastes. Well, mostly due to the elevator and lobby design. There over 500 units in the building, which means a lot of people going in-and-out, but the elevator lobby was super tiny and always crowded with people. It was enough of a hassle to dissuade you for running out for a quick errand. I suspect that people get a lot of food delivery in that building. The unit itself was small, like 500 sq ft, but nice and clean and again...the views. It was fun to stay for a week, but certainly not somewhere I'd like to live.

One of the Toronto highlights was taking the ferry over to Ward's Island, part of the Toronto Islands, just a short ferry ride from downtown Toronto. Ward's Island is best known as being entirely pedestrian (outside of service/emergency vehicles). No private car ownership is allowed on the island, and the small community of people that live there just use their bikes and the ferry to get around. Compared the hustle-and-bustle of downtown Toronto, strolling along the island's waterfronts was such a peacful way to spend an afternoon.

Also, by now it was nearly mid-October, and the fall colors were really starting to show. The islands where alight in bright reds, oranges and yellows, and the parks along the Toronto waterfront were similarly colorful.

But, it was also time to return to the US and start the final legs of my travels. Also, it was time to check-off another bucket-list item: Niagara Falls!

Canada Rail departs from downtown Toronto and arrives into the Canadian side of Niagara Falls a few hours later. While the train does cross into the US via Amtrak, I decided to cross the US-Canadian border by foot. I think I have crossed an international border by every other method at least once in my life: plane, car, boat, train, etc. But I had never done it on foot before. So, after disembarking the train on the Canadian side, I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked across the Rainbow Bridge to the US.

I only stayed the weekend in Niagara Falls, NY, but got in a full day at the falls — lives up to the hype! Also, like Toronto, the fall colors were in full display, with the wooded parks right along the falls fully ablaze in Autumn splendor. One thing that amazed me about the falls was how close you could get. You could stand right next to the Bridal Falls, with just a short railing between you and millions of gallons of water rushing over the edge. It was a very visceral experience to stand so close. And the Horseshoe Falls created such a plume of mist, that as I approached, it almost looked like the rising smoke from a fire.

One surprising highlight of Niagara Falls was the Underground Railroad Museum. Since Canada had outlawed slavery long before the US, and even just New York state, Niagara Falls was a popular place for enslaved peoples to escape to freedom. I learned that the owners and staff of popular hotel on the New York side of the river would help secret enslaved workers across the river in the dead of night. Enslaver families from the south would vacation in upstate New York, and visit the falls, bringing their enslaved workers along with them. Hotel workers would help people escape to Canada, and the hotel owners would plead ignorance (sorry-not-sorry).

And now onto the final leg of my journey: Cleveland! My love affair with the train continues, traveling from Buffalo, NY to Cleveland on the "red-eye" Lake Shore Limited line. I spent the last two weeks of October staying with the families of my dear college friends and fraternity brothers Steve Conway and Mark Irwin. While we all still had to tend to our work responsibilities, it was great just to spend time with them all: cooking weeknight dinners with the family, attending their kids sporting events, and since it is Cleveland...watching some football games.

I also was able to get my steps in! And by this point, I was up to over 6 miles per day and had dropped over 10 pounds since I started the trip. Mark Irwin and I went for a couple hikes in the Cleveland Metroparks system: Rocky River Reservation, and Hinckley Reservation. While a student at Case, I never really appreciated the natural beauty of the area around Cleveland; but this time around, I really enjoyed the hikes and taking in the lovely Autumn scenery.

At the end of October, I returned home to San Francsico. Nearly 3 full months on the road, living life as a "digital nomad". All-in-all, my summer/fall travels were

Since returning home, I've kept up the fitness routine — increasing it even. In October, I walked a total of 201.8 miles, an average of 6.5 miles per day. I ramped that up to 8.8 miles/day in November, totalling 262.8 miles for the month. And so far in December, I'm again averaging 8.9 miles/day. Oh, and I also decided to go beyond just walking, picked up a pair of proper running shoes and ran my first 5K since...well high school (so, like 33 years).

And it's paid off! Earlier this year, I was pushing 250 lbs and as I am writing this on Christmas Day, I weighed myself this morning and am down to 210. I just feel much, much better in every way. Carrying less weight around it great, but I've also increased my strength and endurance quite a bit. San Francisco hills that I used to dread having to trudge up, I can just blast up without breaking a sweat. I'm feeling really good going into the winter months.

Oh, and speaking of winter activities, my next trip is up to Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort for the entire month of January! I booked a ski-in/ski-out condo on Airbnb and plan to get on the slopes each and every day. I'm flying up Thursday (Dec 29) and spending New Years and the whole month of January there. Another bucket-list item checked off in a big way :)

I've also been very fortunate in continuing to dodge COVID. I got my latest booster (and flu shot) upon returning in early November, and have so far tested negative every time. With the holidays in full swing, I hope everyone comes through unscathed.

Wishing you all peace, love, happiness and good health in 2023!

P.S. the only social media I'm on now is Instagram, where you can find lots of photos of my travels, as well as my home-cooked meals: @aaron.binns