Project Hitchhiker | travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design
welcome to my blog
Project Hitchhiker is the online creative outlet of Mike H.
Mike’s adventures have taken him across 3 continents, including driving a motorcycle for 6 months across Southeast Asia, hitchhiking across Canada and Japan, and walking 1000 miles along the coastline of Nova Scotia.
Mike’s passions are music, travel and motorcycles (in that order).
Mike’s dislikes include writing about himself in the third person.
This site is a collection of his travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design.
As most experienced outdoor enthusiasts know, it’s usually some combination of two elements that put us into the most dangerous situations: 1) underestimating the proposed adventure and 2) overestimating one’s own abilities. Which brings me to this story.
Below, a video of me in Northern Thailand, half-drunk on rice wine and trying deep fried bugs at the local market.
I love eating weird stuff. Love it.
Kangaroos. Caribou. Big bugs. Beating snake hearts. One of my favorite things about traveling is trying strange new foods — foods that the locals will eat usually to gross out a foreigner — that’s the stuff I seek out. It makes life more interesting and helps get me out of my travel routines.
In the Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris talks about his simple, yet unconventional strategies for winning the Chinese National Kickboxing championship with relatively little kickboxing experience. How knowing the finer points of the rules and focusing on their weaknesses led him to win first prize in the tournament, simultaneously pissing off the whole of China. My mom was doing this Four Hour Workweek stuff — using existing rules and structures to her advantage, outsourcing her workload — before Tim Ferris joined his Highschool wrestling team. Back when he was still wearing tighty whities and Spiderman pajamas.
Life would have been just fine without Motorcycles.
I might have bought a reasonably priced sedan or hatchback, got a “real job,” had 2.3 kids and lived happily ever after. Things would have been more, well, predictable. I mean, I used to cringe when I walked past guys wearing Harley Davidson jackets and leather chaps, or guys decked out in full racing leathers. Victims of an under-developed fashion sense, I’d say to myself. And here I am two years later on the peripherals of the club. Now when I pass these guys on my motorbike, we exchange the biker’s salute and chat about our travels in Tim Horton’s parking lots and truck stop restaurants (I wonder: how many people who drive Camaros or pickup trucks wave to each other as they drive by as a sign of respect? I would wager it’s not a high number). Though that’s not to say I’ll ever wear leather chaps.
Jules is the most Japanese white guy I know. Not your predictable J-pop loving, Anime-watching, AV Idol-obsessed Japanophile. No, Jules is the exception to the rule. After four years of living in the Kanto region, he speaks near-perfect Japanese, and uses a dialect unique to Osaka – one used by many Japanese comedians. He works at a host club, an industry found only in Japan, where wealthy, lonely women pay exorbitant sums of money to sit and drink with charismatic, fashionable and conversationally skilled young Japanese men… And one white guy named Jules. All of his co-workers and customers are Japanese and none of them speak any English. He is the antithesis of an ESL teacher in Japan.
Remember what it was like to be a kid? Sitting in class, having fantastic adventures in your imagination far away, while your teachers were trying to teach you how to add fractions?
My friend recently shared a story that her 4-year old neice, Ariana, wrote (okay — so she dictated the story and her mom typed it up) and I felt I needed to pass it on. When I read it, I could really picture the kid sitting there, telling the story, and almost see the little creative steps and jumps in her mind — because unlike stories written by adults, there’s no forethought. Just stream-of-consciousness imagination. I love it.
“Three! Two! One! Go!” In perfect unison, the six of us lick the salt from the backs of our hands and down our double shots of tequila. We give a gasp and a celebratory cheer, as we slam our fifth (?) round of shot glasses down on the bar. “Come with us, we’re going to a house party a few towns over!” the blonde says. We all stumble out of the bar and jump into a cab-van. I will my eyes to focus on the digital clock. It’s 2 am. I’m loving life.
