lonnatic

Reading this:

A Practical Guide to Vagabonding and Long Term Travel (Part 1): Taking the Leap

I need to answer some questions.

First, why do I travel?

Why do I breathe? Why do I drink water? I never ask myself those questions. Why must I answer this one? It seems so obvious. Why isn’t everyone doing it?

Where do I want to go?

Back to Encinitas for a while. I really like Encinitas. That’s where Yogananda wrote Autobiography of a Yogi. The weather is perfect, the town is fun, and the people are awesome. Oh, and really nice food.

Then I would like to get to the Caribbean, maybe via Mexico or maybe start in Maine and do the ICW in a downeaster. This is a downeaster:

The ICW, Intracoastal Waterway, is a passage of relatively safe water from Boston to the Keys. Then it’s a short hop to the Bahamas, BVI, and beyond.

http://www.icwplanningguide.com/Marinas/Maine-New-Hampshire.aspx

Then maybe the Mediterranean.

What will I do?

Walk. A lot of walking. And eat. Eat all the good food. And ride the rides. When I was young, we went a lot of places. Always moving from college class to college job. But we never could afford the rides. The trams and boats. The wheels and carousels. I like to ride the rides. But mostly eat nice food and walk.

How long?

The proverbial foreseeable future. “Forever.” I am a member of the class of 2007 in the Escapees RV Club. I lived on a sailboat for 6 years. I have been living out of two bags for over a year now. This week I think I am down to one bag, and a light one at that.

 

 

I spent the last four days obsessing on kit. And geared up.

I have always kept a ready backpack somewhere. Growing up a hippie and moving around a lot inspired a streak of survivalist/adventurer.

I have had several setups over time. My mom made my first backpack out of leftover upholstery material so I could go on a boy scout hike. That did not work so well. With the down bag from the Korean War I don’t think I would have noticed the added weight of an iron skillet.

In secondary school, junior high school in the states, I was placed in “High Adventure.” A pilot program which eventually became Outward Bound. For the first few of those hikes I carried my gear in two opposing shoulder bags like Grasshopper. Picked up a frame pack eventually. No idea where that ended up.

In college, I made a simple canvas backpack by hand. No velcro or snaps or zippers. I also picked up a bunch of scrap polyfill at the Seattle squeaky floor REI and sewed up a sleeping bag seven feet long inside. That bag would serve me for decades until it was stolen from the back of a pick up truck. I also made a cookset out of Revere Ware by cutting off the handles and nesting a frying pan in a pot. Complete with a copper bottom measuring cup. Tied up a knotted bag to hold it all. I have made several of these sets since.

Somewhere in here I pick up a classic Camp Trails frame pack. This is the pack the sleeping bag was in when it was stolen. Complete kit gone. Time to gear up again.

I was blown away by how gear had evolved since my last trip to REI. Among other things, the fabrics amazed me so much I am still trying to get a clothing company going using those modern fabrics in classic style clothes. The MSR Whisperlight had not changed much but the bags and packs and what the hell is this thermarest thing? WOW!

I loaded up a Gregory Palisade with an REI sleeping bag, a therm-a-rest, another RevereWare cook set, a Coleman singe burner, and a Half Dome. Really nice setup served me until this year. It all went as part of the thinning down, simplifying process. I actually justified leaving my sleeping bag, pad, and tent at Goodwill by realizing the new gear I would some day replace it all with would be awesome.

Wow, was I right!

So I have re kitted. I did minimum research and trusted my friends at Second Ascent in Ballard and ended up with a new Therm-a-rest Neoair Xtherm Max, a Big Agnes Copper Spur HV UL1, and a Mont Bell Spiral Down Hugger 800 #3. All of this weighs in at about five (5!) pounds and fits in my Jansport day pack. Any singe piece of my old kit did not fit in this bag. All three of these do with room for the rest of what I need. Laptop, iPad, toilet kit, backup clothes and warms, chargers, headlamp, and field glasses. Even a pair of lightweight shoes.  I feel like a Buddhist monk. If I forgo the coffee kit, more shoes, and an extra suit, I am ready to go with just the Jansport if I am fully clothed.

Seriously?

 

I have decided to make a steampunk headlamp. This product will be offered by http://elonn.com.

I made this decision while I was driving back from San Diego determined to realize my next step before I reached Seattle. I allowed my self the entire trip to figure it out. Around just before Grants Pass I hit upon the idea of a steampunk headlamp.

It will echo the classic Art Deco Sunburst. The lamp will have one very bright center single or cluster led and six across the top. The bright one can be dimmed, shut off, or turned red.

While I was carving and drawing the six leds I realized they could/should be controlled by an app.

The six across the top are totally programable. They will come with some cool built in profile like rainbow and Cylon.

At this time, the vision is for 3D printing on a belt, printing around the electronics. Assemble the electronics, place  in a jig/mold on a belt and feed to a 3D printer. Rotate, and feed to another 3D printer.

You will be able to adjust each of the six leds individually on a timeline. Set the time line duration/speed, adjust each leds color and brightness over the timeline.

My plan is to launch a kickstarter maybe in September.  I need a team for this one. Someone that can handle the printing stuff. Someone to write the app. I can handle the logistics and financials. Maybe one of us could take charge of the marketing. All the media stuff should probably be shared so the content has several individual styles. “She came up with this idea, I like this, we want to do this…” That sort of thing.

Anyone want to play?

Thursday, September 11, 2008

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand . . . keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. . . . Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one.”

Henry David Thoreau (Where I Lived and What I Lived For)

We have been admonished all along by the likes of Ghandi and Jesus, Thereau and Ram Dass. Get rid of your stuff; physical mental and emotional, and keep it simple. Here, now. At some point in my life this started looking like good advice I did not fully understand. How could I think I truly understood these ideas, embraced these ideas and still have all this stuff? A kitchen with many, many drawers full of stuff. I knew pretty much where everything in that room was. A “to do” list that scrolled onto the next page! Literally tons of stuff in a shop that required more tons of stuff outside in materials racks and sheds. Bedroom closets, bathroom closets, night stands, good god how far can this go on? A pile of plans I routinely admitted just were not going to get done. Glove boxes in three cars. How can someone with all this stuff claim to have even a glimmer of a clue what Thereau is talking about? Honesty eventually took over and I admitted this all looked like good advice, I sincerely believed these people were telling me the truth, but I just wasn’t getting it.

I developed the idea that this, as I once described burningman was “something impossible to describe from the inside and impossible to understand from the outside.” I had just returned from burningman 1999 and was standing in a small circle which included a couple people that had not been. One asked the inevitable question, “so, what is burningman like?”

I had heard things like “one cannot think their way to a better way of living, one can only live their way to a better way of thinking” and, one of my favorites, a quote from Ray Bradbury: “You’ve got to walk up to the edge of the cliff, jump off, and build your wings on the way down.” I had to live it before I could think it. How?

I have dreamed of living on the road, free, “mobile” as The Who put it, since early life. It seems to be a normal, common dream among people. We were nomadic originally. Perhaps it is genetic, primal, whatever. A friend had said, “if you want to get rid of a bunch of stuff, move onto a boat.” It was a jest but the truth was unmistakable. The challenge for me with a boat is it is difficult to step out of a boat into a grocery store. Perhaps a motor home?

So I moved into a motor home. And now I think I get it.

I did move on to a boat about five years later. More on that soon!

 

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Interesting Spaghetti
Henry made vegetarian spaghetti with smoked paprika without consulting anybody or a cook book.

Quite a lot of smoked paprika.

Interesting.

I’ve mixed stuff together that I was pretty sure would explode. I’ve been right and I’ve been wrong. Imagine being wrong thinking you are making a cake and instead having an explosive and subsequently, an explosion. There just isn’t any other way to discover something than to take a risk. Or investing in a retirement fund and subsequently living on your own private island or in a rat trap trailer. Not all gamblers win, not all adventurers found interesting things, not all explorers returned. But to never try? To see a possibility and not experiment, suspect something and not test, to imagine and not seek?

I can’t.

I want interesting spaghetti now and then.