Adventure Stories.info

Welcome to Adventure Stories.info

About this website:  Adventure Stories.info was started by Bryan Begun in an effort to share fantastic adventure stories that often center on traveling and backpacking (trekking).  Many of the stories here concern Bryan’s own adventures, but there is an effort to present the stories of other intrepid souls too.  Adventure Stories.info was born out of a desire to tell these stories in a way that offered a lot of flexibility, a degree of permanence, interaction with readers through comments, and links to similar minded people and their websites.  In the past, Bryan would tell his adventure stories with mass emailings to friends and family,  recounting the latest crazy tale from an internet cafe somewhere far away.

Feedback from these mass emailings was very good–some people claimed a craving for these stories and wanted more.  But mass emailings carried so many drawbacks.  People’s email in-boxes got filled whether they wanted the content or not.  The audience was limited to a very select group of people, and the stories were ephemeral.  As emails, they were likely to be read once and then forgotten about, never to resurface again.  With all of these issues in mind, Adventure Stories.info was launched.  In less than 6 months it was reaching an audience well beyond Bryan’s known circle of friends and family.  Unlike those past email stories, the articles on Adventure Stories can be accessed by anyone at anytime, and the user experience is far enhanced.  A lot of credit for what you see on this website goes to the amazing software that is Wordpress, which powers this website as a blog platform and a website content management system.

Looking Forward: Bryan intends to constantly improve Adventure Stories.info.  to make it a premier website for its niche.  Bryan will continue to seek adventures and then write about them, the need for fresh content never diminishing.  A big goal going forward is to improve efforts to present other people’s stories.  In 2009, Bryan had the privilege of hosting the first guest author on Adventure Stories.info, Rebecca Miller, or Becky for short.  Becky and Bryan went to college together at UC Davis but Becky drifted to Latin America and now lives in Venezuela.  She is one of Bryan’s many friends who have some amazing stories to tell, and she has the added bonus of being a good writer.

Another big goal with Adventure Stories is to commercialize the website to produce a secondary income.  That goal is long ways off–currently this website does not even cover its own cost–but the goal remains.  Honestly, Bryan spends a lot more time treating Adventure Stories.info as a labor of love and an art, finding the business aspects to be dry and tedious–telling stories is so much more fun!  The trick is trying to make sales fun too, and since Bryan loves talking about outdoor gear and reviewing products, there may be real opportunity to help people discover products that really are a cut above the rest.

About Bryan Begun: Bryan was born and raised in northern California, a place blessed with good weather and amazing diversity of outdoor landscapes.   Bryan’s main introduction to outdoor adventure was through the Boy Scouts.  Their organization provided the best opportunity a kid could have growing up to working parents in a sub-urban neighborhood.  Otherwise, Bryan may have wound up playing video games and watching TV all day.

Bryan’s first real and independent adventure began in 1999 as a college student when he left UC Davis for a year of study abroad in New Zealand.  The circumstances of traveling abroad on his own provided for the greatest opportunity to establish truly noteworthy adventures.  Without the wisdom and safety of the parental umbrella, Bryan was free to get fouled up in extraordinary messes.

What began as a 10 month study abroad program in New Zealand turned into a visa-extending 19 month top to bottom scouring of the country for all it had to offer.  One important aspect of this journey was that Bryan  funded all of his non-school related adventures by obtaining a summer job aboard a charter fishing vessel in Tauranga, New Zealand.  The obligation to work was an opportunity to appreciate the culture of New Zealand and foster a sense of self-reliance.  Besides that, the job was a ton of fun, involved lots of sea travel in the Bay of Plenty, and paid  $10/hour, a great wage for the time and circumstances.  In addition, there was fresh fish for dinner almost every night plucked from the pristine waters of the Bay of Plenty.

Upon graduation from UC Davis, Bryan worked as a dive instructor and engineer for Blackbeard’s Cruises based in Miami, Florida.  Most of the time, Bryan was sailing with his crew and their passengers aboard the Pirate’s Lady, a 65′ sailboat dedicated to exploring and diving those areas of the Bahamas most accessible to Miami.  After leaving Blackbeard’s cruises Bryan traveled from Canada to Guatemala before settling in Santa Cruz, CA.  There Bryan focused on carpentry, working for clients that he attracted and also working for other contractors on specific projects.  It was a good blend of self employment and apprenticeship to veteran carpenters.  Although skilled already, Bryan enjoyed learning new tricks, methods, and techniques from the older hands.

When Bryan’s grandfather died in Santa Cruz, Bryan lost a man he admired greatly, not to mention his most reliable client (who always seemed to need household repairs and improvements).  Bryan decided to leave Santa Cruz and travel throughout Southeast Asia and then return to New Zealand.  He was accompanied by his girlfriend, Amber.

After 10 months of travel, Bryan returned to his home, the San Francisco Bay Area.  While in New Zealand, Bryan’s dad had bought a debris box hauling business in a dramatic shift from the white collar world of silicon valley tech to the blue collar world of truck driving.  Bryan began working with his dad to make repairs to the business, especially the renovation and replacement of the debris boxes which were dilapidated and of obsolete design.  Bryan resumed a life similar to his life in Santa Cruz, whereby he worked as a self employed individual, helping out his Dad as needed and working for other clients and contractors too.  However, things were not the same as they were in Santa Cruz– Bryan did not find his new community in Palo Alto to be nearly as enjoyable or as like-minded as Santa Cruz.  Nor did Palo Alto have the same beauty and level of outdoor recreation that Santa Cruz had to offer.  The best part about this time period of Bryan’s life was the summers of 2007 and 2008 which involved some extraordinary backpacking trips.    However, as Bryan turned 30 he began to wonder what his role in life was, what his niche should be.  He really wanted to pursue additional adventures and get away from the Bay Area, a place he had spent most of his life.  He had never really intended to be a carpenter forever but now he could see that he was beginning to know nothing else.  A change was needed.

It took a while to find a new direction, but eventually Bryan found an opportunity that felt right.  He was accepted to the NOAA Corps, a very small branch of the military whose mission is science of the oceans and atmosphere (NOAA = National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration).  This would have been a good opportunity under any circumstances, but set against a backdrop of a deteriorating economy it was a lifeline.

As the future progresses it will become clear if NOAA is the right place for Bryan, but he is extraordinarily optimistic–it seems like the chance to contribute to the science of the environment, to be a proud servant of the United States, and also an opportunity for some cool adventures.  With any luck, Bryan will find a career path that is both fulfilling and will continue to provide content for this website too.