New Growth in 2019

Busy Busy, Busy…

Lately, I have been consumed by starting a landscaping business, too busy to make music or work on my website. I started this new landscaping business and am working now as a designer landscaper in Sacramento. It’s hard work, but certainly pays the bills in a way that I don’t think yoga ever could. The only rich yogis that I’ve ever met are the Jois’ and they have an incredibly tightly run business in Mysore, India.

Landscaping is my Future

I love yoga and I might love making music even more. I am continuing to teach indefinitely, but as I said in my last article, I do have to scale back my yoga teaching from 8 times a week to 5. Teaching 5 yoga classes every week will still give me the opportunity to improve my teaching while doing a full time landscaping gig.

Creation is the Priority

I’ve always loved making stuff. These new planter beds that I have built in old Roseville are some of the coolest I’ve ever seen. I am learning how to create high quality, long lasting landscapes. Learning is my priority and I’ve gotten good at using concrete and also at working with dirt and grading, plants, drains, and the whole process of putting together a nice backyard. But I also bought a guitar recently and have started playing, learning chords, and am going to start learning some songs soon. Even though I am busy, I am busy doing stuff that I love so I always have more energy! Until its time to fall asleep.

The Cost of Artistry

Honestly, life has been completely exhausting lately. I fell asleep at 9:30 on New Years. I had a couple beers, but man I can’t party worth a shit anymore! But I guess thats a good thing! I like waking up early anyways, so heading off to work at 5 or 6 isn’t a big deal at all. Only I have a really hard time staying up later, which is pretty weird for me. I’ve had mild insomnia for as long as I can remember. My New Years resolution is to work on staying up later, so I can have more social fun time! Also, to play a few shows in 2019, something I didn’t get a chance to do in 2018.

Finding Balance between Passions

My yoga practice has actually been revitalized in a big way by landscaping. I need it to take care of my joints and relax my muscles which get overworked on the daily from using power tools and you know, repetitive pounding motions. I think I have found a trifecta of things to do that I love!

Looking Forward to 2019

Expect more landscapes, different mediums of sharing my art and blog articles in 2019! Apologies for not writing in a while, but I’m excited to continue blogging. See you on the yoga mat…

Thanks for reading,

Elliot

October 25, 2018October 25, 2018

Scaling Back Teaching Yoga

Recently I have come to the revelation that I simply do not have enough time during the day to get the things done that I want to get done. This includes my recently started landscaping business, my music and this blog. So I have decided to do a little bit of scaling back teaching yoga and my yoga instruction schedule.

I want to spend more making things like EDM tracks and working on beautiful landscapes. My creativity is something that I feel I have to cultivate actively. I want to spend more time making things like this vector image below that is now my site logo. I also haven’t gotten as much time as I’d prefer to practice yoga on my own.

Elliot’s new blog logo

As much as I love teaching yoga full-time, it is an enormous time and energy commitment to teach even one class a week. Right now, I am teaching 7. So, I have decided to cut back on how much yoga I instruct namely my Friday evening class in Auburn.

Lately, I have gotten very focused on quality. I am producing less EDM tracks and spending more time with the tracks that I release. FlyBy, my most recent dubstep track, is a result of this. I have also felt the desire to teach fewer classes for quite a while, so that I can get deeper into music and landscaping. The same has happened with my writing.

This is the LAST WEEK I will be teaching the 5PM FLOW @ EW Auburn on Fridays.

We have a new teacher coming in to take over Friday night. I am excited to free up my schedule for more time to DJ and Landscape. Although scaling back teaching yoga is not easy; I am conflicted about it. However, I do think that the East Wind Auburn Community will be very happy with the new teacher. She will be an excellent addition to the studio.

Teaching Yoga is still my passion

Hopefully, I will continue to teach yoga for the rest of my life. But I don’t want to limit myself while I am young and able to do more physically. And let’s be honest, yoga is not the most lucrative endeavor on planet Earth. To survive comfortably as a yoga teacher, I need multiple jobs. That’s why I started landscaping.

Why I Love Landscaping

Back when I first started teaching yoga, I remember getting very discouraged with the state of the world. Most of my frustration stemmed from changes in the climate and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. Landscaping seemed like a good way to create change in this area, and still does. I enjoy choosing plants that will thrive in environments. I try to create miniature sanctuaries for life within the yards that I design. Ideally, all the plants work in unison to support each other. The design and plant selection aspects of landscaping are my favorite!

I missed yoga today (10/24) because I was supposed to be working in the Bay Area

on a big landscaping project. I might have to work on it this Friday(10/26) instead, so if you are planning on coming to my classes on Friday this week, there may be a sub (they will be great, promise!). I don’t like getting subs, but it is unavoidable as I work on this job that requires a good amount of traveling.

Sorry to my students for scaling back yoga teaching, I hope you all understand why!

January 4, 2018January 4, 2018

What’s with all the Hatred of Donald Trump

Trump: Yep, this is about Donald Trump

So let me just start this out with something that I find interesting. Not Trump. Yet. We’ll talk about him in a minute. First, let’s talk about hate.

How is it that people who are supposed to be all about love feel totally right and justified about hating things? I don’t think you are supposed to pick and choose. And if you hate something, maybe there is a good reason why that you should explore? But let’s just agree that your hate is something undesirable, instead of justifying it. What if you could actually enjoy the things that you hate? Would your life be more enjoyable? Maybe? Cool.

So let’s explore. Donald Trump. I know lots of yogis that pretty much shut-down when he was elected. Why are you reacting so heavily to something that hasn’t even effected you yet? That is very un-yogic. I know a girl that felt the need to leave the country! Rusty Wells threw a fit! Why? And how is it possible you have manifested this intense hatred about the whole situation? Didn’t Jesus say LOVE thy enemy? Wtf. It doesn’t make any sense. He isn’t even given a chance? There can only be one explanation for the fanatic hatred that has spread like wildfire through the popular culture of America. The American popular media.

People are being brainwashed, man…

The news is seriously brainwashing people according to some hidden agenda. That’s one of the things I learned in Asia, where their propoganda is infantile in comparison and much more general. Our media does some weird shit because propoganda has goals. And it has been used for a really long time. Think about Nazi Germany during World War II. Hitler got the entirety of his people morally defending genocide. Even at the beginning of the war, they were aggressively pursuing a racist agenda to pretty much exterminate polish jews. All caused by progoganda. Government communication to its people is one of the most fascinating aspects of history because it indeed influences the history itself drastically. That shit is meta as fuck. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a fireside chat with Reagan, but those are some very interesting moral constructs that we can all learn from.

Why do we let this shit happen?

How is it possible? Why do we let other people influence how we think? Why do you even have the preferences that you do? Well, I guess its just part of living in society. We think together. And people pay lots of money to influence us. But we were never immune to the self-imposed propoganda that exists in our world; its an important part of understanding what culture is. But it is up to us to decide what we truly value. Conditioning is something that only yoga, certain sports, exercise, meditation, and or naturalism can undo. Basically you have to unlearn what you have learned by replacing it with something else, unless you are doing nothing. And I would consider doing nothing to be a meditation.

The media is a method of communication

Propoganda is just another word for government marketing or just attempted influence through the media. Obviously, wealth is what truly creates the largest influence over the news and media. Every country does it, if they are smart. And lots of corporations do it. And the biggest countries in the world are very, very good at influencing the media of other countries through their corporate influence. So everyone does it.

Back to Trump, I think the media is conditioning people to hate him. So I like him. And I’m not saying I love him, I honestly don’t know him well enough to really judge. But I agree with most of his policy so far. If we are at war with Syria, we can’t allow immigrants into the country. We need better regulation of the movement of drugs through the Mexican border. We need to focus on making the American economy great if we want to help the world. The only thing that I feel is missing is a re-appropriation of the military towards the climate. But that’s crazy talk for any politician.

Finding Good Sources?

But honestly, with Trump, I feel like judging his character through the looking glass of the television is inappropriate if I want to properly inform myself. The channel OHN is pretty good I guess, and there are tidbits of CNN and FOX that are okay, don’t get me wrong, but I think overall, they have big hidden agendas created by the DNC and RNC which take in money from the biggest corporations on the planet (specifically the big banks and multinational conglomerates that control 90% of the investment capital in the world). Also, the government regulates them, like they can’t show nudity or use swear words like fuck and shit and bull-crap like that. So there’s that to keep in mind while watching them.

I love lemonde.fr they are great at being neutral; ahh the French and their ideals. Anyways, International news is great, BBC is still pretty influenced by the British State, but its another, different source. We just have to be wary in our country because of the amount of money and therefore influence that corporations have over our media.

Anyways, if those media/bank/government guys hate him, I’m pretty stoked. If you listen to his speeches, they are good. He is spontaneous, and imperfect. He seems sharp. I think there is a lot of corruption in Washington that he is rooting out and he is getting a lot of hate for it. Think about rooting corruption out of the FBI. Doesn’t it seem like something like that might be happening?

2018 Could be an Awesome Year for the US

Trump needs to keep himself safe because the fanatic hate that has developed is kind of explosive and dangerous. I think there’s a good chance that he is draining a big fat swamp. That would free up all kinds of things for our economy.

So seriously, if you feel violent about Trump, you should examine how you got to feel that way. Don’t be too serious about it, this kind of stuff is weird. But people need to get over this idealistic view of what America is. Obama literally sold us out to corporations and their profitability.

We can be a great influence on the rest of the world, but only if we are thriving. And we are not. We need to focus on making ourselves, our education system, and our economy as good as it can be. Mostly we need far better public education. Then healthcare and the climate and all of our other problems will just start to work themselves out.

So I decided to get political for a minute just to express something that I have been pondering for quite some time. I guess I’ll write the article about goals now, which was my intent when I began writing, haha.

Write About Your Trump Hate in the Comments!

I’m honestly curious, please share 🙂

Examples of TRUMP HATE (these are all links, click those suckers)

Seriously read #10, so interesting… but also biased, of course.

PS: pls don’t hate me for writing this..

October 22, 2017

Y – Future House

Y is OUT NOW!!!

That is apparently optimal wording for a new track release. You can download the track below, let me know if you have any difficulties.

[purchase_link id=”69483″ style=”button” color=”blue” text=”Y Free Download” direct=”true”]

I used a combination of my favorite drums samples from some Splice packs that I have been collecting for over a year now. The kick is from the Deadmau5 pack, it has some of my favorite drums sounds. The hats in this track are very uniquely arranged, I feel like they add a tremendous amount of momentum.

The Bass is heavily modulated and I’ve create three different layers for it. It should really shine on larger systems.

The Lead is yet another JUNO synth sound, which is still my favorite. I’ve added like 5 different FX channels to it that are all mixed into the drums to give some awesome melodic and pad pumping effects.

The composition came together rather quickly, I am sometimes really surprised at how it just seems to happen on some days when I devote myself to it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the track, I will hopefully have time to make a music video for it in the next week or so.

<3 E.T.

August 12, 2017

CLOUDS Yin Yoga Class from 8/11/2017

Clouds Yin Yoga Class

Clouds Yin Yoga Class was Instructed and Prepared by Elliot Telford and is sponsored by this website, Elliottelford.com

Recoding from Yin Yoga at East Wind in Auburn

Clouds Yin Yoga Class recoding from Friday night at East Wind yoga in Auburn is available below, please download the class take it with you wherever you want, and enjoy!

[purchase_link id=”69387″ style=”button” color=”green” text=”Free Download” direct=”true”]

Here is the playlist from the class as well, lots of great music in there:

The accompanying playlist begins at the 25:00 minute mark. Feel free to check out the playlists from other yoga classes here as well. Prepare for a silent meditation at the beginning, you should be able to drop right into your practice!

This yoga class was pretty smooth and hits a lot of the hard to hit areas in the hips to help the body in circulating.

Clouds Yin Yoga Class Details and notes:

I created this yin yoga class to support a deep mediation on the breath. During the class, I mentioned this article on heart health. I think that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that yoga is very healthy for your heart. In modern society there is a lack of appreciation for this, as heart health is one of the biggest issues we have to face.

July 30, 2017

Life Update: Split Between Worlds

Split Worlds of Yoga, Landscaping, EDM and Art

Sometimes, I want to just focus on one thing, but I seem to live within three split worlds. I’m almost always working. Teaching yoga isn’t lucrative enough to focus on completely, landscaping isn’t really a sustainable profession outside of my 20s and 30s, nor is it very lucrative, and music actually doesn’t make me money at all yet, though someday soon I hope it does. I want to play live (and am almost ready to), which is where all of the money is!

My music is starting to get hot. Check back in soon for updates on what I’m making for y’all.

Expressing Elliot’s Art

My focus is on creating the type of art that I appreciate, love, and feel. Honestly, its not worth it if I don’t appreciate what I’m doing, the process will become unsustainable, which in work is the name of the game. I love making music and teaching yoga, and landscaping, but get torn between the three as I try to grow.

My yoga teaching has certainly improved drastically over the past couple of years. I try to bring my own style into the art as much as possible to express what I have inside of me and share. This is true of teaching yoga, writing, composing, sound design, this blog, making music videos, etc. I am trying to express myself! It is extraordinarily time consuming to do all these things in my own way because I have to literally develop the style from scratch! And I get pretty hard on myself sometimes. And then when I’m not feeling it, I have to go back to the drawing board and completely rethink what the hell I am doing! It’s crazy how much effort I am putting into this stuff!

Unique Flavors

I am constantly working to create something that no one has ever done before. It’s part of why I am making my own visual for music and why I want to DJ and teach yoga at the same time. My sounds are all my own, next to the library professional drum and synth samples that I have collected and analyzed over the last 3 years, and I am slowly collecting all of the top-of-the-line software that I am learning to use optimally within my productions. Yoga is something that has always been very personal to me, so learning how to develop my style of teaching is also really helping me to develop my style of ddm production.

Getting Equipment

I finally have my instrument and am in the process of learning how to use it in sync with my computer to create the kind of beats that I have been making in the last 3 years.

Yoga is really cool because it doesn’t require equipment at all. If the state of California weren’t a bunch of money grubbing bastards, I could start an entire business in a public park. No wonder that state wants a piece of yoga.

Landscaping is actually a lot like music in this regard. Good equipment helps to get the job done exponentially faster and with higher quality in the finished product. Plus, power tools are so much fun to use!

No time for Wasting

Tons of my new songs are very very close to ready for release. Yesterday I spent the day getting organized and designing sounds. I’m getting close to the majority of tracks from the album. Most of them are fully structured, but the chord progressions and melodies all need work. I will release the album progressively as it helps people to digest the tracks (I honestly should re-release some of the tracks from 0, I feel like they are under-appreciated).

Yoga teaching is going phenomenally, though it always has its rough patches. I am really getting into my own flow and style and it is simply awesome to see that dream begin to form into reality. People are starting to get my message as I become more fluent in communicating it. Honestly, there are few things in this world as rewarding as communicating with and assisting other people in achieving what they want.

Landscaping is also going great, I have completely landscaped my mom’s backyard in Auburn. I am working on a multi-leveled trenching permaculture system to bring water to plants as it flows. I’ll do a post about the garden soon, once fall starts to hit. Landscaping makes decent money on the side of yoga and I get to spend time outside, so it works out great.

Conclusions of Split Worlds

Lots of the time, I wish I could just make music full time. I love contrasting melodies against basses and synthesizing sounds that I’ve never heard before and turning them into fat beats. Teaching yoga is such an important part of clearing my mind to create. I honestly couldn’t imagine one without the other. My main jobs are like the yin-yang, countering each other. Landscaping kind of sits between the two.

Anyways, here’s to the end of July! On 9/1 I am going to release my HAZE EP so get stoked. I will release the tracks progressively, as usual. I’ve also just finished a collab, and it is a very cool track. Be on the look-out from some live streams and yoga youtube tutorials, hoping to start them soon!

ttyl,

the E.T.

May 2, 2016

Deepening

I feel like I’ve let go of so much in the past, like there is so much behind me. The countries, the people, the experiences; I feel so spoiled for having experienced so much, but so lonely at the same time. It reminds me of India, which was a very lonely place, but full of happiness through meditation and stillness. It’s a good kind of lonely, but is a makes-you-stronger and toughens-you-up kind of thing.

I’ve felt like shit for the last month. I guess its how I feel about the first time someone has broken my heart. It hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt and I’ve taken some hits. Emotions are so powerful, I always forget. 7 years of rugby, 7 of football, 10 of basketball, a black belt, and 6 months of boxing makes me a pretty tough dude; this was worse than any kind of physical pain. Waking up and feeling that alone and rejected was completely agonizing, in a free-your-mind or suffer kind of way. Obviously my mediation evolved as a result and now I can find ways to make myself happy no matter what.

I was forced to figure out how to cope. I was still in love with someone who didn’t want to be with me anymore and had to figure out how to make myself happy. But it was hard to eat, hard to watch TV, impossible to make music, impossible to listen to emotional music. Especially the first couple of weeks. I picked myself up and got to work, which is probably one of the best things that I have done in a while. Deepening my gratitude for all that I have and get to experience every day has been getting me past it. But it still hurts.

I started to realize how depressed I’d been for a while. 8 months in long distance takes it toll, and this is my second relationship with distance. Instead of going out into the world and enjoying myself, I kept myself in my room working on my art, pretty inefficiently. I got super lonely, and took it out on the relationship. Not to mention the kind of negativity that started to move through me because of how lonely I felt. I felt victimized by being in another long distance relationship instead of remembering why I was doing it to begin with and being grateful. I forgot about my friends, the life I had built for myself. The distance took its toll.

I found consolation in the things that I realized in India; how much I love the sun, having time in the morning to practice yoga, and now I am working outside. I enjoy life, but I have to remind myself to each day. Yoga is my medicine. I get to work outside now and that is making me very happy. I am also creating a new garden with a pond and some cool water features that I am very excited about. But I realize that I am in charge of making myself happy no matter what; no one else can do it for me.

The last couple of weeks have been a blur of yoga and a new job. I remember how much I like being busy; just not stuck in a desk or in a room. I teach 5 classes a week now and work landscaping 4 days a week. Yoga balances out the work landscaping, makes it easier on my back. But I’m making money now and am much more comfortable than being on the yoga salary alone, which is pretty dismal; firstly because my classes aren’t super popular and second because its hard to make good money unless you own a studio.

Luckily I keep myself busy, but the message remains clear; I have internal work to do on learning how to make my life a place that I really want to be in. I think I focused a lot on traveling and a lot on learning and now its time to create and combine the things I’ve learned into my lifestyle.

I find myself being drawn to painting more and more. All kinds of creation. Music continues to get more complex and more instinctual at the same time; I also spend a few hours a week playing the piano, just to feel what is possible with chords and to practice my rhythm. Ableton feels like it flows through me now, the software is nothing short of amazing. I am making a dark electro song right now and it feels like it’s going to be really awesome. In combination with writing this blog and wanting to finish the Wanderer, it makes my time pretty full. Books are a lot of work. But I am spending most of my time outside and that is how I want my life to be.

My yoga teaching has been improving dramatically lately. I am simply getting more and more confident in what I am teaching and how I practice my own yoga and how I deliver that to my community. This makes me ridiculously happy because I have put a ton of hard work into teaching yoga and can now enjoy teaching without so much pressure on myself to improve. Though I will continue to focus on getting better, each and every class simply by doing my best in each one. I have taken to practicing before each class to come up with unique sequencing and am getting more and more familiar with what people need from their yoga classes.

My art is moving forward, but my heart is heavy. And that’s okay, I have some lessons to learn about myself and I enjoy making myself happy. Right now I need to be alone and learn to be completely okay with that. It’s nice to enjoy not having responsibility in my life right now, because I am sure that things won’t always be that way. I get to practice yoga every single day; my life is good 🙂

Hard times force us to dig deep and remember what we believe in and why. Ultimately, I am forcing myself to regain some discipline and to put my weight behind my word. Challenges have a way of uncovering the best in us, if we do our best. Here’s to the future and finding reasons to be happy and grateful for now.

June 5, 2015

Modena & Verona, Italy | Zurich, Switzerland | Paris, France

The past few days have been a blur of beauty, incredible meals, unforgettable architecture, and time to share with my sisters and mom. I think I will look back on these last few weeks fondly for a long time in the future; so much has happened in such a short time.

Two days ago, we arrived in Modena, Italy with the specific purpose of eating lunch at Osteria Francescana, recently named the second best restaurant in the world with 3 Michelin stars. I will write a whole blog about it later, when I have my blog’s storage situation figured out, but it was a 12 course meal paired with wines and quite literally the coolest and most luxurious experience of my life; quite a contrast to Dhaka, Bangladesh. We moved on to Verona for the night, had a great pizza, then left for an eight-hour drive to Zurich today where we ate yet another pizza. Zurich speaks German, but is an interesting mix of Italian, German, and a smidgen of French, though my French has been all but useless here. I am really looking forward to speaking my second language tomorrow when I meet up again with my best friend from Paris. He’s probably the biggest reason I was a French minor to begin with, then later decided to go all out with the major and switch from International business, so I could spend a year in Paris.

Suffice to say that I am very tired of traveling at this point, but also very happy to see some great friends over the next few weeks. It’s ironic how traveling comes in waves and you simply have to go with the flow, disregarding how you feel oftentimes.

I am excited to feel the French side of my personality return to the foreground of my mind; over the past couple of weeks adjusting to my family has done the same for some deep seeded aspects of my personality. The oldest sister is particularly responsible, but in the best way; she reminds me that I only have to be human and that there’s only so much I can do. Sometimes I can be too ambitious.

Verona and Modena beckon return journeys; Italy is a city far removed from certain technologies and has a culture of presence and amiability. I would love to spend a month there at some point in the far future. Zurich does as well, but perhaps in a trip all to its own; if this journey has taught me anything, it has been finding the gentle balance between movement and stillness, activity and resting. I should simply do what my nature beckons me to.

Fatigue is setting in at the apartment in Zurich, but the city is beautiful. Even the gas stations in Switzerland are health oriented, we stopped today and got an amazing green salad, fruit salad, and sandwich before our salmon pizza dinner. I can truly say that I am getting used to the amenities and absolute luxuries of the western world once again, though there is a newfound appreciation that is unexplainable.

My New song is being uploaded now, head over to alienmusique.wordpress.com to have a listen. A new Wanderer post is also on the way, which I have not forgotten about, but am spending a lot of time on the next major section of the “to-be” book. Thanks for reading 🙂

June 1, 2015

Plitvice National Parks

I feel like I’ve visited heaven. Millions of waterfalls, lakes everywhere, water so clear you could drink it, fish the size of your leg and so many trees, bushes so thick that you can barely see the water flowing down and out of them, and a wooden stair path floating above it all like you are in the Wookie jungle of Endor IV from the final episode of Star Wars.

The national park was epic in proportions that I am still just beginning to understand. 1.1 million tourists visit the park each year, but it is pristine; there are people walking around after tour groups to pick up litter, very few amenities in the park, and it is specifically designed to move tourists through the park.

The park was founded in 1949 in the heart of Croatia, near large mountains, endless nature, and is near the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All of the lakes are arranged in cascading waterfalls that flow down from the highest mountains into the lower basins and the park surrounds an 80m waterfall which is the biggest I have ever seen. The entire park is completely breathtaking; upon entering you feel that you have been taken into a different alien world, one which is natural and completely untouched, even by you and the hundreds if not thousands of tourists that accompany you.

There were probably close to 10 or 20 thousand waterfalls in the park; they littered the entire area and created somewhat of a fantasy world where after an hour they were completely commonplace. Each tier brought with it new wonder and beauty; as we got lower and lower, the waterfalls became more plentiful, bigger, and more powerful until our final arrival at the monstrous 80m waterfall at the bottom of the national park.

We didn’t see any animals at the park, most likely because of the massive tourist groups moving throughout the area in what must have been a daily occurrence. There were no shortage of tourists at the park, but insects and fish were everywhere; the water seemed clear enough to drink from, though it was all strictly regulated and controlled.

The Park reminded me a lot of Yosemite, though the water was far more prominent in the park. There was a massive underground cave system with some unique biological species and plenty of caves and pathways that I could have gotten lost in for a couple of weeks if I had the time. It was labyrinth of beauty and undefinable beauty; I can only imagine how awe-inspiring the park must be during the winter months. It beckons a return journey, as does the rest of the beautiful country of Croatia.

Tomorrow I will be spending another day in Split, after a very enjoyable two days in Zadar; though there seems to be quite a lot of hostility towards tourists in the town of Zadar, I haven’t experienced any discrimination in Split despite the increase in tourism here. We will be visiting a couple of islands on a booze cruise and I am immensely looking forward to spending the time with my family.

Stay tuned for more of the adventure in Croatia, until we move on to Italy, Switzerland, and I finally return to the gorgeous city of Paris as my final destination on the 5 month+ trip around the world.