Extended travel is a series of cycles. You don’t just pack, unpack, pack, and fly home. There’s more. We run out of stuff. Things go awry. Here are the cycles I’ve identified so far. We constantly need to monitor these for our mental health. Otherwise we get irritable. Especially due to the last one. The Laundry Cycle We go about two weeks between laundry loads … I think. It’s really tough [...]
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In the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, I had a realization: I was in Denver. There’s an Oceanaire, a seafood chain (based in Minneapolis, natch); a Hooter’s, the boobie chain; and a TGI Friday’s, a mediocrity chain. None of this is a dig against SD (but you can suck it, TGI Failday’s) — it just made me think about the goals of travel in a way I’ve never done before. When [...]
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After a good run of books, I’ve stalled out. I can’t seem to get through them anymore. I could blame the Salton Sea, or the sand people, or our lack of aluminum cladding, but I’m going to blame the books. Squandering Aimlessly There’s a lot of good stuff in this book, but I had to skim it to get through it. It’s almost comical how upbeat this book is when [...]
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We’re giving away a $50 Travelocity gift card to one of our readers! It comes wrapped in an inspirational copy of Blue Highways. To enter to win the package (book + $50 gift card), all you have to do is follow @drivinginertia on Twitter or ‘like’ Driving Inertia on Facebook. Technically, you could enter twice, and that’s fine. We currently have about 80 fans on Facebook and over 100 followers on [...]
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We’re about three and a half months into our twelve month trip, so we thought it was about time for a quarterly status report. Rather than create a formal report, which would need to be audited for accuracy by someone like KPMG, we thought we’d just answer some of the common questions we’ve been receiving. How’s it going so far? So far, so good. The first few weeks were by [...]
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We’re doing a pretty good job reading on this trip. Which is easy to do without a TV. Here’s what I’ve read so far along with some notes. October through December: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage — This book is phenomenal. Lansing’s writing is great and the story is wild. If you haven’t read it, you should. Nature’s Metropolis — An interesting read about Chicago’s influence over the development of the western United [...]
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I stopped shaving at the end of October, about 4 weeks into our trip. For a while, it was Movember, so I rationalized it with that. Then it was December, and we were camping in increasingly remote spots as the temperature continued to drop. Shaving in front of a cloudy, polished-steel campsite mirror with ice-cold water wasn’t overly appealing. In Las Vegas, we had a hotel, but I had become [...]
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We’re jumping on the year-end nostalgia conga line even though we’ve only been travelling full time for the last three months. We have, however, been blogging for all of 2011. Here’s what was popular. Top 3 Topics of 2011 The Biosphere 2 gallery post. Damn, BoingBoing.net, thanks for the link. And thank you, too, Curbed.com. [FYI -- ALL the cool sites are linking to us, so if you have a [...]
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Did you just rack up a lot of holiday debt? Get back on the right track with these four easy steps: Get the right bank accounts. Be smart at lunch. Cut monthly cell-phone and cable TV expenses. Brew your own coffee. Follow these and you could find over $2,000 in 2012. Don’t trust the lottery. photo credit: fabiolaarizaphotography | Save elsewhere, splurge on this.
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This week, we created a series of posts to help you save money in 2012 to make your travel dreams a reality. Today’s is about cutting unnecessary monthly expenses. Monthly expenses kill savings. They chip away while you’re not looking, weakening your financial strength. You should evaluate every one of your monthly expenses, but there are two easy ones to start with: cell phone bills and cable TV subscriptions. Check out [...]
Read moreWe sold, donated, and stored our possessions; quit our jobs; bought a van; and are driving around North America. We'll wander around, see what's happening, and write about it here.
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