My love affair with European travel began with a work assignment in Sweden in 2015. As an American who hadn’t traveled internationally (save for Canada and Mexico), the history, culture, lifestyle, and beauty of Sweden instantly captivated me, prompting me to return to Europe again and again. Since then, I’ve traveled to Europe at least once per year (if not more).

After numerous 1-2 week trips to Europe along with a month-long tour through the Pyrenees and the Alps, I had the tourist approach pretty well dialed in. But bouncing from place-to-place every couple of days can be very stressful and draining. Such a quick mode of travel gives you just a taste of each town that you visit, leaving you hungry for more. I wanted a deeper immersion into European life, with at least a month planted in a single town in Europe (and preferably longer). 

During the fall of 2019, I finally carved out the time to make such a trip happen. I decided to stop in not one but three different destinations, spending a month in each spot. 

First up? Chamonix, France!

FATMAP was born in the rich mountain culture of the Alps, with Chamonix specifically serving as FATMAP’s defacto mountain headquarters. After spending so much time staring at the Mont Blanc in FATMAP and reading through the various adventure descriptions published by writers over the years, I knew that I had to see this place for myself. I knew that my first priority during my 2019 trip had to be a deep dive into the epic destination of Chamonix.

Travel will always throw you unexpected curveballs, and in Chamonix, due to other time constraints, my first curveball was arriving right as all of the bike-friendly lifts closed down for the season. Undeterred by this obstacle, I set out to still explore as many mountain bike trails as possible… even though I had to ride every single trail the hard way!

Despite that challenge, over the course of a month, I was still able to hit the majority of the highest-acclaimed mountain bike trails in the region… and even a few under-the-radar sleeper hits. For an in-depth survey of the best singletrack mountain biking in this world-renowned destination, be sure to read through my guidebook!

 

I'm ridiculously excited to announce an all-new writing project today! This new website—"blog," for lack of a better term—is a deeper exploration of my Outside 365 project, and a closer look at how nature and exercise connect to our daily lives. You can find it at Outside365.blog

After being active outside every day for 845 days straight, I've only become more and more convinced of the importance of this idea. Over the past two and a half years, I've realized that going outside is actually kind of a revolutionary idea—and only more so in 2020. I've even had friends join the challenge, and they've shared with me how dramatically it has impacted their lives. So I'm going all-in with a full website to explore these ideas in depth.

I've been working on this site and prepping fresh articles for a couple of months, and I'm pumped to start releasing these pieces. If you click on over, you'll see that the site is populated with a number of articles I've written off and on over the past few years, but at the top there are a couple fresh ones to dive into. If you want an overview of the Outside 365 project, be sure to read the Manifesto linked in the navigation, and stay tuned for a little more back story in a couple of weeks.

This new blog is a passion project, and right now the site and the marketing strategy (or lack thereof) is in V1. Please bear with me as I professionalize a few things over time...

For now, I would love it if you were to check out the new site and read the first piece, "Strangely, Going Outside Is a Revolutionary Idea." Any thoughts or comments? Hit me up on the 'Gram!