Writer & Business Reporter
A few nights ago I was looking at a new Longshot Radio project when a thought popped into my head, “Whatever happened to the documentary on Longshot Magazine?”
After a little bit of Googling, I found it.
That’s when the memories started rushing back.
When I traveled through Latin America, I had a 65L pack full of stuff. But I quickly learned what were my absolute essentials: things I felt I couldn’t live without, worked hard to protect or were determined to fight for if someone tried to rob me.
In October 2011, I had just started backpacking around South America. I didn’t speak any Spanish, I was incredibly homesick and suddenly realized I didn’t really know why I had signed up for the Inca Trail in the first place.
Still, I managed to soldier on, hike the Colca Canyon the week prior, and accumulate a wealth of advice and tips for other aspiring hikers.
My last serious boyfriend met my parents for the first time at my grandmother’s wake. It didn’t mean to happen that way, but the night showed me how race played a role in so many of my relationships whether I had noticed them or not.
Grace Lahive is a second-year McGill Arts student who has already published a novel called Rocketry Absurd. In an interview with Leacock’s, she gives out some sound writing advice:
“I think the most important thing is that you have to write every day. […]”
If you told me two years ago I would become someone who regularly climbed 60 foot walls, owned Lululemon clothing and actively ate meat-free dinners before 6 p.m. I would have looked at you like you were crazy.
Now I am happily that person, intent on encouraging more people to check out this amazing sport.
Here are my top 10 reasons why you should too.
Rock climbing has been a big part of my life for the past two years. It helped me get over three relationships, make new friends and become fit in a way I had never felt before. I gained self-confidence, impressive stories and a new community. But I also learned a lot of things about life along the way.
“I didn’t pay to go on vacation and throw poop!” Taylor grins at me. “Yes Karen. Yes you did.” This is life in Nicaragua with Free and Easy Traveler. Ten days of beaches, surf, parties and stupidly-cheap alcohol punctuated by birthday parties, volcano boarding, bazooka-shooting, iguana soup and a beach olympics event that has you … Continue reading Adrenaline rush to the finish: 10 days in Nicaragua
Sometimes, there are things that happen to you so out of your control, there’s nothing you can do but keep trying to salvage whatever situation you have left. That happened to me today. Here’s how I went from my original plan of arriving in Liberia, Costa Rica last night to being stuck in San Jose … Continue reading My Super Expensive Day in Airport Purgatory
Writing is a scary thing. Putting your thoughts, ideas, observations out there for the world to dissect, discuss and dismantle isn´t an easy thing, and anyone who tells you otherwise probably isn´t doing it right or hasn´t received their editor´s notes back yet. So what draws people back to it? To a job one friend … Continue reading On what matters.
Karen K. Ho 