We’re still in Florida, parked in Kissimmee.  Our location is ideal – a gracious friend is letting us park on his amazing land that has full hook-ups. It is such a blessing to have a safe place to leave our home, and a place to retreat to. Without worrying [...]]]> Just a quick, rather disjointed, update.

Kiki climbing trees!

We’re still in Florida, parked in Kissimmee.  Our location is ideal – a gracious friend is letting us park on his amazing land that has full hook-ups. It is such a blessing to have a safe place to leave our home, and a place to retreat to. Without worrying about the expense of a peak season priced RV Spot.

Kiki loves it here, as it’s the only place we let her go off leash for a bit, as there’s no predatory animals here to threaten her. She does amazingly well, and to her – this is Disney World.

It’s an easy hour drive to my parents place in Melbourne, where we’ve been splitting our time between the the bus and in their guest room. And with the MINI getting great fuel economy, the commute expenses have been low.

Our past month has mainly been focused on family, and getting my dad’s treatment plans off the ground.  It’s been hectic and at times emotionally draining, of course – but it’s going well so far. I thank you all dearly for all the kind comments, e-mails and support.

For the month ahead, hopefully the hectic pace will subdue some and we can all get back to a bit of a routine.  For us that means shifting attention back to work and bus projects, and doing a little bit of nomading around Florida. We’ll stay close to the area, as the next round of testing to see how treatments are going won’t be until March.

Here’s what’s generally on tap for us in the next month:

Work

We are working on updates to both our apps, Coverage? and State Lines.   Coverage? is due for a routine map refresh (we find our customers start complaining about the maps being out of date around 2-3 months) and we’re adding a new, frequently asked for feature.

State Lines will be a massive re-write with about double the amount of rules & regulations that affect US travelers, with an entirely new interface including iPad support.  If you have a suggestion for info to add to the app, now’s the time to request it!

This is of course, on top of our normal workload and taking over some support tasks from my father in our shared software business.

Bus Projects

We are potentially moving the bus over to the Tampa area next week, for a skilled family member to do some interior work for us.

We want to pull the oven/stovetop out of the kitchen and replace it with a cabinet for storing our portable induction cooktop and other kitchen gadgets that we actually use for cooking. We’ll eventually replace our microwave with a combo convection oven style for our very occasional baking needs.

We’ll also have the countertops replaced in both the kitchen and bathroom, as our temporary paint job we did back in July is starting to show wear.  We may even do some modifications to our dual desk set up to make it even more awesome!  We hope to consult on what cabinetry modifications will need to be made to swap our propane/electric fridge out for an energy efficient 12v one (such as a Novacool).

Recent changes to the bedroom in the bus - valances recovered, new TV over nightstand.

We actually did tackle a couple of small bus projects last month – we recovered our valances in the bedroom, and installed a 22″ LED TV & Blueray player that streams over wifi (with many thanks to Chris’ folks for the awesome holiday gift!).  The TV is on a swing arm over a nightstand, as we tend to watch content while snuggled up in bed anyway. It’s the first TV we’ve owned since we hit the road back in 2007 – but it’ll  mainly be used for viewing movies, Netflix content and discs.  For viewing movies in the living area, we use one of our huge computer monitors.

And we’ve started some research into approaching installing solar panels on the bus.  In preparation for that, we did a comprehensive energy evaluation on all current systems by taking measurements of each device, light fixture and appliance.  This will help us focus on our needs, as well as where to concentrate on improving our efficiency.

Moving up in the World

We’ll be moving Technomadia.com (this blog) to new hosting.  In January, we had a record breaking month for traffic (we’re up to over 30,000 page views a month these days, and nearly 19,000 unique visitors). This, despite having a fairly slow month for new content as we switched our focus to family.

Recent traffic on Technomadia.com

We’re blown away by this, particularly since we never set out to be ‘bloggers’ and don’t put effort into building traffic.

However, the increased traffic is starting to tax our current cheap shared hosting solution on Dreamhost. We’ve turned off just about every plug-in we can, but still encounter slow load times and frequent timeout related 404 and 500 errors when trying to update/write posts. The other evening, it took me 2 very frustrating additional hours to get our Purging Stuff  post polished and scheduled – just fighting these errors.

If we’re going to continue upkeeping the site, which we do mostly enjoy, it’s time to move up in the world.  We were researching other solutions (other shared hosts, switching to VPS, etc) – when our friend offered to let us have some space on his scaleable Cloud Services account with Rackspace that is way underutilized.  He made an offer we couldn’t refuse that doesn’t increase our costs to keep providing this site.  So, over the coming week or so, we’ll be trying it out and moving.

Hopefully we can do this without interruptions, but – in case we fail, now you know why.

So, next week might see us over in the Tampa area for a bit, which will let us visit Chris’ folks who are still wintering in Spring Hill.  After that, we’ll be taking it one step at a time, and perhaps doing a little bit of meandering around central Florida while we await the next round of tests for my father to know what is next.

If you’re around and would desire a meet up, have bus parking, have a hot tub, ideas for interesting things to see & do in the area, etc. – let us know!

We imagine we’ll be returning the Melbourne and/or Kissimmee area by the end of month, as that’s when the next set of appointments is and my brother is coming in town. After that? Too soon to know.

One thing is fairly certain – our bid to ‘win’ a Burning Man ticket in their new lottery system was a fail. We, and several other core Camp Nomadia members, received confirmation last night that we did not win tickets. So, like last year, we’re not making plans around attending the burn this year.  If it happens, it happens.  Which means, we’re not contemplating a cross country transition to make it to the playa in late August.  It also means, we’ll not be organizing Camp Nomadia. And with very few core members making plans around going, it’s too soon to tell if there will be Camp Nomadia.  We suspect many other veteran camps are in the same position.

Join us for a little journey in reminiscing about some past adventures.

(If you’re reading [...]]]> Over on the Escapee Forums, someone asked what quirky museums RVers have visited in their travels across the USA.  In compiling my response, I realized we’ve started a bit of a video collection of some amazing inspired artists.

Join us for a little journey in reminiscing about some past adventures.

(If you’re reading this post on RSS or e-mail, you may not see the embedded videos for each attraction. To view them, simply click through to the original post).

City Museum – St. Louis, MO

Our original post after a visit to City Museum.

We visit St. Louis often in our travels as we have family there, but it’s also become one of my favorite cities to spend time in. And we’ve had more nomadic rendezvouses here than anywhere else. And we always take our visiting friends to the City Museum.

The City Museum is no ordinary museum, however.  Sure, it is full of found things that are preserved. And it gets the ‘City’ part of its name because the found things are entirely from within municipal St. Louis.  But that’s where the museum part ends.. because this is definitely a place where you don’t just look. You touch. You crawl. You slide. You climb.

This place is what you might imagine would happen if you gave Peter Pan a blow torch.

Here’s a video we produced on the City Museum:

Cathedral of Junk – Austin, TX

Video of one of our visits:

Salvation Mountain – Slab City, CA

What other epic art projects are there to explore in the USA?  We seriously need to continue this journey!

Every so often [...]]]> Following serendipity at every turn is an interesting game we’ve been playing for the past several years.  It’s not about taking every opportunity that comes up, but rather creating a life that allows us to both be in tune with the possibilities, and being agile enough to follow the ones we choose.

Every so often we shake our magic serendipity ball, and nothing happens.  Approaching the end of 2011, that’s exactly where we were. No plans.  Hardly any ideas.

We enjoyed an excellent Christmas with both our parents under one roof. And we attended the Arcadia Bus Rally bringing in the New Year with dear friends.

A picture I took in 2007 in Yellowstone National Park (during our T@b days).

Just before we were pulling out of the rally, the news came in.

The latest unanticipated test results on my dad revealed that serendipity had left the time ahead open for a reason.  Our family is embracing hope and optimism for the rough road ahead.

We’ve been parked at a gracious friend’s tranquil place in Kissimmee – and are splitting our time out in Melbourne (about an hour away) taking an active role in his treatment, giving my folks all the support we can and taking over tasks as needed in our co-owned family software business.

Unfortunately there are few options in the Melbourne/Palm Bay area for RV parks, and they are either 55+ only, prohibitively expensive, not much closer and/or full up with the seasonal influx of snowbirds.  (Incidentally, if anyone has connections in the area for land or large drive ways that might welcome some technomads with a bus for a while, it would be quite a blessing to be closer. Although, aside from the distance – our current setup is pretty ideal.)

We don’t know yet how long we’ll be in Central Florida, we’re taking it one step at a time.  But it’ll likely be a while.  If you find yourself in the area, please do reach out – social breaks may be welcomed distractions.

All of our pre-scheduled blog posts have gone live. There were a couple more we had started and may complete.  Beyond that, I can’t say how much time or motivation we’ll have for writing. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t? (One of the big reasons we blog for joy, not income.)

We ask for your understanding if our postings here become sporadic.

Location independence is often portrayed as a glamourous life of galavanting around the world to see great places, eat great food and have amazing experiences. That’s certainly a nice motivation and benefit we enjoy.

But the core reason for our location flexibility?  To be where we choose to be.

Our plans ahead may not be exotic or inspiring blog fodder – but we’re exactly where we need… no … want to be.  No tropical beach or warm desert boondocking with friends compares right now.

We feel so incredibly blessed to have designed a lifestyle that allows us the flexibility to do something like this, and really be there for our loved ones.  No taking vacation or family medical leave time, no expensive travel to and from home, no feeling of putting our life on hold.  It’s simply built into our lifestyle to pull in and do whatever we can.

If you have a positive thought, well wish or prayer to spare – we would most welcome them.

There were far more buses here than at the BCM Rally we attended back in October in Chattanooga, and much more variety.  It was so [...]]]> Last weekend we attended the Arcadia Bus Rally - one of the longest running bus rallies in the country, and certainly one of the largest on the east coast.

Pano I took from the roof deck of Odyssey, with the iPhone app 'PhotoSynth'

There were far more buses here than at the BCM Rally we attended back in October in Chattanooga, and much more variety.  It was so much fun to see so many other buses of our vintage, and talk with so many other bus owners.  The rally posted a photo tour of all of the coaches in attendance – there’s some drool-worthy buses there.

Bus-side Seminars

We presented two seminars at the rally (on Mobile Internet Options and Lithium Ion Batteries), which seemed to be well received. We found out fairly last minute that the seminars would be live streamed, and apparently they may be accessible in an archive at some point.  The content is pretty much what we discuss in the linked blog posts, however – so if you missed the live stream, you’re not missing much.

Kiki even helped out with giving seminars.  During our Mobile Internet presentation, the screen kept advancing seemingly on its own.  We soon discovered Kiki was inside on the desk looking out the window at the crowd – with her paw on our wireless keyboard.

Technomadia & Our Odyssey

The highlight for us was getting some extended time being neighbors with Sean AND Louise of Our Odyssey.  We got to spend a week with just Sean up in Chattanooga, so it was great to re-connect with Louise as well.

Zephyr & Odyssey - Awning to Awning

Like we did at the BCM Rally, we parked our buses awning-to-awning and Sean & Louise set up their super-awesome portable hot tub for us to soak in at night.  There was some confusion amongst rally regulars, as last year our mutual friends Ben & Karen parked with Sean & Louise in a very similar configuration.

Recall that we have since purchased their MINI Cooper, and they are working on converting  Creative Cruiser – their vintage bus.  We had several folks mistake us as ‘Those friends of Sean & Louise’s with the MINI who were working on a vintage bus!’.    Well… obviously that description fits us now, but we had no clue this time last year!

Sean trying to fix our generator

We had a great time chilling with awesome friends over several days.  Sean, who doesn’t seem to be able to NOT try to fix things, made a valiant attempt at getting our generator working. It’ll start, but not keep running without bypassing some stuff.  He thinks we need some inexpensive parts or a new control board system.  That’ll have to be a project for another day. We are grateful for his efforts, and that Odyssey’s generator has more than enough power to share so that we could remain parked in the dry camping area with them.

NomadiCat MeetUp

But we weren’t the only ones enjoying a nomadic meet up. Angel & George & Opal (the onboard pets of Our Odyssey) and Kiki got to spend a lot of time chilling on our communal porch.

All and all.. a fantastic way to bring in the new year. Great friends. Hot Tub. Smoothly run rally.

Our past maps :  2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010

2011 was a year of a lot of changes for us, and trying to illustrate [...]]]>

Technomadia's 2011 Travel Route (Click for a bigger view)

Every year since we hit the road together, I’ve hand created a year end routing map – it’s such a fun way to reflect on the year’s adventures.

Our past maps :  2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010

2011 was a year of a lot of changes for us, and trying to illustrate that on a map was quite a challenge!  We started the year in the USVI, traveled via 3 different RVs, traveled cross country via train, traveled by car and took a few plane trips.

Here’s a quick recap of our 2011 adventures:

Virgin Islands: We ended our glorious winter on St. John, aside from a fun trip to Austin to speak at SXSW on Technomadism in March.  We returned to Miami in early April, rented a car to visit family and then re-united ourselves with our Oliver Travel Trailer stored in Orlando. We got moved back in and switched to trying to decide what was next for us.

Orion Sold: In late April, just as we were coming to realize we’re ready for a larger home on wheels, we got an unsolicited offer to sell our Oliver. We dashed up to Virginia to deliver in early May, with no plan for what to do with all our stuff, or where we’d live! It was huge leap of trusting in serendipity. We ended up traveling 1485 miles in our Oliver in 2011 before saying a bittersweet farewell.

Le’Sharo Ritual: Serendipity presented an offer to borrow a 1986 Le’Sharo motorhome to use as a moving truck with a bed.  It was an amusing ritual of frequent issues that tested our resilience.  We were pretty sure we wanted a vintage bus and viewed contenders on the east coast.  We traveled 3016 miles during our month in the Le’Sharo, including a stop in St. Louis to leave Kiki & our stuff.

Bus hunt by Train: We had a top contender bus in Oregon – and we both had always wanted to travel across country by train. So we decided to make the trip a train adventure! It turned out cheaper to buy a 1 month Amtrak rail pass than rail fare, so we decided to conduct the rest of our bus hunt by rail. We had an incredible cross country train journey in June, but got our hearts broken by the bus we went to see.

Finding our Bus: In hopes that buses in drier climates would be in better shape, we boarded a train to Arizona to continue the hunt. We rented a car to travel around the state looking at contenders.  On a whim to check out a bus that didn’t look all that promising on paper, our last stop in Yuma lead us to finding Zephyr – our 1961 GM 4106 vintage bus home. On June 22, we had our next home.

Blazing Hot Arizona: Our dear friends in Lake Havasu City, AZ opened their home & bus parking  to us.  The downside?  Summer in AZ is hot. Very hot.  At the peak, the temps reached 125+ (which  didn’t stop our crazy friends from surprising us with a bus warming!).  But we got a heck of a lot of bus work done during July. We flew back to St. Louis to bring Kiki home.

Burning Man: For the first time, we hadn’t planned to attend or not attend Burning Man.  Serendipity clearly spoke and presented us with tickets to the sold out event.  So after a stop in Flagstaff to cool off, then a trip down to Phoenix to pick up some sweet Lithium Ion Batteries to start building our new house battery system – we attended Burning Man, staying in Camp Nomadia which we founded in 2008.

Cross Country Mad Dash – We stayed in Las Vegas and St. George, UT in September (yearn!), enjoying another rendezvous with Ben & Karen (who we saw 8 times this year) – and then decided to get across country for the holidays.  A goal was set to attend the Bus Conversion Magazine Rally in Chattanooga.  It was way too quick of a trip, but we did attend the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.

MINI Adventure:  In late October, we headed to St. Louis to pick up our stuff and finally fully move into the bus. We also decided to buy Ben & Karen’s MINI Cooper to be our toad which was just coming out of lease.  To obtain the MINI, it required me flying back to Las Vegas and having a 1700 mile solo motoring trip back!

Florida: We made our way to Florida with a month long reservation awaiting us!  The holiday season was spent with both of our parents and our Florida communities.  And we also put 13.1 miles on our feet in November by completing our first half-marathon.

We ended up driving 6252 miles in Zephyr in 2011.

Whew.

What an amazing year!! Thank you each and every one of you for your encouragement throughout our adventures by following along, commenting, inviting us over and sharing your wisdom with us.  It means the world to us.

Here’s to the adventures ahead!

Oh wait, I remember – we’ve been keeping busy!

Last April we parked in this very location at Wickham Park in Melbourne when we got the unsolicited offer to sell our Oliver [...]]]> Wow.. where did the month go?  It seems like we just pulled in to Melbourne, Florida for our long anticipated still time.

Our spot at Wickham Park, Melbourne FL

Last April we parked in this very location at Wickham Park in Melbourne when we got the unsolicited offer to sell our Oliver Travel Trailer.

Ever since we’ve been on a whirlwind tour of the country in search of our bus and making it back across country.

Melbourne (well, technically Indian Harbour Beach) is where I lived when I met Chris back in 2006 and decided to join him on the road full time. I had lived here 12 years and have a lot of roots – most importantly, my parents.  Like St. Louis (where Chris’ family is from), Florida is a frequent destination in our travels.

We consider quality time with family to be one of the main benefits of our mobile lifestyle.

Back in September, when we were still out west, my father started having some symptoms that were… concerning. We were already aiming to spend the holidays in Florida, so we made the decision to start heading eastward ‘just in case’.

And thank goodness, just days before we pulled in… his results confirmed that his symptoms where something manageable and treatable. Whew… big relief!

Our time here has been full of joy, happiness and celebration of life.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family.  My brother flew in for a long weekend for a long overdue family reunion.. and for my mother’s 65th birthday.

Chris working outside on iOS development.

Aside from re-caulking the shower, the bus hasn’t changed a bit in the last month. No bus projects!

In the past couple of weeks we’ve put out an update to both Coverage? and the final update to State Lines 2011. We’ve broken ground on a total re-write of State Lines to allow for easier expansion of data and iPad support. The re-write will also serve as a foundation for some other product ideas that we’re excited to focus on next.

We also started a total rewrite of our old ‘Answers to the Common Excuses to Not Travel Full Time’ (ugh, what a mouthful!) blog series, and are re-launching it as ‘No Excuses: Go Nomadic‘.  We’ll be releasing a newly updated chapter every few weeks, as well as updating the pay-as-you-wish eBook version as we go.

Kiki at 'work' (and our view off our porch)

Kiki has also gotten into a work routine while parked here.  Everyday we walk her over to a nearby clump of trees where she is managing a crew of squirrels.  She excitedly wakes us up every morning for her commute.

We’ve been able to get back into a bit of a fitness routine launched by us each completing a 1/2 Marathon.  We love staying at Wickham Park while we’re in Melbourne in part because of all of the walking & running trails around. Well, and it’s one of the few options in the area.  For $475/month, it’s a pretty good deal for long term stays in Florida.

Our social calendar has remained pretty full, between hosting a wonderful ‘open bus’ (which we totally forgot to take pictures at), reconnecting with old friends and making new ones.

Jessica & Duncan of Traveling On the Outskirts

We got to finally meet and hang out with Duncan & Jessica of Traveling On the Outskirts – who also originated their travels in Melbourne.  And we got to spend some time with Sean & Louise of Our Odyssey who are roaming around the area.

Tomorrow we’ll break camp and head over to the west coast of Florida (just north of Tampa) to where Chris’ folks are spending their first Christmas at their new Florida winter home. We’ll follow that up by attending the Arcadia Bus Rally (where we hope Sean & Louise will join us at – *poke poke*).

After last holiday season alone in the tropics (oh, woe is us) it’s really nice to get so much quality holiday time with loved ones.

We haven’t a clue where we’re headed after the first of the year.  There’s temptation to quickly head back west to join up with all of the NuRVers converging in Arizona and southern California for the winter (which our social side craves) or meander our way to Texas in time to ‘unattend’ SXSW in March (which our ‘take it slow’ side craves).

What’s your winter and spring looking like?  Any events, rendezvouses, gatherings, opportunities or invitations we should consider?

It’s not often that we actually have plans more than a day or two out, but Florida is a difficult place to winter in an [...]]]> After a brutally hot summer in Arizona getting the bus ready, we’re definitely following the good weather this winter.  We are headed to Florida to spend the holidays with family!

It’s not often that we actually have plans more than a day or two out, but Florida is a difficult place to winter in an RV without reservations. So, we’ve gone against our default of trusting in serendipity on a nightly basis, and have actually laid out plans!

Here they are:

• November 13 – 17 – Altamonte Springs, FL (north Orlando)
• November 18 – December 19 – Melbourne, FL (yes… a month!! In one spot??)
• December 20 – 28 – Hudson, FL (north of Tampa)
• December 28 – 31 – Arcadia, FL for the Arcadia Bus Rally
• Early 2012 and beyond – Undetermined.

Technomadia’s Open Bus Invites

Hosting a talk on Lithium Ion Batteries at the BCM Rally.

The benefit to having actual plans, is that we can dip our toes into something we’ve been wanting to do for a while – which is organizing casual meet-ups with our readers.

As such, we have scheduled a couple of ‘Open Bus’ events while we’re in Florida.

If you’re in the area, we’re extending an invite to stop on over, meet us, ask questions about technomadism and tour our bus.

You can RSVP on our Facebook event’s pages:

Open Bus – Orlando Area – Thursday, Nov 17 – 3-8pm

Open Bus – Melbourne – Sunday, Nov 27 – 3-5pm

Eventually, when we know in advance we’ll be somewhere, we’d like to organize some casual multi-day gatherings and talk series – sorta like taking our ‘Camp Nomadia’ concept on the road.  But this is a start.

We’ll also be at the Arcadia Rally in late December – and have been invited to present on Lithium Ion Batteries and Mobile Internet Options.  If you’re also attending the rally, we look forward to meeting you there!

As always, we absolutely enjoy meeting up with our readers during our travels – as that’s the primary reason we keep this blog.  So if you’re also in Florida this winter, let us know – and let’s see what we can coordinate.

We are very much looking forward to putting the landing gear down in a few days and having much quality time with friends & family in Florida. And maybe, just maybe, a few less bus projects??

We’re often asked about our pace of travel – and for the record – these past couple weeks are not indicative of our preferred style. In our ideal world, we’d travel a couple hundred miles and stick around for a few weeks or more before [...]]]> Whew, what a few hectic weeks it’s been.

Too Rushed

We’re often asked about our pace of travel – and for the record – these past couple weeks are not indicative of our preferred style. In our ideal world, we’d travel a couple hundred miles and stick around for a few weeks or more before traveling another couple hundred miles – rinse, repeat.

In reality, it hardly ever works out that way.

Events we want to attend, people we want to see and opportunities pre-empt our intentions and far too often we find ourselves on a cross country repositioning in far too quick of time.

For a lot of folks, taking 12 days to travel 2000 miles may seem slow – after all, if you drive straight through you can get across country in a matter of a couple days. But this hyper mobile lifestyle of ours isn’t sustainable long term if we keep a pace like that.

We’re not on vacation after all. We have to juggle the rest of life in with those miles. Fitness, quality time with each other, resting, keeping up with the world, blogging, cooking & cleaning, walking the cat, social time with friend’s paths we cross, enjoying places we stop, errands, etc. And let’s not forget, unexpected obstacles and that work thing.

We simply find that trying to get in work hours and drive hours on the same day just doesn’t work well for us. We need to stop for a day or two at a time and have office days. Especially this time of year, when one of my major clients undergoes their fiscal year turn over that I have to orchestrate.

Ever since we left St. George, we’ve been in pretty much a state of exhaustion. 12-days to get to Chattanooga is way too rushed for our tastes.

Journey to the Rally

At our last travel update, we had just left Ben & Karen in Albuquerque after an amazing time at the Balloon Fiesta.

Lake Meredith - June 2007

We took a couple day stop along Lake Meredith, just north of Amarillo.  5 years ago on our maiden trial voyage in the T@b, we discovered this free camping spot.

With scenic waterfront views, excellent 3G signal and completely free – it’s a Technomad Trifecta.

But soon it was time to hit the road, with miles to make every day.  We crossed through a very windy Oklahoma with stops in Hinton and Wister.

Lake Meredith - October 2011

Then an overnight in Hot Springs, AR for a rendezvous with an old friend – and sadly, no time for a hot bath soak. An overnight at a most peaceful rest stop in Corinth, MS, and then on to a day in Huntsville for an overdue visit to the Apple Genius Bar to take care of some poking issues. We averaged about 200 miles a day to keep the pace as sane as possible.

We pulled into Chattanooga to the Bus Conversion Magazine pre-workshop week, and hit the ground running.

Workshops

We made the rush drive to take advantage of the day long workshops being offered before the rally.

Preventative Maintenance workshop with Don of Choo Choo and Mike of BCM

Our first day was spent on preventative maintenance, a topic we knew we needed help with to bring our bus up to date after 15 years of neglect.

And our second day was a planned nearly all day driving class. While Chris has been rocking the driving, I’ve been hesitant to get behind the wheel.

Both classes were good, but honestly, a bit underwhelming for what was advertised.  Both lasted about half their scheduled time, only had 4 students and neither taught by experienced trainers (but definitely by experts in their topics).

I did successfully parallel park a 40′ bus (woohoo!), and I do feel proficient in driving a bus around an empty parking lot.  But I had hoped to gain confidence in driving in conditions that I’m more likely to encounter – like tight city corners, traffic, hills and just generally avoiding squishing people.

Bus Maintenance

Before the rally, we were a bit confused as to the relationship between Bus Conversion Magazine and Choo Choo Express Garage, who share an address.  Turns out, they are separate entities – with BCM renting space at the garage.

The workshops were held at the garage, which had us staying there too. And this turned out to be a huge blessing.

The garage used to once be the yard of a fleet of charter buses, but is now a dedicated bus shop with highly skilled mechanical knowledge.

Our bus (yes, still nameless) being inspected.

So while we were there, we had them pull our bus over the pit and do an unofficial thorough DOT inspection. As a titled motorhome, our bus isn’t required to have this inspection. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.

Joel pointed out some things that could use attention – primarily maintenance stuff that needed catching up, but all and all – the bus checked out as solid.  We had him tighten up our steering, change a pancake diaphragm in a front brake, fix an air valve, flush our coolant and swap out our transmission filter to be an easier to maintain screw on kind.

We also discussed some future projects that need to happen soon, including replacing all of the air suspension bags.

We fell in love with Choo Choo – friendly knowledgable folks, excellent shop rates and we learned so much.

The Rally

The rally itself was held just a couple miles away at Camp Jordan, so after we got our bus off the pit we headed over a night early to get set up and relax a bit.

Bus Rally!

Over the next days, there were a total of about 40 buses that joined up for the weekend.  There were buses of all sorts – Eagles, Prevost, MCI, GM, Neoplan, Wanderlodge and Skoolies.  It was great to see such a wide variety of both buses and bus owners.

Originally the rally had over a 100 buses saying they would attend, but not all of the registrations made it in. So unfortunately the organizer had to scramble last minute to scale back the event.  Considering he was taking this on alone, he did a remarkable job keeping the event together.  And we’re very appreciative of his efforts.

Presenting our Lithium Ion Battery Talk

There are many things that we could suggest to have made the rally better – but in the end, we prefer to count the positives.  We learned tons more about buses, got lots of great ideas, met many amazing people, made new friends, attended great seminars, gave a couple seminars of our own and had fun meeting up again with folks we had met during our bus hunt.

The highlight however was getting to rendezvous and park next to Sean of Our Odyssey.

It’s hard to believe we had only spent a short time once before with Sean & Louise over a year ago – as we felt an immediate kinship with them, and have maintained contact since.  Louise had to fly back to California during the rally, but we greatly appreciated getting some more time with Sean. He’s been a tremendous help in guiding us on bus projects over these past few months, even staying on the phone coaching us through priming our engine to take our bus for a test drive.

Sean presenting on hydronics in our shared seminar/hot tub courtyard.

He also set up their hot tub (yes, they travel with a hot tub) – so we enjoyed evenings with a glass a wine and a soak.  Oh yeah.  Good friends. Wine. Hot water.  That’s a recipe for bliss.

Road Ahead

We joined Sean back over at Choo Choo, where he’s awaiting parts to arrive for his bus. We intended to leave out on Tuesday, but awoke to news that has the potential to affect our routing.

So we coordinated with Choo Choo to go ahead and get the parts in for replacing our air bags and re-packing our bearings this week, while we wait for further information to know which direction we’re heading next.  And since we came across a pair of never-used Mini Max spring brakes (which are no longer made) at the rally, we’re going to have those installed as well – keeping the old ones as spares.  That should all happen today.

At current time, it’s looking highly likely that we’ll proceed as planned and arrive in St. Louis this weekend for time with Chris’ family.  We’ll also finally move aboard the rest of our stuff from the Oliver that we left in storage there.

Which is a good thing, because that includes our winter wardrobe and it’s starting to get cold!

I write this from Amarillo, TX.

Which you might notice was NOT on our intended route.

So what happened?

As we were leaving Lake Powell, we heard a sudden WOOOSH of [...]]]> It’s only been a few days since we left St. George with intentions of heading eastward through Colorado.

I write this from Amarillo, TX.

Which you might notice was NOT on our intended route.

So what happened?

A Lot of Air Pressure Leaks

As we were leaving Lake Powell, we heard a sudden WOOOSH of air in the driver’s compartment, and we suddenly lost air pressure – which meant our main air breaks are inoperable and the spring emergency breaks would soon be engaging.

Chris got us safely pulled over to the side of the road.

Immediately behind us was an empty tour bus, which pulled over in front of us. The driver got out, and introduced himself. Turns out, he used to own a 4106 – and helped us check things over.  Even as avid followers of Serendipity as we are – this was quite the coincidence.

While we were making a new friend, the air pressure refilled on the bus on its own.  We put out a quick message to the bus conversion community asking if we were safe to move on to the next town, or if we needed a tow.  The diagnosis was that one of our air release valves likely released (normal when air pressure gets a touch high – which is explained by us recently changing out the air compressor filter), but was so gunked up that it didn’t immediately close as it’s designed to do.

Nothing a little WD-40 and cleaning wouldn’t fix up. So we did that to the visible dump valve we could reach.  The bus nut community is *amazing* and we feel so blessed. We had several mechanical gurus sending us advice and re-assurance that we were ok to drive on.

We made it into Page, AZ just fine, and decided to move onwards to our next intended stop of Durango, CO.

The incident reminded us however that we still had routine maintenance that we haven’t able to do as we have no drive-up ramps and a suspension blocking system (something we need to fix ASAP).  So we called around to truck repair centers anywhere near our route before the Rockies to schedule a brake adjustment, chassis lubbing and replacement of all of the dump valves.

We found a place in Durango that didn’t seem too scared of a vintage bus.

In the morning as we were leaving Monument Valleny, the same thing happened – except this time, the air pressure didn’t rebuild.  Some diagnosis with our bus nut friends led us to suspect the air compressor governor’s relief valve as the culprit.  It was likely gunked up, and now stuck open causing a consistent major air leak.

Some percussive maintenance (ie. pound it with a hammer) and some WD-40 fixed that right up – saving us a tow into Durango!

We arrived to Durango a bit later than anticipated, but the diesel shop was awesome.  They spent two hours with us giving the bus a good underside servicing.  They even invited us to join them in the pit, and taught us all sorts of things about maintaining the parts.

This was the first opportunity for us to see under our bus, and we again patted ourselves on the back for finding our bus in arid Arizona. Especially after seeing a 1976 Prevost we had closely inspected in our bus hunt that was seriously corroded after years of service in Canada.

Working in the pit, under our bus!

Their general assessment was that ‘She’s old – but in great shape!’ (we can only hope for such an assessment in 10 years!).

We left with brakes adjusted, every zirk found lubed and some air leaks taken care of. We also left with a new governor, which Chris replaced on his own later.

A couple scary moments, but all and all – we thrived with the challenges, and are upping our bus knowledge exponentially!

A Lot of Hot Air

We were originally going to route through Colorado primarily to visit our friends in Salida. However, we had already eaten into the weekend time they had available.  And with a couple of scares that would have been much MUCH worse on an incline or descent, we decided that risking driving through the Rockies was probably not the wisest of decisions.

We opted to take the flatter southern route – which put us going through Albuquerque.  And guess who was there?

Yup, our awesome bus nut technomad friends – Ben & Karen! They arranged us a spot next to them, which was amazing – considering it was also the start of the 40th Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.  Being neighbors with these guys is something that we can’t get enough of – we always have fun adventures together.

Now, we’ve heard great things about the balloon fiesta – but nothing prepared us for its awesomeness.

Sunday evening Karen and us headed over for our first glow event (Ben had to fly out for a seminar he was giving, so we were sure to tease him as much as possible).  During a glow, many of the balloons inflate on the ground and synchronize glowing with their propane jets.

What I hadn’t realized is that spectators get to roam the grounds right next to the balloons!!

I spent the entire evening with my eyes up and my jaw down, and feeling like a little kid. It was absolutely beyond belief. The sounds. The crowd energy. The lights.  The BALLOONS – they’re everywhere!!

All three of us were in similar states of disbelief.  And we all decided that we HAD to return in the morning for the ascension.

Which meant getting up at the “butt crack of dawn” (my new favorite expression, coined by Karen) – something us night owled technomads don’t do well.

Karen photographing the ascension.

But we did it.. and it was so worth it.  I counted at least a kabillion (give or take a dozen) balloons launching.

And apparently those were the ‘just for fun’ launches.  Later in the morning, balloons launched from around the city at different locations to compete for prizes by tossing super tiny little rings onto poles planted on the main launch field.  And considering balloons have no steering, that’s some pretty amazing piloting.

Think the pictures above are descent?  Hah.   Be sure to follow Karen’t blog at http://www.thepixeldiaries.com , as her pictures are going to be 1,000,000x better than mine. And she’s there for the rest of the event, which wraps up this coming weekend. (If you’re anywhere nearby.. GO!!!)

What an amazing experience, and so delighted serendipity routed us this way!!!

Path Forward

We’re still heading to Chattanooga, aiming to arrive there next Monday evening for some bus workshops before the Bus Conversion Magazine Rally.  We’ll now be meandering from Amarillo, TX through Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, and then through Tennessee somewhere over the next week.

But before then, we’re taking a couple day distraction-free break north of Amarillo, TX at one of our most favorite free camp spots ever.

And I promise – if I can get Chris to focus on anything other than plotting how to carry a hot air balloon with us; his lithium ion battery post should be the next post you see here later this week.

But we did know one thing – if we attended, we wanted a year off of hosting our theme camp, Camp Nomadia, [...]]]> We left Burning Man in 2010 for the first time without a plan one way or the other if we would be attending in 2011.  We left that decision up to serendipity.

But we did know one thing – if we attended, we wanted a year off of hosting our theme camp, Camp Nomadia, and being focused on a role as nomadic evangelists.

Technomadia at Burning Man 2011 (Thanks to Karen Nace for snapping the photo!)

We were thrilled to discover that enthusiasm for Camp Nomadia carried on, and past Nomadians were interested in taking on the reigns.  And then just after we bought our bus, and tickets sold out for the first time ever, we came across two extra tickets.  Finding our bus within a days drive – serendipity had clearly said that yes, we were intended to go again.  We even turned down an offer from a major TV show to film us at the burn, holding to our intentions to keep things low key.

This would be our year to focus on us, connect with friends and relax.  It was our rite of passage.

And it was glorious.

Camp Nomadia Caravan to Burning Man

We met up with campmates prior to the burn in Reno and Fernley, caravanned in together and had our most chill burn yet.

Our old bus powering Ben & Karen's

Before heading to the playa, we completed our lithium ion battery and inverter install, and it performed wonderfully for the week.  And thank goodness, as our friends Ben & Karen had trouble with their bus’ electrical system – so we were able to build a buddy plug to share our battery bank with them.

Camp Nomadia

Camp Nomadia was awesome, probably not much more than 35-40 folks this year (half that as last year) – a great size. Everyone was awesome, and it was wonderful be able to be part of the camp but not be in charge.  We did participate in the camp’s ‘Nomadic Lifestyle Workshop’ panel, which is always fun and a great to meet so many other past, future and present nomads.

The Temple at Burning Man

The Temple - burning.

The temple this year at Burning Man was the most amazing we’ve seen together.

We stayed at Burning Man thru Tuesday morning with many other Camp Nomadians, having one last camp party as we broke our communal shade structure.

Las Vegas, baby!

From there, we headed back south to Las Vegas to pick up Kiki, who had been staying with JoAnna Haugen and her hubby there.  Ben, who is a Photoshop guru and instructor, was able to get us guest badges to Photoshop World.

An amazing act in Absinthe - well worth catching!

So we’ve spent the last couple days attending inspiring Photoshop classes, hanging out and going to some shows. JoAnna gifted us with free tickets to see Penn & Teller, and we also followed her advice to catch Absinthe.  Both were awesome.

Today has been our first day in a long while to have a down day.

From here?  We’re actually quite unsure.  We had originally thought of heading to Sacramento to clean out Chris’ storage unit once and for all, and then moving some stuff to St. Louis to his parent’s place.

But we’re just not feeling it, and don’t have the energy to take on that huge of a project right now.  We’re behind on work, blogging and bus projects – and most crave being still somewhere for a week or two and attempting some catch up.

Just as we were coming to this conclusion, we got an unsolicited invitation from a reader who manages an RV Resort in St. George, UT to come stay for a week or so in exchange for hosting a couple of talks on Technology and RVing.  That’s a style of ‘workamping’ we hadn’t considered before, and sounds like a fitting idea!

So, we’re going to go check that out – after we have another nap or two.

We came here intending to cool off – both our bodies and on the bus projects. We were also [...]]]> Two weeks ago we finally escaped the intense Arizona desert heat in Lake Havasu City, and headed to nearby Flagstaff. Sitting at elevation 7000 ft, it’s many degrees cooler and has things that are green.

We came here intending to cool off – both our bodies and on the bus projects. We were also tempted here to be temporary neighbors with some fellow nomadic friends.

We had dreams of lots of hiking, catching up on some projects, exploring Flagstaff, birthday celebrations and beer.

Ahh… dreams.

Upon arriving, some prior conversations we had started inquiring about the state of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4 – or LFP) battery technology for RV use elevated from intriguing to interesting. This newer LFP isn’t your old school lithium ion battery chemistry that is known for exploding – it’s non-combustable, making it vastly safer.

As our bus came with no house battery system or inverter, tackling that project was on our priority list – especially with planning to go off-grid at Burning Man at the end of the month.

One conversation lead to another, and we were introduced to a supplier of the technology – who happens to be just down the hill in Phoenix.

As we know that Burning Man would present an ideal opportunity to field test such a system, if we’re going to get it done – we had to move quick to take advantage of the Phoenix connection before leaving the area.

So instead of our chill no bus project escape, our time in Flagstaff has been consumed with intense all-nighter research into batteries & inverters, house electrical systems and taking measurements of all our bays. We’ve been weighing the benefits and risks of a bank of lithium ion versus AGM batteries, corresponding with our braintrust of electrically inclined friends and tracking down our ideal inverter.

We’ve decided that while lithium ion batteries have not fully proven their potential yet, especially for RV house electrical systems – heading to Phoenix this week is worthwhile. If it continues to hold our interest, by the end of the week we could have one very interesting and cutting edge house electrical system that could be a fantastic platform for our eventual solar install.

And yes, you can bet I’ll force Chris to sit down and write a more technical report.

So, this morning we’re off to Phoenix. Back into the intense Arizona desert heat.

I haven’t even checked the weather forecast for the expected highs.. I really don’t want to know.

By the way, we should note – we are not trying to motivate anyone to follow us on this path. We are not selling these batteries, we are not affiliates with any battery dealer, we paid for all our components and nor do we have any financial stake in the technology beyond our own systems.  We are simply full time RVing technomads who are designing our own cutting edge home & office on wheels, and are sharing our research & project. Of course we’d love to have more folks out there pioneering and helping us take the arrows in our backs.  Right now, we do not consider this technology ready for the mainstream, and those contemplating this technology need to be a bit savvy with electrical and battery technology. 

Other Posts In this Series:

Promise of Lithium #1: Lead Acid Battery Downsides
Promise of Lithium #2: Lithium Ion Battery Advantages
All our Lithium Ion Battery Posts 

I have updated our video bus tour to include footage of some of the recent updates. [...]]]> The following post will be nothing new for those who have been following along with our daily updates on Facebook.  It’s just a wrap up of some announcements we’ve made this week.

Updated Bus Video Tour

I have updated our video bus tour to include footage of some of the recent updates.  It’s amazing to see how a good wash, scrubbing and wax and new tires & wheels improved the exterior.  And of course, all of the interior changes with new floors and layout.

Link to Video Tour

Incidentally, having a video bus tour has proven to be quite handy. We encountered some difficulty securing full insurance coverage, as many companies won’t cover a non-professional bus conversion. Add in the few carriers who offer full timer’s insurance (sort of a mash-up of an automobile policy and a homeowner’s policy) – and our pickings became very slim. However, because our awesome agent at Epic Insurance was able to submit our video tour, she was able to convince a better ranked company to take us on.

We’re also finding that RV parks that have restrictions on older rigs are more prone to accept a reservation from us by giving them a link to the video, showing that the bus is actually pretty cool.

Apparently, having a yawning cat in your video also helps.

Coverage? App Update

Our Coverage? app continues to have a steady trickle of sales, and has gotten quite a bit of positive feedback for its usefulness. Even we have found it far more useful than excepted to be able to overlay data coverage maps from all of the cell data carriers, without needing an internet connection.

I always take it as a positive affirmation when we start getting a flood of e-mails asking when the next map update is coming out, and we also take that as a signal it’s time to get to work. The maps have been quite a labor intensive process to create, taking upwards of 40 hours of intricate graphics work.

With all of the bus chaos, we’ve just simply been lacking the time to sit down and crank out an update.

However, between getting a Wacom Pen Tablet and discovering some fresh techniques – we’re now able to get the updates out with a lot less effort.

Earlier this week we submitted an update to the app with all new maps, and it’s now available in the app store.

We also came out with a nifty new icon for the app!

Earlier this year we gave an analysis of our app sales. Coverage sales have picked up (now with just over 3500 downloads) – but we in no way consider the app to have reached even close to a break-even point for our development efforts. Combined sales of Coverage? and State Lines average about $9/day. We basically consider it beer money.

Sorry Android users – sadly, we just can’t justify the massive expense and effort to port the apps. We will however continue to support our apps on iOS for as long as the apps continue to sell, and they’re useful in our own travels.

Burning Man – Yes, We’re Going

This was the first year that we made no specific plans around attending Burning Man. We didn’t buy tickets when they came out, and we didn’t base our travel plans for the year around being in Nevada in late August.  We also didn’t plan to NOT attend either.

We instead decided to leave it to serendipity to decide for us.

Honestly, we had gotten a bit tired of always routing over the same paths at the same time of year, generally on a hectic cross country re-positioning.  And, last year I got a tad burnt out from organizing Camp Nomadia (even though it was pretty much stress-free and awesome) and not feeling free to just enjoy Burning Man with all the media interviews and visitors wanting to pick our brains on becoming nomadic.  So it was nice to take a break from the mental attachment of making attending a priority.

And, serendipty has spoken.

Our bus acquisition and project status has us feeling within proximity of attending.  In Lake Havasu, we came across a pair of tickets (Burning Man, for the first time ever, sold out a few weeks ago). And, a Kiki-sitter manifested right along our route in Las Vegas.

So, we’ve now got Burning Man in our plans.   And yes, we will be camping with Camp Nomadia (which is aiming to be near 6 & G) – but not hosting it.  We are absolutely thrilled with the past Nomadians who have stepped in and taken on the organizing efforts, and we’re greatly looking forward to being part of the camp.

Unlike years past tho, we’re not pre-setting up appointments for media interviews and visits.  This year is for us to enjoy the event, and not be focused on being hosts or promoting nomadism in general.    We had seriously contemplated not announcing we’re attending and going incognito… but, we just couldn’t do it.

This doesn’t mean folks aren’t welcome to stop by and say hi – just don’t expect us to be sitting around waiting, or heck, being “proper”

Plans Forward

Our plans are always somewhat nebulous. But after the burn we’ll be returning to Las Vegas to pick up Kiki, and attending Photoshop World with our fellow technomadic friends Ben & Karen.   After that, we’ll head to Sacramento where Chris will be tackling a long overdue project of finally getting rid of his storage unit.  We’ll use the bus as a moving van to relocate anything he wants to keep to his parent’s basement in St. Louis.    And from there…  we’ll probably meander around with a stop in Texas and eye towards wintering in Florida.

But… this all on NST (Nomadic Standard Time), and always subject to change.

We headed towards the sale with literally no plan for what was next. We started looking into buying a temporary RV, or renting a [...]]]> It was only a month ago when we found ourselves facing imminent homelessness, heading north from Florida to deliver both our truck and our beloved trailer to their new owner.

We headed towards the sale with literally no plan for what was next. We started looking into buying a temporary RV, or renting a u-haul to move our stuff to storage in St. Louis, or even finding a short-term apartment rental to base out of until we could really decide what was next.

I joked that we might just pile our stuff on the side of a road under a tarp.

But as usual, Serendipity stepped in at the last moment and presented us with the perfect solution.

We were already planning to stop by and visit our friends Elliott and Ann near Savannah as we headed north, but they surprised us by writing and offering to loan us their 1986 Winnebago Le’Sharo.

When we stopped by their home in Georgia to check out the Le’Sharo, it seemed perfect – small enough to park in a regular spot, yet large enough to serve as a “moving van with a bed” to let us transport all of our stuff from the truck and Oliver. We could then move at a slower pace to stop and research vintage buses on the way. It offered us relatively good fuel economy too.

While we were cleaning up the little RV to get it ready for use, I asked Elliott if he knew what “Le’Sharo” meant.

“You are much more curious than I am. I never thought to ask…”

So I googled it. The top link was about the rituals of the nomadic Fulani tribe from Nigeria:

“According to the Fulani custom of sharo (test of young manhood), rival suitors underwent the ordeal of caning as a means of eliminating those who were less persistent.” (Encyclopedia Britannica)

The Le’Sharo is the exceedingly rare precursor to the more recent and much more successful Winnebago Rialta model. The reason there were so few Le’Sharos left on the road is that they had been initially released with a vastly underpowered imported Renault engine that inevitably ended up blowing up and dying. With parts only available from France, it was little wonder that Winnebago canceled the line after only a few years on the market.

Elliott’s Le’Sharo was one of the few survivors that had been re-powered with a 1994 Buick LeSabre engine crammed haphazardly under the hood, Frankenstein-style.

This will do. All we need is transport for a month or so.

“Sharo – The institution of vital importance to the nomadic Fulani, and all kinds of customs and ceremonies has arisen around it. One such ceremony is the sharo, a public flogging that is a test of manhood. Not all Fulani nomadic groups observe this ceremony or insist on it before a young man may marry.” (The Fulani)

As we prepped the Le’Sharo for departure, Elliott explained a few issues… Such as, there is no working gas gauge. “Just don’t go further than 200 miles between fill-ups…”

And the transmission does not indicate what gear you are currently in – “just count the clicks”.

Oh, and the dash air conditioning had a coolant leak, so we picked up a can of coolant and recharged it, getting it to generate only a tiny bit of cold air. But we can handle a little sweat.

Testing the water tanks, we heard a hissing, and discovered an underfloor hose that had cracked and was leaking. Ok – we can do without running water.

Testing out the refrigerator, I noticed that the DC fridge was rated to draw more DC current than the AC/DC converter / battery charger was rated to put out – meaning that using the fridge while plugged in to a campground would actually result in a drained house battery. Who engineered this?!!? But OK, we planned to use refrigeration only while underway. At least the beer would be cold when we stopped driving for the day – no problem.

Testing the tail lights, we discovered the old connectors were not making a good connection with the bulbs. But after a few hours of jerry-rigging, we managed to get the turn signals, running lights, and one of the brake lights working. Ok, after a winter in the Virgin Islands driving a Jeep with intermittent lights – we know our hand signals, if necessary.

Elliott mentioned that the electric radiator fan was having issues, and to be careful that the engine doesn’t overheat while driving in slow traffic, or idling. But underway, it seems fine.

Uhm, ok… Sure. No problem. We don’t really have time left to find another alternative now. We can handle this.

So, we set off….

“During the Sharo festival, bare-chested contestants, usually unmarried men, come to the center ring, escorted by beautiful girls. The crowd erupts in thunderous cheers and drumming.” (Online Nigeria)

The Le’Sharo had plenty of issues, but we decided to view them all as practice for vintage bus ownership, trusting in serendity that we would be able to handle every challenge without flinching.

The first challenge came during our first nights camped in the Le’Sharo, after a short drive from Savannah to Columbia, SC. A few drops of rain dripping in around the roof vent wasn’t much of a concern. But when I plugged in our small inverter, I was surprised by an over-voltage alarm. Pulling out my multimeter, I discovered that the converter was putting out 19 volts while plugged in to the campground shore power – a high voltage that seemed likely to destroy any battery hooked up to it. A few more tests confirmed that the RV converter was likely toast, and that it had probably already irrevocably damaged the house battery. As a precaution, we decided to minimize time with the RV plugged in, and usage of the interior lights and fans when not. We also gave up on the idea of using the fridge even while underway.

Who needs electricity anyway?

“The sharo is a test of endurance; a youth is expected to undergo severe flogging in public without flinching.” (The Fulani)

Midway through the second day of driving – I noticed the dash battery voltage warning light had come on. We were in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, and due to deliver the Oliver and Tundra in Lynchburg, VA the next day. We were 40 miles to the next town, Asheboro, NC – and calling ahead, I discovered that all the auto shops and mechanics would be closed by the time we arrived.

Ten miles outside of town, the Le’Sharo engine started to surge and sputter as the battery finally died and the electrical system failed. I coasted to the side of the road, and waited as Cherie pulled up next to me. We set up the jumper cables to recharge the Le’Sharo enough to get started again, and then noticed a great campground literally right across the street.

A place to stop for the night, perfect. Fate!

We’re not flinching yet.  But we are tweeting and Facebooking publicly the whole way, sharing the adventure.

“After some time, a challenger, also bare-chested, comes out brandishing a whip, trying to frighten his opponent.” (Online Nigeria)

We wired the Tundra and Le’Sharo together, and left the Tundra running for an hour to top off the Le’Sharo’s battery. We figured that with a fully charged battery we might be able to make it the rest of the way to Lynchburg, as long as we avoided needing to use the headlights or using any electrical systems.

As we were now completely moved out of the Oliver, we slept in the Le’Sharo for the first time – with just our iPhones for light.

But before chancing a long drive, the next morning we stopped into the Asheboro Advance Auto to get a battery & alternator test done, and to buy more engine coolant. (Remember that radiator fan – it was never kicking on, and the coolant tank was now close to empty…)

Advance confirmed that the alternator was dead, but the battery was good. They also happened to have a Buick Le’Sabre alternator in stock, and the clerk thought that her cousin might be able to install it right away. “He doesn’t speak much English, but he is a good mechanic….”

And indeed, Mario was amazing. We found his small hidden garage, and within minutes he had the new alternator installed. I asked him about the radiator fan, and he traced the wires and found a hidden blown fuse, and a seized up air conditioning fan that had likely blown it. He disconnected the fan, replaced the fuse, and suddenly the engine had cooling again. And so did we – the second air conditioning fan was now working as well, though it howled when turned on.

And Mario barely charged us a thing for saving the day. We tipped him extra.

We were back on the road again, and still on schedule to deliver the Oliver on time.

“The festival proceeds with lively drumming, singing, cheers and self-praises from both competitors and challengers. When the excitement is at a fevered pitch, it is the time for flogging.” (Online Nigeria)

Just an hour later, after the next gas stop, I get in and close the driver’s door, but it doesn’t latch. A closer look reveals that the spring inside the latch has sprung – right through the decaying old plastic fixture. We contemplate using a rope to tie the door shut, but thankfully I am able to disassemble the assembly with a star-head screwdriver and get the latch to reset. We discover that if we are very delicate opening the driver’s door, or only enter through the back, we are able to keep the spring in place…

Still not flinching. We are actually still on schedule even!

“The challenger raises his whip and flogs his opponent. His opponent must endure this without wincing or showing pain, lest he be branded a coward.” (Online Nigeria)

My theory was that the fried (from the over-voltage converter) house battery had killed the alternator, so I stopped bridging the engine and house electrical systems while underway. And indeed, the house battery died completely within a few more days to the point that the interior lights would no longer work unless we were plugged in to a campground. No problem, we have flashlights for our en-route Walmart and rest stop nights.

The Le’Sharo’s radio also quit working too. Who needs music – we can talk about our bus dreams to fill the hours.

The antique “Indian Head Nickel” that had been mounted on the Le’Sharo’s keychain fell off, but I found the wayward nickel intermixed in the change in my pocket, and we just-so-happened to be visiting a jeweler friend in Philadelphia that day who was able to properly fix the antique keychain.

It got really cold driving one night, and we discovered that the dash heat didn’t work. We grabbed blankets and made due, until we had a chance to stop and find the hidden valve under the hood (really!) that enabled the heating system.

And overall, despite the hiccups, the Le’Sharo was proving to be an ideal “moving van with a bed”, and the perfect vehicle for our initial bus explorations. We were doing great heading into St. Louis, until we stopped for gas just 20 miles away from my parent’s place.

The Le’Sharo was dripping red fluid – transmission fluid. Lots of it.

Fortunately, there was a Midas a few miles away. They agreed to take a look, just an hour before closing.

“Without warning he lands the whip heavily on the other’s ribs, sometimes drawing blood.” (The Fulani)

The Midas manager reported that the transmission hoses were a mess, old and cracking. But he had been able to tighten the fittings and topped off the fluid level, so we should be safe to make it the final 20 miles to my folks place. He told us that a proper repair however would require 3-5 hours of labor to unpack the front end to reach hoses to replace them.

Another hero mechanic – and he refused to even charge us the $29 diagnostic fee. Wow.

But… While driving the Le’Sharo up on the lift, the cap on the black tank drain had gotten bumped. Now instead of dripping red fluid, we were slowly dripping yellow. (Fortunately – we hadn’t used the on-board facilities for anything other than yellow purposes – so this wasn’t nearly as messy to fix as it could have been…)

We reached Columbia, and were able to unload our stuff, and the cat. Mission accomplished. Now all we needed was to get the Le’Sharo back to Savannah, GA with a stop in South Carolina for Cherie to visit a client.

“Blow upon blow may be struck, with the victim shouting for more. Other youths acting as referees observe the proceedings closely, ensuring that the blows are fairly struck.” (The Fulani)

The first local mechanic we called said he wouldn’t be able to take the job for a week, but the local Firestone shop said that they were able to do the work immediately. We were prepared to be billed for 5+ hours to have the hoses replaced, but the mechanic gave us an estimate of “one to two hours”, and then managed to do the job in 30 minutes! And that is all that he billed us for – amazing!

But… It wasn’t all good news. Firestone reported that the Le’Sharo’s left front tire was a “racing slick” and completely unsafe to drive on, and the other tires were showing extremely uneven wear. Consulting with Elliott, he didn’t want to get stuck with retail tire prices for the Le’Sharo’s hard to find size / weight rating (usually a special order), but the Columbia Firestone actually found replacement tires cheaper than the cheapest internet wholesaler we could find.

So in the end, we left with four new tires, an alignment, and a properly recharged air conditioning system.

Wow. Three amazing and honest mechanic shops in a row!

During the drive from Columbia, IL to Columbia, SC this week, the Le’Sharo felt like a brand new car. It drove straighter, and it didn’t shake and shimmy nearly so much while underway.

Pulling into our campground in Columbia late Tuesday night after a marathon day of driving, as soon as we pulled onto the gravel campground road, there was a pop – and all the headlights, dash lights, and running lights went out. Fifteen minutes earlier, and we would have been in the midst of heavy freeway traffic.

“The point, however, is that the victim does not flinch but shows utter indifference to pain and even sneers at his attacker. If he is able to achieve this, his family and friends surround him with joy, offering gifts and congratulations.” (The Fulani)

As the darkness descended, Cherie and I turned to each other and burst out laughing.

With a grin, Cherie grabbed a flashlight to walk in front of the the Le’Sharo, guiding us in the last little way to the campground loop.

A moment later, the headlights came back on.

We’ve survived the Sharo with a smile.

UPDATE: Never write your victory post before you’ve actually won the game. The Le’Sharo had a few more tricks in store for us.

“It is common for the boy being hit to shout or laugh after he is stricken. Although adolescents have died in this ceremony, young men are eager to participate and display their scars with pride. ” (Jamtan Fulani)

First – one afternoon while we were running some errands in Columbia, the turn signals stopped working entirely. Even the hazard lights were now inoperative.

No problem – I planned a route to Savannah with minimal turns.

We were almost home free.

And then – cruising to Savannah on Sunday, making good time on I-26, the Le’Sharo swung her last blow of the whip.

Suddenly, without warning, the engine sputtered and died. “What on earth now?”

We were 185 miles into the current tank, and literally just a quarter mile from the exit I had been planning on for our next gas stop. But after a full systems check under the hood, it seemed the most likely explanation – the lack of a working gas gauge had finally caught up with us, and we had run out of gas.

The combination of running highway speeds instead of back roads, new tires still breaking in, a working air conditioner and perhaps the last fillup cutting off a bit early had left us drained dry way sooner than our 200 mile “start looking” cutoff.

So… no problem… we’re not flinching even now. We grabbed our sunglasses, left a note on the door, and started walking down the freeway towards the next exit. Before long a kind stranger offered us a lift, and the clerks at the BP station loaned us a two gallon jug, and after a short hot walk back upstream, we were soon back underway, and after just a few hours more we were safely docked back at Ann & Elliott’s place.

The final score: 2,876 miles. 170 gallons of gas. 16.9 MPG.

We have indeed and at last conquered the challenge of the Sharo.

And it was perfect.

Now we are packed for our next adventure and ready to hit the rails today.

So when we started looking at ways to get to the west coast [...]]]> I don’t know which of us actually voiced the idea first when some intriguing sounding vintage buses cropped up for us on the other coast of the country. Taking a cross country train trip has been something we’ve always wanted to do.

So when we started looking at ways to get to the west coast – ranging from taking the borrowed Winnebago Le’Sharo to catching a flight – hopping on a train just seemed right.

We’ve both done some shorter term train travel in our past. For me, my first major train trip was from Helsinki to Leningrad when I spent a high school summer traveling around the former Soviet Union. And we’ve each taken the Coast Starlight along the California coast and various commuter length rail trips.

The more we researched our options for getting across country, the more we both fell in love with the idea of sharing a long train adventure together.

We’re currently in St. Louis where Kiki can stay with her grandparents, and will be heading back to South Carolina this week for me to teach a class.  We’ll deliver the Le’Sharo back to her owners near Savannah, GA (stay tuned for some tales about what we learned from that experience!).

Amtrak's Routes with our First Adventure Highlighted

From there, we decided on a train route that would take us up the east coast to Washington, DC, across to Chicaco and then catching the scenic California Zephyr into San Francisco. And then up the coast to Oregon to view our next bus contenders. A total of 5 nights on trains!

The rail fare for this trip (not including a roomette on the 2-night California Zephyr segment) came to $584 each. And that’s only 1-way. Not exactly cheap transit. But not bad for an adventure.

The Amtrak Rail Pass

And then I remembered meeting Brett ,aka The Amtrekker, several times in our respective nomadic wanderings. A few years ago, he ditched his day job, bought an Amtrak rail pass and spent a long time traversing the US crossing items off his bucket list (we first encountered him at ‘Ride an Ostrich’).

My research discovered that a 15-day/8 segment pass would only cost $389/each. Nearly $400 in savings!

And with our desired route using up 4 segments, it would leave us ample return trip options if we needed it. We called Amtrak to confirm that our itinerary was available with a pass, as there are only a limited number of seats for pass holders on each train. No problem.

We ended up purchasing the 30-day/12 segment pass at $579. It was still slightly cheaper than the booked fare, and would give us a lot of flexibility. Leaving us 8 pre-paid segments to see other buses and/or have other adventures.

So, we’ve each packed a backpack with the intention of being ‘out there’ for a month traveling by train. Exploring the country by rail, searching for our vintage bus and seeing what serendipity has in store for us next.

We can’t wait!!

If you live near an Amtrak rail station, and would be open to hosting a couple cool technomads for a night or two – give us a shout. Who knows, we may just be able to route to you during our rail adventure!

Sailboat? Not yet.

International adventures? Yes, we want more extended jaunts to exotic places. But we want to keep some sort of (mobile) base in the US to return to, [...]]]> Its no secret that we’ve been pondering “what’s next” for a while now, particularly since we’ve returned from the Virgin Islands.

Sailboat? Not yet.

International adventures? Yes, we want more extended jaunts to exotic places. But we want to keep some sort of (mobile) base in the US to return to, so that we can regularly spend time with friends and family here. And after an extended stretch in St. John, we are ready to be back on the mainland for a bit before heading out again.

More RV’ing? Well… We love our RV’ing lifestyle, but the thought of another cross-country trek in our Oliver was feeling a bit “been there, done that” and just not very exciting. We’ve mastered life in a 17′ fiberglass egg, and we’ve been craving something new, more space and new challenges.

Our Oliver (named “Orion”) is the one of the most well designed and engineered travel trailers ever built, and it was made custom for us – with every detail down to the tile on the floor, the gauge of the electrical wire, the solar panels on the roof, and the fabric on the seats carefully chosen. Before Oliver shut down their production indefinitely, less than 50 of them were made.

How could we give up something so uniquely ours?  The trailer has become iconic to us, and part of our identity.

The more we thought about it, the more we grew open to the idea that the time was right to move on, and we even started dropping hints that we might be open to selling later this year.

Meanwhile, we started thinking that a smaller motorhome would be a next step for us, and started to research suitable unique vehicles – including the awesome GMC Motorhome and more recently, smaller vintage buses like the Flxible (yes, inspired by our friend’s Ben & Karen and the bus they’re currently converting) and GMC 4104. We’re so thankful to have knowledgable bus-nut friends in Ben & Karen and Sean & Louise of Our Odyssey to keep reality in check during this research.

(We post daily to our Facebook Page if you want to keep up with what we’re currently researching or up to.)

The universe had other ideas

Just as soon as we had mentally made peace with the idea of moving on from the Oliver, literally within hours, the phone rang.

The conversation went something like this:

Him: “Hi, you may not remember me, but I’m the guy who asked about your Oliver at that campground on the Blue Ridge Parkway last year.”

Us: “Of course we remember you! Who could forget someone coming up to our campsite and asking if we were in Carlsbad, New Mexico a couple months before.. where you first saw our trailer in a parking lot.’

Him: “My retirement dream is owning an Oliver like yours, I’ve been calling the factory every couple months… and I detected you might be open to selling yours?  I know how unique they are and what they’re worth.”

Yeah, serendipity tends to work that way for us. And being serendipity’s minions and all, we listen.

We get to help make somebody’s dream come true, and we don’t have to spend time searching out a buyer? Sounds promising.

Oh, and it turns out he needs a tow vehicle too, and is interested in buying our matched Tundra. And he’s right – he really does know what an Oliver configured like ours is worth. His opening offer makes it well worth it for us to move quickly and not pursue a bidding war amongst our growing list of interested potential buyers. And he also wants to buy Cherie’s older laptop – which has the same custom graphical design on the case as on the side of our trailer?!?!

Could this be for real? Sell the matched set in one fell swoop?

That phone call came last Tuesday, less than a week ago. The non-refundable deposit check arrived yesterday.  It’s real. A perfect match delivered before we sought it out.

A week from now we’ll be in transit from Florida, making a beeline to Virginia to deliver our baby to its new loving home.

Yeah, our heads are spinning! We’re a mix of anxious and excited!

And in just over a week – we will be very literally homeless, without even a vehicle in our name. We opened the door to possibility, and serendipity swept in like a tidal wave, leaving us with a completely blank slate to paint our next adventure upon.

*blink*

We do have to solve some imminent logistical issues though, and are opening ourselves to a range of possibilities…

• We are considering buying (or maybe renting) a cheap ($2k – $10K) older 23-35′ motorhome that we can move into temporarily while we head off in search of our ideal next home-on-wheels. Leads are appreciated on suitable RV’s for sale or folks open to renting theirs to us between Florida and Virginia.
• Or… Maybe we’ll find a suitable vintage bus in move-in condition within the next week, and head towards it once we hand over the Oliver in a one-way rental U-haul or borrowed vehicle. If you know of any converted Flxible, GM, Wanderlodge, or other cool (35′ and under) buses for sale – let us know!
• Or… Maybe we’ll decide to buy a less-than-ideal but very affordable and ready to live in “starter bus”, so that we can try out bus living for a few months before we invest more in a different rig and/or extensive upgrades. We have our eye on one promising starter bus in Salt Lake City, but that is a long way to travel for “promising”, so we’re likely not ready to jump on that right away.
• Or… To buy ourselves a bit more time to find either a temporary or (semi)permanent new home on wheels, perhaps we will seek out a weekly or monthly rental of a place to live and a vehicle to drive – spending a few weeks in Virginia while shopping for what is next. If anyone has any leads on house sitting opportunities, garages to temporarily unload our stuff into, or short term condo or RV rental opportunities, or, or, or…. anywhere near Lynchburg, VA – let us know!

A lot is up in the air, and serendipity is busily reshaping our lives yet again.

It is exhilarating, exciting, and exhausting to even think about.

The next few weeks will be crazy.

Friends, old and new, and family. The best way to summarize it is with photos.

We’re so very blessed to [...]]]> The thing that stands out the most for us about 2010 was the amazing number of people we had the pleasure of meeting up with.

Friends, old and new, and family. The best way to summarize it is with photos.

We’re so very blessed to have you along for the adventure.

Thank you for helping make our year amazing!

In 2010, we traversed roughly 13,633 miles and 25 states via RV across the good ole’ US of A.  We had every intention of traveling into Canada for the summer, and [...]]]>

Technomadia's 2010 Travel Route

It’s always so much fun to compile this map every year (click for 2007, 2008 and 2009).

In 2010, we traversed roughly 13,633 miles and 25 states via RV across the good ole’ US of A.  We had every intention of traveling into Canada for the summer, and into Mexico in the fall/winter to finally break our international RVing cherry.

However, serendipity had other plans for us, and we ended up back tracking to Florida twice instead.   Once to be with Cherie’s family during her father’s surgery, and second to prepare to depart the continental US (and the RV) for a different modality of nomadism on the Virgin Islands.   We don’t regret these decisions one bit, and suspect Canada and Mexico will still be there when we get to them.

For details, stories and photos from each segment, here are links to our individual travelogues from the year:

• St. Louis to Florida (round 1) – January/February
• Orlando to Austin, TX – March
• Roaming around Central TX - April/May
• Austin to St. Louis and back to Florida (round 2) – June
• Florida back to St. Louis, the long way – July
• St. Louis to Burning Man – August
• Burning Man to San Francisco - September
• San Francisco to Florida (third time is a charm!) to St. John, USVI – October/November

In general, 2010 had far too much motion, far too many long repositioning segments, too many routes that we’ve done before and not enough still and focused time in a single location. However, despite that – it was full of awesome.

Currently we’re on month 2 of our 5 month adventure in St. John, and we’re totally digging being still for a bit.  While we have some options formulating as to what might be next for us this spring – we have no idea what life looks like come April.

We look forward to continuing to share our journey with you in 2011. Thank you for being part of our amazing 4th year on the road!

While parked in San Francisco hanging out with friends post Burning Man, we were trying to figure out what was next for us. After a very hectic summer [...]]]> Time period: Oct 7, 2010 – March 30, 2011
Miles traveled by RV: 3140
Miles traveled in total: 4405

While parked in San Francisco hanging out with friends post Burning Man, we were trying to figure out what was next for us. After a very hectic summer of a lot of physical and emotional movement with places to be, our schedule was suddenly open.  And that’s when magic happen.  On the evening of September 22, the opportunity to sublet in St. John was plopped in our inbox.  Within a couple hours, we were pretty certain we were hopping on it, and within 48 hours it was a signed deal.

The next logistic was figuring out how to get there.  We contemplated RV storage in California and just flying the whole way.  But with never traveling by plane with Kiki before, a work trip that needed to be fit in and desiring some quality time with friends and family before we left the mainland for a few months – we decided to suck it up and do a mad dash across the country to Florida.  While our lease technically started on October 1, we factored in not being able to utilize the first month into our decision.  We booked flights for November 7, and gave ourselves a couple weeks to get to Florida and start the packing up process.

Lake Havasu City, Arizona

Our first stop was in Lake Havasu City to catch up with our friends there, as we totally missed getting quality time with them at Burning Man.   They hosted a small party for us to celebrate our upcoming adventure, and there was threats of people trying to dress up like Kiki to earn her spot on the plane to St. John.

New Mexico

Some friends of ours where on a short road trip visiting their family cottage in northern New Mexico, and invited us to stop in a for bit to share the experience.  It was a perfect get-away  mid country to escape and spend quality time. I also had a good bit of work that I was able to facilitate during the stop.

Gonzales, Texas

It was a given that we route through Gonzales to visit the good folks at Hillshade RV Park for a few days – where the NuRVers Rally was hosted earlier this year.  It was excellent to catch up, despite everyone (including us) being in seemingly chaos mode.  We also got up to Austin to spend a day with my brother sailing on the lakes, and got to meet up with Carmon of NuNomad.com.

Orlando

After two lengthier stops (and craving both being still, and having the mad dash over), we pulled long driving hours and made it into Florida as quickly as we could. There was much to be done to prepare for leaving our house on wheels behind and getting to the island, including:

- Business meetings with my staff (who are located in central Florida) to kick off some projects
- A business trip up to South Carolina to teach a class
- Going through everything we owned and deciding what got packed, and what stays behind
- Quality time with my parents and friends in the area
- Getting Kiki’s health certificate so she could fly
- Thoroughly cleaning the Oliver and preparing it to be still and unused for several months

And we did it all without too much stress, and me having a dreadfully draining cold/flu the entire time.

We picked up a rental car in Orlando, loaded our stuff in it and drove to Miami to catch our flight.  Finally landed in St. Thomas after a couple aborted landing attempts, caught a shuttle, then a ferry and then picked up our rental Jeep..  and finally we landed at our winter home in St. John.

Where we have a lease through the end of March – and absolutely no clue what is next for us after that.

Our daily pictorials from Burning Man 2010 should wrap up our time there:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Time Frame: August 29 – October 6, 2010
Miles Driven: 344

Our daily pictorials from Burning Man 2010 should wrap up our time there:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8

After a summer of travel with essential stopping points, plans, emergencies, lots of social time and time lines – we had intentionally left everything post-Burning Man up to serendipity to decide.  When we left the playa, we literally had not much of a game plan other than retrieving Kiki from her kitty-sitter.  We contemplated heading up to PermaBurn – the year round Burning Man inspired community in northern California, San Francisco or finding somewhere off-grid and away from people.

Mostly we were craving somewhere to set up with decent connectivity for a while to launch a few work related projects.

Sacramento

First stop was back in Sacramento, where we keep our storage unit – we needed to put the playa covered Burning Man gear back in storage.  Upon arriving to our friend’s home where we base out of, we were asked if we could house and cat sit for the remainder of the week. Perfect!   A place where we could put Burning Man behind us without feeling like we’d be in anyone’s way, at the same time feeling like we were helping out.  It was awesome to take care of business, shake off the dust and repack the house at a slower pace.

San Francisco

Even towards the end of our time in Sacramento, we had no firm plans for afterwards. And serendipity sure wasn’t voicing an opinion loudly.  Chris, by the way, thrives on the unknown.  For me however, it’s outside my default operating space and I can start to get stressed and agitated, especially if I’m already at my exhaustion point.  So I pushed for a plan to formulate.  After so much motion in the months leading up to this point, I wanted to know when we could put down the landing gear and really get caught up.

We decided fairly last minute to follow our calling to San Francisco. It looked like our friends Sam & Tracy of ZenNomads would be able to meet up there – and that seemed like as good a plan as any. It’s always fun to show off San Francisco!

The thing about San Francisco however is.. it’s not a place to go when you feel you need chill and relax time. It is so full of awesome, opportunity and amazing people – it can either be highly distracting & inspiring or completely overwhelming & intimidating.  Add on top of that, both Chris and I having a lot of community there – San Francisco is anything but a relaxing place for us. We tried our best to make it more on the inspiring than overwhelming side.

We literally made the plans and hit the road west within a few hours, and in that time period – e-mails and text messages started pouring in. Invitations to meet up, attend conferences as guests, present/speak.  Instead of pulling in and getting grounded for a couple days, we hit the ground running – first attending the AppNation conference for iPhone app developers, where we were offered free booth space to pimp our app, State Lines.  And then we were asked to be ambassadors at the Meet, Plan, Go! meetup (a great event, and wonderful to meet so many folks itching to leave the cubicle world to travel).  Visits with friends (including nearby nomads, Shonda & Michael) piled on top of that – and before we knew it our first week was up and we had hardly done anything we intended to do just for us.

We also had a very kind offer from a blog reader looking to hit the road himself – Matt of MuscleActivate, invited us to his studio to sample his muscle activation techniques. He did some body work on us both (even alleviating pain in my hip that had been there for years!) and taught us a lot about muscle mechanics. He even gifted us with custom made strengthening cords to attach to our trailer to improve our fitness on the road!  Amazing experience with an amazing person living his art.

Sam & Tracy then joined up with us, parked next door – expanding our neighborhood social network. It’s great being camped with them, as they’re also balancing a tech career in with traveling. So we can co-work, co-inspire and then have happy hour together.  It was good to focus more on work projects, and I even closed on my new software development contract and was able to get that in motion.

The invitations for meetups and events continued to fly in.. to a point of overwhelm on top of everything else going on in our lives. Which of course included considering the unexpected serendipity to regear our focus to winter in St. John.   We eventually got to a point where we surrendered ourselves to the idea that we just weren’t going to experience San Francisco this time around as much as we intended, and canceled a week’s worth of social engagements. But of course, not first without dressing Sam & Tracy up in leather and exploring Folsom Street Fair.   And we did make it a priority to spend an afternoon hanging out with our friends Christine, Drew & Cole Gilbert (AlmostFearless) before they headed off for their tour of Asia filming the digital nomad documentary.

—-

All and all, trying to spend a month in San Francisco was probably not the exact right idea for what our mental needs were. It was certainly however the perfect juxtaposition for jumping on the opportunity of being in St. John for several months with limited social opportunity to focus on work, and on ourselves.  We booked our tickets to St. John (thus setting the count down clock), left a week remaining on our San Francisco RV space and pulled out the other evening – starting our cross country journey before parking the rig and flying away for a while.

After a way too brief of a stop in St. Louis, it was time to continue west towards Burning Man. It seems every year we find ourselves in this predicament – way too little time to traverse some of the most beautiful scenery our [...]]]> Time Frame: August 2 – 28, 2010
Miles Driven: 2825

After a way too brief of a stop in St. Louis, it was time to continue west towards Burning Man. It seems every year we find ourselves in this predicament – way too little time to traverse some of the most beautiful scenery our country has to offer. Some might say that 3 weeks is plenty of time to traverse the western half of the country, for us, it’s barely scratching the surface.

We tend to find ourselves a bit remorseful of the deadline that Burning Man gives us, and always feeling like we’re skimming this area of the country.

So, we decided to try to find a route we hadn’t took before, to at least give us some variety of seeing different parts of the area. We put out a call for recommendations, and made a general plan of traversing highway 40 this time through northern Colorado and Utah.

Missouri, Nebraska and Eastern Colorado

We pulled a couple long driving days to make it through Missouri and Nebraska, with a goal making it to Colorado by my birthday. Back country driving through Nebraska and Missouri makes the trip much prettier than following interstates, but it is the same pretty over and over again.

We arrived to Brush!, Colorado (yes, they actually have a ! in their city name) and found a cute little city park that offered free overnight parking. We opted to rest up for a couple nights here, explore the little town and celebrate my birthday.

Colorado

After a break in Brush!, we started looking ahead to what in Colorado we wanted to explore this time. Having never been to Rocky Mountain National Park or the Loveland area, we put aims to there. We also put a silent wish to the universe for an RV Park with a hot tub with mountain views. Within moments, we received an invitation from a friend in the area to camp on her mountain land above Loveland, and partake in her hot tub. How’s that for serendipity?

We were having a lovely time.. until a bit of chaos erupted.

One morning I awoke with a horrible toothache. We found a dentist that very morning who could take me, and I ended up having an emergency wisdom tooth extraction that involved quite a bit of chiseling and prying (ouch). Then, just as soon as we got back home – Kiki got bit by a rattlesnake! So another speedy trip down the mountain to find care for her.

Thankfully, cats do well with rattlesnake bites, and Colorado rattlers tend to have low venom. Both Kiki and I recovered quickly – but quite a spendy and traumatic day for us. It also kept us in Loveland a few more days than anticipated.

After follow-up appointments confirmed we were both safe to move on – we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park, only to discover that despite the entrance signs saying otherwise, all campgrounds were full. We found a small county run park right on the border of that national park which turned out to be better for exploring Estes Park as well. We enjoyed a day of driving and hiking through Rocky Mountain NP.

After way too long of being in good cell phone reception area, we were feeling quite behind on several things. So when we found a beautiful meadow of wildflowers outside Steamboat Springs, CO on the continental divide – with decent signal, we decided to stop for a couple days. It seemed like a technomad dream come true… until…

We started receiving roaming overage messages from both Sprint and AT&T. With none of our devices showing us in a data roaming area, we were quite frustrated. Which lead Sean Welsh of Our Odyssey to start planting the seed of satellite internet. He even tracked down a used tripod setup for sale in Gunnison, CO – not too far away. We decided, what the heck? Worst case, we get it and end up selling it. Best case, we have a great option for getting online in remote locations (such as, Burning Man!).

So, our Highway 40 intentions were scratched and we diverted south towards Gunnison. Which ironically put us on a path of rendezvousing with two blog readers who had just sent in invitations to stop for a visit.

The first was Jim & Julie of ImperfectDestiny, who were just about to leave their home in Leadville, CO in a geeked out 17′ Casita (very similar to our Oliver) with their two dogs. We had a great time hanging out with them, swapping stories and sharing tech tips. We also happened to be in town for the Leadville 100 mountain bike race – which was quite a site to see!

Next stop was Gunnison to rendezvous with the sellers of our new satellite dish. Turns out the couple selling the dish had previously spent many years full timing on a sailboat – so we were able to pick their brains on that too. It’s always awesome to encounter other cool nomads by complete serendipity! They trained us on setting up the system, which was much easier than anyone had lead us to believe.  (Yes – we will have a post up soon with  more details on our satellite system & plan we selected, as well other cellular connectivity research and options we selected during this time period. Patience please!)

After Gunnison, we accepted an invitation to stop in Grand Junction, CO to visit another blog reader, Pam. She’s about to set off full timing as a solo female traveler – and we were excited to share with her tips for living on the road. As a former chiropractor and body worker, she gifted us with massage before we hit the road. Life is sweet indeed.

Utah

Unfortunately, with all the delays – our time in Utah was compressed to a single day. Which is such a shame – it’s one of our favorite states to explore.

Nevada

We made intentions to make Great Basin National Park, a stop we had made on our first cross country trip back in 2007. We camped at the upper campground where we knew no cellular signal lived. We wanted to fully test out our new satellite connectivity and see how well it would work for us.

Chris was able to get us set up in under an hour – and it was sweet to be online at elevation 10,000 ft.

Aside from surfing the interwebs, we took an afternoon and did a 6 mile glacier rock hike.

After a respite up the mountain, we crossed Highway 50 – which is a beautiful if monotonous drive through the crumple zone of Nevada. We made it into South Lake Tahoe for a night of rest.

California

Our goal was to make the iOSDevCamp in San Jose – an iPhone developer’s conference being held at PayPal’s headquarters. We had no idea what to expect, except that building an application at the conference was one of the goals.

It was a fantastic conference, very well run (especially given it’s all volunteer).. and we were able to get an operational version of an idea we had due to our connectivity frustrations. Our idea for an app, Coverage?, won the ‘Most Useful’ award of the conference. We were also thrilled that PayPal/eBay let us camp in their parking lot, which helped facilitate late night coding!

Still high on the unexpected award, it was time to shift focus to preparing for Burning Man. So we were off to Sacramento to switch things out in our storage unit (which is mostly Burning Man gear), then off to Black Rock City to settle Camp Nomadia.

Our time at Burning Man was blogged daily.. and there may be more posts about our experience there upcoming.

For now, we’re eyeing getting a monthly spot in San Francisco to focus deeply on a few projects and catching up with our community there. We’ve been in constant motion since mid-May, and it’s time for some still.

With my father well on the mend after his lung removal, we were ready to head on from hot and muggy Florida and continue our adventures. With only one destination to make this summer – Burning Man 2010 at the end of [...]]]> Time Frame: July 7 – August 1, 2010
Miles Driven: 1818

With my father well on the mend after his lung removal, we were ready to head on from hot and muggy Florida and continue our adventures. With only one destination to make this summer – Burning Man 2010 at the end of August – we started listening to where nomadic serendipity would send us.  Never ones for taking the most direct route from Florida to California, options seemed to align beautifully for us to experience some amazing things and spend time with amazing people.

State Parks up the East Coast

Our first destination got set for Columbia, South Carolina for a meeting with a new software development client we just signed. With a week until our first meeting and now integrating in running into our travels, we decided to find some state parks with trails to stay and run at.

First stop was Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach, Florida – which is one of our all time favorite places to stay. Right on the Indian River and nestled in the Florida hammocks – it’s a very relaxing place to kick back at, while still remaining accessible to civilization (including awesome 3G cellular signal!).

And then we meandered northward and decided on Skidaway Island State Park near Savannah, Georgia. Almost as soon as we got the landing gear down, long time followers Elliott & Ann contacted us and offered to give us a tour of Savannah!  It was awesome to finally meet up.  We also enjoyed Skidaway Island, got some good running in and enjoyed a private nighttime guided tour of the salt marshes by the ranger.

And then it was onward to Columbia for our business meeting.  We found Sesquicentennial State Park right in the middle of everything and also offering wonderful wooded sites and running trails. In addition to our meeting, we had a nomadic rendezvous with Andy & Lori of Life In The Right Lane who were ending their several month long RV road trip and heading for an epic adventure to Ukraine! It was great to catch up with them.

Our business meeting went really well, we even put on business clothes (a rare thing for us) – and we’re excited to be starting this new long term, nomadic-friendly, contract up in the coming weeks.

Rendezvouses with Friends

Almost just as soon as we set the meeting in Columbia up, our former sailing nomad friend, Barb (who we had just seen in St. Louis a month prior), told us she’d be in Floyd, VA teaching a jewelry class.  Which was perfectly on our route up to Indiana and gave us the opportunity to traverse more of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We enjoy a couple day rendezvous with her in Floyd, met some of her friends and enjoyed some awesome live music on Friday night!  Floyd seems like a cool little hip town where hippies and farmers converge.

Our next destination was Westville, Indiana – and we discovered that our nomadic buddies Ben & Karen were hanging out at a vintage bus rally in Ohio. Which was also perfectly on our way.  So we routed via Loudonville, OH to converge with them and catch up since we last saw them in St. Louis. We got to see the type of vintage Flxble Starliner bus that Ben is currently converting to be his new technomadic home enjoyed a round of mini golf before we made plans to meet up in a week in Chicago for a photowalk.

And then on to Indiana for a week with our friend Kele.  I’ve known her for a decade now, from my life in Florida – and we’ve kept up and grown closer since our physical lives diverged.  Her academic career is now taking her to Afghanistan for 3 years to be an administrator in a university there. We are overjoyed with excitement for her new expat life, and so happy we could arrange to be with her for a bit to help her put her tech life together and help purge a bit of her stuff.  She’ll be blogging her adventures at PomegranateVeils.com.

One evening as we were coming back from dinner along northern Indiana backroads, we saw Ben & Karen’s bus pass right in front of us!  A quick call revealed they had rather spontaneously decided to pull into Michigan City (not realizing this was just a couple miles down the road from where we were staying) instead of heading all the way into Chicago.  So we had a bonus nomadic rendezvous and got to introduce our friends to each other! What serendipity!

World Wide Photowalk – Chicago

On July 24, it was Scott Kelby’s Third Annual World Wide Photowalk – part of the whole Photoshop thing that Ben & Karen are known for in their professional and artistic careers. Since the event was open to photographers of all levels, we decided to join them for it.

With them now living just down the road from us, we decided to all take the train into Chicago together, and enjoyed an afternoon of shooting stuff.

Here are some of our favorite shots from the day that Chris & I took:

We departed with Ben & Karen after brew and dinner, probably not to rendezvous with them again until this coming winter. This year we’ll be able to count Texas (twice), Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and hopefully Florida as rendezvous spots with them.

St. Louis – Redux

Since our time in St. Louis in June got cut short due to my father’s illness, we wanted to route through St. Louis before heading westward to Burning Man to spend some time with Chris’ family.

Our time here has been filled with helping Chris’ aunt purge her record album, attending a free Concert in the Park, catching up with local friends and doing some cleaning and general maintenance on our Oliver Travel Trailer.

And now we start our westward trek to Burning Man.  We just signed up to attend an iPhone app developer’s conference in San Jose, CA on August 20 – so now we have a target arrival date , but no plans for our route there.

We’ll let serendipity figure that out for us, as it did a fine job for us this past month!

After a couple months of being still in central Texas with a lot of social time, it was time to get back into motion. Our impending plans seemed to be calling us towards heading to St. Louis for Gateway Burn, and then traveling [...]]]> Time frame: May 27 – July 6
Miles Driven: 2256

After a couple months of being still in central Texas with a lot of social time, it was time to get back into motion. Our impending plans seemed to be calling us towards heading to St. Louis for Gateway Burn, and then traveling westward through Canada.  However, on the morning we were pulling out of Austin to head to Burning Flipside (the regional Burning Man event near Austin), I got a call from my parents that my father had just been diagnosed with lung cancer.

It was crushing news, to say the least – and all plans were put on hold. We played things day by day, ready to head to Florida when needed as we awaited more test results to let us know what we were dealing with.

Burning Flipside – San Gabriel, TX

We had been sticking around Texas through May because we had been able to procure tickets to the Austin regional Burning Man event. It’s the largest regional, with about 2500 people in attendance. It’s so popular, that they only have ticket sales for one week – and then they have a lottery to draw who gets tickets.  We had been greatly looking forward to checking this event out.

Obviously, with the news of my father, we went into the event with less enthusiasm.  We were graciously invited to camp with our St. Louis burner community who had put together a camp called ‘Starship Inner Thighs’. It was great to camp with people we know, and we had a great time serving drinks at our community starship bar.

Burning Flipside is a fabulous event, and we highly recommend it. It’s large enough to attract larger scale art projects, but yet small enough that you can actually see it all. Our favorite part was that the San Gabriel River runs through the land, so hot afternoons were spent chilling in the river rapids.

Austin

After Flipside we headed back to Austin to pick up Kiki from her cat sitter.  As my father’s biopsy result was due back in the coming days, we opted to stick around Austin for a couple days before making a decision if we should head on to St. Louis or go directly to Florida.

This gave us the opportunity to hang out more with my brother and his wife, as well as Brice & Rose of TackyTexans, who did henna art on my feet.

The biopsy results on my dad turned out to be inconclusive at this point, and seeing as he had more testing to be done before he was even scheduled to meet with a surgeon, we figured we likely had just enough time to get to St. Louis before heading to Florida.

St. Louis

We had a few reasons why attending Gateway Burn was such a high priority for us.  For one, the St. Louis burner community has thus far been most welcoming of us nomadic folks. When we attended last year, we immediately felt appreciated and included – and then they further invited Camp Nomadia into their fantastic placement at Burning Man later in the summer. The organizers this year decided that they wanted to be a nomad friendly regional burn, and went to great lengths to write their rules in such a way that if following their rule of ‘Leave the pets at home‘ meant bringing them with you – that they would allow nomadic pets to attend. So Kiki was super excited to get to attend her first burn!

We had also put a lot of effort into inviting other nomads to join us at the event – and we had assembled a smaller Camp Nomadia. We ended up having a bit of a NuRVer’s repeat in St. Louis with Ben & Karen and Sam & Tracy (ZenNomads) converging with us.  I also had a dear friend and custom jeweler, Barb, and her daughter, Wendy, who were former full time sailing nomads come out from Philadelphia to join us for their first burn event.

It turned out that everyone was converging in St. Louis a week prior to Gateway, so we would get an opportunity to share one of our favorite cities with some of our favorite people! We took our nomadic tribe to the top of the St. Louis arch and to the ever awesome City Museum.

Barb has also developed a fascination with Gooey Butter Cakes, which seem to be a regional thing in St. Louis that spread to Philadelphia. So Chris’ mom graciously got out her family recipes and hosted a Gooey Butter Cake Extravaganza in which we all spent an afternoon baking. As you might imagine, these cakes are gooey and buttery.. and they’re also super sweet.  No one in their right mind should ever attempt to eat this much gooey butter richness!

Gateway Burn

Our nomadic tribe left St. Louis and caravanned down to Camp Zoe near Salem, MO for Gateway Burn. After some adventurous driving navigating 3 RVs down steep dirt mountain roads – we arrived to Camp Nomadia.

The land where the event was held was fabulous, and also featured a stream suitable for floating and swimming. This helped make the hot afternoons a delight.

Gateway had about 200 folks this year, double what it had last year. The land will give them a lot of room to grow the event and perhaps become a major regional event. It was lovely to be with our St. Louis friends and introduce our nomadic tribe.

Kiki also had a great time sporting her elwire harness!

Melbourne, FL

On the way into Gateway Burn, my father finally received results from his PET scan and had talked to his surgeon. The cancer appeared to be contained and not spread, but needed to come out ASAP. Surgery would be scheduled in just a few days to remove at least one lobe of his lung.

We left Gateway Burn in a bit of a hurry on Sunday morning so that we could make a mad dash to Florida. We wanted to arrive in time to spend some quality time with my folks before the surgery, and get settled in.  After driving through the night with a couple stops for long naps, we made it to Melbourne in time for dinner on Monday.  We set up camp and it was off to surgery early Wednesday morning.

The placement of my dad’s tumor unfortunately necessitated taking his entire right lung, but the good news is – so far, it looks like there was no spreading, and my father will not need further treatments. He’s been making great progress on healing, and will have several months of adapting to life with one lung.  Apparently John Wayne did it, and so can my dad!

————-

We’ve not done much else while in Florida but spend time with my family, a few friends, catching up on some projects, getting the truck maintenance caught up and juggling logistics of reorganizing the software business I run with my folks to glide my father into retirement to fully enjoy this life he was just gifted.

Interesting times ahead for us as I go back to being more involved in the business than I have been in the past couple of years.

And such [...]]]> One of the things that we designed our full time traveling lifestyle to accommodate for was being where we need to be. Family and loved ones are extremely important to us. And we recognized that as our parents and grandparents age, there is likely to be more need for us to be there.

And such as occasion is currently upon us. My father was just diagnosed with what looks like early stage lung cancer. So we are now enroute back to Florida for his surgery this Wednesday. We will be there to support him and my mother through this over the coming weeks, and I will be taking over day to day operations of the software development business that I run with my folks.

We really had no firm plans for our summer – we were contemplating traveling through Canada perhaps. The news came at a time in which we had even more flexibility than usual. So yesterday after leaving the Gateway Burn event near St. Louis we started heading towards Florida.

Photo by ZenNomads - www.zennomads.com

At first, my dad was reluctant to accept our offer of routing to Florida. He was thinking in terms of a more typical situation in which one might need to spend extra money to travel and potentially taking time off work. Then I reminded him, that for us – our travel costs are our everyday living costs and we’d be spending gas and camping fees anyway. It isn’t an extra expense for us.

Routing to be where we need to be, even for the long haul, is exactly what we’ve designed our lives to adapt for.

My father’s prognosis is quite positive and is a best case scenario situation so far. Hopefully in a couple of months he’ll be back to full speed and embracing more digital nomadism in his life too.

Your best wishes, healing thoughts and positive thinking are most appreciated right now as our family comes together to get through this.

After SXSW wrapped up, we entered into an intentionally still time. We knew we needed focused time to concentrate on giving birth to our first iPhone application which became State Lines.

This is probably the least amount of miles driven in any [...]]]> Time frame: March 22 – May 26
Miles Driven: 139

After SXSW wrapped up, we entered into an intentionally still time. We knew we needed focused time to concentrate on giving birth to our first iPhone application which became State Lines.

This is probably the least amount of miles driven in any such Travelogue we’ve posted, but yet likely one of the most eventful.   Just goes to show – experience is not just about the miles driven, and sometimes slowing down the pace invites awesome to your doorstep.

Our awesome mileage these past two months has been astronomically off the charts.

McKinney Falls State Park – Austin, TX

With SXSW chaos in Austin over, our spot at McKinney Falls State Park became available. It’s one of our favorite places to stay – beautiful surroundings, but yet close enough to south Austin to be accessible without feeling like you’re out in the boonies. We stayed here last year on our way through Texas, and fell in love with it – and been looking forward to launching our development here while keeping close enough to Cherie’s brother for quality hang out time.

When we arrived, most of the trees were still barren from a hard winter in Texas. Over our two weeks there, we watched spring bloom around us and turn brown into brillant greens. Wildflowers, including the Texas Bluebonnet, had an epic bloom.  It was an awakening after a long cold winter, and a perfect environment for launching new projects.

The start of our stay at McKinney Falls was a visit from our friends in Hemet, CA to Austin – Helene and her brother Victor. We had a blast doing a photo walk with Helene, and introducing them to Cherie’s brother, Ken, in Austin.

Aside from breaking the back development wise on State Lines, we also took on a new personal challenge – health improvement. Keeping fit on the road can be a challenge, and our options are limited with little space for carrying things like bikes. The Couch to 5K running program kept popping up in our social circles, and we found there was an iPhone app that took away the need to think about interval training. We decided to take advantage of the wonderful trails at McKinney Falls to start up running/jogging.

While at McKinney Falls, one of Cherie’s major software development contracts was up for renewal – which she rebid and won. It secures another couple years at minimum of guaranteed mobile friendly income for us.

We also received an invitation for dinner (delivered to our campsite) from a blog reader in Austin who had just purchased their first RV to gear up their lives to be mobile. Brice & Rose, the Tacky Texans, turned out to be folks very much of like minds, and offered to be our tour guides in exploring Austin.  It was awesome having new friends in Austin to encourage us to take breaks from development to get out and explore.

Hill Shade RV Park – Gonzales, TX

Texas state parks have a 2 week limit on them, so we knew we’d have to move on. When the NuRVers Days of Nu 2 location was announced in nearby Gonzales, we decided to contact the park about securing a spot for a month or so.  We wrote the owners to ask about their wifi and if it was parkwide.  Their response blew us away – they said it should, and if we encountered problems – they’d make it work!  So off we went to Hill Shade RV Park, with intentions in mind of being out in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks before the rally to concentrate on launching State Lines without distractions.

Intentions rarely live up to reality.

The Happy Janssen’s had also decided to make Hill Shade home prior to the rally – so our mobile tribe was already gathering. And soon more started to trickle in. Sam & Tracy, ZenNomads, made an early arrival, and there (happily) went our evenings to ourselves. Every night became a new adventure in community – of campfires, pot luck meals, gaming and movies. Happy community bliss.

And wouldn’t you know it, our intended social-free time was further thwarted by the awesomeness of Hill Shade’s owners, Christine & Michael and their amazing kids. A friendship quickly started to bud with them, and we just couldn’t resist the temptation to be distracted from our seclusion.

By the time the rally officially started, there were already a dozen NuRVers, including our long time technomadic rendezvous buddy and his new sweetie – Ben & Karen who we hadn’t seen since last November. Hill Shade was already rocking before the sound of the rally tweets. It was an amazing and connective experience to be part of the ramp up energy.

We did take a break and made one trip up to Austin, while Cherie’s parents came in from Florida for a small family reunion. Otherwise, we barely left Hill Shade for weeks.

Despite all the attempts at distracting us, by the time the rally started we had the core of State Lines completed with just need for polishing. We wanted to show off our new creation to the very type of people the app had in mind to get initial feedback.

Days of the Nu 2

We had missed the first gathering of NuRVers the year prior, and had made it a priority to make this gathering. All and all, 17 nomadic households made their way to Hill Shade – all in different stages of their nomadness. There were several families on the road in attendance, as well as many childfree folks. It was an interesting experience in trying to find balance to make sure events met the needs of all involved.. and much learned for future events.

The rally was a mix of scheduled and spontaneous events – a field trip to the Shiner brewery, jewelry making workshop, happy hours, crowdsourced meals, costume night (which we won for ‘Best coordinated couple’), bartender wars and more.  The days quickly became a chaotic blur to us, especially as we had taken on the challenge of documenting the event with video. All footage has now been shot, and now we start the long process of condensing down several hours of footage into an approachable documentary to share with all the variety of ways we make this lifestyle work.

Instead of trying to recap all that happened at the gathering, check some of the posts made by other attendees who somehow found the time to record the daily happenings:

Sara Janssen’s Daily Wrap-Ups: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5
Karen’s:  Pre-Gathering Wrap Up
Jim & Rene’s: Tequila Tasting
Jonathan & Dasy’s: Wrap Up
Tara & Justin’s: Sculpting Passion
Becky and Chris’: Traveling Neighborhood
Jennifer’s: First RV Rally
Brice & Rose’s: A Rally at a Perfect Time
Shonda’s: Intimidation amongst peers

Us: Cast of Characters at NuRVers

Photos:  NuRVer Flickr Pool

Gonzales Inquirer Newspaper Article (notice that everyone’s names in the paper is wrong?  Small town publishing or protecting the innocent?)

While the rally officially lasted 4 nights – things ramped down like they ramped up – slowly. It would be almost nearly a week before the majority of the nomadic households moved on. This was wonderful, as it allowed us to experience community without the chaos of a rally schedule to follow.

Hill Shade – Post NuRVers

Us and ZenNomads decided to stick around Hill Shade post rally to finish up various projects we were working on.

We dove back into finishing up State Lines, which got submitted to Apple early morning on May 8, and was in the App Store on May 17.  We loved being able to share our joys with community, and are proud to consider Hill Shade the birthplace of our first app.

We enjoyed hanging out more with Christine & Michael, and made some trips into Austin to see Cherie’s brother, into San Antonio with ZenNomads and more touring around Austin with Tacky Texans. We even got to help them learn their new home on wheels, which was a joy to see their excitement with their new home and life simplification.

We also got to know some of the locals in Gonzales and sampled lots of home made wine, collect our own chicken eggs right from underneath hens and help harvest fruit for future batches of wine to enjoy on our next trip through.

Landa RV – New Braunfels, TX

While some of us stayed behind in Gonzales, some of the NuRVers moved to nearby New Braunfels to enjoy some time along the Comal River.  With our app launched, and starting to get a bit of nomadic itch – ZenNomads and us decided to hit the road and join up too. So a sort of round two of NuRVers happened for a few days, in a much more chill fashion.  It was a lovely time along the Comal, with tube floating, swimming, shared meals and community. Christine & Michael and Tacky Texans even joined up for the fun!  How cool is that that the owners of your previous RV Park drive to come join you??

Pecan Grove RV Park – Austin, TX

Next stop would be the fabulous Pecan Grove in Austin, TX – a spot we had been itching to check out. Both ZenNomads and us were able to score spots next to each other for a few days.  The location is fabulous, on Barton Springs Road – and in walking distance to yummy places to eat, Town Lake, Zilker Gardens, downtown and even a brewery next door.   We’ve been enjoying a lot of social time in our little nomadic caravan.

We’re also using the opportunity in Austin to provision for attending Burning Flipside this coming weekend.

——–

We’ll part ways with ZenNomads in the morning, only to join up again in a couple weeks near St. Louis for Gateway Burn.  Where some others from our nomadic tribe will join up too, including Ben & Karen.   If you have any inclination to join up with Camp Nomadia at Gateway, tickets are on sale through June 5.

After that, it’s back to traveling on our own for a while – which is going to be a strange experience after so much abundance of nomadic community.   Our route to Burning Man for the summer is still unknown.

This past [...]]]> Even though I grew up in Austin, I moved away before I was old enough to really appreciate the level of weirdness the city embodies.  So this visit to Austin, we took opportunities to explore some of the awesome places we had only heard about.

This past weekend while hanging out with our new friends, and soon-to-be-nomads, Brice & Rose of Tacky Texans - we decided to stop by the Cathedral of Junk in south Austin.

You’ll know you’ve arrived to the Cathedral of Junk when you spot a car on the roof of a house, and obviously displeased neighbors displaying ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs.

Park, be respectful of the neighbors – and then spend the next few moments of your life reminiscing as you see toys, electronics, signs, bikes and more from your past artfully constructed into a cathedral integrated in with the natural landscape.

Starting with a few hubcaps on the fence in 1989, over 800 bikes and thousands of specially donated items have been puzzled and wired together.   An ongoing project, the Cathedral continues to evolve.

Vince Hannemann is the yardist behind this monolithic collection of junk – he owns the yard that the cathedral has sprung from and has been working on the project for over 20 years. An inspired artist, not all that unlike Leonard Knight of Salvation Mountain, Vince claims to be ‘not as friendly’. We didn’t find him be necessarily unfriendly either.

The cathedral is well constructed – this really isn’t just a pile of junk. It’s wired together and built for full on interaction with winding paths, ladders to upper floors and various chambers. And in the case of a tornado tearing through the neighborhood, it’s quite likely the Cathedral will be the only thing left standing.

View our video tour of the Cathedral of Junk (click for those on RSS/e-mail)

(By the way, this HD video and many of the photos in this post were taken with my ultra compact Canon PowerShot SD780 – which I got back in July and am still totally loving.)

Some of the neighbors aren’t so amused however, and are trying their darnedest to create as many hoops as possible for the Cathedral to jump through. Their latest is involving the city of Austin for code enforcement – and presently the Cathedral has been granted only days to come up to compliance or face bulldozing. At present time, they have an April 9, 2010 deadline to file the necessary permits.

This would truly be a loss to the weirdness that Austin is – and many volunteers from the local community have come together to bring the Cathedral entirely up to code.  Vince is also seems fairly confident that his community can come up with funding to buy the displeased neighbors out and be able to sell the properties at full market value to enthusiasts of the Cathedral who would better appreciate the attraction.

Inspired like we were by this monumental art project?  Click on through to savethejunk.org to track the latest in the battle, and see how you can help out.

—-

April 17, 2010 Update: The Cathedral of Junk continues to meet challenges.. potentially terminal ones.  Not only is Vince trying to jump through hoops to meet code regulations, he is also now faced with possible zoning regulations.  Austin City Council has said it is open to hearing citizen feedback as to whether the zoning regulations need to be clarified to allow this treasure to continue to exist.  Write them now to have your voice heard!

Our travel plans for the next few months are starting to shape up:

April: At the end of the week, we’ll be repositioning down to Gonzales, TX – to the site where the NuRVer’s Gathering will be held at the end of the month.  It seems like a great spot to be for a bit, to complete some projects (that we’re quite excited to announce soon!) and spend some time with the Happy Janssen’s, who are in the area early for the event too.  We’re getting quite excited about the event!

May: We’ll be hanging around central TX, as we received the wonderful news that we won the lottery to participate in Burning Flipside – the Austin regional Burning Man event.  We’re quite excited to be attending.  If there are other nomad’s also attending, we’d love to put together a Camp Nomadia theme camp there.  Let us know if you are!  (Kiki is also looking for someplace in Austin to stay, as Flipside is a ‘no pets allowed’ event.)

June: We’ll be immediately heading up to St. Louis, so that we can attend Gateway Burn – the St. Louis area Burning Man event.  They’re specifically reaching out to nomads to attend – and waiving their ‘no pets’ rules to specifically allow nomadic pets to attend (Kiki is very excited!).  Tickets should go on sale soon, and will be available for purchase until just a few days before the event – making it quite easy to accommodate nomadic standard time. We highly encourage any nomads who might be passing this way to come join us at Camp Nomadia there – it’s an awesome event, and a great way to get a taste of the Burning Man vibe without the epic adventure.

Our time between June and August is currently unplanned.  Although I recently realized that I have about 100,000 Delta miles that will be expiring soon.  It’s enough to get both of us somewhere in Central or northern South America, or me almost anywhere in the world.  So we’re starting to contemplate an international adventure – either together or perhaps a solo trip for myself.  We’re open to ideas on where might be a good place to go.

After an extended stay in Florida catching up with family and friends, checking out sail boats and making new friends – we decided to head on to Austin to be in the area while SXSW Interactive was going on.

With so many bloggers [...]]]> Time Frame: March 7 – 21, 2010
Miles Driven: 1229

After an extended stay in Florida catching up with family and friends, checking out sail boats and making new friends – we decided to head on to Austin to be in the area while SXSW Interactive was going on.

With so many bloggers and friends planning to be there, we decided to splurge and booked the last RV spot we could find in Austin. We also decided to just wing it, and not actually buy badges – instead relying on serendipity to social network our way around.

And on a bit of a whim.. off we set, taking backroads whenever feasible.

Manatee Springs State Park – Chiefland, FL

We made our way west, aiming to find the western most road north out of Florida, exploring an area of Florida neither of us had been in much before.   Just about when we were ready to call it a day, we saw a park sign for Manatee Springs State Park. A quick confirmation that there was camping in the park with our handy RV Camping in State Parks book, and off we set in hopes of making it to the gate before the park office closed.

We totally scored by making it just in time, and were assigned a beautiful camp site and set off for a hike around the lagoon at sunset.  The campground is also close by the manatee viewing area, and we caught sight of a few swimming around in the morning. Unfortunately, due to high waters, swimming with them was off limits during our stay.

New Orleans

In the morning we continued our drive west, boondocking overnight in Pensacola. We drove the coastal route along the Florida panhandle, and got to witness the chaotic kick off of spring break in Panama City Beach.

We had decided before we left Orlando that we’d like to treat ourselves to a couple days in New Orleans, as neither of us had been back there since Katrina. Researching camping options online surfaced the French Quarter RV Resort, located just on the edge of the French Quarter.  While pricey , we decided being able to walk to everywhere  was worth it.  The resort itself was nice – huge spaces, a central courtyard with private bath suites, an ice machine and a hot tub.  It was a nice departure from our normal style of boondocking and public campgrounds.

We spent a couple days wandering around the French Quarter and the Frenchman area. On our way into town, we happened to catch a tweet from Carl Nelson, and remembered that he had recently settled in NOLA.  Carl immediately offered to meet up with us while we were in town.  He directed us to a jazz club, where we marveled at his awesome Lindy Hop swing dance talents.   Carl is also known as the Dance Nomad, and teaches swing dance around the world and online.  It turned out that Carl was heading to SXSW, and would also be ‘not’ attending like us.

Houston

On our way west, we were contacted by Rasheed Hooda of Present Day Nomads, who had done a feature on us last year. He invited us to dinner and to street camp in front of his home in Houston on our way into Austin. Perfect timing!

After a drive-break stop in Avery Island, Louisiana for a tour of the Tabasco Factory – we arrived to join Rasheed for an evening of very yummy Pakistani food, and great conversations.

In the morning, Rasheed shared with us how he’s currently making his income – by twisting balloon animals!  He left the corporate world to find something that brought him joy. And, it’s a portable business model that he plans to take on the road with him as a nomad eventually.

He shared with us that at first, when people asked him how much a balloon animal cost, he quoted a price of $2-3.  And, as one would expect, he received just about that. A while back he started answering the question with ‘Pay whatever you think it’s worth’.  He’s now averaging $5-10 an animal.

Something to think about, for sure.  We tend to undervalue ourselves.

Austin – SXSW

And then.. our arrival to Austin!  We pretty much hit the ground running, attending various SXSW Interactive social events we were invited to.

First off was breakfast hosted by our friend and podcaster Ewan Spence at Magnolia Cafe (yum). We were immediately seated with Dave Delaney (part of the Griffin road trip to SXSW), Julien Smith (co-author of Trust Agents) and C. C. Chapman (Campfire Creative) – we indulged in gingerbread chocolate chip pancakes while talking about life on the road with mobile technology.

Next was the Location Independent Professionals MeetUp, where we got to rendezvous again with the fabulous Cath Duncan (who we met last year when our paths crossed in Colorado) and Carl Nelson.  We also finally met many other location independent folks we had been corresponding with, including: Jon Woodward, Andy Hayes of Sharing Travel Experiences, Mike Boyink, Adam Baker (Man Vs Debt) and a video chat with Lea Woodward, who stayed back in the UK.  Our breakfast meetup ended up going well into the afternoon, and we followed a string of serendipity, and ended up attending SXSW social events well into the late evening.

We got to spend a lot of time with our friend Kaye Porter, and help her map out her next business venture, and ended up crossing paths repeatedly with Carl, Andy and Cath. We ended up meeting many more fabulous people – including Pace and Kyeli of FreakRevolution,  Ali Hale of Aliventures, Nathalie Lussier of Raw Foods Witch, Kelly of Sticky eBooks and a whole crew of author’s of Thrivable.

Our heads are still spinning after all the awesome new friends we met!

We ended SXSW the same way we started it – breakfast with Ewan at Magnolia Cafe.  We then stopped by our campground for him to tell Kiki scary stories before dropping him off at the airport to return to Scotland.

And that’s just our first week in Austin…  stay tuned for our anticipated upcoming plans.

Unfortunately, we’ll not [...]]]> We are currently enroute to Austin, Texas to (not) attend South by Southwest (SXSW).  SXSW is a huge convention/festival combining independent music, film and emerging technologies – all rolled into the weirdness only Austin can provide.  We’ve never been, although we keep getting told it’s exactly our kind of thing.

Unfortunately, we’ll not be attending this year either – the ticket prices are just too steep for us, especially last minute.  It’s an unfortunate side effect of living via nomadic serendipity – there are financial penalties for not pre-planning far in advance for events like this.

Given that Austin is where I grew up, I have family in the area and a bunch of our friends are converging in Austin over the next couple of weeks – that’s the place we feel called to be.  Earlier this week we snagged one of the last RV spots in town.

From what we hear, there are plenty of ‘fringe’ SXSW related social activities going on that don’t require a badge to attend.  For instance, the Location Independent Professional’s community will be hosting a LIP Meet-Up (click to RSVP and join us!) this coming Sunday, and we’ll definitely be there.

If you’re attending SXSW and know of any events we can crash – or want to meet up – please do let us know.

Presently our plans have us in Austin through the end of the month, and then moving on to Gonzalez, Texas in April – which is where the NuRVer’s Gathering (a tribe of us younger full time RVing freaks) will be happening towards the end of the month.  We also have ticket requests in to attend Burning Flipside, the Austin regional Burning Man event over Memorial Day weekend.

We’re looking forward to hanging out in the hill country of Texas for the spring, enjoying the wildflowers and focusing deeply on a couple of projects, all the while enjoying a lot of awesome Tex-Mex cuisine!

But first we’ll be making a stop in New Orleans on the way.

After an extended month long winter and holiday stop in St. Louis visiting Chris’ family, it was time to head south for the remainder of the winter. Cherie previously lived in Florida for 12 years before we hit the road, and that’s where [...]]]> Time frame: January 20 – February 20, 2010
Miles Driven: 1776

After an extended month long winter and holiday stop in St. Louis visiting Chris’ family, it was time to head south for the remainder of the winter. Cherie previously lived in Florida for 12 years before we hit the road, and that’s where her parents and a lot of our friends live. We knew we’d be in for a hectic schedule of trying to fit seeing everyone in.  We started our adventure south on January 20, 2010.

Atlanta

Our first planned stop would be in Atlanta, a place we never seem to get enough time in as we’re alway just passing through. However we wanted to be sure to stop in and see Diane and Jill, who own a T@b clamshell twin to our former home on wheels. We used to be able to park at their place, but with our slightly larger Oliver Travel Trailer, we weren’t certain our trailer would still fit in their back lot.

And then serendipity happened.  We received a well timed e-mail from someone who almost camped with us at Camp Nomadia the very first year we brought the camp together. Dale was formerly a nomad, but he ended up camping elsewhere and we only got to meet briefly at Burning Man 2008.  Before he switched camps, he had made up some awesome caribineer/flashlight/bottle openers with ‘Camp Nomadia’ printed on them. He gifted us a handful, and they’ve been quite useful. Especially for lightpainting!

As it turns out, Dale has since settled in Atlanta, and invited us to stop in – citing he had plenty of parking space.  His directions ended with ‘park anywhere on the tennis court’ – which raised an eyebrow.  So thus we parked, intending to only stay a couple nights, on his tennis court in front of his airplane hanger converted loft.  It was awesome to get to know Dale and compare stories from the road, Burning Man and geekery. Our intended couple night stay turned into 5 nights (see what we mean about Nomadic Standard Time?) until we figured we really did need to be on our way.

While in Atlanta, we also got to meet up with Diane, however Jill was sick. We also got to make a new friend, who was introduced to us via a mutual friend in California. We went to an independent artists fundraiser and saw a cool afro-celt band play.

Tomoka State Park

After coming off of our intense month working at Amazon.com, holidays, cold weather in St. Louis and our unexpected social time in Atlanta – we were craving some alone time with just the three of us before heading into more social time. One thing we’ve found in our travels is that if we want time for ourselves, we have to carve it out.

So we selected one of our favorite campgrounds in Florida – Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach. It was one of our destinations when we were first trying out nomadic life together back in early 2007. We love it for it’s authentic Florida hammocks and nicely wooded campsites along the waterway.

We got some relaxing and alone time in. However, one thing about state parks in the middle of the week, is that we’re not the only interesting people traveling through. We ended up meeting two other traveling couples.  They were closer to traditional retirement age than us – but what was interesting, is that in each couple, one of them was earning an income by being online professors. They were each using mobile technology to explore their wanderlust, visit their families and keep funded.  It’s so inspiring to encounter so many people exploring these mobile lifestyles before retirement.

Titusville

Next stop was Titusville, primarily to visit with Cherie’s ex and her former cat, Alma.  Cherie and Fritz dissolved as a couple primarily because they were simply on different life paths – Cherie wanting more mobility and adventure, and Fritz wanting to settle into one spot and focus on planning for retirement with a stable career.  Their solution was to seek what they both wanted in life and remain close friends.. instead of getting bitter and angry over it.  It was wonderful to see just how happy they were now that they were well into their chosen paths.

We did split our time down in Melbourne, staying with Cherie’s parents a few nights.  Unfortunately, they live in one of those neighborhoods where they don’t allow RVs, so we opted to stay in their guest room while we left our camper at Fritz’. It’s worth it to get quality time!

While in Titusville, we noticed that the last planned night shuttle launch was planned, and ended up being temporary neighbors with the delightfully awesome nomadic Louis and Sean of Our Oddyssey. We were part of ‘Camp STS-130′ – an amazing temporary RV city that forms around launch time.

James and his partner Maria came over from Tampa – he’s better known as @NomadRIP, to join the fun. We look forward to many future rendezvouses with all these like minded folks.

The launch was delayed an evening, but it was an amazing 4:14am launch of Shuttle Endevour.

Melbourne

We relocated down to Wickham Park, a county run park in Melbourne for a couple nights.  Chris’ parents are experimenting with being snowbirds on the west coast of Florida this winter, and came over for a fajita cookout at Cherie’s parents place.    Chris also took care of routine medical exams at our primary care physician in Melbourne, and we both had our routine eye exams.  While we have medical access all over the country via our individual health plans, we do prefer to establish providers in spots we consider ‘home bases’.

Orlando.. no.. now Miami!

At first we were planning to relocate to the Orlando area, where we have friends with several wooded acres who extend an open invite. However, we got hit with a Nautical Bug, and found our way to Miami instead to attend the Miami Internatational Boat Show.  Chris has written prolifically about this.

Following Nomadic Serendipity

The next week was an amazing ride of following the Ripples of Serendipity – which took us down to Marathon to check out an older catamaran we were intrigued by.

Then up to Jupiter Farms to meet with some awesome readers of our blog – Richard & Claire and Dave & Julie, and answer their questions about nomadism on wheels. Richard and Claire have a pig and backyard chickens, and we spent an evening combusting Christmas trees in their backyard firepit with their awesome sons, Glenn & Patrick.

Then serendipity decided we weren’t done yet, and handed us a connection to a similarly aged full time sailing couple, Gray and Cindy, who seemed happy to spend an afternoon sharing their lifestyle with us. It was great to be on the other side of the table, inquisiting someone else about a lifestyle we’re interested in embarking upon.

Orlando.. and beyond?

We finally found our way to the Orlando area, a full week after our original intentions.  We plan to stay here a week or so – get caught up on a bunch of projects, and just enjoy the solitude of our wooded nest camped next to great friends, Cec & Paula, who truly embrace our self sufficiency and temporary neighbor preference.

—–

Soon we’ll decide when we need to start heading to Texas. We’re still undecided about South by Southwest, mostly because we just can’t justify the high ticket cost.   If we make it to Austin by mid-March, we may just meet up with friends attending outside the event, and enjoy the ancillary festivals and events that apparently happen.  Perhaps next year we’ll submit a proposal for a Technomadic panel and try to get in as presenters.  At the very least, we need to make it to Central Texas by late April for the NuRVer‘s Gathering (or whatever they decide to call it) – a rally of other younger full time RVers.

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Camp STS-130 in Titusville, FL

Since Saturday afternoon, we’ve been camped along the Indian River in Titusville, Florida – right off Highway US 1.  We’ve been enjoying a completely awesome nomadic rendezvous with Sean Welsh and Louise Hornor of Our Odyssey as temporary neighbors (it’s our first in person meeting after years of cyber stalking each other around

Sean & Louise of Our Odyssey

the country.)  We’ll post most later about our time with them.

What we’re here for was to watch the last planned night shuttle launch. And one of the last five shuttle launches, period.

I lived on the Space Coast of Florida for 12 years before going nomadic. Stepping outside to watch a launch is an amazing part of everyday life here, and an experience that never gets old. I feel very blessed to have serendipitiously ended up back on the Space Coast, in the perfect area to watch this last night launch.

Only on two other occasions had I made the effort to get a close up view and see the entire launch from engine ignition.

Our view across the Indian River - VAB & Launch Pad

There’s been a temporary RV encampment here along US1 that has been fun to be part of, it’s been sort of a ‘Quartzite East’.  The City of Titusville allows free overnight camping on their owned land during a 36 hour window surrounding launch time, something we greatly appreciate!

And we have had the most spectacular of views.

The first attempt of the launch was scrubbed Sunday morning due to low clouds in the area. However, we had an awesome time hanging out with Sean and Louise.  Nomad-stalker, James Schipper and his partner Maria, also came over from the west coast of Florida for the launch and for our first in person meeting.  The four of us huddled all night long in our little Oliver Travel Trailer until the last minute no-go call.

This morning however, at 4:14am EST – all systems were GO (or GEAUX for you Saints fans!), and we witnessed an amazing launch. We also had the nomadic Browski family stop by for a bit before they headed on to their shuttle view hotel room.  The past couple days have been quie the nomadic tweetup!

We recorded video to share:

Direct link to the video for those on RSS/E-mail. By the way, this HD video was taken with my ultra compact Canon PowerShot SD780 – which I got back in July and am still totally loving.

I had a tear in my eye watching this magical moment of technological splendor, knowing that the shuttle program is soon coming to an end. And most likely, this will be the last shuttle launch I’ll ever get to witness in person.  What a beauty!

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With plans to spend the holidays with family in the St. Louis area, we looked ahead to doing a mid-country run very much similar to the path we took earlier in the year.  We decided to sign on to workamp [...]]]> Time Period: Oct 25 – Dec 31, 2009
Miles Driven: 2125

With plans to spend the holidays with family in the St. Louis area, we looked ahead to doing a mid-country run very much similar to the path we took earlier in the year.  We decided to sign on to workamp at Amazon’s distribution center in Kansas on the way to kill a month, which would mean the trip across country would be at a much quicker pace than our normal.

San Diego, CA

Upon discovering that we had potential vehicle issues with our Jeep that might need additional attention before attempting another cross country jaunt, we decided to relocate from Hemet, CA to San Diego – where there would be more resources for repairs. It also helped that our technomadic friend, Ben Willmore, was also hanging out there – so for only the fifth time in our travels we stayed in a commercial RV park.

And much to our surprise, the park was able to place our tiny 17′ rig right next to his 40′ bus. It was nice to be temporary neighbors with Ben for a week while we took care of our chores and he took care of his. And as it was the San Diego Beer Week, we spent many an evening sampling some fine craft beers together.

In the end, it turned out that repairing the Jeep didn’t make sense, so our focus shifted to finding a replacement tow vehicle  more suited for full time towing. We said good bye to our beloved diesel Jeep Liberty CRD, and hello to a 2006 Toyota Tundra.

Exploring the Salton Sea

With a new tow vehicle procured, it was time to start our eastward journey – but not before a long anticipated rendezvous with nomadic photographer Sandi Wheaton.  She had been put in touch with us several months ago after she lost her job and decided to spend several weeks doing an epic phootography roadtrip down Route 66 in a small travel trailer. During the course of conversing about the lifestyle, a friendship was formed.

With her now  in Los Angeles and ready to start her eastward trek back home – we rendezvoused back near Hemet at a paragliding field that Chris had been practicing jumping off mountains at.  While we just missed the opportunity for him to have a sled ride down, we had an awesome time meeting Sandi – so much so, we called our awesome artist friends Sean Mahonney and Helene Lohr (who we had spent the past 6 weeks with).   They came out and joined us, and an epic Salton Sea photo exploration for the next day was conceived.

Arriving after dark, our first night on the Salton Sea was spent boondocking at the old Niland Marina and doing some epic light painting.  Both with Cherie doing fire and LED poi dance, and of Sandi’s triangle trailer.

In the morning, we all spent several hours photo exploring this area – coming up with some amazing shots!   And then, Sandi offered to give us a tour of Slab City and introduce us to her friend who lives there.

Went spent the rest of the day in an artistic wonderland that is known as East Jesus in Slab City, and exploring Salvation Mountain – both of which we’ve written about separately.   We ended up staying the next two nights at East Jesus before continuing on our way eastward.  We will be returning for an extended visit.

Eastward to Kansas

As we had previously gone a very similar route through Arizona and New Mexico earlier in the year,  we opted to traverse this section of the trip on the interstate and make good time.

We did stop off for a couple nights in Lake Havasu City to visit our Oliver-owning Burning Man friends – where Andrew was sweet enough to help us track down some problems we were having with our tail lights.

We made good time through Albuquerque, then decided to slow the pace down a bit and started taking our preferred backroads once we hit Tucumcari. We got across the great state of Texas in record time by just crossing the tip of the panhandle, and explored around Oklahoma. Spotting a sign for the city of Laverne, we took a detour to do a special photography holiday gift for Chris’ grandmother – of the same name.

We arrived to Independence, Kansas and began scoping out our camping options for our month long stay in the area while we worked at Amazon. We checked out the closet options in Coffeyville – but at the time the only spots left were spack dab in the middle where we’d have neighbors on all four sides. While the commute would have been nicer, we opted for the open meadows and lakes that Elk City State Park offered, which is also where another Oliver owning friend of ours was staying as they workamped too.

Amazon.com

The month of December was mostly working at Amazon.com’s fullfillment center in Coffeyville, Kansas. It was a physically intense experience that left us with a lot of illumination on many aspects of American culture we might not have otherwise received.  We’ve already written some of our initial impressions about the experience, and did an interview with Gizmodo that has been since featured on Slashdot. We find it a bit humorous that us normally tech-enabled nomads taking on a manual labor job gets us so much publicity!

We will be following up in the coming weeks with a lot more information on our experience at Amazon – mostly we’re just waiting on our final paycheck to make it through our forwarding system so that we can show exactly how much money can be made at these sorts of gigs.

St. Louis

We’re  now in St. Louis spending the holidays with Chris’ family.   Mostly we’ve been catching up on sleep, readjusting back to daylight hours and catching up on all of the chores that can accumulate in a month.

In a few weeks, we’ll start heading south to warmer climates and time with Cherie’s family.

However, I didn’t anticipate [...]]]> We had such as awesome time visiting and exploring Slab City – the remains of the abandoned Marine barracks of Camp Dunlap just outside Niland, California along the Salton Sea in the desert of southeast California. And I had big intentions of writing prolifically about it to share with you.

However, I didn’t anticipate just how little ‘free time’ we’d be getting working at amazon.com’s distribution center in Kansas this month.  We’ve now completed our first full week (working 11 hour days – 5 days a week), and it’s exhausting. It’s not mentally challenging by any means, but it sure is physically challenging.  And it’s quite an experience and peak into this side of consumer culture and America. We’re all about experiences and learning about things we’re not normally exposed to – so it’s definitely worthwhile from that perspective.  Hopefully when we’re done with our time here in a few weeks we’ll have the energy to post more indepth about what we’ve learned (without violating the terms of our NDA we signed about the specific processes.)

So back to wonderful antithesis of consumerism – Slab City and East Jesus. When we met up with Route 66 Roadtripping Sandi Wheaton in what seems like so long ago now, she was thrilled to be able to play tour guide for us around the Salton Sea – an area of the country we had not yet explored, and were quite curious about.

We posted previously about our afternoon at Salvation Mountain.

However, we also explored The Slabs, and were introduced to her awesomely cool friend Container Charlie who has created an experimental artistic habitat constructed out of found materials and made into art – he calls it ‘East Jesus’. It came as no surprise to us that he’s a fellow burner (Burning Man participant) and vagabond. We instantly clicked, and new friend found.

Sandi just saved us a ton of writing by posting her write up of our visit to East Jesus. So instead of trying to muster the creative energy to post about it ourselves, I’m going to refer you to her awesome post – East Jesus, Pop 1, Elev 75.

Before starting at amazon, I also managed to complete a video piece about The Slabs in general (not focused on East Jesus) to give you an overview of our time there.

In case you don’t see the video above if you’re on RSS – here’s a direct link to the video.

So, I wouldn’t be expecting much in the way of posting for a few weeks from us as we complete our time at amazon – we hope you enjoy your vacation from our stories, and we look forward to continuing sharing our adventures after the first of the year with you.

As a gentle reminder – aside from working there as temps this season at amazon, we’re also affiliates.  If you’re going to be shopping at amazon anyway, if you start off your shopping session using this link – we’ll get a small cut of your purchases.  Every little bit helps to pad the meager hourly wage they’re paying us to package your stuff.

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Most never act on this.

But a rare few are overcome with purpose, and devote their lives to the call.

Artist Leonard Knight heard such a call (“to my knowledge, it was on a Wednesday, about ten-thirty in the morning [...]]]> Some people have a calling, a message they must deliver to the world.

Most never act on this.

But a rare few are overcome with purpose, and devote their lives to the call.

Artist Leonard Knight heard such a call (“to my knowledge, it was on a Wednesday, about ten-thirty in the morning in 1967″), and has dedicated his life to nothing else since.

And for the past 25 years, Leonard has been toiling tirelessly in the California desert – building a monument to his message – that “God is Love”.

I have met tenacity and it’s name is Leonard Knight.

When the simple message of ‘God is Love’ hit Leondard in 1967, he was inspired to stitch together a massive colorful hot air balloon to fly the message to the people. But after 14 years of work, he was never able to get his balloon inflated without tearing. And eventually his patchwork of fabric had become a lost cause, beginning to rot.

When he gave up on the balloon project in 1984 Leonard was passing through Slab City in the southeastern desert of California – a fascinating no man’s land that we will feature in a story all its own. Before leaving, Leonard decided to stay one more week to make a “small statement” – a monument to his message built into a local hillside.

Decades later his “small statement” has grown into a 150 foot wide by 50 foot high mountain built out of adobe clay and buckets of paint, and he’s still going at it.

This kaleidoscope of colorful hills, limbs, arches, flowers and scripture became known as Salvation Mountain, and it marks the entrance to Slab City today.

When the county tried to tear down Leonard’s creation in 1994 locals rallied to his defense, collecting hundreds of signatures to stop the monument from being torn down.

Today no one even thinks of tearing down Salvation Mountain, and it has become a treasured landmark and tourist attraction that has become famous around the world. The Folk Art Society of America has declared Salvation Mountain a national folk art shrine, and in 2002 the US congress officially recognized Salvation Mountain as a National Treasure.

And all the while, Leonard has continued to work on it.

Salvation Mountain entered further into the pop culture mainstream when Leonard and the mountain were featured in Sean Penn’s 2007 Oscar-nominated movie Into the Wild (read our movie review), a dramatization of the true story of Chris McCandless, who spent time in Slab City on his nomadic journey towards his tragic death in Alaska.

We visited Slab City and Salvation Mountain recently with two photographer friends – Sean “Epic” Mahoney (get your website up already, dude!) and Route 66 Road Nomad Sandi Wheaton.

When we arrived, we were immediately greeted by Leonard Knight and taken on a personal tour of his amazing monument. We even got to witness adobe being made for further construction. (And we couldn’t help but giggle when he asked us Photoshop proficient photographers if we “knew anything about adobe?”…)

View our guided video tour of Salvation Mountain with Leonard Knight.

While none in our group are particularly religious, we were all overcome by Leonard’s energy and enthusiasm and sheer joy at being alive and sharing his message. And the mountain itself beautifully embodies his joy and love. Taking a tour with Leonard (free, btw), and then climbing the yellow brick road path to the top is an experience not to be missed.

Leonard started off alone in the desert, and through faith and tenacity his message has now touched millions.

Inspiring indeed.

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Our projected nomadic path forward might look something like this:

Tomorrow [...]]]> We’ve been hanging out in Southern California without much of a plan on which direction will be next. Things are finally began to gel once we made it a priority to spend holidays with family this year – which means heading eastward!

Our projected nomadic path forward might look something like this:

Tomorrow – Depart our technomadic rendezvous in San Diego with Ben Willmore and rendezvous with Route 66 nomad Sandi Wheaton before she heads back to Canada.
Nov 11ish –  Hang out with some other cool Oliver Travel Trailer owning folks in Lake Havasu City, AZ.
Nov 14-18 – High tail it to Kansas, perhaps exploring some of Route 66 ourselves.
Nov 19 – Dec 23 – Trying our hand at ‘workamping’ at the amazon.com distribution facility in Coffeyville, Kansas.  With so many of our RVing friends signing up for the gig, we decided – what the heck? Camping is paid for, the money is relatively decent and it’s on our way to St. Louis.  Worst case, we get to meet some other full time RVers and get paid to workout for a month.
Dec 24 thru ?? – In St. Louis visiting Chris’ family for the holidays and reconnecting with our growing community there.

As always, if we’re going to be passing by you – let us know! We love meeting up with people.

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PS. Did you know that we’re an Amazon.com affiliate? If you’re going to be shopping online anyway this holiday season, starting your shopping on Amazon.com off with this link will support our travels in two ways: 1) We’ll get a small cut of your purchases at no extra expense to you and 2) you’ll be providing work to many full time RVers working at the distribution centers this holiday season, including us!

Post Burning Man we only had one specific goal – to make it to Hemet, CA for much needed down time. We had met some folks in the area during our travels earlier in the year that we [...]]]>

Time Period: September 6 – October 24
Miles Driven: 1179
(not including non-RV trips)

Post Burning Man we only had one specific goal – to make it to Hemet, CA for much needed down time. We had met some folks in the area during our travels earlier in the year that we only had the opportunity to visit for a few days back in April – and we were anxious to return to their beautiful home.

We stayed at Burning Man late, helping with the clean-up efforts and taking responsibility for our camp achieving a ‘green’ rating for leaving no trace behind.

Directly from Black Rock City, we went back to Fallon, NV to pick up Kiki and wash some dust off.

Afterburn at PermaBurn

Eyeing a handout we received during our clean-up days, we were intrigued by an opportunity to visit PermaBurn for their Afterburn event.  PermaBurn is 600+ acres that were purchased about 85 miles due west of Gerlach, with the intentions of being an intentional full time Burning Man inspired community. Well within range of the playa, it’s an ideal place for testing out and staging art projects.  The vision is one of community effort and manifestation.

Always in search of nomadic ports with like minds, we were intrigued enough to divert up to Northern California for a few days to check it out. It was a small gathering of folks for the weekend and we had opportunity to meet many of the folks behind the project. It was just what we needed – an opportunity to chill with community post Burning Man, before returning to the ‘real’ world. And bonus, there’s cell phone signal out there!

For just $200, interested folks can buy in with a lifetime membership – which gives you a vote in how the land is used. It also gives you full access to the land for as long as its held as part of PermaBurn. An awesome opportunity, and one that we definitely recommend checking out if you’re so intrigued. The folks behind it are awesome and well intentioned.

Sacramento and San Francisco

After PermaBurn we returned to Sacramento, where we have dear friends – Sean & Lindsay, as well as our storage unit. We spent a few days putting our Burning Man gear back in storage and getting our house reorganized and prepared for potentially not returning to the area for a while.

And then it was on to San Francisco for an evening to spend with our dance community – Rhythm Society. It was their quarterly All Night Dance Celebration. Not even a fire marshall could keep the event from happening, and it was quickly re-tooled to take place at an alternate location right on time. It was definitely worthwhile to make the stop on our way south.

After lunch on the Presido munching down on our favorite burritos from Taqueria Cancun, we started our southward journey.  We opted to take the interstate instead of a slow meandering way – anxious to get to Hemet.

Hemet, CA

There are definitely places in our travels that feel more like a homebase than a stop,  and Hemet is amongst them. It’s not so much about the place, as it about the people. Fortunately for us, this place has both!  Beautiful scenery and awesome people.  Here they also have a little porch with RV hook-ups right off of it. We’ve taken it over, giving us a beautiful outdoor living room and office.

Another reason for hanging out in this area of the country was its proximity to Las Vegas, as we had been invited to attend Photoshop World as a guest of our technomadic friend Ben Willmore (who is a presenter there).  Deciding it was cheaper to carpool up and split a room with our friends from Hemet – Sean & Helene and us made the trip together up to Vegas.

We had a lot of fun, including participating in the iStockPhoto party invite process – which involved decorating Munny dolls. We made ours to resemble Ben with his rocking mohawk – which he boldly decided to keep from Burning Man where we last saw him.

Upon returning to Hemet, we each got invitations to attend two different conferences in two different places.  Cherie was invited to the Experts Academy up in San Francisco, and Chris to the Los Angeles Idea Project.  For the first time in our 2.5 years of travel together – we went our separate ways for a few days – which is probably a good thing for traveling couples to do every so often.  With no rush to be anywhere, Cherie opted to take the Coast Starlight train back – enjoying a relaxing and scenic adventure.

We’re now hanging around Hemet for a few days more as our Jeep has some maintenance and warranty issues taken care of.  Chris has been practicing his paragliding, a sport he’s not done in a couple of years.

We anticipate in the next few days we’ll embark on the next adventure – which we actually have no clue where we’re headed yet.

If it looks like we’re coming anywhere near you – let us know! We love meeting up with folks as part of our travel.

The last segment of our Summer 2009 travels was wrapping up our cross country adventure and arriving for Burning Man. With a month ahead of us to get there, we looked for ways to optimize backroads and scenic routes. We aimed to visit a [...]]]> Time Period: July 29 – August 28
Miles Driven: 2764

The last segment of our Summer 2009 travels was wrapping up our cross country adventure and arriving for Burning Man. With a month ahead of us to get there, we looked for ways to optimize backroads and scenic routes. We aimed to visit a few more National Parks along the way, as well as friends.   We also put ourselves up to the challenge to try not to pay for camping and to stay entirely off grid by not needing hookups for the month ahead. Given the higher temperature month of August, this was an especially tall order.

Thus we conceived of the Technomad Trifecta: Scenic. Free. Connectivity.   And we aimed to find it wherever we went.

Missouri

When we left St. Louis we anticipated that we’d jet as quickly as possible through Missouri and Kansas – figuring there wouldn’t be many options for the Technomad Trifecta.  We were proven wrong.

To avoid heavy traffic along the interstate out of St. Louis, we quickly diverted to backroads and followed the Missouri River westward towards Jefferson City. Beautiful drive with rolling hills and lots of pulls offs for scenic views.   With the approaching setting sun, we started researching possible camping options.

Not actually expecting to find scenic free camping in the area, were thrilled to discover that the Pine Ridge campground within the Mark Twain National Forest was on a donation basis. The campground was not far off the road and only offered a few camp spots, only a couple of them suitable for RVs.  But we found one that was available and pulled in.

The next morning we received the crushing news that our Burning Man theme camp for Nomads, Camp Nomadia, was denied placement.  Too bummed to move on, we took advantage of the wooded camping for another night to sleep on the news another day. In the morning we headed on, and I remembered that a dear friend was now located in Kansas City. A quick call to touch base, and off we were for a lunch rendezvous of catching up.

Kansas

We were dreading Kansas. Our mental image was of flat land, endless roads, farms and sunflowers. Mostly we were right.  We eyed a free campground outside of Junction City, Kansas run by the Army Corp of Engineers called Rolling Hills.  It hit the Technomad Trifecta perfectly. All of the campspots were spread out along Millford Lake, each with private lake access. There was ample cellular sign. And it was free.

We stayed two nights, enjoying amazing sunsets, online catching up and relishing in the beauty that Kansas could offer. On the way out of Kansas, we went in search of Mt. Sunflower – the highest point in the state.

Colorado

We had aims to visit our friends Teresa and Andrew in Salida, Colorado. We also anticipated it would be a decent spot to put down the landing gear for a few days and enjoy a truly wonderful little mountain town.

We found perfect free boondocking just east of the city along the river with excellent cell phone coverage – again, the Trifecta manifested. We ended up staying a week – enjoying awesome microbrews, farmer’s markets, art shops, live music and hanging out with our friends. We also had a nomadic rendezvous with Cath & Andy Duncan, who were passing through town on their USA tour.

We considered the routing we would take out of Colorado to get new vistas and opted to head north up to I-70, fabled to be amazing hiway as art through the natural features. We were not disappointed – definitely some of the most beautiful interstate around.

Utah

Utah has more than its fair share of scenic driving and vistas. We’ve heard it said that you can drive an hour and visit new landscape that seems like an entirely different planet.  And it certainly seems true.

For this pass through Utah we decided to aim for Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument.  We got into Capitol Reef to discover that their first come first serve campground was already completely full at mid afternoon on a weekday.  Initially disappointed, we decided to head westward to find some of the campgrounds in the neighboring national forest.

Just as we left the park and before we reached the town of Torrey – we saw a little dirt road. Curious, we stopped and checked it out. Definitely dispersed camping on National Forest land.  We backed into a spot with an amazing view of Capitol Reef and enjoyed free boondocking for a few nights – with cellular internet from the nearby town. Amazing. And definitely a Technomad Trifecta score.  And bonus, the Persiad Meteor Shower was starting up – so we enjoyed some of the most spectacular star gazing we could possibly imagine. We literally had dozens of shooting starts per minute at peak hours.

The heat was building each day, almost tempting us to hook up the generator for air conditioning. Instead, we experimented with evaporative cooling with a water mister – to much success.  We were able to keep in the temperature to a cool 88 while the outside temperature was peaking at 98.

Onwards from Capitol Reef we experienced a new planet every few dozen miles. From red rocks, to forests, to white cliffs, to the spectacular formations of the escalante.

Absolutely jaw dropping amazing driving.

We arrived to Bryce Canyon to lots of crowds.  We entered the park just to get a few pictures and take a short hike. We had a tip on Cedar Breaks that it was similar scenery but without the crowds that we were banking on for a better experience.  And we were not disappointed at all.

We were so impressed by Cedar Breaks – both in the formations, lack of crowds  and friendly rangers – that we decided to break our free camping streak and pay for a night in the park.  We were much rewarded for this choice, as soon after making camp we had the ranger stop by and invite us to the evening’s talk about the geology of the region. The talk was interesting and informative, however spending quite a while afterwards talking with the ranger about her motivations for switching out of nursing and into geology was even more fascinating.

Nevada

Nevada is beautiful in its own right. However its monotonous series of 600+ distinct mountain ranges and valleys have caused me to call it the Crumple  Zone of the west. After going over a few passes in Nevada, you pretty much get the point.  On previous traverses, we’ve taken the Loneliest Highway – this time we wanted something different.  So, we selected the Extraterrestrial Highway, in hopes of meeting some aliens or something.

Beautiful drive, but no aliens found. Not to give up hope, we followed our GPS’s advice to take a short cut via a 40 mile dirt road across the valley into Warm Springs.  It’s always an adventure to choose an overland road – you just don’t know what you’ll find.  Nearing sunset we had dashing antelope, fox, cows and wild mustangs.   Somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn, because we ended up at a back gate of Nellis Air Force Base Bombing range.  Whoops.

Around we turned and found our correct little dirt road.  And just as we reached the turn off our GPS was telling us to take – we discovered we still had many more miles of dirt road traversing to go.  Instead of missing a sunset by driving precarious roads, we opted to stop right there and stay the night at an old mine shaft.  It wasn’t a trifecta night – as there was no cellular signal to be found. However we’re quite sure we were the only humans in the valley, and there was not a single artificial light to be seen.  Another amazing star gazing night.

In the morning we went exploring around, and found a lot of old abandonded stuff – propane tanks, a VW Beetle, a stove and more. And the most amazing find?  A huge barrel being fed by a spring full of coy fish.   Fish.  In the middle of nowhere off the ET highway in the Nevada Desert.  That’ll count as being alien enough for us !

California

We came into the backside of Yosemite and stayed a night near Mono Lake, anticipating hitting Yosemite on a Sunday afternoon in hopes of less crowds.  We were wrong, Yosmite was insanely packed making the experience pretty miserable. Guess we should have timed our visit to not be on one of the National Park free weekends.  We’ll just have to check it out at a different time of year.

We made our way to our homebase in Sacramento with Lindsay & Sean, discovering that our trailer exactly fits in their side driveway allowing us to utilize the front porch too and get off the street.  Awesome.  Our time in Sacramento was mainly spent getting our Burning Man gear out of storage.

Burning Man

We ducked down to the San Francisco Bay Area to catch up with a few folks, and then started the journey back into Nevada for Burning Man, stopping a night in Reno to meet up with Kev & Ang of NuRVers.com. It was awesome to finally cross paths with them.

We then headed down to Fallon, which is where we had run a field office for the Obama campaign the year prior. Our host family there had offered to take care of Kiki while we were at the burn. It was great to catch up with them and provision for our time on the playa.

And then off we headed towards Black Rock City, where the adventures have already been documented:

Connected at Burning Man

Camp Nomadia at Burning Man 2009

Burning Man From Start to Finish

Just like its more famous cousin located downtown along the Washington D.C. Mall, the Udvar-Hazy center houses an incredible collection of aviation artifacts, including an SR-71 Blackbird, the Space Shuttle Enterprise (the one used for in-atmosphere [...]]]> The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center is located near Dulles Airport, just outside Washington D.C.

Just like its more famous cousin located downtown along the Washington D.C. Mall, the Udvar-Hazy center houses an incredible collection of aviation artifacts, including an SR-71 Blackbird, the Space Shuttle Enterprise (the one used for in-atmosphere flight testing), an Air France Concord, and you can even see the Enola Gay – the bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb.

There are literally hundreds of aircraft of all sorts on display – ranging in size from ultralights to airliners, and in time from the dawn of flight to prototypes paving the way for tomorrow.

As an aviation buff (and licensed pilot), I was like a kid in a candy store. I spent hours running around from plane to plane, and I thoroughly enjoyed the free docent guided tour.

You can also go up into the old Dulles control tower for an exhibit on air traffic control systems, and for an unparalleled view of airplanes taking off and landing at Dulles.

Check out this video featuring some highlights:

The City Museum is no ordinary [...]]]> We’re often asked what our favorite things are in our travels. The City Museum in downtown St. Louis, Missouri is without a doubt, on tops of that list.  And who would have thought that in the center of the midwest stands one of the most amazing creations around?

The City Museum is no ordinary museum, however.  Sure, it is full of found things that are preserved. And it gets the ‘City’ part of its name because the found things are entirely from within municipal St. Louis.  But that’s where the museum part ends.. because this is definitely a place where you don’t just look. You touch. You crawl. You slide. You climb.

This place is what you might imagine would happen if you gave Peter Pan a blow torch.

Let’s start with the roof.. which has a praying mantis, ferris wheel and bus lurching over the corner.

And then there’s the MontroCity outdoor playscape sized for kids and adults which has a network of wrought iron slinkies and slides connecting two airplane fuselages, a fire engine and a castle turret.

And inside, you’ll be dazzled by whales, tunnels, slides, a circus, a skateless skate park and inner caverns with a 10 story circular staircase.. and slide!

Here’s a video we put together after two trips to the City Museum in the past month. I think it at least starts to capture just how awesome this place is.

Have I mentioned the City Museum is awesome yet?

Many thanks to our traveling friend, Matt Bell, who rendezvoused with us for one of our visits to the City Museum and allowed us to film him for this piece!

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Located at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, spending some [...]]]> A meshing of civil engineering and ecosystem art, the Fairmont Water Works interactive center gives a peak back in time to when water distribution throughout Philadelphia allowed the city to survive and thrive.

Located at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, spending some time at the interactive center is well worth your time – and definitely check out the short movie that tells the story.