My project is called “Time Frame”.

The “Time Frame” is a classic antique table-top mirror, with the mirror removed, mounted on top of a 5 foot tall self-supporting pole.

Looking through the frame gives a glimpse “back in time” to the view as seen through the frame the day or night before. For example, participants looking into the frame on a bright sunny morning may have a view of the kinetic action as seen from that exact spot late the night before.

Every day / night of Burning Man I’ll take another picture of the scene in Center Camp through the frame, take it back to our photo printer, print a new image, and return to update the frame with a new view (in both directions). Older views will be mounted, and left on display for viewing or to take.

This is my 10th trip to Burning Man, and I am really excited to have an “official” art project of my own for the first time. And so far, it has turned out fabulous!

Here is the Flickr Set to follow along with the new photos each day.

And here are some quick highlights so far:

And here is a picture of me, setting up the project in Center Camp. I can’t believe the prime placement they gave me!!!

As I’m still struggling with being a morning person (particularly with running), I opted instead to do a photo bike of the open playa art while Chris ran..

After Chris’ victory run, we climbed to the top of The Man for an epic view of Black Rock City.

In the afternoon, we took upon an invitation from K-Svert (an on playa radio station) to do an on-air interview about our life on the road. (Funny story – we know these guys via a mutual friend – Kev & Ang who run the NuRVers.com website – Tom of K-Svert came to our trailer the other day ‘Help! Our mixers have gone down!’. We of course offered him some cranberry juice – when what he needed was to get a message out to incoming campmates to bring parts to fix their mixing board).

The rest of our day was spent enjoying a rare day on the playa for us – awesome weather, awesome friends and no events to host!

Today we host our big event – the Technomadic Lifestyle Workshop (where we answer question about making this mobile lifestyle work), followed by a Nomadic Happy Hour. On tap to join us on the panel we have Sam & Tracy of ZenNomads, Brian of BikeandBoots.com and Jay & Ayo of OurTakeOnFreedom.

For more photos of Burning Man, check out our Burning Man 2010 Flickr Set.

As I’m still struggling with being a morning person (particularly with running), I opted instead to do a photo bike of the open playa art while Chris ran..

After Chris’ victory run, we climbed to the top of The Man for an epic view of Black Rock City.

In the afternoon, we took upon an invitation from K-Svert (an on playa radio station) to do an on-air interview about our life on the road. (Funny story – we know these guys via a mutual friend – Kev & Ang who run the NuRVers.com website – Tom of K-Svert came to our trailer the other day ‘Help! Our mixers have gone down!’. We of course offered him some cranberry juice – when what he needed was to get a message out to incoming campmates to bring parts to fix their mixing board).

The rest of our day was spent enjoying a rare day on the playa for us – awesome weather, awesome friends and no events to host!

Today we host our big event – the Technomadic Lifestyle Workshop (where we answer question about making this mobile lifestyle work), followed by a Nomadic Happy Hour. On tap to join us on the panel we have Sam & Tracy of ZenNomads, Brian of BikeandBoots.com and Jay & Ayo of OurTakeOnFreedom.

Our camp brought shade structures, tarps, lights, decorations, rebar, and ping pong balls (who would have imaged THOSE came in useful??). It was an epic adventure of crowdsourcing and making due with what we have.  In the truest of nomadic ways.

We had our first Nomadic Happy Hour today… and it was.. epic.   We had folks inspired by what Camp Nomadia is all about come to visit.. including Ted Beatie of Vagabonding.com (who we actually serendipitously had Indian tacos with on our way into Burning Man) and Leigh Shulman of Matador Travel (who the rest of the folks are coming to join us later this week at Camp Nomadia).

It’s been an amazing day.. and we’ve really not even left camp yet!  Now we’re off with dear friends to explore the rest of Burning Man! (Sorry.. not taking the camera).

We’ve not left camp much at all, as we’re on call to greet our campmates.. but here’s some photo highlights:

Shopping cart art car…

We had a rare rainstorm this afternoon.. which turned the playa to a concrete type substance. With every step, you get taller!

What does it mean?!?  After the rain, we had the most amazing triple (possibly quad??) rainbow ever!!  Here’s some of our Camp Nomadia tribe out playing in the mud!  (Sam & Tracy of ZenNomads, and our friends Sean & Helene).  

Here’s a photo update from our first day on the playa pre-gate opening:

The official sign coming into Burning Man flashed ‘Eat Your Veggies’ – which of course reminded us of our friends, the TackyTexans who are embarking on their first move in their mobile home on wheels this week!

Camp Nomadia will be on the gateside 6:01 corner of the 6 & Hanoi intersection – not sure where that’s at? I’m standing on it!

Chris setting up his ‘Time Frame’ art project in Center Camp Cafe… more on that in a future post.

When we were passing through Leadville, CO – Jim & Julie of ImperfectDestiny gifted us playa bikes.. here they are pimped out for Burning Man.   They left on their nomadic journey this weekend.

We had a chance to stop by Pandora’s Fix it Lounge, out of St. Louis, to help them set-up. Last year, we co-located Camp Nomadia with them – they have a special place in our hearts.

More.. maybe.. later

Safety is often an excuse folks come up with for not embracing the life of full time travel they dream about. This is part of our ever growing series of addressing the common excuses to not traveling full time.

There seems to be a fear that at every corner ‘out there’ – there’s a villain waiting to mug you, a calamity waiting to strike, a powerful tornado, a money sucking incident, a sink hole to devour you, a rabid bear stalking you, a health issue or some other such traditionally bad thing.

I am constantly mystified at just how frequently safety comes up when folks inquire about our mobile lifestyle. ‘How do you keep safe?’ is a very common question we find ourselves addressing. And unfortunately, my response isn’t a convenient shopping list of stuff you can go order online.  To really handle this topic, it’s going to take some deep inner work to rethink how you respond to fear and find safety.

Redefine Safety

One of my all time favorite warning labels is Caution: Living is dangerous to your health.

Risk and danger is all around us.  No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid it entirely. Eat right, avoid high risk behaviors, exercise regularly – and you can still be killed by a falling tree on your  morning jog (true story). Unless you keep yourself in an isolated bubble, you’re going to encounter risks – or go insane and die of boredom.

A more traditional definition of safety is:

Safety: The condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury.

I’d like to propose that safety is not actually a condition that is realistically achievable.  The closest one can come is having a feeling of being in a state of significantly reduced risks. And our society seems obsessed with feeling safe.  We install alarm systems to keep bad people out, we carry guns or mace to defend ourselves, we keep installing gizmos to increase safety and we generally live in a state of fear of something bad happening.  We humans are evolved to be on alert and seek safety.

And you know what? Living in a state of fear is exhausting, stressful and at the very least shortens our quality of life – if not quantity of life.

That’s not to say bad stuff doesn’t happen. It does. And Chris and I have faced our share of bad stuff.. believe me.  Over the several years of being on the road full time we’ve had a jack-knifed spin out on an interstate, our lives threatened in the middle of nowhere, our bikes clipped and stolen right off our tow vehicle, a wire shorting out that nearly caused an electrical fire, our cat being bit by a rattlesnake, vehicle troubles, extreme weather conditions, minor medical emergencies and bandwidth shortages.

But I don’t feel either of us lives in a state of fear of this stuff (well, maybe the lack of bandwidth thing).  I feel incredibly safe in our lifestyle – both before, during and after each of these incidents.

Why?

Because long ago I adjusted my definition of safety to be:

Safety is not expecting that bad things won’t happen. But rather trusting that I have the agility, capacity and courage to deal with the bad stuff when it happens.

Notice I didn’t say if it happens – I count on bad stuff happening.   No matter how many safety gizmos are installed, one can never account for everything that might happen. There’s only so much I actually have control over… and when bad stuff happens, I deal with it. I focus on that feeling I’ve felt many times before – of getting past it and having grown stronger, wiser and more capable as a result.

And in the end, I’d much rather die having lived my dreams.. than dreaming about the life I want if only I wasn’t afraid.

Choose your battles wisely

Adopting this new definition of safety however doesn’t mean completely throwing caution into the wind.  If you buy into this, you’ll be taking informed risks, educating yourself, choosing what are real fears, taking reasonable precautions, knowing what you’re able to handle and knowing your own risk tolerances. And act now and you’ll also be willing to challenge all of this from time to time too!

Cherie fire dancing - Photo by Sandi Wheaton

Chris and I both collectively embark on some activities that are regarded as risky by others- including fire dancing, SCUBA diving, paragliding and sky diving. But it’s not like we do any of these things without first receiving proper training and building up our confidence and skillsets. We always assess our environment, our own current health status, our ability to cushion a metaphorical or literal fall and our confidence levels. We choose wisely when we feel we’re most capable to tackle these adventures and their given risks.

You must also recognize that your own personal risk tolerances can change on a regular basis due to a variety of reasons. Be willing to not let your itch for adventure be thwarted by that default evolutionary implanted lizard brain response to fear.

Be smart about the risks you take on, challenge yourself to grow, take reasonable precautions.. and have fun out there!

Your choice: Be a moving or still target

There seems to be an erroneous sense of safety being associated with staying put in one location – as if being a stationary target of routine is any less safe than being a moving one. It actually cracks me up when folks questioning the safety of our mobile lifestyle try to take a high road that their life is significantly less full of risk.

Above I gave you a list of scary incidents that have happened to Chris and I since we hit the road together.   What I didn’t include was a list of bad things that happened in any other 3 year snapshot in my life.  Just in the 3 years prior to hitting the road, my list would include: a scary medical diagnosis, tire blow out, neighbor’s house catching on fire, multiple direct hurricane strikes, house flood from a faulty ice maker, identity theft, minor medical emergencies, a car accident and more.

How many bad things have happened in the past 3 years of your life and do you really reasonably expect that number to increase significantly if you were on the road?

Remember –  bad stuff happens.  Period. Whether you’re living in one spot, or constantly moving.   The list of risks unique to each situation is actually rather small.

The one advantage being still has is speed dial level local services to deal with stuff when it comes up. But even a lack of continuity is addressable in a mobile lifestyle by thinking differently.

Being mobile actually gives you some distinct advantages as well, such as being more alert to your surroundings because they’re always different and the ability to easily move on if things don’t seem right.  If crime rates in your fixed location neighborhood increase, how difficult would it be to sell your home and move to a safer location?  If you’re mobile, you just put the key in the ignition and drive away.

Good Stuff Happens Too

Chris paragliding

Yes.. bad stuff happens. It can make for a sucktacular day, indeed.

But when you’re not wrapped up in protecting this false notion that you have complete control over preventing bad things from happening, you’re more free to experience all the good things that can… no, will.. happen.

For everything that has happened to me that could be classified as bad – I can rattle off a list of dozens.. hundreds.. of good things that have also happened. Glorious amounts of serendipity, kind and generous strangers, amazing experiences, amazing meals, opportunities to share my gifts, beautiful art, basking in the glow of the gifts of others, the purr of our cat and the shared love of so many absolutely amazing people we’ve encountered and connected with in our travels.

The world is a great big place full of awesome things to be discovered.

Don’t fear the words Epic, Awesome and Amazing becoming regular parts of your vocabulary.

So, here are some quick tips we offer up with this being (hopefully) our forth year on the playa with our home on wheels:

1. Embrace the dust! No matter how many preps you make, plan to do some extensive cleaning afterwards. Hiring a full on detailing is a worthwhile investment to get your RV back to a somewhat pre-playa condition. But do be prepared that you will always find traces of your playa experience on your RV for years to come. That dust just doesn’t seem to go away (cleaning with a vinegar solution is the best method it seems tho) – we’ve learned to embrace it and the fond memories it brings back.

2. Cover all vent openings. Get some cheap cut-up AC filters and tape (a sticky kind – the low adhesive painter style tape just falls off) and place them over all external vents. Pay particular attention to behind your fridge and any openings to circuitry. This will save you a lot of fine detailed cleaning and perhaps even electronic failures. Caution: If you put a covering over your hot water heater – make sure it is turned off, or stuff will melt!! Take the vent covering off BEFORE turning on your hot water heater.

3. Tape over switches &  seams! Put some tape over any external switches and seams with potential openings (windows, poor sealings, etc).  This will help electronics from filing with dust and locking up (it would be awful to not be able to retract your awning or leveling jacks!), and reduce one more entry point of dust during storms.  We even tape over any switches we won’t regularly be needing near doors and windows.

4. Wax On, Dust Off! As our RV is fiberglass, we always do a good cleaning and waxing of all our gel coat before heading to the playa. This helps tremendously in allowing the dust to just blow over, and allows us to quickly tidy up inside with a quick wipe down once a day. Consider this for any waxable surfaces on your RV.

5. Protect the Soft Bits. We always cover all our upholstery with sheets or spare fabric, so that the our coverings stay as dust free as possible.  This also allows us to have something to shake out (when the dust is still) to quickly give us a fresher feeling inside.

6. Minimizing Openings. Minimize the amount of time your door is open, and number of entry and exits. Some folks construct a sort of ‘dust room’ at their entrance for taking off dusty clothing and shoes, and keeping baby wipes near the door. This can help minimize tracking dust further inside.

7. Close it up! If you’re leaving your camp, close up all windows and vent fans, and RETRACT YOUR AWNING. Wind and dust storms can kick up unexpectedly, and getting back to camp in a hurry is not usually possible. Most awning can not withstand the gusty winds that can kick up.. and will rip right off!

8. Air Flow. When there’s no dust blowing, keeping the interior of your rig ventilated is no more difficult than in any other boondocking situation (crack a window and turn on your vent fan to ‘out’ to create a flow where you want it).  However, this is bad bad BAD during dust storms.  If you plan to ride out a dust storm inside – come prepared with a small fan. We keep a small clip on oscillating 12v fan (can pick one up in most automobile departments) for just such occasions.

9. Poor Man’s Evaporative Cooling. Evaporative cooling works wonderful in the dry environment of the playa. We found a way to attached a small wet towel over our ceiling vent fan and then turn the fan to ‘In’ mode.  This makes for a great makeshift cooling system, and has gotten us through many a hot afternoon without resorting to firing up the generator for air conditioning. We also use a Misty Mate handheld water mister that does wonders.

10. Minimize Electrical Usage. Use your best boondocking practices to minimize needing to run your generator as much. LED lights are great, reduce reliance on other types of lights.  Turn off any parasitic loads (a friend recently reported that he gained an extra hour PER DAY of battery capacity by simply unplugging his microwave when not in use). Anything with status lights that isn’t being actively used is drawing a load on your batteries.  Obviously, solar power is an awesome route to go!

11. Pee in a Bottle. To maximize your black water tanks (if yours aren’t large enough to get your crew through the entire burn), handle those night time (and dust storm) nature call moments by peeing into a bottle. (Boondocker’s hint for women: one of those empty plastic Folger’s coffee cans works great for us!).  You can dump the bottles out later in the porta potties.

12. Minimize Water Usage & Evaporate. Obviously, water is a limited resource on the playa – you have only what you can bring out. Use our steps for minimizing water usage. Also, collecting dish washing water into a pan allows you to set it out in the sun to evaporate (never ever dump grey water on the playa!!).

Any other tips for taking an RV to Burning Man? Post them in the comments – we’d love to hear more!

We had intended to have our friends in Sacramento cat sit for Kiki while we’re at Burning Man. Previously, Kiki and their cats have gotten along fine. But they recently got a new cat.. and he and Kiki are constantly fighting. Things are getting worse, not improving. We can’t in good conscious leave Kiki here stressed out, not to mention the stress on their household, for almost 2 weeks.

So, scrambling to find other options. We’ll be calling around to boarders in the area tomorrow, but the likelyhood of finding a good one with availably on this short notice for Burning Man (which is also over Labor Day weekend) is slim. Not to mention, we’d really rather not leave her that long in such a small space with little interaction. She’s been extra skittish and stressed since her rattlesnake encounter, and seems to not be as easy going around other animals right now.

Is there anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento or Reno area who might be able to take Kiki starting Thursday (tomorrow) through likely Sept 8th or so? Not opposed to paying for cat sitting either.

If not.. looks likely we’ll have to cancel going to the burn. And considering we’re hosting a camp of almost a 100 folks and have a Center Cafe art project, that would be a tragic shame.

(An no – pets are not allowed at Burning Man, and this is a very firm rule that they will turn you back at the gate for trying to sneak one in. And it’s a rule we agree with, it’s an extremely harsh environment to subject an animal to, and we wouldn’t even attempt it if it was allowed.)

As we meandered across country, we learned more – such as, the event was centered around a Hackerthon, an opportunity to team up and build or complete an app during the conference that would be judged.  In the weeks coming into the conference, we were inspired by an idea, and completely developed a working model of a new app at iOSDevCamp.  Much to our amazement, we won the ‘Most Useful App’ award!!

This is a story is how setting deadlines can work in your favor.  And to better tell the story, we’ll illustrate the inspiration and describe our project with pictures (this was essentially our pitch that won us the award):

(For those on RSS or e-mail – here’s a link to the YouTube video)

We like developing apps that solve needs we have, and Coverage? will be no exception.  We were highly frustrated by lack of cellular bandwidth as we crossed the country, and unexpected overage messages from Sprint and AT&T infuriated us.  We let that frustration form an idea. Having the ability to overlay standardized coverage maps for each provider we use will be a valuable tool for us in our travels in planning stops and routing.  With a looming deadline for submissions for the Hackerthon at iOSDevCamp, we came out with a working model of our app idea in under 16 hours of beer and pizza fueled hacking.

Having a deadline kicks your butt into gear. It gets you moving. It inspires you to create great things.  And 55 great things were created at iOSDevCamp.

We have more polishing work to do on Coverage? – such as creating higher resolution detailed coverage maps (not as easy as it sounds, the ones currently in the mock-up are just rough sketches).  But we are excited to launch the app sometime after we get back from Burning Man.

I think we’ll give ourselves a deadline.

For many, Burning Man is a time to ramp up to – a big party, a big event, time to let loose. For us, we’re kinda the opposite. After being in constant physical and/or mental motion since we left Texas back in early June – Burning Man will be our first opportunity to be still and relax for more than a week at a time.

For us, going to Burning Man is not really all that different than any other day – except for of course, the sound of the thumpa-thumpa and being surrounded by a high concentration of amazing people. Oh, and the dust. There’s a few minor preps that we’ll handle in Sacramento and Reno next week, but for us it’s really not much more than picking up a few extra groceries and beer.

The stillness can’t come soon enough – we feel dreadfully behind on so many projects, such as this blog, our NuRVers video documentary and some iPhone app development. Post Burning Man, we’ll likely pick a spot on the west coast and put down the landing gear for a few weeks to get caught up before deciding where next.

Join us at Camp Nomadia – Location: Near 6:00 & F

This year again, we are hosting our Camp Nomadia – a theme camp for nomads. As of this morning, we have over 70 nomadic minded folks confirmed for the camp. Wow. I’m downright astonished at the amazing group of people converging from all over the world!

Nomads at Nomadic Happy Hour in 2009

We’re doing this year much less organized than years past, namely that we’re intentionally unplaced. Chris and I have early entry for a Center Cafe art project we were selected for, so we’ll be able to scout out land prior to gate open and have it secured for our camp. The big benefit to this is that we’ll be able to continue accepting new nomadic campmates up until the last minute – so if you’re looking for a camp to join, you’re a past/future/current nomad and self sufficient – there’s still time to join us!

Our camp is aiming to be somewhere near the intersection of 6:00 & F (general location of our Annex last year). We’ll update the exact location when we know it.

We’ll be hosting a variety of nomadic events throughout the week that we’d love to have you join us for:

We’re currently planning 3 ‘Nomadic Happy Hours’ – Tuesday & Thursday from 4-6pm and Sunday from 3-5pm.  

And we’ll also be repeating our Technomadic Lifestyle workshop on Thursday just prior to the happy hour at 3pm.

If you’re playa bound too.. come stop by and say hi at Camp Nomadia!

When we signed up to host the August Digital Nomad Blog Carnival (a roving round-up of blog posts submitted relevant to digital nomads), we didn’t anticipate the connectivity issues we’d have in the past few weeks.  So, as a result – we didn’t have nearly the ability to pimp out the carnival as we would have liked to get more quality submissions, as we’ve been basically in digital survival mode as we’ve traversed Nebraska, Colorado and Utah.  More on that later, unless you’ve been following our Twitter Stream and know all the juicy details already .
As a result, we had a good number of spam submissions… but there were a few gems to share with you today!
Afraid I haven’t really had time to read over the entries and personalize my descriptions as we’re grossly behind on so many projects and the deadline is here today!  So I’m using the default listing format so that we can get this up and  hopefully I’ve taken out all the spam.

Lifestyle Design

Technology & Gadgets

Travel Tips

Last Friday was a crazy day.  We were in Loveland, Colorado staying with some friends up in the pretty mountains.

My humans were gone most of the day, apparently Cherie had to get a wisdom tooth taken out. She came home mumbling at me, something was wrong with her mouth. Or all her wisdom got taken out.  But  I was stir crazy and didn’t care, I’d only been able to watch the horses outside my window and little hoppy things jumping on the ground.   I wanted outside to play and pounce!!

So Chris put me on my leash while he attended to Cherie.   And there was a grasshopper taunting me, so I was chased it!  It’s what us cats do, afterall.

Then I heard rattling in the nearby brush. My curiosity was distracted by that darn grasshopper, so I pounced on it.

But before I knew it, something had bit me on my face! Ouch!

I rolled and flopped around on the ground to make it go away, I howled.

Chris saw me all distressed and came over, picked me up and handed me to mumbly Cherie.  She checked me all over while Chris played in the bushes too – guess he was pouncing grasshoppers too?

He came back in and I remember them both talking about my face bleeding and rattlesnake bite!  I don’t know what a rattlesnake is.. but it sure bites hard and I was in lots of pain.

They picked me up, put me in the truck and we made a long fast drive down the mountain.  I laid in Cherie’s arms as she pet me and made calls on her iPhone.  They were scared, and Chris was driving like a crazy man. I guess being bit by a rattlesnake is serious stuff (it turns out that us cats generally do pretty good with rattlesnake bites long term.)

We arrived to this big building called Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Ft. Collins, CO. I guess they knew we were coming, cuz as soon as Cherie and I entered the building everyone was on alert.  I was handed over to a really nice lady who took me into a room and put a needle in my paw and started injecting things and taking blood out.  I started to feel woozy and the pain faded away a bit.

I remember seeing Cherie and Chris, they came back and visited.  And then they left me there overnight, and I had lots of people checking in on me.  My face got really swollen!!  I was scared not being with my people in my home, and I didn’t know what was going on.  Everyone was so concerned.

In the morning, everyone seemed relieved – and my people came and picked me up. I was all groggy and slept a lot for a couple days. I couldn’t walk very well either, apparently I was on something called pain drugs.

But, in just a couple days I was all better.. and back to pouncing on things!  I’ll stay away from rattlesnakes, thank you.

- Kiki

For 2011, we got our proposal in by the deadline – and our feedback from the SXSW staff was that it’s solid and:

The subject of your panel proposal is one that I think speaks to many people in our core community and would encourage people to make changes that could improve their lives.

We’ve brought together an awesome group of technomads, including Ben & Karen, Sean & Louise and the Boyinks. We think we have a good shot at this!

The next step is to get community support which accounts for 30% of the selection process.  And that’s where we’re asking for your help.

Please go vote for our Technomadism panel!

You can vote without creating an account.. but we do get extra points if you create an account and log in to vote and leave comments.

Your support is much much appreciated – cuz how cool would it be to have mobile digital nomadic living represented at a major conference like SXSW???

So it’s no surprise that one of the fears in adopting a location independent mobile life can be the loss of this little continuity security blanket.  It’s a fact of nomadic life, living on the road equates to always having to find a new service provider at every new location you find yourself in, and always adapting to local variations in the way things are done.

Never Fear

However, it’s really not as big of a leap as it might seem while you’re in the overwhelm of thinking through all the details of the mobile life you’re envisioning.

Sure,  you may be giving up your favorite hair dresser or dental hygienists as your regular provider in the process.. but there are many talented and qualified providers all over the place. It’s just a matter of being able to find them, being adaptable and trusting a bit in serendipity to make their location known when you need them.

In the past 3+ years of us being on the road – we’ve navigated a wide variety of services. Everything from every day needs to needing urgent care.  Hair cuts, vet appointments, dentists, grocery shopping, a soak in a hot tub and maintenance on our truck and trailer.

Reduce Reliance on In Person Services

The first step is to consider what things in your life can be switched to not needing in person services.  Things like banking, insurance, bills and other things can be handled pretty much online if you set them up that way.

Until recently however, banking with check deposits was more of a hassle as you had to either find a branch of your bank to make a deposit at, or risk mailing your check to them.  More and more banks are doing stuff via mobile phone – such as allowing you to upload a picture of your check for remote deposit.  Chase and USAA are two such banks that are currently offering this service – for free – with their iPhone apps.   We’re loving it, and it’s given us a great sense of freedom to handle receiving check payments from clients, friends and family without ever having to leave our house.

Find insurance agents that are comfortable handling things via e-mail and phone, and not needing you to come into their office to sign paperwork.

We even selected a health insurance plan that included the TeleDoc service, allowing us to request remote consultations for typical stuff – like sinus infections and UTIs- via phone or internet. They can even prescribe medications for us, reducing our need to find urgent care clinics or physicians while traveling for the basic stuff.

For the In Person Stuff

Many things however require a human touch, and will require you to seek out services in a new environment.  And it can be a daunting task sometimes.  Is the company reliable? Do they offer service up to our expectations? Do they have a good reputation and stand behind their work? And even if we do research them to be a good service, will they have availability to see us while we’re in town?

There are several resources we use to track down services when we need them:

• Yelp - Yelp is a fantastic crowd sourced resource that lists a variety of services, along with user reviews. In areas (such as larger cities) where Yelp is more utilized, this can be quite useful. Unfortunately, many areas that we find ourselves in don’t have many Yelpers – so it’s not always useful for us.
• Google Search – Sometimes, just searching Google for the service you’re looking for, along with the location – will yield a list of results. Sometimes even with reviews from several sites gathered into one place.
• Concierge Services – We’ve recently been turned onto the Visa Signature’s concierge service – a free service for Visa Signature card holders (which we have been for years).  Recently I had an infected wisdom tooth while in Colorado, and needed to see a dentist ASAP. As we had limited cell phone reception, we placed a call to the concierge service to ask them to find us dentists in the area who had availability today.  They did all the calling around for us, and sent us a list of dentists with appointment times available. They followed up with a phone call and an e-mail within an hour.  Impressive. While we didn’t end up using one of their suggestions (our host was able to get me into their dentist within minutes), we can definitely see us using this service in the future for a whole range of things.
• User Groups – Find and join user groups that fit different facets of your life. Many models of vehicles and RVs, for instance, have Google, Facebook, Yahoo or self-hosted forum groups. We’ve gotten great recommendations on places to get maintenance on our truck and trailer. There are also groups focused on topics, such as: nomadic, location independent, simple living, traveler, knitting, fire dancer, etc. that you can join.  When you’re in search of a service, often times you’ll be amazed at the results you’ll get from locals who share a common interest with you when you shout out something like ‘I’m currently in Austin, TX and looking for a great place to get a haircut.. any recommendations?’
• Talk to Locals – Locals know their area best, and regularly utilize services around their area.  Chat up your wait staff, campground owner, hotel staff and hosts and ask for recommendations.  We’ve often gone into locally owned coffee shops or boutiques (shopping there of course), and gotten great information about the local area and recommendations for things we needed. Just recently we had a coffee shop barista sit down with us at our table for a good 30 minutes and tell us all about his little town, and where to get a great pizza.  When you’re a unique visitor to their establishment as a full time traveler, many times locals are just as interested in chatting with you as you are with them.
• Talk to other Travelers - When you’re staying in places where there are other travelers – such as campgrounds, hotels and hostels – ask others what they have discovered in their stay in the area.  Particularly other long time travelers tend to have similar needs as you for every day things. We’ve shared many great tidbits of information with other travelers we’ve passed in our own journey.
• Paying Attention - When we’re pulling into a new town, we tend to take note of things – where there’s urgent care clinics, vets, grocery stores, propane fill-ups and any other project we might have pending on to our to-do list.

What other resources do you utilize?

Be adaptable and resourceful

The biggest key of course is being willing to have this sort of variety in your life. You’re always going to have a different hair cut, a different brand of milk available at the closest grocery store, different produce in season locally and wide variety of personalities attending to your needs.

You will have to take more responsibility for seeking out services, taking the risk of bad service and relaying your history as needed.  Particularly in the case of medical, vehicle and vet services and not seeing the same staff all the time – you will be an unknown each time you enter a new waiting room.  As not all records are as portable as they should be, you’ll have to give an accurate summation of any relevant facts about your history to ensure the highest care you can. Which means you’re going to have to keep good records.

You’ll also have to take responsibility for any follow-up care, as it’s unlikely you’ll be around in the long term.  Be sure to remind your providers that anything you’re seeking service for needs to be portable and not reliant on you coming back to this location for repeat appointments long term.  This may require you asking for more detailed receipts and records at the end of your appointment to take with you and/or taking good notes.

When you can turn lack of continuity around and see it as an advantage to embrace variety instead of a disadvantage – you’ll thrive.

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!

• It marks 2 years since we picked up our highly customized , geeked out Oliver Travel Trailer and began living in it full time.  We still love our little home on wheels, even if we do get space-envy from time to time.  It is our ideal technomadic home for two plus cat.
• Cherie’s birthday!  She turns 37 later this week, and we have no clue where we’ll be or how we’ll celebrate. Probably somewhere scenic with good cellular signal.

To celebrate these two occasions, we are having a sale on our first iPhone app –  State Lines. This week only, it is available for just 99 cents in the App Store.

Since we launched State Lines back in May, it has been selling steadily – mostly through word of mouth.  With such a hectic summer, we just haven’t had the time to do the marketing push it deserves.  We have however been doing a ton of research into new laws & regulations to add – and later this week a new version should be approved by Apple for sale that includes expanded sales tax information to further help with saving money as you travel across the US. It’ll also include a refresh of the cell phone and texting ban laws, as many states have been passing new laws.

We’ve also launched a second version of State Lines last month focused specifically on alcohol & DUI laws called State Lines: Alcohol Laws. We still have plans for an iPad and eBook version, and have a lot of data ready to be loaded in.

There’s so many things that have to come together, such as:

• securing a mobile friendly income source
• deciding what to do with all your stuff
• figuring out all of the logistics such as mail & domicile
• getting the kids & spouse onboard with the idea
• making arrangements for pets
• balancing your desires for community while you travel

This post is part of our slowly but surely growing series on How to Handle the Common Excuses Not to Travel Full Time.

Even with a best case scenario of not needing to dispose of a house and stationary job, all of the details are daunting and seem to create an endless to-do list – with no clear place to start. So many questions to answer and execute.

• Do you start transitioning your career now and try to build up enough income working remotely?
• Do you try to sell your house or rent it out for the time being if you own in a slow market?
• Do you get rid of all your possessions or store them in case you want something later?

There are no straight up answers anyone can give you to these sorts of questions – every scenario is so unique that only you can find the right answer.

But how do you find those answers and act?

Where to Start?  Set the date!

So many folks we’ve talked to approaching these sorts of transitions tell us that they’re waiting for all of the pieces to come together before they actually set a date to close the door behind them.   And you know what that leads to?  Never making that step and keeping it as a someday dream.

At no point will all of the pieces magically line up for you. There is never a perfect time and perfect conditions.  Sure, there will be times at are better than others. And life will present you with convenient transition points – such as getting laid off from a job, a kid starting college or a major life scare.

Today is yesterday’s someday, and tomorrow is quickly approaching.

Things like setting up all of the details, getting rid of all of your stuff, earning a mobile income – they’re not going to get done with out motivation. And motivation is not going to happen unless you make it real to yourself.  Really real. If you don’t have a deadline set, you will find ways to keep putting off the mundane and difficult work of making your dreams happen.

A seasonal purge is not the kind of purging of stuff you’re going to have to do to get ready to hit the road full time..  it’s grueling, emotional and has to be done consistently day after day after day, even when you want to curl up and watch TV.   Starting a blog and putting Google Adsense on the sidebar is likely not going to earn enough income to fund your adventures after you quit your job  (but it may buy you the energy drink needed to stay up late going through your sock drawers). Looking at endless Craigslist ads, blogs like this one and RV sites may have you dreaming about the possibilities of what you might like in your mobile substrate – but unless you’ve given notice on your current life path, you’ll keep dreaming instead of deciding.

If going mobile is what you really and truly want – and you want it in the foreseeable future –  the most efficient way to make it a priority is to give yourself an eviction notice.  Pick a reasonable but ambitious date for your situation, take a deep breathe and mark it on the calendar. Announce it to your friends & family, let your landlord know or contact a realtor. Let your boss or clients know.  The more you make it real, the less opportunities you have to back out later.

Everything changes now.

You hold your body differently, you think differently.

Take Steps if You Need To

Nothing says you have to do everything in one big leap.  When setting your date, it doesn’t have to be a single date for having everything handled – such as quitting your job, getting rid of everything, planning your first destination, getting an RV and securing your  mobile income.  Sometimes it just makes more sense to come up with sensible steps that represent major milestones.

In Chris’ case, he was laid off from his Silicon Valley job which gave him a great launching point to put his dreams of nomadism in motion. He gave notice on his apartment and then pushed himself to get all the details together at once.  Chris thrives on tackling big overwhelming projects all at once, but not all of us do.

In my case, I went in stages.  We set a date together for when we’d hit the road for an extended trial run.  I purged a good deal of my stuff, but I didn’t focus on getting my house sold at first. Instead, I focused on getting my life in order to handle being completely mobile and getting Chris’ little Tab trailer ready for two of us living in it.  When I decided that nomadic living was for me, I then set another date to take care of the rest.

In the case of our friends The Tacky Texans, they’re taking things in stages as well.  Their first step was moving into their new mobile setup – a mega cute Avion trailer.  This entailed them purging a lot of their stuff and moving out of their apartment.  Neither has quit their jobs yet, they just moved down the road to an RV Park so they could adapt to living in the trailer first.  Now they’re focusing on transitioning their careers to support generating income while being mobile, and are pondering what deadlines to set for themselves.

By taking things in manageable bite size stages, you can reduce the overwhelm of trying to tackle everything at once. Your steps will likely look different than any one else, because your situation is going to be unique.  Find what works for you, and don’t hold up anyone else as a model you have to strive to match.

The critical part remains though – with each stage, set a deadline to keep you on track and motivated.

Kicking it into gear

It’s amazing what happens when you switch from this being a someday dream to being a what you’re actively doing.  It’s a mental shift that just can’t be achieved otherwise, and it’s the shift that is necessary to actually get stuff done.

Now the fun begins!

Our Google Doc Project Lists from 2007 Exodus

That to-do list that once seemed endless?  It now has an end date and can’t be endless – there are things on that list that absolutely must get done. It’s kinda like those all-nighters we used to pull with big assignments due in school that we put off to the last minute.  I know I made massive quality progress when a deadline was looming.

From here, it’s probably best to institute some sort of project management system. If you’re already using a Getting Things Done system such as OmniFocus or Things, set up projects within those to track all of the details that you’re going to be tackling.  If you’re not already using a system like this, now is probably not the time to research and set up the options (unless your deadline is far out enough) – as that can become a massive project all of its own.  I’ve certainly encountered folks who spend more time setting up their systems than it would take to just get the things done on their list.

In our case, we set up a series of Google Docs where we kept shared notes on all of the projects ahead of us.  We had notes for the purging process, maintenance to be done on the trailer, purchase lists, trip planning, social engagements and logistics to handle (such as insurance, banking, mail forwarding, etc).  Thinking through each project allowed us to write down individual tasks that had to happen to complete the overall project.  And then each individual task became a manageable and achievable item that was much easier to approach in an afternoon.  Instead of having a goal of ‘get rid of everything you’re not taking with you’, I could approach different areas of my house as mini-projects each evening- such as my closet, bathroom, kitchen, etc.

Our 2007 Tech Prep List

We put aside time every few days to go over each of the projects together and make sure we were both caught up on what the other was doing, and what other tasks would come up.  We divided up the tasks and made sure we each knew who was responsible for what, and which had a higher priority for getting done sooner versus later.

We’d put even the small stuff in our system to keep the motivation up by feeling we were making progress and made sure to schedule date time with each other non-related to the project at hand. We’d celebrate each time we completed a major project, helping keep the enthusiasm going.

If I had it to do over again with today’s technology, I’d also be using Google Calendar’s task list feature that has since come out to manage a to-do list for each calendar day. I’m using that system now with great success, and I can totally see how it would have helped with the daily items that I needed to accomplish during my nomadic preparation days. These days Chris uses OmniFocus to manage his projects.

Chris’ exodus and both of mine were right on target for having everything ready on our circled date on the calendar.  The system worked.

What other tips do you have to share for dealing with the overwhelm of a major project like gearing your life up to hit the road full time?

Bikes just weren’t worth it

For our first couple years on the road, Cherie and I carried our bikes with us, with the intention of exploring by bike wherever we went. We both enjoyed biking, and figured that they would provide a great way to get some exercise on the road.

But we hardly ever used them.

It was such a hassle to take the bikes off the racks, especially knowing that they’d need to be hoisted back up again so soon. And inevitably whenever we did think to ride, the tires would be low, or the chains rusty, or the gears out of alignment. Bikes are just not meant to live full-time exposed to the elements on the back of a vehicle.

Or exposed to thieves. Our first set of bikes got stollen when some miscreants cut the security chain one night and made off with them right off the back of our Jeep. Our second set of (cheaper) bikes were protected with a heftier lock, until that lock rusted shut from constant exposure to the elements. We eventually abandoned our bikes at a friend’s place, awaiting a blowtorch to someday free them.

Bikes just weren’t working out for us.

Instead we did a lot of walking, some informal yoga and we occasionally contemplated how we might be able to incorporate a Wii Fit into our tiny home.

Rediscovering Running

Then, with Cherie loving her Vibram FiveFingers Shoes – she got inspired in March to get back into running with the  Couch-to-5k interval training program she had been hearing about, but doing it barefoot style.  She even found a great iPhone app that would make it easy to time the run/walk intervals without thinking about it.

Cherie used to love running when she was younger, but had given it up years ago due to an ankle injury. I on the other hand have always hated running – it just never seemed to work for me. Too boring, and too sweaty.

Cherie was inspired to get back into it, so I wished her well and watched as she rocked through the first week of the training program.

But, I was really craving some exercise. And I started to realize how nice it was that running didn’t require any special gear or fuss. So, I decided to give it a try.

I figured I would do the first week or two of the program, and then I would get bored, or my legs would hurt too much, or my feet would get sore. But to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it!

We’ve both kept up with the running in the months since, and have discovered that running is a great stress relief in addition to seeing our health improve overall.  I’ve also been amazed to see just how much my endurance has increased.

Recently I’ve “graduated” from the Couch-to-5k program, and I’ve moved on from running intervals to jogging a full 5k non-stop every couple of days. Now I am working on increasing my speed, and maybe building up to even longer distances.

Cherie has been rocking the running too, though our natural paces are so different that this hasn’t been something we’ve been able to do entirely together. Still – it is great to pass each other on the trails, and I’ve made a point of always picking her wildflowers to bring back from my runs.

Both of us are feeling vastly more fit than we have in years.

Nomadic Fitness Solutions

We’ve especially grown to appreciate just how nomad friendly running is. You don’t need any gear, and you can do it just about anywhere. Heading out for a run has given us an incentive to explore the parks and campgrounds we have been staying in, surprisingly more so than having bikes along ever did. As a result, we’re seeking out and appreciating paying to stay at public campgrounds more so than before, just so that we have amazing trails to explore while running.

For us, running has proven to be a great fit for our nomadic lifestyle. But we are curious – what do other nomads do to stay fit? We’d love to hear what works for all of you.

——————–

Some apps we recommend for running with an iPhone: (iTunes Affiliate Links)

	RunKeeper – $9.99 RunkKeeper works great as an odometer, and is how we measure the distance and time of our runs. It also calculates your pace, and shows you where you’ve been on a map. The UI is quick and simple. There is also a free cut-down version.
	Couch to 5k – $2.99 This is the beautifully designed app that got us started, and it has just been updated to support iOS 4 multitasking so that it can run in the background while using another foreground app. I’ve started using the intervals in Couch-to-5k to work on building up my speed, using the alerts to indicate fast/slow, instead of run/walk. A totally fabulous program!
	Pandora Internet Radio – Free I’ve always loved Pandora’s streaming music service, but until now you couldn’t listen to Pandora and do anything else at the same time on your iPhone. Now with iOS 4’s multi-tasking support, Pandora can provide a soundtrack for my run while both RunKeeper and Couch-to-5k are running. I love it!

We love our iPhones (and yes, we did just both upgrade to the new iPhone 4), and we are growing increasingly addicted to our iPads (yup, we have two).

We consider both of these fine pieces of technology to be essential components of our technomadic arsenal. There is something magical about having the Internet in your pocket, a world’s worth of maps on your lap, email and messaging always with you, music and video on demand, and an abundance of incredible apps that every day make our iGadgets ever more useful tools for facilitating our full time domestic travels.

Oh, and apparently the iPhone actually makes phone calls too. (We really aren’t phone people…)

Today we’d like to share some of favorite apps that we use specifically in our travels. Please note that aside from the apps we were involved with creating, we paid for all of the apps and these are unsolicited reviews.  Just our honest opinions.   But, if you do opt to buy any of these apps off our recommendations, the links below are iTunes affiliate links and we will get a tiny cut.

Apps for Finding RV Parking & Camping

When we first starting looking for apps to create on our own – a campground locater was tops on our list. At the time, we could find no decent options.  More recently however, there seem to be a bunch of them – and we’ve been trying several of them out.  There still does not seem to be one single app that does everything – but there are some promising potentials.  We find ourselves using a combination of apps depending on the situation and type of camping or overnight parking we’re looking for.

	RVParking.com – Free This app claims to have more than 18,000 listings in their database, which is also accessible online at RVParking.com.  Both the website and app are brand new, and the database is still being fleshed out.  We’ve found many duplicates, bad addresses, missing parks, and listings for mobile home parks that don’t allow RVs. The maps in the app don’t seem to auto-update as you scroll through them, making browsing by map a bit of a challenge by having to start with a location search. They do have a unique angle tho that we’re really excited about – integrating in full park info, user reviews, photos and profiles. We’ve been enjoying leaving reviews, and would love to see this website adopted by others.  If it can get a lot of following, it stands to be an excellent central source for finding RV Parking information on the go. And as a free app – it’s definitely worth checking out (just be prepared to do a bit of fact checking until the database gets cleaned up.)
	Camp & RV by Allstays – $2.99 This app uses the same technology as the rest of the Allstays product line to help you find things near highway intersections and freeway exits.  It features a wide variety of RV camping and overnight options – including some public campgrounds, private campgrounds, KOAs, truck stops, Walmarts (including those that don’t allow overnighting), rest areas (including wifi & RV dump availability) and RV repair & parts stores.  Each category shows up on maps with nicely labeled pins so you can quickly scan for what you need. You can also adjust how far from the highways exit you want to search. The interface is fairly intuitive, and we like that the maps auto update with camping options as you scroll around.  Their nifty exit view auto updates as you approach exits to show you what is coming up. We’ve found a fair amount of discrepancies in the database, and a lot of missing campgrounds, so it is not entirely comprehensive.  The app has built in feedback to the developer to submit corrections.  As this is the only app that tracks free overnight parking options, we mainly use this app when we’re in transit and just in need of a place to sleep for the night.
	Campwhere – $5.99 This app only covers public campgrounds – including city, county, national, state, forest service, BLM and Army Corp of Engineer campgrounds.  Since this is our preferred camping style, this app has been a great tool for us to quickly find our public camping options. The database seems pretty comprehensive and accurate, and smartly leaves off campgrounds that are not accessible by vehicle. In the map view, each type of campground is displayed in a different color. The user interface is so incredibly well done, that we wish they had a version that was completely comprehensive of all camping & overnight options so we could only use one app.  There is not much information to be found for each campground listing aside from the number of sites they have, coordinates, weather forcast and web link.  The app would be more useful if it listed amenities provided, prices and more.  Overall, for finding public camping options, this is our top choice app – especially since the app now also works full-screen on the iPad.

If the three apps above could be merged into one comprehensive, user friendly app – we’d be very happy campers!

Apps to Aid General Travel

	HearPlanet: Audio Guide to the World – $4.99 We must admit, we’re partial to this app as were hired to orchestrate its launch at MacWorld 2009 (a very fun project!). Even without a connection to the app, we’d use it often in our travels to get an overview of things around us. It’s an awesome concept – an audio tour guide for the world around you, which are perfect for while you’re driving. The bulk of the database is basically text-to-speech computer voiced Wikepedia entries – however HearPlanet has been hard at work acquiring premium human voiced content. We even have some entries we have created in the app, just search for ‘TFT’ to find them.
	Google Earth – Free Chris is addicted to Google Earth, particularly on the iPad. Google Earth lets you zoom in and browse the entire world, using your fingers to zoom, pan, and tilt in a way that is so much more intuitive than any desktop application. We use Google Earth to scope out the road ahead, and the places we have been – getting a great overview of the towns and terrain we have passed through. And – Google Earth integrates Wikipedia as well – so whenever you see an interesting place, the Wikipedia page for more details is just a click away. Just the other day Chris used Google Earth to “fly” through West Virginia’s New River Gorge, reading about the regions rich mining history as he went. Amazing stuff!
	Roadside America – $2.99 This is an app version of the popular website that tracks all the various roadside attractions across the US – so now you’ll know where all those large balls of twine are!  We enjoy using this app to find cool off-the-beaten path things around as we travel.  We enjoy that users can leave tips and that you can mark the things you’ve seen.  They also have an interesting pricing model – the $2.99 purchase prices gets you 1 of 6 regions of the US.  If you want other regions or the entire US, you can make an in app purchase to activate them.
	CoPilot Live USA - $4.99 The iPhone and iPad are perfect navigation devices with the built in GPS and gorgeous high-resolution screens. For the most part, the built in Google Maps application works well, but only when you have cellular coverage. Because the maps are loaded over the Internet, if you are out in the boonies you can easily end up lost. The Google Maps app also doesn’t do turn-by-turn directions to let you know when a turn is coming up, or automatic re-routing when you veer off course. We’ve been in search of a better navigation solution, and for now we’re trying out CoPilot Live USA. At $4.99 for the entire countries worth of maps, it is an incredible bargain. The app so far has impressed us, though the UI is cumbersome at times, and the GPS seems to occasionally get confused – telling us to “turn right, then turn left” on long straightaways where no turn is necessary. But for the price, you can’t beat it.
	CoPilot Live HD North America –  $29.99 The only iPad-optimized full screen navigation app out so far is CoPilot Live HD North America, but it has gotten some rather poor initial reviews. For now we are waiting for an update to be released, or for TomTom or Magellan to come out with an iPad optimized mapping app.
	State Lines – $2.99 And of course, we have to mention our own app – State Lines. We developed State Lines to fulfill our own desire for a single resource for all those laws and regulations that change as you cross state lines.  The app itself is selling fairly well, despite us lacking the time to really do much of a marketing push on it. We also just released a alcohol specific version for just $.99 that tracks just state alcohol laws, including DUI information.  We must say, we are loving our own app, and we use it frequently as we cross state lines to find out if gas taxes will be cheaper in the next state, if we can overnight at rest areas, if we can buy beer in grocery stores on a Sunday and other such information. We’ve been busy collecting even more data (child safety seat laws, U-turns, more motorcycle information, etc.) that we will be releasing in an expanded version soon.  If you were so kind as to purchase the app and are finding it useful, would you mind leaving us a review in the App Store?

Apps for General Use in Travel

	GasBag Pro – $1.99 When you’re on the road as often as we are, being able to locate the cheapest gas can make a huge difference in our bottom line travel budget. There are several apps available for tracking gas prices, and we’re partial to this one because it also has a built in mileage log.
	Yelp – Free We love Yelp – both the iPhone app and their website. It helps us quickly locate good places to eat – as well as dentists, veterinarians, mechanics, hair salons and more. End users can leave reviews, so it’s a great way to get unbiased opinions about places when we pull into a new town.
	USPS Mobile – Free While we try to minimize the amount of mail we need to handle, we do utilize shipping from time to time. This app from the US Post Office lets us quickly location post offices and mail drop boxes.  Our favorite features is that it also lets us find the automated postal centers, which allow us to do full package shipping after postal office hours.

That’s our current list of our favorite RV travel essentials.

Do you have any other favorites? Please share them here – we are always looking for great new apps to try!

Upcoming Stuff – Come Join Us!

Ask us Questions Live on EscapeForum.org

We’ve been trying to mesh up schedules for a while now, and the date has been set for next Wednesday, July 21 at 7pm PST. Escape is a brand of fiberglass travel trailer very similar to our Oliver, and the owner of their user forums wants to conduct a live interactive chat with us about full time living and working on the road. The chat is open to anyone, and you don’t even need to join their forums to join the chat. You’ll be able to ask us questions live, and we’ll answer via streaming video. Just tune in Wednesday evening to EscapeForum’s LiveShow.

Get Featured on Technomadia.com via the August Digital Nomad Blog Carnival

And finally.. we’re pleased to have volunteered to host the August Digital Nomad Blog Carnival. Cody McKibben of Thrilling Heroics has organized a monthly round-up of submitted content related to digital nomadism.. and the carnival itself is nomadic! You’ll find it all over the web on blogs of other lifestyle designers and nomads. In August – it will be right here on Technomadia.

We are specifically inviting YOU to take part in it. All you need to do is write (or have written) a post on your own blog relevant to digital nomadism – it can be about your own path to becoming a nomad, tips you offer about this lifestyle, philosophical ponderings, technology you utilize, reflections of your life by design.. and as our own special request.. moments of following serendipity. Choose your post, and then submit it on the Digital Nomad Blog Carnival by August 15. We’ll review them all, and in mid-August you’ll see a round up of the best here (well, probably them all… we hate to make choices!)

Recent Appearances

Agile Living Video Interview

Cath Duncan of MineYourResources.com conducted a video interview with us back in May about how we balance choice, fear, career and serendipity into our lives and small space. It was a fun interview to do, and we really appreciate her depth of questions!

Sharing Travel Experiences Interview

Andy Hayes recently asked to feature us on his top ranked travel blog, Sharing Travel Experiences – all about our full time traveling lifestyle. It’s a fun read and we’re delighted to have taken part.

GeekSpeak.Org Radio Interview

One afternoon we got a random Skype Call from Lyle Troxel of KUSP Santa Cruz’s GeekSpeak.org. Instead of airing the radio show live, he was pre-recording content. We ended up doing one of the most fun interviews shooting the breeze about technology – including iPhones 4, iPad and Google taking over the world. We also talk a bit about technomadic living, and living life out loud by sharing so much of our life publicly. It’s a hoot, and you can pick up the archived interview as a NPR podcast.

To which we of course reply ‘Then why aren’t you doing it too?’.

We are in process of compiling our responses to the common excuses that folks give us to that question, some very valid. We aim to share examples of others overcoming the challenges, our own stories and share resources to assist.   This will be a growing series, so please do check back to see what we’ve added.

Currently in this series:

Excuse #1: Jobs/Career – Choose careers that are nomad friendly!
Excuse #2: Affording it - It can be far more affordable than you think!
Excuse #3: Stuff – Stuff is anchor, learn to live with what you really need
Excuse #4: Family - Travel can be an education for kids and keep you more connected to family
Excuse #5: Environmental Impact - You can travel and lower your ecological footprint on the world
Excuse #6: Pets - Some forms of travel are more pet friendly than others
Excuse #7: Community – Being nomadic opens up new opportunity for community
Excuse #8: Romance/Companionship – From solo travel to dealing with a partner who doesn’t share your wanderlust
Excuse #9: Logistics – How to handle mail, voting, taxes and banking – the mundane logistics.

Excuse #10: Healthcare – Considerations for health insurance when you travel full time.

Excuse #11: Conserving Water – You don’t have to use as much water as you think

Excuse #12: Overwhelm - Tips for handling the daunting tasks ahead of you for preparing your life to be mobile.
Excuse #13: Lack of Continuity - How to find services on the road when you need them

Excuse #14: Safety – Being mobile really doesn’t have more risk than being stationary – just different risks.

Other topics coming up include: Health, Staying Connected and Fear.

What other excuses do you have, or have you encountered?  Reply in the comments, and we’ll address those too.

What is Burning Man?

Camp Nomadia 2009

Not unlike the Grand Canyon, Burning Man is something that can’t adequately be described with words or pictures – you really need to experience it to understand it. The basics, however, are rather simple – nearly 50,000 people come together in the the remote and desolate Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada during the week before Labor Day every year to build a temporary city dedicated to “community, art, self-expression and self reliance”.

There is no vending, no food stalls, no t-shirts, no main stage, no “official” agenda, and no corporate sponsorships of any kind allowed. The only city infrastructure provided are porta-potties, ice sales, and a Center Camp cafe that sells lemonade and lattes. There aren’t even any trash cans – every participant is responsible for carrying out not only their own trash, but any other trash they find, making Burning Man the largest “leave no trace” event in the world.

There is however amazing art, music, fire (lots of fire!), food, architecture, technology, and even an airport to be found. All of it is created by other attendees, and offered to each other via a “gift economy” where even bartering is frowned upon.

Burning Man operates on a “no spectators” philosophy – and there is intentionally no distinction made between audience and performers. Everyone attending Burning Man is encouraged to find some way to actively participate, whether this looks like working as a volunteer for the city itself or helping on one of the many giant architectural projects, or doing other things – such as gifting handmade jewelry, giving a fire dance performance, hosting a BBQ feast for your neighbors, playing live music, offering aerial tours, showing off autonomous swarming networked robots, giving rides on a magic carpet, creating a roller disco, offering math tutoring (seriously!), giving dance lessons, or even just offering cold icee pops to passers-by on a hot day.

No one is being paid to perform. Whether you stumble across a world-renowned DJ spinning, a famous artist painting, or a full-on circus (complete with big top tent) performing a high-wire show, you will marvel realizing that every one of them came through the front gate having purchased the same tickets that you did.

The physical centerpiece of the city is a giant wooden man that is burned on Saturday night, but with so much other stuff going on all week long the “Burning Man” itself is hardly the focus of the event any more.

Camp Nomadia

One of the things we crave as we travel is a deeper connection with community. Our travel allows us to connect with people all over the place, but we find a certain special connection with other folks who are also called to a nomadic lifestyle and who are out traveling the world.

To help bring together other nomads, in 2008 we we founded a new theme camp at Burning Man – Camp Nomadia. It’s a camp specifically for nomadic souls to come together and converge to create a temporary home for us all.

The last two years have been a great success, with 2009 cresting with a population of 70 neighbors full of wanderlust. We enjoyed camping with other nomads as well as hosting several nomadic happy hours to bring together other nomads camped elsewhere in Black Rock City. Over the course of the week, a wide range of amazing folks came together to connect, swap stories, and share experiences.  We also hosted a widely popular “Technomadic Lifestyles Workshop” and had around a 100 attendees craving information on how to make this lifestyle work!

Nomads at Nomadic Happy Hour in 2009

We are planning to host Camp Nomadia again this year at Burning Man, and we’d like to extend a special invitation to all nomadic spirits out there to join us.

As nomads tend to be used to being very self-sufficient and independent, Camp Nomadia has intentions of being a very chill no-frills camp. We will have no central group infrastructure, except perhaps a shade structure. This means each nomad is responsible for all his own needs – food, water, cooking, clean-up, shelter, shower, power, greywater handling, etc. But unlike many other more infrastructure-heavy camps, we also have no camp fees.

Camp Nomadia is open to current nomads, digital nomads, future nomads, wanna-be nomads, part time nomads, domestic nomads, international nomads, technomads, low-technomads, former nomads, RV nomads, couch-surfing nomads, land nomads, rail nomads, backpacking nomads, sailing nomads, or folks who just want to be around nomads (yes, your non-nomadic friends can join too!). We welcome Burning Man veterans and virgins alike.

Camp Nomadia 2010 Events

Even if you’re not planning to camp with us, come join us for any of our events we’ll be hosting .. it’s a great opportunity to mingle with other nomads and learn more about the lifestyle.

We’re currently planning 3 ‘Nomadic Happy Hours’ – Tuesday & Thursday from 4-6pm and Sunday from 3-5pm.  And we’ll also be repeating our Technomadic Lifestyle workshop on Thursday just prior to the happy hour at 3pm.

Interested in camping with us? Here’s the scoop…

For more information on our camp, including how to join us – please refer to our Camp Nomadia information Page.

We look forward to seeing you on the playa  - whether camped as our neighbor, or perhaps at one of our events!

Two recent problems we had illustrate the concept.

Shoes

One of the annoyances of living full time in a small space such as the Oliver has been .. what to do with shoes??

We’ve obviously simplified our shoes to just a few pairs each – hiking/running shoes, sandals, slip-ons, semi-dressy.  But even so, they add up and take up room. We originally tossed them in the bottom of our hanging closet – which was a constant hassle of playing ‘Find the matching shoe!’. And of course, if shoes were wet, muddy or otherwise dirty, we endangered our hanging clothes too. Even with the best of intentions of putting away shoes, we’d always end up with a pile of shoes somewhere.

Organization was needed.. so off to the Container Store we went. I had an idea of cutting an over-the-door shoe organizer in half, and hanging it below our 2-person dinette. Chris was a bit skeptical of my idea, but he’s learned to trust me when I have crazy ideas.

We opted for the Container Store’s most expensive shoe hanger.  On a full size door, it can store 30 pairs of shoes. When I had a traditional house, this was my solution and I loved it. It’s well built, and really honestly does hold 30 pairs of  (women’s) shoes while taking up a minimum of space.

Next step was to measure and cut it to length to fit nicely under the table. Which left enough bins to store 12 or 14 pairs of shoes (more than we own). The remaining half is still usable as an over-the-door solution for a regular door… or be creative elsewhere with it.

We at first attempted a suction cup mounting solution – which failed while in motion.

So Chris drilled holes and mounts into the lip of the back of the table – and the solution has been working perfectly for us for several months now. It does take up a bit of space under the table, but not enough to make sitting at the table uncomfortable. And the organization has been so wonderful!

Kiki approves!

Flowers & Plants

Chris and I have recently taken up running (go us!), and he’s gotten into the very sweet habit of bringing me back wildflowers from his run.  The problem was, with a small space we hadn’t kept any flower vases. Heck, we don’t even really have much counter space, so even keeping flowers in one of our few drinking glasses wasn’t the best solution.

I had the vision of a suction cup mounted flower vase to solve the problem.  Living in what is essentially a huge fiberglass bathtub, we rely on using suction cup everything to mount to our walls – photo frames, organizing bins, hooks, room dividers and even our speakers!

A vase mounted on the wall would allow us to take advantage of space that is otherwise unused and out of the way.  I figured if one wasn’t already on the market, I could likely construct something.

Thankfully all it took was me posting the idea on Facebook, and immediately we had a solution.

It’s part of a 3-piece set at QVC that has the vase and two small planters that also mount via suction cup… for just $10.97 plus shipping!

Bonus to my flower dilemma, I’m looking forward to having  a little mobile suction cup garden.

Any suggestions for 2 or 3 useful, easy to grow, cat-friendly cooking herbs that I should try to grow?

We went to the Miami International Boat Show, picked the brains of some great sailing nomads, and worked on defining what we wanted in our ideal floating home.

Noticing our interest, my mom (thank you!) surprised us by sending us a DVD documentary she had stumbled upon about the adventures of a sailing family, and we finally got around to watching Ice Blink this week.

Ice Blink is a documentary about the Martin family, “a conventional family of five living a very unconventional life afloat”.

The story begins in the late-80’s when a young Dave Martin set off to circle the the globe in his small 25′ sailboat. Along the way he met and married his life partner Jaja, and together they had three children (in a 25′ boat!!!) and many adventures during their seven year circumnavigation.

Eventually the Martin’s upgraded to a larger 33′ boat, and after two years ashore in 1997 the family set sail again to explore more northerly waters. Most of the footage in Ice Blink chronicles the family’s explorations of these arctic waters, and the photography and video is stunning. The ice filled seas and swimming polar bears certainly make a sharp contrast to the more typical tropical cruising photos!

The Martin Family in Greenland

But despite the beautiful photography and video footage, we actually found a lot of interview portions of Ice Blink to be a bit… Boring…

But only boring to us because we have spent so much time of our own answering the exact same frequently asked questions, and we could almost echo the same answers the Martins were giving ourselves. We already know how important it is to just get out and go – and that the details will work themselves out along the way.

But if you are in need of motivation and inspiration to hit the road or the waves, Ice Blink’s look at the Martin family provides a great case study of how it can be done – starting with little more than an old boat, a thirst for adventure, and a willingness to jump into the unknown.

Here is a preview video from Ice Blink:

I particularly appreciated Dave’s stories about how he trusted that he would be able to pick up work along the way to fund the voyage. For example, he turned menial work in a meat packing plant into the rewarding opportunity to spend a year overhauling the plant owner’s boat. And a friend’s advice to “take pictures even if you can’t afford the film” eventually led to the Martin’s selling photographs professionally.

Indeed, if you trust in Nomadic Serendipity, things tend to have a way of working out – often in ways that you least expect it!

I also appreciated the way that the Martin’s explained how you must often pass through the challenging “zeros” to truly reach and appreciate the epic “tens” experiences on the other side. I think this reflects an element of challenge and reward that is present in crossing an ocean that is somewhat lacking in our more predictable and controllable land-based adventures.

Speaking of our own boat aspirations… I’ve been daydreaming about sailing again lately (must be the salt air here in Florida), but we still haven’t firmed up what our own next steps might be. Hopefully we will be able to make it to Seattle later this year to get some time-on-water with our technomad friends Steve and Sky. And maybe this winter we will try to take some sailing lessons and/or do some chartering to get more experience. If we both discover that sailing feels like the right next step, perhaps this time next year we will be sailing north up the Intercoastal to explore the Great Loop…

The general plans (notice how things get more nebulous the further out time goes, that’s the nature of Nomadic Standard Time):

July 13: Sometime in the next week we’ll start heading north from Melbourne, FL towards Columbia, SC – where we just scheduled a business meeting to launch a new project I’m very excited about.  How serendipitious that being back in FL made this meeting easy to just swing by on our way across the country?

July 15: Just as I was setting up my business meeting, a dear friend contacted me that she’d be in Floyd, VA for vacation that same week. We ask our friends to let us know when they’re traveling somewhere, because you just never know when a rendezvous might be possible.  Score – it’s on the way to where we wanted to go next – so it’ll be a perfect stop over along the Blue Ridge Parkway to meet some of her dear friends. And since we had just commissioned her to make some special jewelry for us – the timing is perfect to handle fittings in person.

Sometime the week of July 19: The reason we picked this general route is that another dear friend of ours just accepted an exciting 3-year contract working at a university in Afghanistan. I’m so very excited for her (and once she launches her blog about the adventure, we’ll introduce you to her), so we want to go spend some time with her in northern Indiana before seeing her becomes much more of an adventure for us!

Late July: Since we’re in the area anyway, we’ll return to St. Louis to spend more time with Chris’ family – as our time with them got very compressed when we decided to divert to Florida for my dad’s surgery last month.

August: From St. Louis we’ll find a route across country to meander towards Sacramento, CA (where we keep our storage unit) to pick up our Burning Man gear, and then head on to Black Rock City – where we are once again hosting Camp Nomadia, a theme camp for us nomadic minded folks. More on that soon.

If you have ideas for our routing, suggestions for things we just have to see or live anywhere along the way and would like to meet up or better yet – have us be Temporary Neighbors for a couple nights, be in touch.

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!

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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.

Until we discovered on Twitter one day that she and her husband were taking a USA road trip vacation, and our paths would be crossing in Colorado last summer.  We enjoyed a delightful day hanging out with them both, and then caught up again at SXSW earlier this year.  One of our original summer options was traveling up to their new home in Calgary, crossing into another country for the first time with our home and escaping the summer heat. Obviously, we’ve ended up in Florida – definitely not escaping the heat.

Cath writes about a concept she calls Agile Living, which is the ability to thrive through change and uncertainty.  This concept resonates so clearly with our own concept of following serendipity.  We’ve intentionally designed our lives to embrace change and uncertainty at every turn.

We were so honored a couple months ago when she contacted us to ask if she could interview us as part of a new series she’s putting together profiling folks she feels embody agile living.

The interview went live yesterday on her site – How to Overcome Your Fear and Embrace Serendipity.

While the video part is very blurry – the audio content is excellent.  She asked some insightful questions to pick our brains on how we thrive with our agile lives – everything from fears, dealing with endless options, working on the road and balancing our differing personality types in a small space.

And who can’t be absolutely charmed by Cath and her amazing accent and personality?

That’s not to say it wasn’t tempting, and that we don’t have the occasional sponsored item, affiliate link to products we adore or occasional link ads. But we don’t seek them out, and only take those that seem to be an easy fit and are unobtrusive.

After researching what it’d take to build up a blog to be generating sustainable income – I greatly respect those who have been successful at it. It’s a lot of work.  So if you’re thinking of going that path to fund your own location independence, don’t think it’s an easy and always profitable path.

I continue to learn a lot from sites like Problogger.net, ThinkTraffic.net and NomadicMatt’s How to Make Money with your Travel Blog ebook (affiliate link) by adapting their advice to simply maximize our efforts to find our people (instead of generating cash income).

Why do we blog?

Chris and I were both active social bloggers long before we met. The Prius forum that we met on over 4 years ago was on a blogging platform that we both utilized for our personal blog space.  Sharing our lives via blogging is a natural part of who we are, and it’s the social part that keeps us blogging.  When we decided to merge our paths in 2007 and share our travel adventures outside of our personal spaces, we opened up Technomadia.com.  However the blog portion of it was just a republishing of our personal blog entries.

It wasn’t until March 2009 that we launched Technomadia.com as its own independent blog on WordPress, and we were absolutely astounded to find out how many folks had been following along, and how many more have since joined in. What started as merely a way to keep family and friends up to date on where we were has turned in several hundred RSS subscribers and over 10,000 unique visitors a month – WOW.

We are joyously thankful for each and every one of you who continues to subscribe and check in on what we’re up to.

One of the reasons we made a conscious decision to not build Technomadia.com to be an income generator is that we never wanted to feel an obligation to produce content or have an adventurous day just to have something to write about.  It’s been a huge relief these past few weeks with dealing with my father’s surgery (he’s home from the hospital now, by the way), to know that by taking a break from our blog, Twitter and Facebook pages and refocusing our attentions – we weren’t jeopardizing an income source.

We also wanted to make sure there was never temptation to be anything but completely authentic, and felt that building Technomadia up to be a business could put a barrier up. We never wanted to feel we had to sell anyone on mobile lifestyles to fund our own choices. Not to say that you can’t make money from blogging and be authentic at the same time – it’s just a different motivation for us.

Even though we don’t make bundles of cash directly off our site – we feel we have been paid tenfold in the efforts we’ve put into this blog and networking under the Technomadia banner. And that’s through the connections we’ve made – new friends and opportunities for experiences. That has been absolutely priceless.  And the stories we’ve had reflected back to us of how folks have been inspired by something we’ve said have literally taken our breath away at times.

And that is why we blog. We are passionately inspired to share, as we have been inspired by the sharing of others.

My father grew up a Navy brat – always moving around, and spent his first adult years serving aboard a nuclear submarine in the 1960s.  When he met my mother, and she wouldn’t date him until he got out of the Navy, he moved into civil service and ended up becoming a software developer quite by circumstance.  On the night I was born, he dreamed up an idea for a software solution that became the foundation of the business he and I still run together to this day.

From the moment I was born, I had tech in my life.  Nowadays, that’s not so uncommon.  But for someone born in 1973 – I was destined to live outside of boxes from the beginning.  By the time I was 4, I was navigating a Wang 2200 mini computer – and even getting him nearly arrested for telling my pre-school teacher that I spent the weekend ‘playing with my daddy’s Wang’.

By age 7, he had taught me to write and compile BASIC programs, and by age 13 I was developing applications and editing our company’s self published magazine. All the while, he had built up a successful software business in the Wang and BASIC-2 community.   I learned a lot about not only technology, but also the stress of running a larger company when your passion is creating.

When Wang went through it’s nepotism inspired crash in the mid 1980s, his company fell as well.  But he taught me agility of adapting by transitioning his career to becoming a location independent software consultant and developer. He learned new skills outside of Wang, reduced the stress in his life and focused more on quality time on the things he loved.  Many of the clients I support today in my full time travels are folks we forged long lasting relationships with during this time period.

I am so grateful for all the gifts my father has given me – in raising me with technology as a foundation of my youth, in bringing me up in an entrapanuer household and in inspiring me to live my passions.  I learned from him that nothing is impossible, to always question the norm and to forge my own unique path. He’s been my biggest supporter in my chosen lifestyle.

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This past Wednesday he underwent surgery for what was previously thought to be a small, possibly cancerous, tumor in his right lung. The original prognosis was that he would likely only lose his lower lobe.  However, the surgery and pathology showed the tumor was both cancerous and placed in such a way that his entire lung had to be removed.  Thankfully, the cancer was only Stage 1A squamous cells, and his lymph nodes are all clear – it was caught in time.  The past few weeks have been a rollercoaster of an emotional ride, and I’m so thankful that we could be here at this difficult time for my family.  Every day he is making progress and looking better and better, he is a fighter.  The next few months ahead will be challenging as he relearns living with one lung and the prognosis is good for a long healthy life ahead.  We intend many future nomadic rendezvouses.

For Father’s Day today, Chris and I created him an iPad app of his own – which allows him to interact with his favorite bunny (that lives under his house) while he’s in the hospital. The smile on his face was priceless.

Thank you for your patience in our absence from our normal content as life has directed our focus elsewhere.

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.

On board the Oliver, we have a fresh water tank that is 32.5 gallons, plus a hot water heater that holds an additional 6 gallons. Our grey water tank (which holds sink and shower dirty water) is 35.5 gallons and our black water (potty waste) is 18.5 gallons. The tank sizes, for the size of trailer we have, are actually quite large.

But obviously, 38.5 gallons of fresh water is not a huge amount either. When I lived in a traditional house, it was quite likely I used this much water for a single shower. For someone going to an off-grid event like Burning Man, they may do the math and say – wow, that’s 19 days worth of water! No problem.

Here’s how we conserve water when we’re living off-grid for extended periods of time:

Showers

Showers can easily account for most of our water usage. Obviously, you’re not going to be able to stand under hot flowing water for several minutes with this type of lifestyle.. at least, not often. I’ve gotten quite adept at taking a fulfilling 1-2 gallon shower. I turn on the water (usually capturing the initial cold water coming out of the tap into a jug to use for drinking water and/or toilet flushing later), give myself a good rinsing and then.. and here’s the big secret.. turn off the water!  Our shower faucet has a quick button for turing the water on and off, while keeping the temperature settings intact. This makes it extra easy to not let the water flow when it doesn’t need to be.

I lather up with a little bath gel, not using anything other than my hands (as a rag, loofah or scrubby would take lots of extra water to rinse out). If I’m in the mood, I may shave my legs at this point. And then I rinse.

That’s it.

Notice I don’t shampoo my hair. I’ve actually not shampooed my hair since October 2007, and instead using a baking soda/apple cider vinegar routine once a week or so. Occasionally I will use a conditioner if I’m in a dry climate. My hair feels much more healthy than it ever did, and it really reduces my water needs, hygiene costs and environmental impact.

And when we’re in motion or living off grid, it’s not unusual for us to take a shower once every 2 or 3 days. We utilize Burning Man bathing (baby wipes) quite often, and use just enough water to wet my hair to comb through it. And the reality is, once I get past about 36 hour mark after my last shower, it’s quite natural feeling. I think here in America, we’ve gotten quite spoiled with our hygiene routines – you can look and smell great without taking a daily long steamy shower.

That’s not to say, that when the opportunity presents itself – I do indulge in a nice 3-5 minute long hot shower at a friend’s house or campground . It feels like downright luxury when it happens.

Dishwashing

One of our tricks with dishwashing was following the advice of boating nomads I know. We got a dishpan that fits perfectly in our sink, and use that to do dishes in. And when in places where it’s allowed, we can then dump the greywater directly onto the ground instead of it going into our tank.

Kiki helping with the dishes (not recommended for water conservation)

The dishpan makes it really obvious just how much water is being used. Again, the trick here is to turn off the water when not rinsing. We’ll often use paper towels to clean food debris off the plates as much as possible, rinse, spray sudsy water and then rinse again. A spray bottle with diluted dishsoap is extra helpful in conserving water and quickly applying soapy water. When needing to really conserve water, we’ll re-use rinse water for the initial rinse of the next dish. We’ve been able to do an entire load of dishes (which for us is usually a wok, two plates, two forks and two cups) with about 2 cups of water.

And of course, cooking with minimal dishes being made in the process is also key. I do most of my cooking with a single wok. And I try to avoid dishes that require boiling (such as noodles/rice) when we don’t have ample access to water. Avoiding dishes that leave behind a mess is also critical.

Teeth brushing / hand washing

Other big water users are brushing teeth and washing hands. The teeth brushing comes down to the very first water conservation lesson I remember having in the 3rd grade – turn off the water (notice this re-occurring theme). Hand washing is difficult because we don’t have on demand hot water (our heater is usually off, as we run it off propane most times – and it’s easy to waste a 1/2 gallon of water getting hot water out of the tap). For hand washing, we often combine cold water rinsing with sanitizing gel.

So how long do we last between dumping grey/black tanks and refilling fresh water? It’s been quite variable depending on what we’re doing. We’ve done  Burning Man twice for 10-11 days with tank room and fresh water to spare (but were evaporating some of our grey water, and using the porta-potties). We’ve stayed 2-4 weeks in one location without access to a dump station, and did fine with supplementing using a real bathroom for part of that. I’d say in general – a week to two is easy to do without much thought. And we can eek out more when needed.

Any other tips for saving water when living off-grid?

Andrew scopes out the Jeep trail ahead, on our first meeting in April 2009.

A while back, we posted the Serendipity Challenge – to hopefully inspire folks to experience more by planning less. We’ve gotten some excellent responses to it that we’re gathering up (keep them coming!) to share with you.  Our friend, Andrew Fresh, just surprised us with this story of his recent experience with following serendipity.

I love the full circle nature of this story, as our friendship with Andrew, Lisa and Wayne is actually a result of embracing our own serendipity last year.

They’re also Oliver Travel Trailer owners, and had invited us to stop by their home when we were passing through Arizona. As the factory had told us we are the youngest Oliver owners and their Arizona home was in the retirement area of Lake Havasu City, we naturally assumed they might be much older than us. Turns out, they’re around our age, totally hip and our overnight in Lake Havasu City turned into a weeklong adventure of  jeeping, sharing meals, fire spinning, geeking out and light painting. By the end of our stay, they had bought tickets to Burning Man to join us at Camp Nomadia, and Lisa took a huge step to changing her career to eventually become nomadic.

We have been blessed by a life long friendship with these awesome folks by simply following life’s invitations, so it’s extra inspirational for us to share this story with you.

What follows is an extremely rare (only our second to date) guest post, by Andrew Fresh.

Andrew, Lisa, Wayne and their niece & nephew at the Desert Bar.

Since Lisa, Wayne and I met Technomadia, more travel has been on our minds, however I think we have just recently started noticing and taking the opportunities that come our way. We went to Burning Man 2009 because of (and with) Technomadia and that was our first big step in being open to Nomadic Serendipity.

Since then, I signed up for a Twitter account and started following several burners and noticed that many of them live in the San Francisco area which means I get tidbits about things that go on there.

There have been so many different things that have been drawing my interest towards San Francisco, but I had sort of put it off until ”someday” or “later”. The following is a series of events that I feel really illustrates what can happen when a person begins to view life as a series of wonderful surprises and opportunities. One just has to say yes.

I purchased a Palm Pre the day they came out and recently Palm had a Developer Conference at their headquarters in San Francisco which I was incredibly bummed that I couldn’t attend. After the fact I sort of kicked myself that I didn’t make the time to go.

Maker Faire is put on by Make magazine, a magazine I specifically don’t subscribe to because it seems I already lack the time for the things I want to do, and I don’t need to add more things to my list. If I don’t know about it, I can’t miss it. This year, Maker Faire was happening near San Francisco. How amazing to be able to go. Maybe someday.

Maker Faire

One thing that does get some of my limited time is home coffee roasting and as many home roasters do, I get my green beans from Sweet Maria’s near San Francisco. There is that place again.

TAD Gear, a store I just love, had announced a “super amazing ultimate” sale that was going to be in-store (in San Francisco) only, the same weekend of Maker Faire. Too bad I can’t go. I even tweeted my disappointment.

I also am a hacker, so I read 2600, listen to Off the Hook and am interested in things like hackerspaces and in San Francisco, they have one of the best, Noisebridge. I’d love to check that place out. Someday.

Lisa had a foreign exchange student from Germany who has since gotten married and both he and his wife are now doctors. They were in San Francisco because his wife was doing some training with a doctor there. While she was working, her husband decided to drive down to visit us in Arizona. He arrived on a Tuesday with their two children and was planning to head home the following Thursday. How lucky for them to get to travel to and stay in San Francisco!

On Tuesday, I had gotten some extra money for a side job I had done so we had some spending money to do something. Hmmm.

That weekend, we already had plans to meet some friends in Las Vegas, but unfortunately those plans fell through at the very last moment. We were supposed to pick them up at the airport on Thursday morning and then drop them back off on Monday.

We already had the time off work and Lisa decided she wanted to do something anyway, I said, “Well, Maker Faire is going on near San Francisco.” and she said “OK!” and asked if we could caravan back up with our guest. He said, “Actually, my wife really wants to fly down because she is tired of the cold and rain in San Francisco and would love to come down to the sun, but you are welcome to use the flat we have rented.” A place to stay in San Francisco? For FREE?!   Yes!

So, on Wednesday night we decided we were going to have long a weekend in San Francisco.

Thursday morning we left, got to the apartment which was in a wonderful neighborhood on Castro Street, within easy walking distance of plenty of eateries and shops and filled with many interesting people wandering around. The city is amazing.

While in San Francisco, we were able to do so many interesting things and meet some wonderful people (at least one of which said we could stay on their couch bed when we came back).

Lisa at the top of The Rocket at Maker Faire

We made it to Maker Faire, got to see lots of incredible things that were there, got to climb up into THE rocket that we didn’t get to tour at Burning Man (it was too windy any time we tried), got to see how they converted one of the most captivating art projects we saw at Burning Man, the Mondo Spider, to run on electricity instead of being gas powered. Learned about something  that was truly amazing, TechShop, where you get to use super cool things to make super cool stuff. In addition there are super cool people who can help you learn to use these super cool things. Wow!

When we arrived in San Francisco, I asked some people via twitter what we should do while there and a couple of people said we should definitely go to Breaker Faire which was at American Steel. This is one place where Nomadic Serendipity significantly played a part because we almost decided to go to bed. We didn’t know anyone there and were a little nervous about what it might be like. We did decide to go though and it was incredible. The car pi�ata, the gingerbread house destruction, but mostly, the people. Many of whom were BRC-DPW (Burning Man infrastructure crew), everyone we met was really, really nice.

While at Breaker Faire, we met Alex who highly recommended we stop by Noisebridge which was something I had wanted to do since I had originally heard of hackerspaces. With his encouragement, we added it to our must-do list for the next day.

Sunday, we spent much of the morning relaxing after a late night and did a little packing for our trip home the following morning. That afternoon, we wandered out to do some more walking around the city, seeing more sights and getting Lisa more delicious vegan food. This was one of Lisa’s favorite things because we don’t have vegan places to eat where we live. She is always having to figure out what she can eat but there were actual entire restaurants that were completely vegan.

We finally ended up at Noisebridge in the early evening and quickly discovered that it was a good thing we hadn’t gone there first because it would have been unlikely we would have gone anywhere else. Neither of us wanted to leave.

The next morning after breakfast and before heading home, we drove to some of the places where Lisa grew up. Once we were on the way home, I drove so I set the GPS to guide us while Lisa took a nap. When she woke up, she commented on what an odd way the GPS was taking us, but we weren’t too worried. After driving a while longer, she joked that we would be passing Magic Mountain any minute. And then we did. Being in the serendipitous mindset we took it in stride and kept on going and before long we were getting close to Pasadena. It just so happens our friend recently moved there so we gave him a call and ended up having a wonderful, completely unplanned dinner with him.

San Francisco

There were a few things that I was looking forward to while in the bay area, visiting Palm HQ and Sweet Maria’s, but those didn’t work out, we just decided that it gives us a great excuse to go back.

Because of the amazing experience we had, we are now much more open to doing things that seem fun and interesting. We weren’t home two days before Lisa purchased tickets and got a trip all set up to go to The Next HOPE in New York.

I can’t wait to see what yes brings next.

For anyone who is considering joining up with Camp Nomadia at Gateway Burn in about two weeks, please be aware that ticket sales close on June 5. So you’ll need to purchase them soon (just $30 per person).

Also, if you’re planning to camp with us – please make sure we know. They are putting aside a spot that is RV friendly since we’ll have a few rigs in the camp. Also, if you’re bringing your nomadic pets you MUST pre-register them with us. They are making a special exemption to their no pet rule for us, and all pets must be pre-registered as part of Camp Nomadia, or you will be turned away at the gate with directions to a nearby boarder. All pets must stay inside of the boundaries of Camp Nomadia while at Gateway (as we don’t want to upset all of the other folks who went to effort to get pet sitters to attend.)

Gateway Burn is an awesome regional Burning Man inspired event in the St. Louis area being held from June 10-13, and the community loves us nomadic types. And we love them. They are aiming to be the first nomad-certified regional event.

It’s a perfect opportunity for nomadic types to get a taste of Burning Man culture without the epic trip to Black Rock City (or, a great way to ramp up for the big event!)

We’re currently joined up with the St. Louis crew at Burning Flipside (Austin regional event) this weekend, and they’re excited to have Camp Nomadia be part of their event this year.

Anywhere near the midwest in the coming weeks??? Come join us!

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.

A nomad must get proficient at the art of saying good-bye – for you are always arriving and soon after leaving. Unless one can become detached emotionally enough, it’s going to tug at heartstrings.

For me, I choose to not to strive for detachment – for meeting and connecting with people is a big part of the adventure. I would much rather have a deep friendship that I miss, than not allowing a connection to be made for fear of loss. Most of the time I can say my goodbyes without tears and sorrow, for I know my travels will eventually bring me back around to visit. For I know that technology allows me to stay in touch with the people we connect with in ways not previously possible.

However, this past month has been a particularly difficult one in terms of trying to keep good-byes cheerful. We have been positively swimming in abundance of awesome connections. Between all of the amazing nomads we shared community with at the NuRVers Gathering, family and some particularly special new friendships made here in Texas, each good-bye we’ve made has been like slowly pulling a bandage off. Each tug grabs at our hearts a little more, and the tears are becoming more and more difficult to hold back.

These connections have been an unusual departure from our norm – both in terms of how many we’ve made and the depth we’ve had opportunity to explore. With our sometimes short stopovers, there’s generally not time to get below the surface level of initial friendship. However, for the past two and half months, we’ve been somewhat still in the Austin area of Texas to concentrate on launching our first iPhone app – State Lines. This has had the unexpected side effect of opening doors to forging friendships that now have intentions to last a life time.

In many ways, these depths of connection have been an element in our lives that has been missing. We have not only been saying good-bye to amazing inspiring people – we’ve been mourning the impending loss of sense of close community. I’ve honestly not felt quite like this since I left my community in Florida to hit the road 3 years ago. Leaving the Austin area on Thursday is going to one of the most difficult departures we’ve had to make yet.

I don’t view this is a bad thing, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. It is instead a magnificent reminder of my core inspiration to be out here on the road. To connect deeply. And that I have.

I’ve managed to do some amazing and artistic things with small but advanced pocket cameras like the Canon SX110IS that we relied on throughout most of 2009, but I continuously found myself pushing the edges of what small cameras were capable of – particularly once we started experimenting with light painting and long exposure photography.

But every time I’d begin to get tempted by a DSLR, I’d find myself turned off by the size and weight of the camera bodies and especially the lenses. I don’t have any interest in carting around a suitcase full of photography gear, and when it comes down to it – the absolute best camera is the one that is with you when you stumble across a great shot. I knew that anything bulky or complex would more often than not be left behind.

Every year I’d research the latest in DSLR’s, get tempted, and then talk myself out of it. The bulk (and expense!) just wasn’t worth it – particularly considering I’d only ever want to own just a lens or two. It’s not like I had a 30 year investment in legacy lenses that I cared about….

Panasonic G1 (2009) vs Canon T70 (1984) -- My first major camera purchase, and my most recent...

But then last year I started to hear about the upcoming promise of EVIL cameras, and the new Micro Four Thirds standard being pioneered by Panasonic and Olympus.

While Nikon and Canon DSLR’s are unquestionably excellent, they are victims of their legacy – and to maintain compatibility with their vast library of lenses they are based around the same optical design as film camera’s from decades ago. Central to every traditional DSLR is a mechanical mirror that needs to swing out of the way each shot, and a bulky glass prism that focuses the light onto the optical viewfinder that you look through. Up until just last year most DSLR’s couldn’t even offer a “live preview” on the LCD screen of the shot you were about to take (because the mirror is in the way of the sensor until you press the shutter), and even the newest DSLR’s sacrifice focusing speed while the live view modes are engaged.

EVIL (electronic viewfinder / interchangeable lens) cameras are designed from the ground up to be optimized for digital. They take the larger camera sensor and lens interchangeability of a DSLR, but do away with the dependence on a mirror, prism, and optical viewfinder. Cameras based around the Micro Four Thirds standard can thus offer most of the advantages of a traditional DSLR, and some new capabilities that DSLR’s can only dream about, all in a package that is vastly smaller, simpler, and cheaper than would be possible with traditional optics.

The G1 has instant shutter response - SNAP!

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 was the first camera supporting the Micro Four Thirds standard to come to market, and it received rave reviews and spent most of last year sold out everywhere. But I was still concerned that it might be too big and bulky for my needs, and I never found a camera store with a G1 in stock to check it out in person.

Then late last year the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 came out, offering essentially the same capabilities and Micro Four Thirds lens compatibility of the G1 in an even smaller package that travel photographers online were raving about.

I thought I had found my dream camera, so late last December we tracked down one of the few camera stores around that had the GF1 in stock.
(Recommended: The excellent Schiller’s Camera in St. Louis.)

We drove out to Schiller’s one bitterly cold winter day to try the GF1, and to my surprise and disappointment, I didn’t like it.

The GF1 just didn’t fit fell in my hands.

But Schiller’s had a “barely used” G1 on hand, and it was a joy to hold – particularly when combined with the new 20mm lens that came with the GF1. To my surprise, the slightly larger camera won me over once I had a chance to spend some time with it!

We thus came home with a great deal on an almost new G1, and have been loving it ever since.

Lumix G1 – The Good:

It isn’t worthwhile to rehash some of the other excellent G1 reviews online – such as the epic 33 page opus at dpreview.com. But here are a few of the things that I particularly love about this camera…

For me, what I most love about the G1 is its extreme versatility. The camera is small enough and light enough that it isn’t in the way taking it almost everywhere, but it is large enough that it feels great and stable in your hand. After several months of use, I am not at all regretting going with the G1 over the GF1.

I love the flip out LCD that makes shooting at odd angles easy, and I love the integrated electronic viewfinder that switches on automatically when you bring the camera up to your eye. The G1 is just as at home shooting both “thru the lens” as at arms-length, with no compromises in speed or features when changing modes.

The G1 is fabulous for night photography work...

I love being able to take pictures in RAW mode, particularly now that iPhoto supports Panasonic’s RAW format directly so no conversion process is necessary. The RAW files are 5x the size of JPEG’s, but the extra flexibility when editing has proven to be even more worthwhile than I expected.

I love having a remote shutter release, and support for manual “bulb mode” exposures for light painting and night photography. “Bulb mode” in particular was a feature completely lacking from ANY point-and-shoot camera I could find.

And most of all, I really love the wealth of manual controls that the G1 offers – it is so freeing to at last break free from the limitations of pocket cameras. But when I just want to take a good picture fast, the G1’s automatic modes do a wonderful job as well.

Lumix G1 – What’s Lacking:

The most significant feature the G1 is lacking is any support whatsoever for recording video. This has been frustrating at times, particularly since video has become a standard feature on all new cameras.

Fortunately all of the newer Micro Four Thirds models now do support HD video, so I can look forward to upgrading someday.

Other than the missing video features, the only thing I wish the G1 had was an even better sensor for handling high-ISO recording without noise. The G1’s sensor performs good/great at ISO’s up to 800, but I wish it was even better in its highest sensitivity modes. (The max ISO is 3200)

Lumix G1 – What’s Next:

Panasonic started with the G1, and last year added the ultra-small Lumix DMC-GF1 and the pricey pro-video-quality capable Lumix DMC-GH1 to the lineup.

Exploring depth-of-field and the mysteries of Bokeh...

Panasonic has also just announced two new Micro Four Thirds models coming later in 2010 – the Lumix DMC-G2 is externally nearly identical to the G1, but it adds HD video recording capabilities almost on par with the GH1, and a touch screen that allows for a very innovative “touch to focus” capability which reminds me of the iPhone 3GS. The G2 looks to be a very worthy successor to the G1. (And while supplies last, there are some great deals to be had on the G1 now too!)

Also new is the Lumix DMC-G10, also identically sized to the G1, but cost-reduced by eliminating the swing-out LCD found in the G1 and G2. The G10 does however offer basic HD movie recording support – though it is significantly less capable than the pricier G2.

The great thing is that all of these Panasonic cameras can share the same lenses, and the Micro Four Thirds standard is also being pushed by Olympus. You can freely mix-and-match Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four Thirds lens and bodies, and using lens adaptors you can actually even take advantage of nearly every legacy lens ever made – including lenses from Canon, Nikon, and Leica!

Essential Accessories:

A great camera deserves a great tripod, particularly for playing around with night photography. One of the highest rated tripods on Amazon is the Dolica AX620B100 62-Inch Proline Tripod and Ball Head, and it is indeed amazing – particularly consider how much it versatility you get for the price. It is easily as capable as many tripods costing 3x the price, and it even includes a free tripod bag!

Our second more portable tripod is the UltraPod UP-1, a small tabletop tripod that folds up to fit in a pocket.

Another essential accessory is our Cactus Wireless Shutter Release, which lets me wirelessly trigger the camera from up to 45ft away. This is great for long exposures and light painting, avoiding any risk of bumping the camera while it is recording. The Cactus shutter release even supports “Bulb” mode for arbitrarily long exposures!

We also purchased a Promaster Digital Elite Holster SLR Camera Bag that is a great match for the small size of the G1, a UV filter, a spare battery, and a 12v battery charger.

Future Photo Arsenal Upgrades:

Our photography arsenal isn’t quite complete yet however. One of the joys (and perils!) of embracing an interchangeable lens camera system is the temptation to start collecting lenses. Sometime this year I plan to add the phenomenally small and fast (low light capable) Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 Aspherical Pancake Lens. This lens is so small that when mounted on the G1, the camera actually becomes jacket-pocketable!

I also will eventually want to replace the default 3x zoom kit lens that came bundled with the G1 with a more versatile 10x zoom lens, such as the Panasonic 14-140mm f/4.0-5.8 OIS Lens.

We also could use a small external flash so that we can start playing with side-lighting and other creative lighting effects.

Though upgrading to the new G2 to get the video capabilities is tempting, I think we’ll try to get at least another year’s use out of the G1 first, and then consider our options. Cherie’s excellent and compact Canon SD780IS handles all of our HD video recording needs fabulously for now.

FYI: For more on the SD780 and why we chose it, read this blog post.

Conclusion:

I really like the technology behind and future prospects of the Micro Four Thirds standard that Panasonic and Olympus are pioneering. Traditional SLR cameras were designed for the pre-digital 35mm film era, and the bodies and lenses are less than ideally suited for the digital age as a result.

The Panasonic G1 was the first of a new breed of cameras, and the GH1, GF1, and upcoming G2 and G10 show that the format has staying power.

So far, I couldn’t be happier with our decision to skip the legacy Canon and Nikon DSLR designs to embrace EVIL.

In this case, EVIL is good. *grin*

Most links above go to our Amazon affiliate account. Should you make a purchase based on our review, we’ll get a small cut of the sale (at no increased cost to you) – which we greatly appreciate!

Traveling around the USA, you likely have had some of the same experiences we have…

• You pull into a new state, decide it’s a good night for a beer, and assume you can stock up at a grocery store.  You search and search, only to find none for sale… or that you can’t buy any alcohol on a Sunday… or that what is sold in stores is not ‘real’ beer… Frustrating!
• You’re sitting at a red light, waiting to make a left from one one-way street onto another. There’s no traffic…  but is it legal to make a left on red?  It is your home state, but what about here?
• You stop to handle some major shopping chores, and only later realize that you could have saved substantially by driving another 50 miles down the road into a state with substantially lower sales tax, or even no sales tax at all…
• You’re traveling through, and just need a place to stop over for the night to catch a snooze.  Is it legal to overnight in this state’s rest areas? What about the next?
• You get a text message on your phone while you’re driving – is it legal to read and return it in this state?
• And so on…

As we’ve traveled, we’ve been struck by the sheer number of variations in state laws and regulations that affect us as travelers. We’ve noticed major state-to-state differences in everything from gun carry laws, public smoking bans, towing laws, alcohol laws, gas and diesel taxes, special time zone rules, helmet laws, leash laws and much more.

It’s amazing how much stuff can change right under your nose when you cross a state line.

So we decided to solve our own problem by compiling all this information into one easy-to-access place, in the process developing our first iPhone application.

State Lines is the result of several months of development effort and extensive research, and today we’re proud to announce it is available for purchase in Apple’s iTunes app store at an introductory price of just $2.99.

In the coming weeks, State Lines will be updated and enhanced to be a “universal” iPhone / iPad application (running full screen on the iPad). When that free update is released, the price of State Lines will increase to $4.99. We will also be creating an eBook version for traveler’s without iPhone OS devices.

Currently State Lines tracks 43 pieces of travel relevant information for each of the 50 states; including vehicle gun carry laws, state sales tax, time zones, towing & RV specific laws, gas/diesel taxes, rest area overnight parking rules, default speed limits, alcohol sales laws, smoking bans, open container laws, state park camping entrance fees, pet leash laws, bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws, cell phone & texting bans, left hand turn rules, and more.

State Lines is location aware, so it can automatically show you information about nearby states. The entire State Lines database is integrated into the application, so State Lines works even when you are out of cellular or WiFi coverage..

State Lines is a growing project, and we welcome feedback and ideas of other useful state specific information to include in future versions.

We are really proud of our first iPhone application. It is a unique and genuinely useful tool. Please check it out, and spread the word!

Over the past years of full time travel, a frequent question we’re asked is: “What’s your favorite place so far?”   It’s become our least favorite question to be asked, and we’ve had to get creative in how we answer it.

I’ve always hated being asked to name my favorite of anything – colors, food, climates, movies, books, cars. Choosing just one as an ultimate favorite is painful. There’s generally always something to appreciate and take away from everything, and my favorite will vary depending upon the context.

When you’re traveling through somewhere – whether staying for a few hours or a few months – you learn that you don’t have to evaluate a place on what it doesn’t offer, but instead – what it does. A place doesn’t have to meet all of your criteria for what makes a place ideal – climate, scenery, culture, community, history, traffic, public transit and pace of life.  You begin to look at places differently, to find their hidden gems, what makes them unique and you seek out the beautiful in everything you encounter.

Being nomadic has given us the freedom to not have to choose a favorite place.  For if we had a singular favorite place, we’d likely just live there.

City Museum - St. Louis, Mo

No, our life is constructed for variety and we’re not looking for a singular place to eventually call home.  Different places speak to us in different ways – we love Utah for the dramatic changes in scenery, San Francisco for our diverse community and liberal culture, Black Rock City for it’s temporary nature, St. Louis for family & the unexpected, Austin for its Texas weirdness and great TexMex, Southern California for the people we know, etc, etc.

Why choose when you can have it all? Why look at things as ‘or’ when you can really have ‘and’?

So I think the next time I’m asked what my favorite place is so far, I’ll answer:

“Where ever I happen to be”

Three years ago today – May 10, 2007, I left my home vastly emptied out in Florida and hit the road with this new guy I met in his tiny little solar powered travel trailer.

Today is my both my Nomadiversary and ours together.

I spent about 6 weeks cleaning out closets, drawers, paperwork and disassembling as much as my stationary life as I could. As I was already intending to move to California just as soon as I could sell my house, it wasn’t a project that I did only for hitting the road. But hitting the road definitely gave me a deadline and ramped me up into full on purge mode. Getting rid of so much stuff was completely liberating. Trying to figure out what was essential to take – considering we’d be sharing about 45 sq ft of space – was more of a challenge.

As I was unable to sell my house (at a price I wanted) in the crashing economy on the coast of hurricane riddled Florida, I left my home half occupied by my friendly and supportive ex – still paying my half of the mortgage and expenses. While it was a stretch to both take a reduction in income for working less hours and paying for my share of the travel expenses – I simply made it work. It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you put your mind to it.

Friends and family where mostly supportive of my decision to embrace adventure and run my little software development company remotely as I bounced around the US. Knowing the adventure would be fueled in part by a big dose of new relationship energy, we looked specifically at this maiden voyage as being a trial phase. We committed to traveling together for the summer ending our trial at Burning Man 2007. At that point, we would evaluate our less than year old relationship and independently, life on the road together long term.

The first day on the road was a blur of handling last minute details, lunch with my parents and trying to stay ahead of traffic towards our first stop in Miami to visit some old high school friends of Chris’. It remains a chaotic day in my memory.

The next couple of months were a rush of trying to make it to California for a wedding Chris was best man in, all the while trying to stop and visit with as much family as possible. The rush contributed to our first catastrophe on the road – a hydroplaning spin-out, that left us a bit shaken and a grateful opportunity to recommit to the value of life.  We got to San Francisco, and hung out there for a while before Burning Man. By the end of the first two months I was digging the nomadic life.

At the end of the three month trial, we committed to each other as life partners. As for living on the road – we decided to meander on back to Florida for a few months and then completely wrap up my life there by finally selling the darn house and looking for a mobile home built with the two of us in mind.

After getting past the initial couple chaotic months on the road, I’ve not once looked back on my decision to live a fully nomadic lifestyle.  Three years into the journey, it just feels.. amazingly normal to me.

Thank you for having followed along thus far!  Here’s to many more shared adventures!

We had everyone at the gathering draw their route since the last gathering. This group gets around!

The one thing we all seem to share in common is our passion for the road and not waiting until retirement to just do it!

We’d love for you to meet all our amazing new friends (some who we’ve profiled before), who each have an inspiring story to tell. Listed in order of arrival…  meet the Days of Nu 2 attendess:

	Sara, Matt, Bella and Lucy / Happy Janssens The Janssen family started out on the road about 3 years ago on the Live Lightly tour, and then settled back in Montana thinking they were done with the road. After the birth of Lucy, they decided they were meant for the road and headed back out.  Their gorgeous RV is run on straight veggie oil, and part of their income is derived on doing veggie oil conversions for others.
	Chris & Cherie / Technomadia That’s us!  Chris has been on the road full time for just over four years after leaving behind his Silicon Valley job, and Cherie joined him in May 2007 after selling her house in Florida. They live out of a 17′ solar equipped fiberglass egg – doing remote software development and technical consulting.
	Chris, Becky & Nora / Tao of Long The Long family has been on the road for about 2 years after living in New England and trying to make their artistic careers thrive. While they continue to find ways to fund their travels with Chris’ amazing sculpting skills and Becky’s painting – Chris is currently a traveling cookware salesman.
	Tara, Justin & Zeb / Organic Sister This group just left their base in Las Vegas about 2 months ago, and is just getting started. They travel in a 1970s small Winnebego, converted to run off veggie oil and solar.  They originally thought they’d travel around for a year until they found ‘home’.. but may be discovering that the road is really home.  Justin is a skilled carpenter and Tara is a massage therapist who just launched an Unschooling Coaching business.
	Sam & Tracy / ZenNomads These two left on the road about 6 months ago after their grown kids moved away from their base in Florida – finally free to explore their dreams of travel. Sam is a software developer and system administrator, and is able to work remotely on the road. Tracy was a preschool teacher, which isn’t a very mobile career – so now she takes care of Sam, their two dogs and their turtle.
	Jonathan & Dasy  / WeGoFar These two gave up their high pressure IT careers in the Washington DC area last summer, rented their house out and decided to hit the road for a year or two.  They pick up consulting contract work as they go.
	Jim & Rene / Live. Work. Dream. About three years ago Jim & Rene sold their home and business in California to explore the road with their three-legged dog Jerry. Jerry passed away, and they bought a summer home in Colorado. They now travel the winter months in the south with their new three legged family member, Wyatt – running their Tripawds business providing support for three legged animals.
	Michael & Shonda / RV Her Michael and Shonda have been on the road a few months, and travel around running their business doing eLearning for crime scene clean-up, and speaking at seminars.
	Ben / Where is Ben & Karen / Pegasus0880 Ben has been on the road full time for just over four years, touring in his rock star Prevost bus. He’s a Photoshop master, teaching and training along the way as well as exploring his artistic photographer side. Karen, a graphic artist, just joined him at the beginning of the year – working with her employer to convert her existing job to be mobile.
	Kevin & Angie / Chillaxnet Kev & Ang have been on the road full time for over 4 years. Kev is a web application developer who works remotely from his sweet mobile office setup. Ang has a full time job keeping him in line. These awesome folks are also the founders of NuRVers and we’re ever so grateful for their vision and dedication to our community.
	Damien & Michele / Remiks Jewelry These two have been on the road full time for over 7 years, and fund their travels by making and selling jewelry. They sell both at fairs across the country, as well as through their Etsy online store.
	Jennifer / Living in my car Jennifer just bought her first RV literally weeks before the rally, and by the end of May – she’ll be departing on her first solo RV adventure to the Artic Circle!  She’ll continue to work remotely helping administer the small business her husband and her run. While she’ll be doing the driving solo, her husband is planning to fly out to rendezvous with her at various stops along her adventure.
	Steve, Beverly & Slade This family has put their house in Texas up for sale, and is itching to figure out what their ideal home on wheels will look like. They were able to pick up a lot of useful information at NuRVers.  They hope to hit the road soon, and are still considering what their source of income will be.  Steve is currently a fierier (horse shoer), and thinks he might be able to convert that to a mobile career. Hopefully they’ll soon open a blog to share their adventures with us!
	Joey Claire / Nomad Me After 12 years of owning an RV as a temporary office and crash pad while managing her restaurants, this was Joey’s first RV adventure and rally!  She’s going full time as a single solo traveler, and ramping up her art business.  She intends to convert her RV to a mobile art studio. A long time sufferer of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, Joey is proof that single women of any age can travel on their own!   (It should be no surprise that Jennifer and Joey are sisters… both these women are downright courageous!). Joey’s new blog should be online soon…
	Gillian, Kwamena and Efua / Intense Lives This single mom and her kids made a surprise last minute addition to the rally. The family has been nomadic for many years, but this is their first time traveling by RV for these past few months. And they’re loving it!   Gillian has been living off the sale of her business, but is currently ramping up a writing career to continue funding their travels.
	Skipper, Selena and Levi / Peace of Parsley This family has just purchased their RV, and are in process of converting it to be their full time home. They currently make organic products (salves, etc) that they sell at farmer’s markets on weekends – and intend to take the business on the road with them.
	Brice & Rose / Tacky Texans The youngest folks at the rally just purchased and moved into their 1970s Avion trailer literally days before the rally. They’re currently parked in Austin and transitioning their lives to live on the road full time. They aim to be fully mobile by the beginning of next year.

The NuRVers Days of Nu 2 Gathering was an amazing event, with some very amazing people.

We were able to conduct indepth video interviews with most of these folks, and are excited to be working on two different documentaries with the footage.  One we’ll debut here and for the NuRVers community for you to learn more about life on the road and how we all make it work. And another for a Digital Nomad documentary that Almost Fearless is ramping up, for which she is currently accepting donations towards.

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We’d like to send many thanks to Sara Janssen for her beautiful photography at the event and for allowing us to share it with you. Her images are featured above for each nomadic household and group shot used as the header image.

While our nomadic spirit is constant, our desire to be in actual motion waxes and wans. We go through periods of constant motion, a new place every night or two.  And then we crave stillness to absorb what is around us and concentrate on momentum in other areas of our lives.  And when the nomad is still for too long, she eventually craves motion again.

It’s a nagging feeling that you’ve learned all you can for now at this location and you’re meant to be somewhere else, experiencing something new. It’s not a reflection of the current place at all – as great as the people are, as great as the scenery is, as perfect as the climate may be – it’s simply time to move on.

We’ve come to call that feeling the Nomadic Itch.

And its cure doesn’t come in a creme or pill form. When the itch hits, it’s simply time to move on. The nomad designs their life to be mobile for the ability to scratch that itch when it calls.

Nomads always know that nothing is permanent in their lives, and we must really appreciate the now. That’s why we sometimes feel compelled to fully embrace where we’re at, for we know the itch may flair up at anytime and we’ll be heading on down the road. Sometimes the feeling of unfinished business just doesn’t override the feeling of being still too long.

Some nomads may get the itch after just a couple days. Others may thrive best with several month long stays. Some have a lot of variability. There’s no formula for how much motion one must have to be a nomad.  The trick is being able to listen to yourself and find your own unique balance between motion and stillness, of routine and of change.

What’s your balance? How have you designed your life to respond to the itch when it hits?

Breaking free from the templates of conventional living usually involves tradeoffs.

In particular, pursuing a life of travel often comes with compromise. While living without a fixed address has many advantages, perpetually living on the road can be draining. For a taste of location independent freedom, you end up trading away the security of a fixed home, a known place to work, and more.  Even the most hardcore traveler will eventually end up craving a night in his or her own bed.

But what if, despite the proverb.. you could take it with you?

For the past three years we have been doing exactly that.  Our home has wheels.

We have found that living in an RV has enabled us to embrace a fully technomadic lifestyle without compromising the freedom that comes from mobility, and without giving up the comforts of home.

We are never dependent upon expensive hotels, the uncertainty of couches or hostels, the fear of overstaying as a guest, or the lock-in of long-term rentals.

In our small geeked out and solar powered travel trailer, we can come to town for a day, or for months. We can stay in a driveway, or in the deep wilderness. And when we visit friends, we are temporary neighbors, not guests.

A few more of the advantages that help make it sustainable:

• Never Needing To Pack. Having your entire closet always with you means that you never need to play guessing games trying to figure out how to pack for the weather. We travel with a well thought out wardrobe, stocked kitchen, bathroom, bed, office, all our technology and more – and we also have room to bring along an airplane (powered paraglider), bikes, rollerblades, an inflatable kayak and other fun things. Living in a small RV combines radical life simplification with still having everything you want within arm’s reach.
  
• Location Flexibility. We’re able to check out new cities and towns without having to make a commitment or sign a lease, and very often we can even stay places for free by camping on public lands or with friends and family.   If we find we don’t like our neighborhood, we can literally hitch up and leave to find someplace better. And because we have solar power and sizable water and waste tanks, we are not even tied to the constraints of public utilities.
• Logistically Proven. Many of the logistical hurdles to living on the road full time in an RV have already been well pioneered by the sizable full time RVing retiree crowd. There are RV parks across the nation, mail forwarding services in many states, communities of other RV’ers, mobile volunteer opportunities, and even “workamping” jobs to help fund life on the road. (BTW – A great community of younger non-retiree RVers who are shaking the RVing template is NuRVers (link: http://www.nurvers.com).
• Variety of Experiences. We enjoy a life rich with variety – from urban stealth camping in the heart of major cities to scenic boondocking deep in a national forest. All the while we remain connected to friends, family, and clients via cellular internet.
• Incredibly Affordable. As long as you are willing to give up the cost of maintaining a “home base” somewhere, the RV’ing lifestyle can be incredibly affordable. In 2009, we spent less than $15,000 between the two of us for our 13,000 miles of travels across the country. This includes all of our fuel, camping fees, insurance, and cellular / internet service.

Of course, traveling by RV does have some limitations. The biggest constraint being where you can physically drive your rig.  For right now, we have been focusing on exploring the vastness of North America. But if you want a more global experience, you can ship your RV overseas, or buy / rent one on your next continent. And you can always park your home for a few months, grab a backpack, and hit a country or two that way.

All and all, we’ve found RV’ing to be an incredibly sustainable foundation for long term truly mobile lifestyle. It meets our desires for wanderlust, community and affordability. After three years of full time travel with no other home base, we feel we’re just getting started in our nomadic explorations.

We consider nomading with your house as the best of all worlds – we get to travel without ever needing to leave home.

Indeed, you can take it with you after all.

Header panolloge image courtesy of Ben Willmore.

However, Sara Janssen seems to have found the time, and is making some awesome posts each night recapping the happenings.  You can follow along over at Happy Janssens.

We are taking high quality HD video and conducting interviews with everyone, and do plan to have a documentary made about the event to share with you… eventually.  We’re also excited that the video will be part of the Almost Fearless Nomad Documentary.

To follow along with the excitement follow #NURV on Twitter and view the NuRVers Flickr Group.

You are missing one heck of a gathering of full time location independent travelers on wheels. We are expecting a dozen rigs and a few tents to join us here in Gonzales, TX. Many of us have been here for a week or more.

Arrival of Jim & Rene & Wyatt of LiveWorkDream.com

We’ve been dubbed ‘Geeks and Granola’ due to our varying ranges of lifestyles and professions.  Age wise, we seem to be ranging from mid-twenties to mid-forties.  We have folks who are just starting out with full time living on the road, and those that have been doing it for years.  Some are raising families on the road, some are childfree by choice and some have raised their kids.  All of us are doing some form of work on the road to earn an income to fuel our individual adventures.  It’s really quite a collection of digital nomads on wheels, and we’re so very excited to be part of it!

Even if you’re not here now, you can join in the fun virtually!

• Come join us! – We have a cancellation – so there is one spot left. If you happen to be within driving distance of Gonzales, TX (about an hour outside of San Antonio) shoot Kev an e-mail, and come join us! Heck, there are overflow options too.
• Follow along on Twitter – #NURV - Next, you can follow along virtually. We are utilizing Twitter ‘conference style’. From your favorite Twitter client, set a search for #NURV to read all the posts from the gathering. Feel free to post using #NURV to interact with the conversation – we’d love to hear from you!  Or you can follow along from this link. Many of us will be uploading pics throughout the event.


NuRVer Motorcycle Club (WeGoFar.com, ZenNomads.com & TheOrganicSister.com)

• Days of Nu 2 – The Documentary. I will be filming clips from the event, and conducting interviews with attendees to come up with a YouTube documentary of sorts. So you won’t miss out on all the fun, or the chance to meet these amazing nomads!
• Join us at a future gathering! The next similar gathering will be at Gateway Burn near St. Louis from June 10-13. Gateway Burn is a regional Burning Man event that is striving to be nomad friendly - meaning they’ll be doing last minute ticket sales AND allowing nomadic pets to attend (they realize that for us nomads, ‘Leave the pets at home’ means bringing them, and that us nomads don’t tend to plan in advance!). Chris and I will be hosting our Camp Nomadia there, a small theme camp of nomads – and we invite you to come join us for a taste of Burning Man culture. Feel free to contact us if you’re not sure if this is your cup of tea or not.

All our best from Hill Shade RV Park.. we’re full of anticipation for the coming days as more of the tribe arrives!  The gathering officially starts on Thursday (even though most of us are already here.)

And then a little over a year ago, I found NuRVers – a community already building of other non-retireed full time RVers traversing the country.   Perfect – someone had already done the work to lay the foundation!  It was already too late for us to change our plans to meetup with the group for their first gathering last spring.

The next one is happening in less than a week (April 22-26), in the foothills of the hillcountry of Texas just outside San Antonio. I bounced up and down with excitement that it would be held near to my hometown of Austin and we could combine the gathering with (not) attending SXSW.  We made it a priority to attend.

When we started looking into Hill Shade RV Park, the site picked for the rally – we became more and more intrigued. A little secluded park, 11 miles from the nearest city, run by an awesome sounding family unschooling their kids – and yet offered full hook-ups (including wifi) for only $300/month?  It sounded too good to be true, as we were both craving some uninterrupted time  to focus deeply on some work related projects.

I wrote Christine, one of the park’s co-owners, to confirm.  My response from her was fabulous – and I knew this was where we needed to be.   Since the beginning of April, we’ve been parked next to a field of wildflowers with a heard of cattle, and getting lots of stuff done.  There aren’t many distractions out here – except for the amazing people.

Every few days, another one of our roving tribe arrives – also with the idea of making it in early for the rally.  Right now, about half the rigs are already in, including the fabulous Happy Janssens, Organic Sister, Tao of Long and Zen Nomads (website coming soon!).  Our technomadic buddy, Ben Willmore and his new travelmate Karen Nace also made a surprise early visit last week, and will be back for the rally.   Our hosts at Hill Shade, Michael & Christine, feel like part of the group too.  More nomads are rumored to be making it in by Monday.  I suspect that only a couple folks will actually arrive on the official start date of the rally.. and we will completely consume this little gem of a park.

It’s a dream come true to be living in a little neighborhood of other younger nomadic folks – all of us spending our days doing our own things. Working, blogging, photo-editing, raising kids, etc.  And then we converge from time to time to break bread, share stories around the campfire, game or just share the details of our day together.

I suspect each day will get more amazing as more of our tribe rolls in.  The gathering itself will be one wild party – but it’s these days of living a daily life amongst our people that will create lasting memories for me.

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Speaking of opportunities for nomadic convergence and community – tickets for Gateway Burn go on sale later today.  Come join us near St. Louis from June 10-13 for this awesome regional Burning Man event. We’ll be organizing Camp Nomadia there, and already some awesome nomads have told us they’re making their way there!  This is a great opportunity for anyone wanting a taste of Burning Man culture without the epic adventure to get to Black Rock City.

We get so many questions that it seems like a good idea to try and answer them all in one place. So here goes:

What are the specs?

Our solar electrical system consists of:

• 2x AM100 100-watt Solar Panels – These two panels are bolted together on the top of our roof, giving us 200 watts of sun harvesting capability. Our roof mount is technically capable of being tilted, but since we don’t have a ladder to easily reach our roof to make adjustments we have kept our panels perpetually flat – sacrificing some efficiency for a lot of convenience.
• 2x Lifeline GPL-4C 6V AGM Batteries – These two “golf cart” style batteries provide us with 220 amp hours of overall battery storage capacity. AGM-style batteries cost more, but allow for faster and more efficient charging, and they do not require any maintenance.
• Blue Sky 2512iX Solar Boost Charge Controller – A fabulous MPPT-capable charge controller. For more details why we selected this controller, read our solar charge controller options post.
• Blue Sky IPN-ProRemote Battery Monitor – A real battery battery monitor that tracks amps in/out (and not just the battery voltage) is essential to efficiently using solar power. To learn more, check out our RV battery monitoring post.
• Xantrex Freedom 458 Inverter / Charger – The inverter / charger we selected can provide up to 2000 watts of AC power from our batteries when we need it, and when we are plugged in to shore power or our generator the 100 amp charging circuit can rapidly top off our depleted batteries much quicker and more efficiently than any trickle charger.

Did you install the system yourselves?

Chris did the entire solar conversion on his old 16′ Tab trailer himself, and we had been planning to do the work gutting the electrical on our next trailer to bring it up to our standards. But the great folks at Oliver Travel Trailer were willing to work with us to customize our new trailer exactly how we wanted it, so Chris researched and worked out the specifications on our solar system for our Oliver, right down to the gauge wiring.

The Oliver crew then procured, fabricated and installed our system (we were onsite for some of the installation and assisted) as part of our custom build. They even went so far as to make some modifications to their overall trailer design to accommodate our desires for maximum solar space on the roof, such as moving the A/C and vent fan back further to make more space for the panels.

Oliver now offers the system Chris designed as a standard package, and they have sold several units with the “technomadia package” using the same components as ours.
(And no, we don’t get kickbacks…)

What would you do differently?

Overall we have been extremely happy with most of the components we selected.

If we were building the system from scratch we would once again investigate every new possibility for more solar panel wattage and battery capacity, and the one major change we would make would be going with a sine-wave inverter / charger rather than the modified-sine-wave Freedom 458.

(Our 24″ monitor makes a faint whine when plugged into modifed-sine-wave power, even when it is turned off…)

What all can you run off the solar?

We can run all of the following off our solar power:

• Lights
• Ceiling Vent Fan
• 12v small oscillating fan
• 2x Macbook Pro 15″ Laptops
• 1 Mac Mini (our trailer’s media and backup server), plus attached external drives
• Cradle Point ctr350 Router (converts our Sprint aircard to wifi)
• iPhone and camera battery chargers
• 24″ Dell Ultrasharp Monitor (via the inverter)
• Electric jacks/levels
• Water pump
• Furnace fan
• Cellphone booster system
• Small single serve smoothie blender (via the inverter)

We have optimized our systems so that nearly everything can run directly off of 12v power, allowing us to mostly avoid needing to turn on the inverter. The only things which we are unable to run directly off of 12v is our 24″ LCD monitor, and our small blender. The inverter has a bit of a power overhead just being on, so we minimize our reliance on it as much as possible.

Now.. we don’t run all these things all the time, mind you.

What don’t you run off solar?

Our refrigerator can run off 12v power, but it’s incredibly inefficient in this mode and it would quickly drain our batteries even on the sunniest of solar-producing days. Propane refrigerators like ours cool by producing heat, so it is most efficient burning propane when we’re off-grid, or 110v when we are plugged in.

It is also essentially impossible to power an air conditioner off of a solar system – the demands of even a small 1000-1500W air conditioner would require a huge expanse of solar panels, and massive banks of batteries to provide for even a few hours of air conditioning per day.

When we’re off-grid and really need it, we have a small 2000 watt Honda EU2000 generator converted to run off propane that will run our air conditioner. Our furnace (aside from the fan) and hot water heater are also propane powered.

We left the microwave/toaster oven option off our unit, though technically our inverter would be large enough to power it. But even though we could, running a microwave for even 15 minutes a day would impact our battery life, and honestly, it’s not our style of cooking anyway. We greatly appreciate the extra pantry space that decision afforded us.

How have you optimized your systems to run off solar?

All our our lights are converted to LED. This is a fairly easy switch to make, and we used LED Wholesalers to find replacement bulbs for our existing fixtures. We spent about $200 to switch all our bulbs out – pricier than standard bulbs, but so worth it for the power savings. We can turn all our lights on, and combined they use less power than a single halogen bulb previously did.

We have 12v MacBook power supplies from MikeGyver and HyperMac for our MacbookPros, that allow us to run our laptops without the power overhead of the inverter needing to be on. And we use a 12v power supply from Carnetix for our Mac Mini.

How long can you depend on solar power only?

It depends.

Summer? Winter? Shade? Clouds?

We designed our system with a goal of enabling a full day of computing (8-12 hrs) for both of our Macbook Pros, plus using the lights, vent fan, and occasional water pump use.

With moderate use of our technology, we can easily go several days on end without even thinking about power much. During the summer with daily full sun, we have lasted as long as 12 days completely off grid without needing to top off with our generator – and we probably could have lasted much longer.

More typically, we tend to go 3-6 days at a time without much concern, providing we’re not in the shade or there aren’t overly overcast days.

If we are trying to make our batteries last, it is important to pay close attention to our batteries and how quickly we are draining or charging them. We ran a series of tests on every individual electrical item we own in various states of usage to know exactly how much power everything draws, so we can optimize our usage as needed

Our BlueSky battery monitor is absolutely essential here – it gives us a real time indications of our power usage, which keeps us very in tune with our system.

When we are trying to maximize our efficiency and off-grid stamina, we do need to be conservative with our power usage. We keep our power consumption to a minimum, and reward ourselves at night with a movie on the ‘big screen’ if we’ve ended the day with a good power score. Our goal is to always keep the batteries at above 50% capacity to ensure their health. Generally we can charge the batteries around 20% in a good day of moderate use and sunshine, so anytime we start creeping below 80% at night we know we are likely to soon need an alternate source of energy to top us back off.

Are you off-grid all the time?

No.

We stay in a wide variety of places – and we have our solar system to increase our options, not to depend on it completely. Our ability to run completely off solar is dependent upon the weather and access to a clear sunny sky. In the winter, with shorter days, we tend to need to be plugged in more. If we’re parked at a friend’s house in partial shade or at a shady campground, we’ll also usually need a little help power wise.

And if we encounter a string of heavy overcast days, we can’t rely strictly on solar either.

As our batteries also charge off our tow vehicle’s alternator as we drive (and yes, the solar panels continue to top off the batteries as we drive too), our transition days tend to be unplugged – as we have plenty of power to keep us computing overnight. Even if we have no sun at all, a full battery charge can keep us going at least two days without needing topping off. And when in major transitions, such as from Washington DC to San Francisco last summer, we can go a couple months without ever plugging in. Days on the road tend to provide lots of sunlight for the panels, as well as plenty of hours charging off the trucks alternator.

It’s really difficult to give an estimate of how much time we spend plugged in versus not, just because there really is no ‘typical’ in our lives. For example, we may choose to stay in a major city – such as San Francisco last year – for a couple months, where it makes more sense to get a monthly RV space with power included.

But even when we are plugged in, we sip power. The last time we had metered electricity, we used about $20 worth of electricity a month – and that was not being conservative with our usage at all.

Do you consider your solar system adequate enough?

We wouldn’t want any less than our current battery capacity and panel size, and while more of both would be nice, it is not essential.

A good rule of thumb is to target 100 watts of solar and 100 amp hours of battery per person, minimum.

After almost a full two years of relying on our current system, our solar endurance has certainly never been much of a limiting factor, and having solar has given us quite a bit of flexibility. We certainly couldn’t imagine living without it.

We are looking at potential future upgrades in our battery capacity, as that is more of a limiting factor or us than anything else. If we had larger batteries we could bank more of the energy we collect to get through overcast days. We’ve also pondered adding more solar panels on top of our Tundra’s camper shell, and perhaps an additional battery bank in the truck bed, now that we have more flat surface to play around with.

But given that we don’t really feel we’re lacking, these upgrades are not a high priority.

Once you’ve had solar, traveling without feels limiting and uncivilized.

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.

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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!

Boyink Advenures – The Boyink family is preparing to depart in an RV in September 2010 for a year long (or perhaps more) US road trip.

Man Vs Debt - Adam Baker and his family were deep in debt. They put their minds towards paying it off, selling everything and traveling the world. Adam approached us at SXSW last month, as they’re considering travel via RV in the future.

Drop of Change – Carl Nelson teaches Lindy Hop swing dance to fund his travels. Currently, he’s based himself out of New Orleans.

Tacky  Texans – Brice and Rose are an awesome young couple we recently met who just purchased their first RV and will be moving into it by the first of May. They’ll stick around Austin for now, with intentions of hitting the road in about a year.

Nerd Nomad – Joe departed the Silicon Valley in a 33′ RV at the beginning of 2010 to explore tech work and living on the road.

Tricknor Tribe – For anyone who says that having kids means you can’t travel full time – you need to check this group out. A family of 13 (11 kids) traveling the US via RV.   Yes – you read that right – 11 kids.

Life in the Right Lane – Andy and Lori met while working at a camp for kids with cancer, and are now traveling by RV around the country.

This Open Road – Robyn decided there really is no perfect time, and has put purposeful intentions towards hiking the Appalachian Trail and then teaching English as a second language overseas.

All of these awesome nomads have been added to our growing List of Nomads – which I seriously need to put some effort into better organizing.

If you know of other nomads with blogs or are one yourself (even if you’re aspiring to be ) don’t be shy about introducing yourself! We’d love to feature you in an upcoming post like this one.

We have a lot of gear and technology that we consider essential to our technomadic lifestyle.  It is hard to imagine traveling like we do without our computers, our iPhones, our solar panels, or our onboard media server.

But today I want to at last reveal what we consider to be our most essential piece of onboard equipment.  In some ways, it embodies the pinacle of human technological innovation.

Nothing we have on board can match the overwhelming utility and versatility of… Wine-In-A-Box!

Consider…

• Boxed wines come in an easy to pack shape – we can store several under our bed.
• Boxes don’t roll around, clang together, and there is no glass to shatter.
• According to the marketing materials, boxed wine is supposed to “last for weeks” once opened.  This is clearly incorrect – but it does usually last at least a few days before the container runs dry.
• When the box is empty, the cardboard box can be easily collapsed and recycled – or even burned in a campfire. (Carting around bags full of glass bottles waiting to find a recycling center is no fun!)

But the real delight is lurking on the inside.  Just like Cracker Jacks – every box of wine has a treat waiting on the inside, ready to be inflated…

The world’s most comfortable travel pillow!

Such brilliant innovation!

First you drink the wine, then you can nap it off in comfort!  All without the hassle of breakable bottles, or bulky trash.

You have to wonder if NASA scientists originally came up with such a wondrous and multi-functional invention for use in the space program.  Or perhaps it was a French contribution towards the International Space Station.

Regardless – this marvel of technology can now be found in stores everywhere.

Today, April 1st 2010, is my fourth Nomadiversary.

Four years ago today I left behind my San Francisco apartment to begin my full time life on the road. In celebration this afternoon we will be toasting to nomadic serendipity, sipping from a box full of happiness.

And then we’re going to put the box down and head out for some great margaritas.

I mean, wine in a box is good, but…. *grin*

Happy April 1st!