A little more than a year ago, I began traveling around the Americas. My plan was to upload photos and videos regularly, both about my travels, and about my research on economics and society.

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On August 4th, 2006, I said goodbye to my family. We waved our goodbyes.

I was filled with excitement. I stopped often to take photos, and slept little.

I met all kinds of interesting people.

I met hobos and fairies and hippies.

I met beautiful women, and truckers, and more hippies.

I met Canadians, and more beautiful women.

I saw some amazing things.

I saw the incredible glaciers of Alaksa. I saw the Northern Lights. I watched evening fall over Bogota. Click on the photos to see a larger version.

I quickly became overwhelmed with the incredible quantity of information I was gathering.

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My hard drive was overflowing with photos.

It took much more time than anticipated to edit and upload photos and videos.

My primary interest in traveling the Americas was to collect information about local economies. I wanted to understand economic growth and its counterpart, poverty.

As an active member of the ONE Campaign, I made efforts to share information about the U.S.’s role in promoting world economic development. I gave out more than forty copies of the book, The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs.

But as I traveled, I became increasingly frustrated. Many people seemed confused as to my intentions regarding poverty efforts. And it was difficult to accurately convey my message.

My excitement about traveling was replaced by a nagging regret about my failure to accurately convey my thoughts about poverty and economics; only two of the forty recipients of The End of Poverty actually read it.

The End of Poverty is a highly technical treatise, written by a Harvard economist. With my experience in analyzing financial statements, I quickly absorbed the information in the book. But in most cases, the technical discussions went right over everybody’s heads. Few readers made it past the second chapter.

For a long time I puzzled over how to explain the basic principles of economic development. I neglected my blog for several months, though I continued to work on editing videos.

I ended up in Denver, where I picked up some work as a Construction Lender with my former employer, M&T Bank. My position with M&T has given me a unique perspective from which to observe the recent deterioration of the U.S. Housing Market.

In my capacity as a Banker, I have ongoing access to market reports, which provide detailed statistics and anlysis of regional and national economic data. Additionally, I have a ground-level view of difficulties in the mortgage industry. And I have further benefitted from various personal discussions with lenders, builders, and homeowners.

Above is a photo taken in Belleview, near Seattle, where I stopped during my travels to pay homage at the M&T Bank office (previously M&T Mortgage). I worked in this office from 2002 to 2003. When this photo was taken in 2006, I had no idea that I would be working in M&T’s Denver office during 2007.

All of the foregoing discussion brings me to my point. As much as I enjoy sharing photos and stories from my travels, the thing I really want to talk about is economics. My experience and research on this topic are extensive.

In upcoming posts, I will share economic research from my travels. I will give a brief but thorough overview of the economy of a sprawling metropolis with a population of more than 10 million.

I will give you a personal tour of this incredible city, and throughout the tour I will point out the causes and effects of economic development. I will also identify areas that are excluded from development and remain in conditions of abject poverty.

This is a city that few U.S. citizens have ever visited. The city is urban, modern and sophisticated.

The city is Bogota, Colombia. (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

I have begun working on uploading photos from earlier portions of my trip. Following are a couple of photos of volcanic lava flow which I saw last October:

The lava sends up a cloud of smoke as it destroys everything in its path.

Click on the photos above to see a larger version.

If you look closely you will make an interesting discovery.

What appears to be lava is not lava at all. It is something very different from lava.

I saw this “lava flow” last October while I was Bogota, Colombia. I have just finished cropping and uploading more than 200 photos from Colombia to my Flickr page. Click here to check them out.

I’ve been hiding out in Denver.

A little over a year ago, I began a highly ambitious project.

My goal was to travel the entire span of the Americas in a year. I intended to document my travels, as well as performing detailed research on questions of economics and society.

In order to take this trip I quit my job as a banker with M&T Bank. I sold many of my possessions and liquidated most of my stocks. I had enough cash in the bank, as I saw it, to make a one-year voyage around the Western Hemisphere.

Nevertheless, I failed to achieve my primary goal of reaching Argentina by August of 2007. Certainly to drive that distance in a year’s time is possible, even if the driver maintains only a moderate pace.

However, while I was traveling, I was engaged in intensive documentation and research efforts. Documentation took the form of videography, photography and note-taking. I performed eight formal interviews, and fifty or so informal interviews, during the first six months of my travels. All of this took an exceptional amount of time and effort.

Partly as a result of the time required for my research efforts, and partly as a result of unforeseen circumstances – such as the untimely demise of my 4Runner – the pace of my trip has been much slower than anticipated.

However, I am pleased to report that both the quantity and detail of my research has been exceptionally high. And I am now convinced that I will do a much better service to myself and my audience by taking ample time to gather more research along the way.

Going forward I do not plan to adhere to a strict timeline, which I had done in the beginning of my trip. Instead, I will remain in each city for as long as I feel is necessary, and then I will move on to the next destination.

My plan now is to resume traveling in the first part of 2008, and from there to continue traveling for the next three years or so. After I reach my final destination of Buenos Aires, I will return home, and soon thereafter I will take a trip to visit my Grandma Lemmon in San Luis Obispo. After that I expect to devote two years or more to editing video footage to create a film documentary. The film documentary will primarily emphasize the conclusions of my research. To a lesser extent it will serve as an exposé on the joys of traveling.

During my first four months on the road, I maintained a strong pace. I drove from Thousand Oaks, California, up the Pacific Coast, inland through Idaho, Alberta and British Columbia, up through the Yukon Territory, north through Alaska, all the way to Fairbanks, Alaska. I stayed a week in Fairbanks, and two weeks in Anchorage. I also took two side-trips from Anchorage: one to Southern California for a friend’s wedding, and one to Bogota, Colombia, for research.

During much of my travels, I was accompanied by my assistant/sometimes-girlfriend, KereAna. In many ways, KereAna has been tremendously supportive and helpful. For example, she drove the car for almost the entire stretch of highway going south from Alaska to South Dakota. I suspect she offered to do this because she was eager to spend time with me. However I did not object in the least bit, traumatized as I was by my unfortunate car accident in British Columbia.

Those early months on the road were full of triumphs and disappointments of every kind. During this period I saw some incredible sights, met some incredible people, and captured some very good video footage. I also totaled my car. And I was robbed no fewer than four times. Among items that were stolen from me are: a cell phone, a small digital camera, $120 cash, a cheap acoustic guitar, two backpacks, a camera flash, an unformatted 500 gigabyte hard drive, and my dignity.

When I reached South Dakota I was completely drained – physically, mentally, and emotionally. I took up residence for two months in the Castle Inn, located directly at the center of Rapid City’s burgeoning Pawn Shop district. It was nearing Christmas time, and I was planning to fly to California for the Holidays. I remember experiencing a feeling of dread about leaving my belongings in the motel nestled among the Pawn Shops.

My feelings of apprehension served me well; when I returned, the lock on the top carrier of my car had been broken, and several important objects had been removed.

Nonetheless, I have always been careful to protect my most important assets, which inclue the hard drives where I store my photos, as well as the numerous videocassette tapes which I have filled with footage during my trip. I have also kept careful track of my favorite watch, the loss of which would be devastating from an emotional perspective.

At any rate, after six months on the road I was exhausted, and desperately in need of a break from the stress of my travels. Additionally, much of the funds in my bank account had been depleted. I decided that I would continue driving until I ran out of money, and I would get a job in whatever city I happened to be in when my last penny was spent. I would work as a waiter or a landscaper or whatever. The important thing was to continue to travel.

Not a day after I made this decision, I received a phone call from Jeff Evershed, the President of M&T Bank’s Western Division. He informed me that he had an urgent need to hire an experienced banker to work in Denver, Colorado. His timing was excellent, as I had just made up my mind to find work somewhere. And where better than Denver?

And so it was that I put on a shirt and necktie , and returned to work. I started working in M&T’s Denver office on March 5th, 2007.

I committed to work for nine months, which, if my math serves me, means that I will be in Denver at least until December 5th, 2007.

This work arrangement was quite fortuitous for me. The timing and location were very convenient. Moreover, the job pays somewhat better than landscaping work might. Additionally, the job represents a promotion from my previous responsibilities with M&T. Without intending to, I have advanced my banking career by at least by a small degree.

However, my daily work does not compare to the exhilartion of world travel. In addition to dealing with day-to-day interactions in the workplace, my responsibilities include writing extremely long and detailed financial reports. As a result, I am afraid that my writing style has suffered irreparably.

I have kept busy while in Denver, and as always I have met many new and interesting people. Nonetheless, I ache to get back on the road. Even as I write this post, I can hear the road calling me, beckoning me to return…

Hello friends. It’s been a long time, and there is so much to talk about! I know a lot of people want to know what’s going on with me, and I’ll get to that in a future post, but for the time being, the most important thing that I want to talk about is Salt Lake City’s 2nd Annual Poverty Awareness Concert.

Last year local members of the ONE Campaign organized Salt Lake City’s First Annual Poverty Awareness Concert. The video above contains highlights from the concert. Right click here to download the video. If you’re not able to view it, you need to download Quicktime.

I’m still learning the finer points of uploading video to the web, and I’m not completely satisfied with the compression quality on this video, but I guess it’s good enough to get the message across.

The 2nd Annual Poverty Awareness Concert is this Saturday at Salt Lake City’s Downtown Library, from 5 to 10 p.m. I will be traveling to Salt Lake especially to attend and help out with the concert. If you live in the Salt Lake area, I hope you’ll come out for the concert, and bring some friends.

If you live outside of the Salt Lake area, I hope you’ll check out the ONE Campaign’s website.

In actuality, I realize that not very many people are reading this blog these days, since I haven’t posted anything in months. But I’m also putting the video up on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, etc., so I felt like I should include it on my website as well.

Additionally, this post serves as my official announcement that I am ready to return to blogging. The following two photos are just a small taste of what’s to come…

Click on the photos to see the larger versions.