Welcome to NRDLIFE: A Short Intro To NRDLIFE
Hello and welcome the NRDLIFE blog. This is going to be a hodge podge of rambling words trying to make coherent sense. A lot of the writings will be about my travels, other times I will we writing about food that I am eating and/or making, and sometimes I will be writing about life in general. Most of it won’t make any sense, but hopefully some of it will! Strap in and enjoy the ride!
Getting to know me
My name is Nick and I am from Bayonne, NJ. I lived in Bayonne until I was 29 years old and spent 10 years working as a HVAC service technician for my family’s business. Ultimately, I decided I wanted to travel more extensively and find a new profession that I was passionate about. I decided to drive my Volvo XC70 all over the country and teach myself photography. This led me to living in Denver Colorado.
Once I established myself in Denver, I went back to school to become a software developer. Since becoming a software developer, I’ve moved around quite a bit. First I moved to Fort Collins, Colorado and I ended up living in FoCo for about a year. Really loved living there and met some great people but a better opportunity brought me to Chicago, Illinois.
Moving to Chicago was done basically sight unseen. I had some friends who lived in Chicago so they gave me the scoop on where good neighborhoods would be. I ended up living in Chicago for 3 years in the Wickerpark neighborhood. Chicago is a fabulous city and I really enjoyed my time there. The food is amazing and the people are friendly. Lots of NYC vibes from Chicago but the transit makes more sense and the streets are lined with rats and garbage. I love Chicago so much. Check out this city guide I wrote for a nice 3-4 day trip to Chicago.
But then covid happened….
During the Covid era, I decided to pack up everything and move to Texas. This was made possible since my job went fully remote. I lived in Grapevine for one year and in Fort Worth for another year. I really enjoyed my time in Texas. Grapevine is such a cute small town and I had some friends living there so we were able to hangout a lot. I also enjoyed living in Fort Worth – it’s a much bigger city but I lived in a cool historic neighborhood that was extremely walkable with great restaurants and coffee shops around.
After 2 years living in Texas, I was starting to really miss my family. I also wanted to travel more extensively and didn’t feel it was prudent to be renting while traveling for more than a month at a time. It was also at this time that my parents bought a second house down in the Jersey Shore, so I threw most of my stuff into storage and moved back home. This has worked out pretty perfectly for me since I have the house to myself during the week and I get to see my family almost every weekend.
Tales of Traveling
When I left my job back in November of 2014 to travel the country, that was the first time I had taken an extensive break from working and also the first time I’ve done any significant solo traveling. There are some adjustments that need to be made in order to survive/thrive out in the world alone. I had to get comfortable eating alone at restaurants and being a little less shy when talking to strangers. The talking to strangers part can be a little weird for me since I am very guarded person when solo traveling. I don’t like to drink alcohol or do anything that would lower my wits when traveling alone.
My first adventure was down to the Florida Keys in January of 2015. I think I made it to the Keys after 3 long days of driving from NJ. I spent a night in Key largo and few nights down by Key West. The Florida Keys really blew me away because it’s so tropical and beautiful down there. There are great state parks all along the highway and I stopped at a bunch of them. Crystal clear water. There is also a 7 mile bridge that is really breathtaking and a bit scary not seeing land in the center.
florida baby!
In the end, I went on 3 trips down to Florida in 2015 and drove all the way out to California. These tales would make great separate blog posts about those trips since they are longer stories. I love a good road trip and at this point (October 2024) I have been to every state in the continental USA. I have not been to Alaska or Hawaii yet but I want to very much. Also there are also a few states that I haven’t explored too extensively – Montana and Washington states come to mind. I’ve only driven through them briefly. Getting back on the road and traveling America is on my agenda for 2025 🙂
Over the last few years, I started doing more international traveling as well. I went to Thailand in January 2023 and I fell in love with that country. Chiang Mai in northern Thailand is one of my favorite cities I’ve ever been to. Such a chill place with ancient temples and architecture. The food and the weather are amazing. I also explored the Chiang Rai region and that’s very beautiful as well. I met my girlfriend in Chiang Rai. She showed me all around Chiang Rai on our first date and I took her on a hot air balloon ride for our second date. It was amazing and exhilarating but that’s for a separate blog post 😉
love wins
Then I went back to Thailand for another 6 weeks last year. And before coming back home, I went to Cambodia, Vietnam and Japan. I feel like I’ve learned so much about different cultures. It’s such a different experience going to a place than jjust reading about it, or watching a video about a place. Japan is such a clean and polite country – I really enjoyed myself there and would like to go back.
I also just got back from a European trip which was fabulous. I have several blog posts in the works talking about all of the great cities I went to. Over the course of 2.5 weeks I went to: London -> Ely, England -> Cambridge -> Amsterdam -> Bruges -> Brussels -> Paris -> Bayonne, France -> Bordeaux. It was my first time in Europe and such a great experience. The two stand out cities for me were Bruges and Bayonne. They are both old medieval towns. Bayonne was a Roman walled city from 2000 years ago and still has most walls intact. The best way to describe Bruges is that it’s like walking around in a fairytale.
literally like walking around in a fairytale!
I don’t have any new trips planned at the moment but my gears are turning. South America is near the top of my list, especially Peru. Ultimately, I would like to go everywhere and it would make sense for me to redirect my career goals to be in the travel industry.
International travel has been amazing so far but there is also so much more for me to explore here in America. I would like to go to every National Park and visit every Capitol city of each state. A lot of the State Capitol buildings are really beautiful and built before cranes were invented, so they are quite impressive feats. All this to say there will be plenty of subject matter for me to talk about in the future.
What’s my plan for the blog?
My original intentions for this blog was to document my travels and share it with friends and family, since I’m not too into social media these days. I haven’t posted anything in years, so I wanted my own space to share personal details of my life on a platform that I own and control.
I take a ton of pictures everywhere I go. Most of them stay on my phone unless I share with friends and family. Some of these pictures are too good to be collecting digital dust in the cloud and need to be shared in a thoughtful and purposeful manner.
Whenever I used to post on social media, I would always used the hashtag #NRDLIFE. My initials are NRD and I was posting about my life, so it seemed like a no brainer. I always thought it was funny too how my initials are NRD like “nerd.” The kids in my bowling league growing up tried to make fun of me for my initials but I have always been proud of my NRD heritage! And I will continue to use the hashtag #NRDLIFE !!
nrdlife 4 life
I have a bunch of different passions in life and I don’t always know the best way to express them with the world. This blog can help me branch out and find like minded individuals in the world who are into the same stuff as me. Traveling is one of my main passions but there is a whole bunch of sub-passions that exist because of that. One of them in human connection. I like hanging out with people, meeting new people and learning about different cultures. This is one of the reasons I love Thailand so much is because the people are so friendly and welcoming.
If this sounds like a blog you might be interested, please consider subscribing so you will be notified when there is a hot fresh new blog post coming out! Talk to you soon 😉
