Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Oakland, CA
I hung out with a few longtime friends this past weekend. During our conversation, I mused about returning to Korea for a 100K+ race in November.
When was the last time I was in Korea, one of them asked. 2014? Earlier? I couldn’t remember.
To my surprise, I was there in July 2016. I was also there in August 2015, and spent the New Year in Seoul to kick off 2014.
With the assistance of geotagged photos and Google Maps Timeline, I’m only now slowly putting together memories of those adventures (and others) now.
This kind of forgetfulness is what I’m most afraid of — is it worth experiencing something (or anything?) if I can’t even remember having the experience at all?
That’s why I take so many photos — and why I want to write more.
Unfortunately, it never seems to be enough. When I look back at my life thus far, I feel overwhelmed. There’s so many things I want to hoard in the crevices of my mind. But I also need space to live in the present and plan for the future.
So I think it’s time to revive an old project: I want to document and organize all my trips and adventures of my adult life. My preliminary list of trips (including only a handful of races) to review currently appears to be
- August 2021: Backpacking the southern half of the Sierra High Route.
- May to July 2021: The 2021 Vantrip (CA, NV, UT, ID, WY, MT, WA, OR).
- April 2021: Sean’s Yosemite Wedding.
- December 2020: Christmas in Zion, and New Years in Bryce.
- September 2020: Backpacking Beveridge.
- August 2020: Backpacking the Hoover Wilderness.
- August 2020: Yosemite and Clouds Rest in Smoke.
- August 2020: Backpacking the Emigrant Wilderness.
- June 2020: The Castle Peak Loop. (writeup complete!)
- March 2020: Tam to Diablo. (writeup complete!)
- February 2020: Cycling Queenstown to Christchurch, New Zealand.
- February 2020: My First 100K+ and First International Ultra: the Tarawera 102K.
- January 2020: A Night in Vietnam.
- January 2020: New Years in Burma.
- December 2019: Winter in Northern Thailand.
- November 2019: A Lassen Thanksgiving.
- November 2019: Pacing Monterey Bay Half Marathon with Friends and Coworkers.
- October 2019: The Columbus Marathon Work Trip.c
- September 2019: Half Dome.
- September 2019: Tour de Tahoe, my first big ride!
- July 2019: Camping at Berryessa.
- May 2019: The Yosemite Half Marathon.
- March 2019: The Napa Valley Half.
- October 2018: DC, Arlington, and the Marine Corps Marathon.
- October 2018: The Chicago Marathon.
- May 2018: The Ottawa Marathon.
- February to March 2018: Southern Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Himeji, Okayama, Takamatsu, Hiroshima, Kitakyushu, Oita, Usuki, Miyazaki, Kagoshima)
- January 2018: New Years in DC.
- April to May 2017: Vienna, Krems, Melk, Innsbruck, Munich and cycling the Danube.
- January 2017: News Years in New York.
- November 2016: Sendai, Matsushima, Yamagata.
- July 2016: Summer in Seoul.
- March 2016: Fukuoka, Karatsu, Nagasaki, and Shanghai.
- January 2016: Chennai, Mumbai, Rajasthan (Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur), Agra, and a wedding in New Delhi.
- March 2015: Seoul and the Korean DMZ.
- December 2014 to January 2015: Another New Year in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and a circumnavigation of Taiwan (Taipei, Taroko, Taitung, Taiwan City, Kaohsiung).
- March 2014: Springtime in Stockholm.
- February 2014: Winter in Dubai.
- December 2013 to January 2014: A New Year in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Seoul, and Hong Kong.
- November 2013: Winter in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
- December 2012: A Journey through Bangkok, Yangon, Machu Picchu, New York City (in one trip!).
- December 2011: Vegas.
- December 2011: Ridgecrest and China Lake.
- September 2011: Chicago.
- December 2010: Vegas.
- July to August 2010: Vegas.
- June 2008: My first trip abroad on my own.
It’s a long list (which doesn’t even include all 55 races I’ve run since July 2015!), and photos and notes before November 2016 (a mere 5 years ago!) are scarce. This is partly because this is when I left a long-term relationship. It’s also partly because I didn’t appreciate recording my experience as much as I do now.
My plan now is to set aside a couple hours every week to organize my terabytes of digital assets, organize them into logical segments (likely by space and time), and publish them to my blog victorwyee.com. As I move into my pre-2016 era, I suspect that efforts to recover data from old hard drives and backups will start taking more time.
But it’ll be worth it. If I want to live a life I’m proud of, I want a place where I can see what I’ve done with my life, organized the way I want.
Fin.
