Our Story – How Chris & Cherie ended up as Technomads

We were on opposite coasts of the country when we met in 2006, and we met in the course of each of us starting to explore new lives for ourselves.

Our story

The 16' T@B trailer we traveled in for our first year on the road together.

How we met & our ‘T@bbed Browsing’ days

Chris had just left behind his Silicon Valley career to start pursuing his dreams of full time nomadism in a tiny 16′ T@b Clamshell travel trailer.  He was in part inspired by his good friend Steve Roberts‘ (who coined the word) pioneering technomadic adventures years before.

Meanwhile, Cherie was running a custom software development business from her beachside home in Florida, and was already working remotely as she engaged in personal travel. She had been moving her life towards moving to the San Francisco area, drawn by a much more robust community and opportunity than Florida could continue to provide.

We first encountered each other in a Prius (yes, the hybrid car) forum shortly after Chris hit the road and discovered we had friends in common.  Chris had just traded in his Prius for a Jeep, and Cherie was searching for tips on hacking her brand new Prius that she bought.

After months of correspondence, we finally met for the first time in October 2006 on an epic 27 hour first date. After that, we knew we were meant for each other, and started exploring the possibilities of how our lives might merge.

Chris was already about to start on his first cross country transition in the T@b, so he set his destination as Florida to meet back up with Cherie in a few weeks.  She didn’t believe it until he was already half way across the country.

Given that the housing market was crashing, Cherie was having difficulty selling her house to move to California. At first we thought Cherie might join Chris on the road for a week or so at a time, but we quickly learned we were meant for much more.  Since life in the T@b was affordable as it was designed for complete off-grid living with its solar panel Chris installed – Cherie could afford to keep up her house in Florida until it sold AND explore full time travel with Chris.

So on May 10, 2007 – after purging over 90% of her stuff, we set off on a 7-month trial run together that took us nearly 13,000 miles around the USA.

We only had 45 sq ft of living space, no bath facilities, refridgerator or air conditioning  - but we had solar power, cellular internet and an exciting new relationship.  We learned, that’s all we *really* needed to be happy.  Well… kinda.

Road Test Complete – ‘Going Oliver The Place’

During our 7 month cross country adventure in the T@b, we decided:

• We make excellent life partners, and had a life commitment ceremony while at Burning Man.
• We wanted to continue traveling, so we sold Cherie’s home & Prius.
• We needed a touch more space than the T@b offered, namely we wanted a dedicated bed & desk.

Our Oliver Travel Trailer at Burning Man 2010

We commissioned Oliver Travel Trailers to custom build us a sweet 17′ fiberglass travel trailer with as much solar and battery capacity as we could squeeze into it.  Sadly, Oliver quit making these fabulous trailers shortly after they completed ours, making ours a very unique high end combination of quality, high tech and small space.   It was only 1 of 45 ever made.

We now had a luxurious 80 sq ft of living space, a bathroom, refrigerator and air conditioning! We happily traveled full-time in our Oliver from July 2008 – May 2011, enjoying such a variety of locations.

The Oliver could go places most other RVs simply couldn’t, and gave us everything we needed to live comfortably.

Towards the end of 2010, serendipity gave us an invitation to sublet a friend’s treehouse cottage on a remote area of the island of St. John in the USVI.  It took us all of a few hours to decide YES.  So we parked the Oliver for 5 months, and spent the winter in tropical paradise.

The current journey – Vintage Bus Days!

Our time in the US Virgin Islands taught us:

• We really like being able to mix up the pace and style of travel, and that we didn’t want to be focused on RVing only. It was time to start exploring other styles of travel.
• We did want to maintain a mobile home base in the USA, as we have so many ties with family, community and work. Regardless of where our travels took us, we still anticipated spending a significant part of the year roaming the US.
• We also came to the conclusion that our days of living in micro-tiny spaces were likely over – we were craving more space. So we needed to create a comfortable & unique, yet affordable, mobile home base first.

We anticipated taking several months to search out our options (already leaning towards vintage buses), but almost as soon as we mentally came to terms that our Oliver days  may be coming to an end – we immediately we got an unsolicited offer to sell at a price we couldn’t refuse. There’s that serendipity for you.

Lightpainting of our bus, by Karen Nace & Ben Willmore

We delivered our Oliver with about a week’s notice, borrowed a small motorhome from a friend on the way and then jumped on Amtrak to travel the country in search of a vintage bus with a rail pass.

It was hectic and crazy, we had no plan and we trusted completely in serendipity that we would be lead to where we needed to be.

In late June 2011, in the 115+ degree desert heat of southern Arizona – we found Zephyr.  A 1961 GM PD-4106, 35′ bus conversion that had sat still for many years, but was begging to get back out on the road.

She had already been converted to be a livable RV, and we’ll be working as we travel to make her our ideal high tech home & office on wheels.  We anticipate we’ll travel most of the year around North America, and parking the bus for a couple months at a time and enjoying some international explorations.

We follow nomadic serendipity at every turn – so who knows how it’ll actually play out.

Our worklife

We’re not on vacation. We’re not taking a gap year(s).  We’re not retired early. We just took our careers on the road with us.

Our primary source of income is via our tech and software company – Two Steps Beyond.

Our projects range from managing custom software development projects (primarily in the healthcare industry), intense market research and orchestrating launch strategies. We don’t talk too much about this side of our work life, out of respect for our client’s privacy.

One of our travel apps - Coverage? Compares cellular coverage provider maps.

We also dabble in mobile phone application development, and are launching a line of incredibly useful travel apps for the iPhone & iPad. It’s more for fun and to solve problems we encounter on the road.  As we produce travel niche apps, and the app market is completely saturated – we barely make beer money by selling apps. But you might get the perception that this is a bigger part of our life than it is – simply because this is the aspect of our work life we can talk about.

We’ve also been known to take on short term intense gigs that are totally outside of our norm, just for the fun experience of it.  Such as packing boxes at Amazon.com during the holiday rush, volunteering full time to run an Obama campaign field office in rural Nevada, or orchestrating a guerilla marking launch of an iPhone app at Macword (involving organizing a week long party on a double decker bus).

Our work schedule is quite variable, and we definitely enjoy working in short intense bursts on projects as opposed to a regular work day.  We can work anywhere from a couple hours to a hundred hours a week.

Meet Technomadia

Chris Dunphy

Chris is a long-time technology geek, working in several venues of the Silicon Valley tech industry with a specialization in mobile technology. He’s been a tech journalist, mobile tech industry spy and forged creating a mobile application ecosystem.  He grew up traveling and living all over the world, including spending 3 years in Indonesia as a kid.

After traveling the world as an industry spy for Palm & PalmSource (a job just too good to give up), in April 2006 he evicted himself from his San Francisco penthouse apartment and launched into a technomadic lifestyle, making his life a living laboratory for mobile technology. He bought a T@B trailer, traded in his beloved hybrid vehicle and off he set.

He’s also a pilot (usually carrying his ultralight paramotor with him), photographer and all around adventurer.

His online screenname is is ‘Radven’ – short for Radical Adventurer

www.radven.net / chris@technomadia.com

AIM/YIM: RenDevang     Skype/Twitter: radven

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