With my life in shambles, I left the US on a one way flight to Paris, where I ended up going on the adventure of my life, backpacking through six countries including France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Upon taking the ferry from Italy to Barcelona, I decided to test the true limitations of myself and bicycled across Spain with only an old map I found on the streets to guide me. During my journey across Spain, my Camino de Santiago if you will, I met my brother in Pamplona, and together we ran with the bulls. 

Hemingway had it right. There is something majestic about Pamplona and the people who live there, but that is another story altogether. After Spain, I ended up selling the bicycle I had bought in Italy for 40 euro and hitch-hiking with four Australians to surf Biarritz and Hossegor in France. It was a journey unlike anything else I had ever done, and somewhere along the way I realized that I couldn’t abandon everything I had started. People lose sometimes. That doesn’t make them weak. But what makes you strong is continuing despite that loss. 

Finding what I was looking for in myself, I returned home to finish what I started, to become something I had not been before, and to carve my name into the stars with the help of my friends, my family and the dreams that have guided me thus far on this wild ride. PS: I am the writer formerly known as Trowa D. Cloud. It wasn’t until after I returned from staying with the monks in Kathmandau, Nepal, maybe some 60km away from Mt Everest, that I came home with the name Bodhi, a gift from the beautiful people of Nepal.