I handed in my keys, my parking card, and gave away what was left of my furniture, so I am officially now out of the West Seattle apartment I moved into almost exactly a year ago. Now I am committed to this vagabond life, all my stuff either in Breeze or in Bella (mostly the big awkward stuff like telescope tripod, camp chair, awning, and other stuff I need to set up camp). I spent most of yesterday afternoon sorting things out from the bags I had basically thrown things into just to vacate the apartment and try to beat…
Category: Trailer Life
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The good parts of the day first… Today’s sunset was amazing. The KOA might be hard by a freeway, with the attendant noise, but the sky is amazing. This is #nofilter stuff right here, people. I didn’t need to change a thing. Unhitching the car was OK. I went slowly, and thought about each step before I did it. And the two were finally separated, so I could drive off to Walmart. And buy food and paper towels and dish soap. Such an exciting trip. Now for the bad parts of the day, both involving new skills I obviously am still…
The Adoption of Breeze
Bella and I pulled into the Safari Condo parking lot this morning, ready to adopt the newest member of our little vagabond tribe. There she was, waiting in the bay, complete with a red bow and a welcome sign: Then it was a day of learning so many new things that I think my brain grew another brain just to try and hold onto the flood of knowledge the Alto grandmaster, Denis Messier, passed along to me. Full tour of outside, then inside, every single thing had something special to remember about it. Kudos to the crew that took care…
Route Planning, Round 2
More thinking, more discussion, more googling of places and things, and so today was time for round 2 of planning routes. I got some great feedback from people on the first round and also lost my outbound co-driver, so I made some adjustments in the plan. Overall, still same general picture: The purple pins are the eastbound route, while the teal pins mark the westbound route. Eastbound: 3164 miles, give or take a few side trips along the way.Westbound: 3411 miles, with the little Alto behind me all the way. Let’s dive into the details, where the devil hides… The…
Staying Connected
Being a vagabond in the 21st century doesn’t mean cutting ALL the ties that bind, especially the online and computing ones. I’ve been researching and working on downsizing myself to be mobile and yet connected (and backed up, too). My current setup: Internet: $60/month for all the data I can eat, via rented wifi router and ISP. I will miss this. A lot. Phone: AT&T Mobile Share plan with 15GB/month, unlimited talk and text. Mac mini: 1TB hard disk with a 3TB backup disk running Time Machine auto-magically so I never have to think about backups. Both of these devices…