Welcome!

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to a goofy website dedicated to stories about me and my travels.  I know what you're thinking, "why should I care about some bearded idiot traveling around the world?" Well first off sis, I'm your bro and you should care about me because I'm you're brother, crazy adventures or not!  Stop being so negative!  For the rest of you, if you’re anything like me you probably aren’t all that excited to read another blog written by a stranger about sweet adventures you’ve never been on and probably will never go on and ‘plus, that dudes probably just lying anyway so, psh… whatever!’  Yeah, I know, I saw that stupid facebook post about some college student who convinced her family she was in Asia but ended up never leaving her dorm room or whatever it was…. ugh.  I can assure you I’m not some world wide web-connected conspiring conartEEST of a college student.  First off, I’m not even in college… I'm just out having fun in the world trying to enjoy each day.  Simple...

Anyway, let’s take care of the stranger issue.  My name is Jon Rees – or if I’m in trouble, Jona-THAN Rees.  I recently bid farewell to my 20s and diggin every moment of it!  I grew up in southestern PA went to school for Jazz (with a capitol ‘J’) performance and music ed in Philly, performed professionally – still do I suppose - taught music for four years, quit to be a park ranger, toured with a big band around the states, walked through Nepal and India for a few months, enjoyed odd jobs skiing on frozen lakes chasing fish under the ice with radio telemetry equipment, sage grouse with ATVs and now am sitting here in a storage container on skies in the middle of a wind storm on sea ice off the coast of Ross Island in Antarctica.  There, now we’re no longer strangers!... which is good timing since I need to borrow some cash… the black-ice market down here does not take plastic… haha see that, we’re no longer strangers and you just learned I’m funny.  What fun you’re going to have reading this!

Well so yeah, in a nutshell of a run-on sentence, that is what’s happened to me over the past 10+ years or so.  I figured some of my friends and family might like to follow along with my adventures and have even entertained the delusion that perhaps a stranger or two may also enjoy my stories.  Some of my going-ons are weird, some amazing, some sad, most happy and much of it, well much has yet to happen, so I have no idea what it’s going to be like.  As I mentioned, my latest adventure has brought me to an extremely remote place that for many of us is painted more by our imaginations than by our photos or experiences.  It’s the bottom of the map, the last bit of unclaimed land, miles of ice extend out from you in every direction you look including directly below you … I’m living on the ice locked continent of Antarctica.  

So, yeah, I'm here to write about that and other adventures along the way - under extreme duress you should know, and pressure from my immediate family, so if you don't like this, well… then blame them.  I'm an innocent bystander in all of this, simply wandering around, usually with only a glimmer of a clue as to what i'm doing, smiling at the world, taking a picture and pausing for a moment to write about it.  

(more photos to follow... may be surprised to learn that the internet is not great in a remote field camp on sea ice in Antarctica...) 

Enjoy

j