Hi, I’m Erich
And I am a curiousiholic. When I’m not in the kitchen coming up with some new takes on food, I’m wandering somewhere in nature wondering why, what, and is this edible? I always wanted to be an explorer, finding something out there that is not googleable. And there is plenty.
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. ~ Albert Schweitzer
I grew up birdwatching and fishing, soon mushroom hunting and picture taking, then traveling and later flying.
And now I live in the US, living the dream, living in the ville. Life is good and short, so let’s share it.
I want to share my hobbies, so you can help me improve these skills and learn some for yourself.
Imagine Maplewoodroad.com becoming a little regional planet in the internet-verse of the eastern US, where we can share seasonal, traditional, and local food; events; and ideas without having to jump from website to website. Imagine someone else building a similar community for the Southwestern US. And then someone else in southern Italy, or southeast Asia, or Scandinavia. Creating regional online planets on the internet-verse under one umbrella, maplewoodroad.com.
I grew up in Switzerland, hiking the alps, fishing the lakes, and enjoying homemade food my parents grew in their own vegetable garden.
When I was not in school, I was somewhere in the forest, climbing trees, checking out bird nests, or stalking foxes to take pictures. At 21 years old, I backpacked solo around the world in 51 weeks and 6 days. That’s when my curiosity gene really exploded. The food, the smells, the sites, the people, the culture, the wildlife. I wanted to learn everything about it.
I worked in classic advertising for the next 10 years, taking month-long breaks in between to travel (mostly to southeast Asia).
Out of curiosity, I participated in the US green card lottery and won. I moved to the US when I was 30, first to Hawaii and California, before starting flight training in Florida and meeting Viana in Daytona Beach. The rest is history, as the saying goes.
For the last 15 years, I’m the captain and manager of a private jet for a family based in New Jersey. This job not only keeps my travels going but also gives me the time to do what I like most: hiking, birding, cooking, foraging, picture taking, and just going out looking at something in nature and coming up with questions that can’t just be googled to find an answer.
When Viana asked me in 2018 about starting a website (I like to call it an e-zine), I said of course. And here we are.
Sharing private stuff to potentially anybody in the world was not an easy decision for me, but I believe that with all the anonymity out there on the web, you, as a reader, should know who actually writes these articles so that you can better relate and react to them.
It’s obviously the first time for both of us doing anything like this. We’re open to any suggestions to make this journey and experience an awesome trip, for anyone interested.
Please take a moment to read the following quote, stand back, and let it sink in:
Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality." ~ David Bohm, theoretical physics