About

Bradley Charbonneau

Why “Pass the Sour Cream”? It seems to make just no sense at all.

First the background. I wrote a piece years back about traveling and eating in South East Asia. My then girlfriend and I had been … well, I’m just going to put the sour cream passage below and you’ll get the idea.

I had been in Asia just over two months—something like ten weeks, or if you’re counting days, about seventy days. Of course, if you’re counting meals, like I was, think about two hundred and ten. Add iodine-purified water, a permanent layer of dust on my tongue, and let’s just say I couldn’t always hold down what I did eat. Food was becoming my meaning, my passion, my existence. I dreamt up meals in my head: leafy salads, steak, anything without rice and noodles. Sure, rice and noodles are great, but try them for seventy days, three meals a day—try anything for that long. I wanted food from home. Besides, just before coming to Asia, I’d spent six months in Africa eating things that were beige, bland, and beaten. Oh yes, Asian food had sounded exotic and adventurous, but at this point given a choice between a baked potato and the Great Wall of China . . . pass the sour cream.

I’m big on clarity. But I also want to earn it. I want to provide a clear path, but make you jump through a hoop or two to get there. I also tend to have a vision and can’t get rid of it. Some of those visions end up as URLs.

I’m big on priorities. I don’t like excuses (e.g. “I don’t have time for that.”) because it’s really, usually, a choice. Do I truly not have time to go to the PTA meeting or is my work meeting just more important to me? I know I have a choice, I can do what I please. It’s up to me. Besides death and taxes, I have a choice. Great Wall of China? Baked potato? Pass the sour cream.

My current priorities are getting a little out of balance and I want to work on that. Too much work, too little money, too little time. Hmm, odd balance. But common enough. This will be my journey, my path to my baked potato, my decisions, tips, tricks, and tribulations of getting not only from Point A to Point B, but making sure Point B is really where I want to go. But most of all making sure the path I’m on is the one I want to be on.

Ready?