About Me
Hey there! My name is Ryan, and this is my girlfriend Valentina!
This was my best friend, Shadow. She loved to go on adventures. Sadly, she passed away in August of 2021 from hemangiosarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer.
This is my new puppy Abby. She was abandoned in front of my friend’s house in Atlanta. I didn’t think I was ready for a new dog, because all of this happened within days of Shadow’s death. Now, I couldn’t imagine life without her!
A little about me – I was born in 1987 and was raised in the city of Stone Mountain, GA. I was probably the last generation to spend their childhood outside – building ramps for our bikes, wrestling on the trampoline, and building teepees in the woods.
I started rollerblading in middle school. I got pretty good at it (this was a 23-stair handrail at Henderson Elementary). I stopped skating when I was about 16 years old – your body doesn’t recover from concussions, sprains, or other injuries as quickly once you’re a bit older..
During high school, I worked at a local veterinary office and also at a QuikTrip gas station. After high school I attended Georgia Southern University.
I had the chance to study abroad in 2008, and I went to Italy and Greece for five weeks. I spent the last two weeks riding the EuroRail and backpacking from Italy to Spain. I got to meet a distant cousin on mine while I was there (in Milan) and then I traveled through Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Spain. I met some great people along the way and loved my time there.
I did another study abroad trip to Chile in 2010. We started in the city of La Serena (on the coast), and traveled up the coast, making our way to Santiago. I double-majored in Creative Writing and Spanish at Georgia Southern, and graduated in 2011.
The summer after graduation, my girlfriend at the time was doing a three-month college course in Milan, Italy. Her dad owned a tire shop in Norcross, and I worked for him for three months and saved enough money to buy a plane ticket to Italy. I got to see my cousin again (he lives in Milan) and I was able to stay in a vacant apartment that he owned. I was in Italy for about two weeks this time.
Once I got back from Italy, it was time for me to get a “real job”. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do (especially as a Creative Writing / Spanish major!) but I found a cool job working at a treetop obstacle course in Buford. It’s basically an adventure course / zipline course in the trees and the concept had just been brought to the US by a French company. I worked there for 1.5 years.
I had a few months of free time between Treetop Quest and my next job. I took advantage of this time and planned my first cross-country road trip with my ex-girlfriend Molly. We were on the road for over a month, and drove over 10,000mi in my Honda Civic.
Shortly after the road trip, I was hired by an auditing firm to perform internal compliance audits for a client that has hundreds of branches throughout the country. I had to spend two weeks out of every month on the road, performing audits of stores for our client. I did this for 3.5 years, until constantly living out of a suitcase became too much. This job took me all over the US – I’ve hit every state except for four!!
Once I left the auditing job, I worked for about three months as an electrician’s helper at various sites in Atlanta, GA. I then decided to enroll at Georgia Gwinnett College to study Information Technology, and began their Software Development program in the Spring of 2018. I graduated from that program in Spring of 2020.
Update: I graduated during the COVID-19 pandemic and got a job as a Remote Software Engineer at Kapsch TrafficCom. I’ve been there almost two years now and I love it! There’s a new challenge every day!