About Me
Greetings! My name is Jack Noah Rees and I’m a teacher and travel writer from a small corner of the Welsh countryside in the United Kingdom. It’s a picturesque and peaceful part of the world and a location that has, quite simply, inspired me to get as far away from it as possible (I jest) – although the nomadic seeds were sewn at a very young age.
I have always had a mild – others may say a fervent – obsession with countries, flags, and travelling for as long as I can remember. I could recognise every country’s national flag before I could swim, cycle, or use a Super Pumper (see the adjacent photo of my sister and me in our youths). I would spend countless hours looking through atlases and always dreamt of being able to visit these strange and foreign lands, just as soon as I had stopped wetting the bed.
Fast forward into adulthood and I really struggled to take those first fearsome steps into the unknown – to start the voyages and journeys that I had always dreamt of as a child. I had lived in Wales my whole life (and had had more part-time jobs than fingers on both hands) when I finally decided to take the plunge and move to Canada for a year. I had only made short trips around Europe until that point, so it was quite a colossal leap, but it soon became the first step towards a completely different life.
My time road-tripping and exploring British Columbia strengthened my travelling ambitions and I quickly realised that I was now unable to go back to the monotonous, safe existence I once had. My lifetime ambition, instigated by picking up a book on flags as a toddler, became to travel to each and every one of the one hundred and ninety-six countries of the world. This includes all one hundred and ninety-three member states of the United Nations, plus the two non-member observer states (Vatican City and Palestine), as well as Kosovo (the only country recognised by the United Kingdom but not yet by the UN). I decided to name my foolhardy expedition Bucket List 196.
However, I am not going to each country simply to tick them off a list, oh no. I won’t be flag-poling nations – jumping across a border for five minutes before returning – as this would defeat the whole object of my journey, except in places where there is a high likelihood that I will be struck in the head by a grenade. I think it is essential to experience a country through the eyes of its locals, to contribute to their economy, and to gain a better understanding of what daily life is really like – this is one of the main reasons I strongly advocate road tripping. I want to see as much of our world as I possibly can, both the spectacular and the deplorable and following a numerical list of nations is the best way of quantifying my goal (having OCD has nothing to do with it).
I decided that a good way of preparing for my global journey would be to attempt to visit all the fifty states of America in one calendar year. A feat I completed in 2015 as I drove, along with three companions, the length and breadth of the contiguous forty-eight states, living in the back of a 1997 Plymouth Voyager called Sam. With so many tales to tell and tips to share from our grand adventure, I felt a sudden irrepressible urge to write them down, or rather type them up. The result of which is the subject of my first e-book, which I hope to finish at some point before Hell freezes over.
As for the future, my love of travel has led me to create Hit The Road Jack, from which I will do my very best to entertain, encourage, and, hopefully, inspire the odd person to sack the 9 to 5 and start working from the road, filling their lives with fantastical experiences in foreign lands!
See you on the road.
J
