About

Hi! My name is Justin Bachus. I work in technology, I’m an avid skier, and I love to travel. Below is a little about my past, but check out my Now page to see what I’m doing now.

Work

I’ve been tinkering with computers ever since I was a kid when I would dual-boot our family computer with the latest Linux distribution that I was experimenting with, downloaded over a slow dial-up connection that shared the line with our family landline! I’ve done everything from creating websites to system/database administration to writing software and stringing together tools to scale both the software development process and the backend infrastructure, automatically and reliably.

Play

Skiing & Mountains

Growing up in Texas, skiing wasn’t exactly a part of the culture. However, when I was about 12 years old, my parents took the family on a ski trip to New Mexico, driving 12 hours to the nearest snow. I was enrolled in ski lessons, took to it immediately, and it has been a passion of mine ever since. After that, I took it upon myself to plan our spring break trips myself, making sure they involved mountains and snow whenever I could!

I was an active Cub Scout and Boy Scout throughout my youth, eventually earning the rank of Eagle Scout. I relished in the occasional summer camping trips to the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado, especially enjoying a long 100+ mile backpacking trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico. I knew that I wanted to move to the mountains after college, at least for a little while. It was after a ski trip to Snowbird and Alta in Utah during college that I knew Salt Lake City is where I would go next. I’ve lived in the mountains ever since, skiing in winter and hiking in summer as much as I can.

Travel

Those early ski trips were good training for developing my trip planning skills - finding the best transportation options, figuring out a place to stay and things to do, and finding the best possible deal on everything. I had a compressed 4 day work week at my first job out of college, so in 2008 I decided that I’d better make the most of the long weekends and I made a resolution to visit a new place every month. A year later, I took an extended 5 month solo trip to New Zealand. I was hooked!

Since then, I’ve visited over 40 countries, all 50 states, and all 63 US National Parks. I’ve learned a great deal about budget travel, travel hacking, and RVing in the process.

Education

I graduated in 2007 with a BBA from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, double-majoring in Management Information Systems and Business Honors, an undergraduate program modeled after case-based MBA programs.