Mere months after Josh and I met, we put all our stuff into a storage locker and hit the road. We intended to focus on Bamberg and Vietnam, but what was originally going to be a year of traveling turned into five years of nonstop walking the earth. We’ve now been to 7 continents, but still don’t feel like we’ve done enough.

Unfortunately for you,I’m a reluctant blogger. I wanted to record as much as possible from the journeys: what I have eaten and where; all the beers we drank and breweries visited, what cities or towns surprised or disappointed us. In recording this knowledge, we could have provided you with a roadmap for future travels.

It has not quite worked out that way.

I am a professional writer–have been for fifteen years. It is the only thing I really know how to do.

But I don’t like writing about my travels. Why? Maybe it’s because I don’t want traveling to become a job.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles…

This blog started with the moniker “A Single Step,” named after the adage about how every journey begins.

Drink Vicariously With Us!

A few years later, I changed the blog to “Drink Vicariously” because “Drink Vicariously with Sunshine and Josh” was the name given to our Facebook page when we first hit the road.

But neither of those blogs flowed, we barely wrote, and with no readers, I felt as if the effort of blogging was futile. I still do, because I don’t like recording everything I do when I travel.

Love and Barley

One day I found myself writing about a Japanese poet named Basho, who traveled far and wide in Japan. He wrote about his travels in verse. A collection of those verses is entitled “Love and Barley.” Because we love beer, the barley part of the equation made sense. And we love each other. Duh.

Basho’s work also struck a chord because he eschewed a traditional lifestyle with home or possessions. He left it all behind to go traveling, and he did so unselfconsciously. We did the same.

This is the only way I know how to live. I have to travel, because it is the only anti-depressant I care to take.

Who We Are

My name is Sunshine Kessler. I’m an only child. I was born and raised on Miami Beach. I am into yoga, meditation, writing, and beer.

Josh Oakes and I have been traveling and drinking beer together for seven years. We met in Vancouver, BC.

Josh can name every country and its capital in ten minutes.

We met in 2009 at the old Dix brewpub in Vancouver, and decided to just hit the road. We have no home base. People think it’s glamorous, but it’s not. It’s just a more affordable way of traveling.

It’s exhausting to travel this much. We want a well-wired burrow, a pied-à-terre (or pied-à-mer!) from which to process experiences and recharge the batteries between trips. Maybe then, I would write better blogs!

Mixing business with pleasure is never fun. The intention is to never turn traveling into a job and to always remain open to the wonderment of life. This blog is just a reflection of our lives, and my desire to share it with you.