- We stayed in Hemet (southern California) through the end of October - wonderful to be still for a bit, being neighbors to awesome friends in an awesome location.
- One of my father's best friends passed away. He was like an uncle to me. It is very sad.
- Due to some contracting issues with one of my companies, I have essentially cut back my role to a level that is just barely sustainable financially.. by choice. I'm now exploring new opportunities to fund my marvelous lifestyle. It's exciting, actually.
- In mid-October I flew up to San Francisco to attend 'Experts Academy' with my dear friend Sterling. The seminar was a 4-day intensive of 12+ hour days non-stop. I learned a lot of stuff that I'm still noodling over and what I might like to do with it in new career paths. It was awesome to catch up with Sterling, and have a brief visit with some of my Bay Area friends before heading back.
- I opted to take the Coast Starlight back to LA - a 12 hour train ride along the coast of California. Absolutely divine. If you ever have the opportunity - do it! Ample leg room, walk around at will, dining car, social/lounge car, electrical ports at each seat and amazing scenery. A perfect way to relax, think and catch up with oneself.
- We took our Jeep in for regular maintenance and warranty work on the transmission. In the process it was discovered our tow hitch was bent. Further investigation revealed small cracks in the frame where the hitch attached. After a lot of consulting with our trailer company, body shops and hitch specialists - we came to determine that our Jeep was towing at darn near its limit anyway, and the additional extender we needed due to the spare tire placement was putting us over capacity. In a nutshell, the frame could be fixed, but it would likely just continue to occur.
- We relocated to San Diego at the beginning of the month, in part because our nomadic friend Ben was also there. We ended up camped next to him for a week - much fun being neighbors. San Diego also gave us lots of options for frame repairs and vehicle shopping.
- We bought a new tow vehicle. Shopping at CarMax.com made the process painless and actually fun. Buying a vehicle in California made it financially painful, as they forced us to pay sales tax despite registering in South Dakota. Ouch. However, we now have a pretty red double cab 2006 Toyota Tundra with a camper shell with ample tow capacity and lots of storage space. We have significantly increased our storage room and feeling much less packed in. We are sad to let our awesome little fuel efficient diesel Jeep go tho - she towed us over 40,000 miles since we got her in May 2007.
- After San Diego we rendezvoused with Sandi Wheaton, a Route 66 roadtripping photographer that I had been helping prepare for her semi-nomadic debut.
- We and Sandi ended up photo touring around the Salton Sea for several days, along with our Hemet friend Sean. It was.. awesome! We ended up camped at the infamous Slab City where Sandi had a friend who lives there full time at 'East Jesus'. It's a post-apocolyptic pre-singularity experimental artistic habitat that is just mind blowingly cool. We had an fantastic time.
- We're now working our way eastwards towards... drum roll.. KANSAS!
- Why Kansas? We decided we wanted to spend Christmas with Chris' folks in St. Louis - so we looked around for options between now and then. We discovered that several of our full time RVing friends were going to amazon.com's distribution center in Kansas as temporary seasonal workers. We decided.. what the heck? Get paid for a month of shipping boxes (work out & meditation all in one!) and hang out with other cool full timers? We'll arrive in less than a week and see what it's all about.
We've had our landing gear engaged for just over a month now in Hemet, CA at our awesome friend's place. The views are spectacular, ample hiking, the people wonderful and score - we have RV hook-ups and our own covered outdoor living room, office and beer garden. It really is it's own paradise, and we feel completely blessed for the opportunity to be here. I've been able to keep the nomadic itch at bay with a couple of travel adventures that didn't involve moving the house - a weekend in Las Vegas and a weekend solo in San Francisco with a glorious return trip via coastal train.
But the itch is here, and it is strong. I've been still long enough. I've recharged and I need a change of experience.
The problem is.. where to next? There are so many possibilities. The ones ruminating in my noggin include:
- Starting an eastward trek to St. Louis - aiming to spend holidays with Chris' family and reconnect with our growing community there. This could include stops to see our friends in Lake Havasu City, AZ, Albuquerque and my bro in Austin. Or maybe a diversion through Salida, CO for more beer snobbery and experiencing this thing they call 'winter'? And it could be extended to time in Indiana for warmth of heart and hearth, and then planning a rendezvous with my parents somewhere, perhaps even ending up back in Florida for a bit. Afterall, hardly anyone from my Florida life has met Orion and Kiki.
- Head up the west coast to the Seattle area, with a likely stop in the Bay Area and Oregon, to both concentrate on further developing a sense of community there, and spending some profound geekery with the original technomad, Steve Roberts - including going sailing with his cat Java on Nomadness. And then heading eastward from there, battling winter roads.
- Stretching our boundaries by crossing in to Baja Mexico for a bit, since we're so close.
- Meandering around southern California for a bit, chasing the ideal paragliding winds - and perhaps satisfying my craving for beach time.
- Insert your suggestions here
More than likely our path will include some combination of the options above. Afterall, embracing the power of 'And' is a philosophy I treasure.
And really, if this is the level of my 'problems' - life ain't so bad, eh?
Chris and I developed a rule that a date would end when we went 24 hours without touching each other.
For 2.5 years of nomading together, we have not spent more than a few hours apart. Sickening, I know. (And can you imagine, even living in 85 sq ft of space together, we still have not only not killed each other.. but we actually love each other?)
However, on Wednesday - that streak ends.
I'm flying up to San Francisco (we're currently in Southern California) to attend a conference with a friend of mine from Florida. And it looks like I'll have opportunity to spend time with some other folks too. Not much time mind you - the conference will be very intensive 12 hour days. And instead of flying back to SoCal, I'm taking the Coast Starlight train - 12 hours of scenic coastal train sounds divine.
It's been an amazing fourth date full of many adventures. I can't wait for what the fifth date has in store!
- We traversed the western United States from St. Louis to California in early August, and had many amazing adventures along the way. They're all chronicled here, with pictures.
- We arrived to Burning Man a couple days early to help set up the placed camp that adopted Camp Nomadia. Kiki stayed with our host family from the Obama campaign in Fallon. It was great to catch up with them before and after.
- Burning Man was awesome, Camp Nomadia was huge and we stayed late to help with clean up efforts.
- After Burning Man, we got invited to an AfterBurn at PermaBurn in northern California (in between Susanville and Alturas). Essentially, a square mile of land was purchased with the intentions of becoming a year round Burning Man community where people can build, store and deploy massive art projects. The land is under 100 miles due west of Gerlach, making it a great launching area for the playa. We were curious to check it out, as the project sounded quite interesting. We stayed for 4 nights and met a lot of the folks driving the vision. Small group so far with a vision of adding thousands of members. For just $200 you can get a lifetime membership which entitles you to camp on the land as much as you want and you have a vote in the direction of the city. We're intrigued and can recommend checking it out if it intrigues you too.
- After PermaBurn, we continued on with our intentions - stopping in Sacramento to put Burning Man back in storage and then on to San Francisco for our quarterly 'All Night Dance Celebration'. Even fire marshalls couldn't thwart our fun, and I'm amazed at the resourcefulness of the community as a whole to quickly regroup and hold the event right on time at a new location.
- And then it was southward to Hemet to get to where I was most craving - somewhere I could put down the landing gear for a while with no plans afterwards. Nestled up in beautiful mountains with awesome people for the past couple of weeks. It's been good to relax, be essentially still and focus more on life instead of getting somewhere - which is essentially the mode we've been in since last March.
- And it's a good thing I had time to focus on life.. the end of September saw the contract that the company I run with my folks back in Florida having some.. complications. The end result was that for the next 6 months, there would be a shortage of income that was about equal to my part time salary. After a lot of thinking, I decided it was best to lay myself off instead of trying to have everyone adjust to reduced income. The sense of freedom this brought to me surprised me and superseded the fear of no reliable income. And just as I was getting used to the idea, I pulled off some amazing contracting magic and managed to unexpectedly get the funds back. Now, with the knowledge of what a new level of freedom felt like - I had a choice to make. Take the reliable income, or go with the freedom? I ultimately came up with a balance that has me feeling like I'm fulfilling my obligations to the contract to stay involved with my unique knowledge of the system we support and develop - but no longer has me on call all of the time (the thing that limits my flexibility most). I've reduced my income by quite a bit - to a level that will just barely make ends meet. I wanted that, so that I become motivated to develop other income sources instead of resting on the known. I'm still adjusting emotionally to the change and I don't think I've really had time to fully process on what it means exactly or what's next.
- We were invited to attend Photoshop World in Las Vegas by our technomadic buddy, Ben Willmore. Apparently he's some big shot there.. I dunno, we just appreciate him as a fellow technomad who's fun to hang out with. We also got to meet up with friends from Florida in town for the event too. An amazing time that I was unfortunately mostly too distracted by attempting to handle the logistics of making the above transition to fully immerse myself in.
- Chris and I have been following intermittent fasting since the beginning of July. Thus far, I have lost 15 lbs and him 17.5lbs. I'm finally back to below my pre-surgery weight - and feeling great.
What's up next?
Actually.. no clue. I just committed to attending an immersive conference with a friend from Florida in San Francisco from Oct 15 - 18 which plays into future career options, which I'll likely just fly up for while Chris visits with his cousins in LA. Beyond that - we literally have no plans until Burning Man next year.
Burning Man this year was amazing, and I'm really seeing my tribe of full time travelers converging. We had 70 people in our Camp Nomadia camp, and had stellar placement right behind Center Camp. Combined with being placed across the street from Homebrew camp, we really had not much reason to leave camp. We had a constant stream of people coming by to visit - so much so, we had to put out an 'Off Duty' sign one afternoon.
Many highlights, many photos, many stories.
Anyway, we made a post today about Camp Nomadia with some fun photos of the camp. Check it out:
http://www.technomadia.com/2009/09/c
Over the next few days, we need to:
- Procure bikes, as we left ours down in southern California with friends earlier this year due to a bike rack failure.
- Stock up on food & beverages for 12 days
- Buy booze to contribute to our camp's central bar
- Get haircuts
- Maybe find some more el-wire to decorate our bikes at night with - thankfully, they sell it in grocery stores in Reno now.
Most everything else is taken care of - as bringing your actual house to the playa greatly simplifies preps. For us, Burning Man is essentially like any other day, but with different clothing.
And that's what our theme camp, Camp Nomadia, is all about. It's shaping up to be a fantastic camp with over 40 nomads from across the globe. We'll be a neighborhood of folks who really are at home. And with many thanks to Pandora's Fix-it Shoppe sharing their space with us, we will have an awesome address of 6:00 & DNA (right behind Center Camp). If you're playa bound, stop by and see us - or attend one of our Nomadic Happy Hours. We'll even be doing a 'Technomadic Lifestyle Workshop'.
We're slowly inching our way towards the playa this week, with a stop in Reno tomorrow and then visiting friends and Kiki's kitten-sitter in Fallon. We'll likely head to the playa on Friday or Saturday with our Early Arrival passes, and help with set up of our camp.
Where: Thai Satay @ 1376 E 14th St, San Leandro, CA
When: Wednesday, Aug 19 @ ~7pm
This will be a casual get together, and a chance to catch up with many friends in the area. A RSVP is not necessary, but it'll be nice to know if you can make it. Apparently this place doesn't get too busy, so accommodating folks should be fairly easy on a drop-in basis. It's also just a few blocks from the San Leandro BART.
Hope to see you there! (And many thanks to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
klrmn for helping with planning!If you're coming to the playa this year, stop on by to fix stuff, mingle and have a drink.. we'll be right behind the Evolution ring and Center Camp. We'll also be hosting a series of Nomadic Happy Hours inside of Pandora's lounge, as well as a workshop on how to become technomadic. Click for our full schedule of events (also in the WWW thingy).
Also, if you're going this year, feel free to reply with your address :)
Anyone wanting specific time with us should also be in touch ASAP. We've been mostly out of connectivity this past week while traveling through UT/NV.. so just now getting back in touch with our online world.
radven and I are currently inbound to the San Francisco and Sacramento area. We have an estimated arrival of Aug 17, and should be around for a week or so before heading out to Burning Man. We're very much looking forward to catching up with friends there!That is .. if we don't get distracted by all these awesome views in Utah first. :D
Anyway.. we're on the look out for:
1) Social opportunities while we're in town. Have a party? Gathering? Dinner/Lunch/Hiking? Thrifting? Want to plan something? Invitations always welcomed and most appreciated :)
2) Places to park. Have room at your place to legally park a small trailer for a few/couple days.. and would like having some awesome temporary neighbors? (We have a place in Sacramento already, and will likely spend a couple days in San Leandro, assuming
dawnd will have us again.)destabee recently did a wrap up post to cover a span of time. I think I'll try to make a habit of that on a monthly basis, and only post the major stuff in between. I liked her format. So, in July:
- Started out the month traveling across Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania
- Arrived to Philadelphia in time for a 4th of July bash at a 300+ year old house that literally saw the birth of our nation. The invite came from an online follower of our adventures. If that wasn't awesome enough - there was live music and a hoppy IPA on tap.
- I've decided that life is too short to drink watered down beer.. I'm going to be a beer snob.
- Toured around Philadelphia being a tourist on a paid (not much) videography assignment by a travel video site. I've been increasing my video production foo.. and even got a new Canon SD780IS camera that is ultra ultra slim and does HD video. I'm impressed with where I've come in my video skills, and it's pretty fun too. And I'm loving getting back in touch with my speech and voice-over skills.
- Enjoyed some very lovely time with [Bad username: silvergoldberry'] in Philly - it reminds me of how blessed I am to have maintained connections with friends from multiple eras of my life. Between time with her, and
destabee the week prior, also reminded how much I miss having a constant community around me. I wish all the cool people lived closer ;)- Taught a class in Washington DC for a client, and got to spend some time with catching up with
alchmst, who was also in town on business. Appropriately, we had visited him *exactly* 1 year prior in Florida when we dropped off my Prius, Xara, with him on our way out of the state. T'was awesome - and add him to the list of cool people I miss. Still on assignment for the video folks, got to play tourist some more too!- We got to see the actual Apollo 11 capsule on the week of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Geek point, score.
- Spent some scenic relaxing in Shendendoah National Park, Blueridge Skyway and the Appalachians in general. Got some awesome hiking in too. Did you know kittens can hike? Kiki did awesome out on the trails.
- Got into St. Louis and spent time catching up on geekery, family time and social time with our new friends we met in the burning man community there. We even visited Hobo University.. can't wait to write that one up. Oh, and lambic on tap? I think I found heaven.
All and all.. a great month. Considering we had no clue what the summer held for us.
Now, we're westward bound, likely stopping in Colorado next week. We'll visit our friends in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area in mid-August (heads up guys! Plan fun stuff for us) .. and then out to Nevada to visit our host family from the Obama campaign in Fallon. They'll kitten sit for us while we're at Burning Man. And yes, we're still going.. we won't let the disappointment of not being a placed camp keep us down.
This completely sucks. A year of planning and connecting with other burning nomads from around the world.. wasted. A year of traveling to other regional events and meeting up with other nomads to bring them to the playa.. down the drain. An itinerary of travel to get to the playa early to set up.. down the drain. We're relegated to regular arrival now.
So much of my identity as a burning nomad have just been shattered. I've just been told I'm not good enough. And I completely don't understand it.
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*edit* Ok, the shock is wearing off, and we're making the best of it. We're nomads, since when is an address part of our identity anyway? For the record, 130 camps where denied placement this year due to the shrunk size of the city. We're probably just not interactive enough for the criteria this year (whereas, last year.. we were.) While I don't agree with the balance of placed camps vs. open camps - we will adapt. It'll be more difficult to organize 30+ global nomads bringing their houses to the playa.. but we'll make do.
radven and I talk about how awesome the City Museum in St. Louis is. So much so that recently nasu_dengaku rendezvoused with us in St. Louis last month to check it out. 
We also had the opportunity to return to the City Museum and visit their new roof top this weekend with a group of friends (yes, we're currently in St. Louis, making our way back from the east coast towards California and Burning Man).
I finally got enough footage to put together a video piece this evening that I think will give you a good overview of the awesomeness of this place. It also features
nasu_dengaku running around and climbing on all sorts of stuff!So who's meeting us in St. Louis next?
I've been very tempted to upgrade my iPhone to the new 3GS. The biggest block aside from having to pay the higher non-subsidized cost if I did now, is my 'Hope' Obama sticker that is affixed to it.
When Chris and I were volunteered full time on the Obama campaign in rural Nevada last October, Max Kennedy (youngest son of Bobby Kennedy) joined us one Saturday morning to help launch our campaign. He gifted Chris and I with these stickers.
Yesterday, a dear friend of ours from Florida was also in DC and we toured the National Portrait Gallery downtown together. He took us directly to the original Shepard Fairey collage that the sticker and posters were reproduced from. I wiped out my phone with a proud grin on my face.
A good reminder of one main reason I'm not ready to upgrade my phone. A compass just isn't as useful as Hope.
But the thing is.. I still assert that I'm an INFJ, and operate from a J space. I'm quick to make judgements. I want an overarching plan with goals and milestones. I'm more at ease when decisions are made.
But what's changed particularly in my pursual of nomadism, I have come to appreciate the power of being open to possibilities, and not setting out with a daily plan that must be followed. I find delight in discovering what comes our way, and I appreciate waking up in the morning and basing what we do more off how I feel and less on what we had planned. That's not to say plans don't come into play for me anymore, I've just really come to learn that the details along the way aren't as important.
And by and large the questions on these test are dealing with daily and project based schedules.. and on those levels, yeah, I've come much more comfortable with unknowns and setting out without an outlined plan, and being at ease with the ever changing landscape of my life. It's a boundary I intentionally pushed when I set off, it's a change I wanted in my life. And by golly, I've achieved it.
But I'm still a J. I still sometimes have the initial gut reaction of 'But what is the plan?!?'. Chris' very strong naturally inclined P will grate on me. I want decisions made, especially on the more mundane things in life. Life is just too short to obsess over 'what's for dinner', 'what camera to buy', and the like. Present me with options, weigh the pro's and cons and make a decision already! And more importantly.. do it! And definitely, if I feel I've made any sort of commitment to someone else, I feel a sense a obligation to revert to J-mode and make sure plans are executed and schedule kept (which has actually become a bit more stressful for me than in the past.)
--
Another change is that my previous 'strongly' I has become a 'moderate' I. I think the nature of my nomadism and just coming more into my own has me enjoying and being less drained from social interactions. I definitely don't need nearly as much recharge time as I once did.
All prices below include payment via PayPal and US Priority shipping. If you need non-US shipping, please contact me.
Canon G9 - $425
Canon Powershot SX110IS - $100 (won't turn on, has water damage)
Pentax Optio S12 - $130
FujiFilm FinePix F50sd - $90
Casio Exilim EXZ750 - $30
For full details of each camera, click through to our full blog post.
Our travelogue for our trip to Hohenwald, TN from St. Louis and back to get trailer maintenance
A story we did about how Oliver Travel Trailers is adapting in this down economy
Chris' gives me tech lust by getting an iPhone 3GS
Our Summer 2009 Travel Plans - including a stop in Philadelphia and Washington, DC before a cross country adventure back to California and Burning Man. Invites for visits always welcomed :)
In other news, we've had the great fortune recently to be getting lots of time with dear friends.
nasu_dengaku joined us in St. Louis and we took him on couple day road trip to Chicago, ending his 4.5 world tour. And then we arrived in Northern Indiana to stay with destabee, and took a day trip into Chicago to catch up with Sterling & Melissa. And in the coming weeks, we'll also go visit with silvergoldberry in Philly. I think that's one of the greatest benefits of being nomadic - being able to keep in touch with such a wide variety of folks who have scattered in various directions over the years.
We also attended a Burning Man regional event near St. Louis that was awesome, and this morning we take
destabee to her first Burning Man anything in Western Michigan. So much fun!And oh yeah, I henna'd my hair this week.. it's now really red.
I'm very grateful for the joy and quality that LJ has brought to my life over the years. I love the social blogging aspect of LJ. I love that I met the man I intend to spend the rest of my life with via LJ (that alone is worth the $140 I spent on memberships, eh?) I love the friendships that have been deepened via LJ.
But I'm just not using LJ anywhere near as much as I used to. WordPress, Twitter and Facebook are overtaking that mental bandwidth for me. I'll still use LJ, mostly to cross post major travel updates from our adventure blog at www.technomadia.com, and the occasional personal musings. And I will continue to check in on folks from time to time.
But mostly LJ has become less socially interactive for me. With each post I seem to get less interaction, which either tells me I've become a bore.. or more and more folks just aren't using LJ either. I tend to go with the second theory.
If you care to follow me more in real time, please add me:
http://twitter.com/serolynne
http://www.facebook.com/cherie.vear
Or better yet.. keep in touch and drop me an e-mail at cherie@serolynne.com or chat me up on IM as Serolynne.
Check it out:
It's Not an Extended Vacation
Our descriptions of Digital Location Independent Lifestyle Designing NuNomads.
and... if any of the above descriptions strike a chord with you.. then you might want to participate in:
A new survey for Digital Nomads & Location Independent Professionals (and those who want to be).
