Living the dream: Making it happen

November 15, 2011 in lifestyle design, lifestyle entrepreneurs, live your dream, location independent by nancy | Permalink

The original post by nancy was posted here, you can comment there!

“You’re so lucky!”

As travelers, we hear those words on a very frequent basis. “You’re lucky to be able to travel!” “You’re lucky to be able to spend this time with your family!” “You’re lucky!”

And we are. We certainly understand that we are fortunate that we’ve been able to live the life of our dreams.

But in many ways, our lifestyle hasn’t been luck at all. It’s been hard work and wise choices.

We didn’t wake up one morning to find all the pieces of the puzzle had magically dropped into our laps overnight. We spent many, many years cultivating the right environment and making it happen. It wasn’t handed to us on a silver platter. We made it happen.

We’re not the only ones who made it happen. Each and every traveler out there worked hard to get all the pieces of the puzzle in place. It doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t happen easily, but it can happen if you make it happen.

Livin on the Road

Amy and Jarred travel with their four children

My friend Amy, who blogs over at Livin on the Road, made it happen. She and her husband and their four children are now living life on the road in Australia. Here, in her own words, is how they made it happen:

Life was pretty good.  Each morning my kids would crawl into bed with me for cuddles after my husband had left for work.  My kids finished their homeschooling lessons before the other neighbourhood kids even started school.  Then came the usual discussion, “Mum, can today be our zoo day?”  “No, I want to go to the museum today.”  “Oh, but what about the planetarium?”  “No, I want to go to a National Trust property,”  “Mum, please please can we go to the zoo.  I want to sit in the butterfly house and take my watercolours to paint the butterflies.”  “Oh yeah, that’s a great idea.  I’ll take my pencils and paper, too.”  “Are you sure?  I wanted to go to a friend’s house and play with them in the cubby house today.”

After a day of sipping coffee while chatting to my friends and watching the kids playing in the backyard, or picnicking on the lawns of a National Trust property, or spending the day at the zoo, we’d head home tired, but happy.  As my husband pulled in the driveway from work, I’d run out and swap keys with him so I could work the evening shift at a pharmacy I loved.  The work was interesting and enjoyable, and I liked my co-workers and customers.

Sometimes someone commented, “You’re so lucky.  You’re so lucky because your husband is an electrician and you are a pharmacist.”

Then we decided that our lifestyle, wonderful though it was, in the city wasn’t enough for us.  We wanted to travel.

So many times we’ve heard; “You are so lucky to be able to travel.” “It’s fine for some people to travel, but we couldn’t afford it.”  “We just aren’t as lucky as you, so we can’t make those sorts of choices you have.”

We’ve been told this many times as we’ve headed around Australia in a caravan with our four kids.  We believe some of it.  We are incredibly lucky to be able to travel.  We’ve made our choices.  They weren’t easy choices to make.  We struggled.  We worked towards it.

I was in my final year of high school when I met and married my husband.  When I sat my final exams, I was already three months pregnant with our first child.  Everyone told me that we were ruining our lives.  What about our education?  At eighteen, I was expected to finish school, go to uni and maybe take a year off to travel.  But now?

Livin on the RoadThe opinion of family, friends and strangers in the street was universal – we were ruining our lives.  I was conscious of strangers checking my finger for a wedding finger.  Classmates wondered at how I, who excelled academically and was the school geek, could throw away my bright future.

That first child was born, and our first house purchased the following year.  I was in my first year of university studying naturopathy, and switched to night-school.  I didn’t have time off for when the kids were born.  It just wasn’t worth it to me – I actually sat one of my second year final exams the day after my second child was born.

I spent all day with our baby, while my husband slept.  He woke up in the evening and stayed with our newborn son while I went to night-school.  When I got home from school, he left for work.  The next year we added another baby to our family, and decided that Jarrad would go back to become an apprentice electrician.  We went down to one small car, and I rode a bicycle towing my little ones in a bike trailer.

For two years, our little family of four had $60 each week to spend on food and fuel after paying our mortgage and bills.   We worked so hard … and at the time we had nothing to show for it except an empty belly.  The kids never went hungry, but my husband and I often were.

I started a pharmacy degree after I’d completed my naturopathy.  We didn’t want to put the kids in childcare, so I found a university that was prepared to let me attend only for a practicum every second week on a Friday.  They recorded the lectures for me.  The catch?  That university was 1000 kilometers away.  Once every two weeks, I’d catch the overnight interstate train to the next state.  I would get there at 1:30am and head off to another student’s house to sleep until my practicum the next morning.  I wanted to take my bike as that felt safer than walking and would give me transport, but the interstate train wouldn’t allow bikes.  As soon as the morning prac was over, I’d catch the train back home, getting in just as the kids were going off to bed.  I only missed one day every two weeks with them.  They got to spend that day with Dad.  But when did I study?  I got up at four each morning to get in a few hours study before the kids woke up.

I had my final pharmacy exam a week before our fourth baby was born.  Jarrad had been qualified as an electrician for a year at that point.  For a year, we continued on much as we had been though much better off financially.  Jarrad left for work before we woke up.  We’d homeschool and entertain ourselves all day, but as soon as he drove in the driveway we’d swap keys and I’d head out to work all evening at a local pharmacy.  After a year of doing this, we decided that it wasn’t what we’d worked so hard for.

Livin on the road kidsWhat had we worked so hard for?  I had everything I’d wanted.  It was great.  But we wanted more.  You see, it didn’t seem like enough just to build up that nest egg.  Had we really worked so hard just to be able to earn a lot of money now?

We are now following the path less taken.  We work a few months, then travel for a few months before we stop and work again.  We earn a good wage in those few months that keeps us going in the mean time.  We love this lifestyle and have been traveling for almost two years now with no plans to settle down any time soon.

I know we are lucky to make be able to travel.  That’s the luck that we made.

Follow Amy, Jerrad, and their kids at Livin on the Road

******

Follow us on Twitter: @familyonbikes and Facebook: Family on Bikes

Get our posts delivered directly to your email inbox – sign up here!

Living the dream: Making it happen is a post from: Family on Bikes. Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive your free e-book: Bicycle Touring with Children; A Guide to Getting Started.



Syndicated from nancy, via Family on Bikes, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

Movements in Chile

November 13, 2011 in Chile, English by hanna | Permalink

The original post by hanna was posted here, you can comment there!

I have been moving down the Chilean coast for the last two months alongside an entirely different movement, which started in this country long before I did. It has mainly been visible in the cities. I have seen signs of a student strike From Antofagasta in the north to Valparaiso in the middle of the country. In Antofagasta there are chairs hanging on the schoolyard fence instead of standing on the classroom floor. In Valparaiso the students are writing political phrases on the school building instead of writing down new knowledge in their notepads. Between the cities, I am cycling through the desert and during some hard and heavy pedaling up a hill I see a handwritten sign in the middle of nowhere that says “Free education now”. I am reminded that I am not the only one in this country who is in an uphill struggle.

The Chilean government has given certain guarantees and has promised some improvements, but the students demand for free education has not been met. They have gathered nationwide in an attempt to decrease the differences between those who can and who cannot afford quality education, in a nation where the socioeconomic differences are already wide. The resistance that they are subjected to seems to be inherited from previous military dictatorships. In Valparaiso I meet a Swedish documentary filmmaker who recently was at a high school when it was charged by the police force. He describes the assaults committed in there as torture.

In the same city, I am staying with a man who is teaching mathematics at one of the universities. He says that he supports the students, even if it means that he has not been able to earn an income since May. As I am leaving the city he is however returning to work, after a vote at his university, where the students have decided to resume their studies. They are ending the strike because they want to receive and achieve knowledge, others continue the strike for the same reason. Some students continue the protest with hopes of a future education system for all the young people of Chile.

My acclimatization to altitude is diminished after two months at sea level, but I move east to cross the Andes anyway. The student movement is also diminished but not destroyed, it continues to struggle even if their mountain seems even higher than before.

Peace

Syndicated from hanna, via Hanna MI Jakobson, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

Rörelser i Chile

November 13, 2011 in Chile, Svenska by hanna | Permalink

The original post by hanna was posted here, you can comment there!

Jag har rört mig nedför den chilenska kusten de senaste två månaderna och undertiden har en helt annan rörelse pågått som startade här i landet långt innan mig. Det har varit mest synligt i städerna. Från Antofagasta i norr till Valparaiso i mitten har jag sett tecken på studenternas revolt. I Antofagasta hänger stolar demonstrativt på skolgårdsstaketen i stället för att stå utplacerade i klassrummen. I Valparaiso skriver studenterna slagord på skolbyggnaden i stället för att skriva ner studieanteckningar i sina block.  Emellan städerna cyklar jag delvis genom öknen och i en utmanande och utmattande backe mitt ute i ingenstans ser jag en skylt med uppmaningen ”Gratis utbildning nu”. Jag påminns om att det inte bara är jag som kämpar i uppförsbacke.

Den chilenska regeringen har gett garantier och lovat förbättringar i skolsytemet, men det krav som studentrörelsen har på fri utbildning har inte gått igenom. Studenterna har gått samman för att minska skillnaderna mellan dem som kan och dem som inte kan betala för sin lektionstid och framtid. Det våldsamma motstånd de möter tycks vara nedärvt från landets tidigare militärdiktaturer. I Valparaiso träffar jag en svensk dokumentärfilmare som nyligen var med när en gymnasieskola stormades av polismakten. Han beskriver övergreppen som tortyrliknande.

I samma stad bor jag hos en matematiklärare från ett av universiteten.  Han säger att han stödjer studenterna, även om det har inneburit att han inte har kunnat lönearbeta sedan maj.  Samtidigt som jag rör mig bort från staden kan han dock röra sig tillbaka till föreläsningssalarna, efter en omröstning där studenterna på hans universitet har valt att återuppta studierna. De avslutar strejken för att de vill ha kunskap, andra fortsätter strejken av samma anledning. Så vissa studenter fortsätter protestera, ockupera och argumentera i hopp om ett fritt utbildningssystem som är till för alla Chiles unga.

Efter två månader på havsnivå är min bergsacklimatisering försvagad, men jag rör mig ändå österut för att korsa Anderna. Studentrörelsen är också försvagad, men fortsätter att kämpa även om deras berg tycks vara högre än tidigare.

Peace

Syndicated from hanna, via Hanna MI Jakobson, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

Service dogs help others live their dreams

November 9, 2011 in GAP, guide dogs, seeing eye dogs, service dogs by nancy | Permalink

The original post by nancy was posted here, you can comment there!

Dreams come in many different shapes and sizes. What’s important is that you live them – whatever they may be and wherever they may lead you.

While my family and I were living our dream of biking to the far corners of the world, my sister and her husband were living a different kind of dream – the getting-a-guide-dog kind of dream. Now, you and I have a chance to help others live the guide-dog dream. (Click here for more info)

Rory, Glenda, and Rudy

Rudy accompanied Glenda and Rory everywhere

My sister’s dream started off in an unlikely manner. As Glenda Sathre and her husband, Rory Greenway, walked across a WalMart parking lot, Glenda leading so she could alert her husband to possible obstacles, they met a woman with a service dog heading towards a vehicle that had Guild Assistance Dog Partners, Inc. (GAP) decals on it.

Seeing as how Glenda and Rory have always been avid dog-lovers, they struck up a conversation with the woman. “I casually mentioned to her that we’d need a guide dog someday due to Rory’s deteriorating eyesight, but were not ready for it yet. She explained to us that you don’t have to be totally blind; you just have to be in need of seeing assistance.  She also said it could be up to a two year wait, so if we were interested we should put in an application soon.”

Most service animal organizations charge high fees for the animals; GAP is one of the few who don’t. They are staffed entirely with volunteers and don’t charge for their services at all. It is a labor of love. “We feel we fill the gap in that we don’t charge,” said Mary Ellen Bernhardt, who helps run GAP. “We usually find a place for each dog feeling there’s always some perfect place.”

Fishing Buddies

Rudy was never far from Rory's side

Rory was not only going blind, he also had compression fractures of eight vertebrae, a contused spinal cord, extensive nerve damage, and balance issues. He submitted an application. GAP just happened to have Rudy, who was cross trained as a Seeing Eye dog and a balance and support dog and was in need of placement.  He was nearly three years old and they try to have service dogs placed before three years of age to ensure proper bonding.  It was a match made in heaven.

A few months later, Rudy went to live with Glenda and Rory and their lives changed dramatically. Rory had never worked with a Seeing Eye dog before, but the first time he took Rudy’s harness and walked around the block he felt liberated.  He knew things were going to change.

“Before that I had been Rory’s eyes,” Glenda said. “In addition to not seeing well and everything being blurry, he had no depth perception and everything looked flat to him.  If there was a painted line in a parking lot he didn’t know if it was a curb, a parking bump, or just a painted line.  He couldn’t see cracks in the sidewalk, tree roots on a trail, or numerous other obstacles.  We had our little routine. I would walk slightly ahead of him and say “crack,” “stick,” “step,” “curb,” or whatever it was. Some things I thought were so obvious there was no way he could miss them so I didn’t point them out, and then he would trip and fall. When Rudy came into the picture I was freed of my responsibilities, and Rudy gave Rory the commands from then on.  Rudy was much more consistent and better at it than I was.”

Graduation from service dog school

After a year of training, Rory and Rudy graduated together

All service animal organizations are different, but in general they require a certain amount of training as a team. The organization Glenda and Rory used, GAP, required monthly trainings for one year in Denver where they provided classes. In addition, Rory had to complete several hours of training per month with Rudy at home and at work. His monthly training was difficult for him since it was 100 miles away from where he lived.  With shuttle services and volunteers from GAP helping him out, he managed to attend the training sessions, and after a year of joint training with Rudy they graduated together and became certified.

“Rudy was supposed to fit into our life,” Glenda added, “but we catered to him and we fit into his lifestyle.  One example of this is when we walked together as a family.  Rudy was on the left, Rory was in the middle, and I was on the right.  Rudy was so concerned about me that he would cross over in front of Rory to see what I was doing.  We quickly figured out that if I walked on the left, then Rudy, then Rory on the right everyone was happy.  I quickly became Rudy’s “person” also.  He kept a very close eye on me.  He intuitively knew how much help Rory needed and the fact that I did not need that type of help.  He would switch modes depending on who was leading him.  He is an extremely intelligent animal.”

When Rory passed away suddenly, both Rudy and Glenda were by his side.  Rudy licked Rory’s hand one last time the moment his “person” died, then he transferred his allegiance to Glenda. For the following week, he barely left Glenda’s side. “It was a very confusing time for both of us,” Glenda said. “One day he was with us 24/7 as Rory’s Seeing Eye dog, and then overnight he was just a pet.”

Rory with his guide dog, RudyIt’s now been nearly eight months since Rory passed away, and Rudy and Glenda are moving on with life together.  Rudy enjoys their daily walks through the forest and romping on the beach.  After three years of training and five years of service, he now gets to relax with his new “person” for the remainder of his life.

Guild Assistance Dog Partners, Inc. (GAP) is currently in the running for a $50K grant from the Pepsi Company to purchase a new van in order to help transport people and their dogs to training. Seeing as how the vast majority of people with service dogs are not able to drive, this service is invaluable. Please vote here – and come back every day during November as well. There are 300 organizations vying for the money, so every vote counts!

Please get the message out through any channels you may have – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, personal friends… Together we can make a difference in other people’s lives!

******

Follow us on Twitter: @familyonbikes and Facebook: Family on Bikes

Get our posts delivered directly to your email inbox – sign up here!

Service dogs help others live their dreams is a post from: Family on Bikes. Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive your free e-book: Bicycle Touring with Children; A Guide to Getting Started.



Syndicated from nancy, via Family on Bikes, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

7 deserts en youTube

November 9, 2011 in Uncategorized by Sergio F. Tolosa | Permalink

The original post by Sergio F. Tolosa was posted here, you can comment there!

La productora El Somiatruites –o “the omelette dreamer”, como la presentaron en New York, Milán y Sydney cuando la película fue proyectada en el internacional Bicycle Film Festival–, Uri Garcia –el director del documental– y yo mismo hemos decidido poner al alcance de todos la historia 7 deserts.
7 deserts es un documental de 53 minutos de duración que aporta una visión muy distinta a la que se ha visto por televisión de las expediciones que formaron parte del proyecto 7 desiertos. Creo que no soy el más adecuado para valorarla o describirla, pues se centra especialmente en la persona que llevó a cabo el proyecto –es decir, en mí–, en sus ilusiones, sus miedos, su forma de superarlos, su transformación a medida que pasan los años –el proyecto se prolongó desde principios de 2003 hasta mediados de 2007–, y no tanto en aquello que vi, la maravillosa gente que conocí o la fauna con la que me topé en cada desierto, materias y anécdotas que por fortuna sí logré incluir en el libro editado por Saga. En menos de una hora de cinta era imposible condensar tanto material. Además, el objetivo de Uri Garcia con este documental era otro. Recuerdo el día en que vino a casa de mi hermana –donde yo vivía por aquel entonces– se sentó delante de mí y me dijo que le interesaba mi historia. Me cedió su cámara de vídeo para llevarla todo el día encima, incluso al Sáhara –la mía estaba estropeada y hacía un ruido horrible–, lo que significaba prácticamente que me la regalaba. Y me pidió que lo grabara todo. Todo.
Cuando volví del Sáhara tenían sobre la mesa de edición más de 70 horas de grabación. La mitad eran del Sáhara y de los dos meses previos al último viaje. La verdad es que en aquel momento pensé que no quería estar en su pellejo. Yo sólo pasé una mañana frente a los ordenadores que se usaron para editarlo, sentado junto a Uri y Francesc Talavera, mirando cómo analizaban cada secuencia. Meses después me llamaron para ver una prueba. Semanas después acudí para ver el montaje definitivo.
Sólo puedo decir que el documental es intimista, sincero y me muestra tal y como soy, o como fui en aquellos meses de incertidumbre y nervios previos al viaje por el Sáhara, después del cual, debería redirigir mi vida hacia nuevos retos.
La versión original es casi toda en catalán, pero tiene subtítulos en castellano e inglés. Para activarlos, en youTube hay un botón rojo con dos ces (CC).
Sólo quiero agradecer una vez más la participación de todos y todas los que trabajaron para hacerlo posible, que demostraron ilusión y profesionalidad en todo momento. También a Top Cable, que aportó fondos para que se hiciese realidad patrocinando todas las expediciones. Y, por supuesto, a mis padres y mi hermana.

Syndicated from Sergio F. Tolosa, via CON UN PAR DE RUEDAS, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

A little bit of international flair

November 4, 2011 in coins, earrings, international, international coins, jewelry by nancy | Permalink

The original post by nancy was posted here, you can comment there!

Looking for something fun and international for you or that someone special? I’ve got just the thing!

Throughout our entire journey from Alaska to Argentina, I saved coins from each country we passed through. Now I’m using those coins to make jewelry! They’re fun and funky – but speak volumes about the traveler within you.

International coin earrings - Peru

Puruvian soles

I can make earrings or necklaces with coins from every country we passed through. I also have a limited number of other coins a friend sent – they are mostly from the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. Unfortunately, the countries are written in their script, so I have no way of knowing which coin is from where. They look way cool though.

I have a wide variety of crystal colors or can make them with other beads if you prefer – just let me know what you’re looking for!

$25 for earrings – click here to purchase

$15 for necklace – click here to purchase

Panamanian balboa

Panamanian balboa

Costa Rica colones

Costa Rican colones

******

Follow us on Twitter: @familyonbikes and Facebook: Family on Bikes

Get our posts delivered directly to your email inbox – sign up here!

A little bit of international flair is a post from: Family on Bikes. Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive your free e-book: Bicycle Touring with Children; A Guide to Getting Started.



Syndicated from nancy, via Family on Bikes, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

Seven months on – and still living (more or less) simply

November 3, 2011 in conscious decisions, corporate influence, decision making, Reentry, voluntary simplicity by nancy | Permalink

The original post by nancy was posted here, you can comment there!

Seven months. In some ways it seems like it’s been seven years since we arrived back in the USA; in other ways seven days. Tomorrow, on our seven month anniversary of arriving in our home country, we’ll be moving into our house.

john grouting tile floor

The bathroom floor has been tiled and grouted – now we need to get the toilet in!

We’ve been working frantically trying to get the house ready, but it’s not anywhere close. We finally decided we would move in as soon as we had a toilet. Everything else was a luxury. Including a shower.

So it is that we’ll soon leave our little casa de nada (house of nothing) and move into a real house, albeit one without a shower. We’ll unpack the barn and have real chairs to sit in and real beds to sleep in. I’ll have a real kitchen to cook in and we’ll have real dishes to eat out of rather than the recycled yogurt containers we’ve been using for seven months.

And I’ll have a washing machine.

I’m cracking up over my excitement about a washing machine. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was amazed when I found a laundromat. It was magical to walk in, throw my clothes in a machine, push a button, and *poof* just like that, my clothes were clean. Each and every time I load our dirty clothes in the car and drive to the laundromat I’m reminded anew of that magic. And to think I’ll soon have a washing machine in my own little house.

I’m trying hard to maintain my sense of wonder and amazement at the simple things that add so much to my life.

Sometimes I find myself slipping into the commercialism so rampant in my society, but then I reach down, grab myself by the bootstraps, and yank myself back out.

The other day as I drove the boys to Boy Scouts, the road was closed. We were running late and were in a hurry to get to their meeting and, as I turned off the main road onto some small lane running through a residential neighborhood, I found myself getting frustrated. “Why now?” I fumed. “Why couldn’t they close the road somewhere else or sometime else when it doesn’t matter?”

But then I took a deep breath and thought back to our 400-mile detour in Bolivia. On bikes. FOUR HUNDRED MILES!

The road we had planned to take through the center of the country was closed due to a strike. Our options were limited, but the best included climbing up and over the Andes Mountains before dropping down into the Amazon basin. From there we turned right and headed into Argentina. Our detour took us a couple weeks of cycling.

And I got upset about a mile? In a car? What’s wrong with me? Have I changed that much in seven months?

My friend Justin from The Great Family Escape was talking the other day about how hard it is to escape the corporate influence in the USA.

“I want to live without the influence of all this stuff and be able to see the world as it’s meant to be seen – AD FREE! For me, the only way to find out what I can live without is to obviously live without it. And the only way I think I can do that successfully or fully, is to get myself and my family away from all this crap. To move our lives away from the maddening crowd and relearn life.”

Do we really need to get away from the ads and corporate influence? Or can we simply make conscious decisions to live life more simply?

be yourself in a world trying to change youI admit I’m struggling with that idea. I walk into K-Mart to buy dish soap and see the gorgeous crystal bracelet sitting there and immediately fall into that “must have” trap. Or I go to the bead store to buy a simple finding for something I’m making and fall in love with sparkly Czech beads.

I’m trying to keep my life simple. I don’t necessarily want it as simple as it was on the road, but I don’t need the excesses that most Americans consider essential.

I love having a frying pan in addition to my pot and a chair to sit on rather than hoping for a stump. I love having more than two sets of clothing and more than one pair of shoes. It’s really nice to have a lamp to use while reading in bed rather than having to hold a tiny little penlight. I like having a consistent source of hot water. Heck – I enjoy having water!

I think the answer to dealing with American consumerism comes down to making conscious decisions and living intentionally.

Whatever I buy now I truly evaluate: will this item add value to my life or am I buying it simply to spend money. If it’s something that will truly make me happy for whatever reason, then I have no problem buying it. If not, I pass it by.

attitude changes everythingAs I look around my casa de nada, I’m surprised to see how full it is. When we arrived here seven months ago we arrived with only the contents of our panniers. Now, we’ve got significantly more than that. I like to think we’ve got enough.

It’s been seven months – 210 days. In many ways I’m scared to see how much “stuff” I will have amassed by one year. How much of an impact will the American corporate influence have on me?

I truly hope I will come back here in five months and report that we’re still living simply. And I hope I still marvel at my washing machine each and every time I put a load of clothes in it.

***Are you making conscious decisions and living intentionally?***

******

Follow us on Twitter: @familyonbikes and Facebook: Family on Bikes

Get our posts delivered directly to your email inbox – sign up here!

Seven months on – and still living (more or less) simply is a post from: Family on Bikes. Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive your free e-book: Bicycle Touring with Children; A Guide to Getting Started.



Syndicated from nancy, via Family on Bikes, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

Presale on now! Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures

November 1, 2011 in Bicycle Touring, family bike touring, family travel by nancy | Permalink

The original post by nancy was posted here, you can comment there!

YAY!!! It’s happening! Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures will be available soon!

Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered AdventuresThis is the journey that started it all. When the boys were in third grade (2006/07) we took a “one year career break” to cycle around the USA and Mexico. It’s now five years later, and our career break hasn’t ended yet :)

Perhaps it was a midlife crisis, or maybe just a simple plea for a life less ordinary, but one day we realized the American Dream wasn’t the be-all and end-all we had hoped it was and decided to throw caution to the wind. We took off with our 8-year-old twins to explore our country on two wheels.

Throughout our twelve-month, 9300-mile journey through nineteen US states and five Mexican states, we discovered a side of life seldom portrayed on the nightly news or in the morning paper. Total strangers reached out and embraced us, showing us a kinder, gentler side of humanity than the news would lead you to think existed. Those Road Angels enriched our lives by offering a warm shower, a soft bed to sleep in, or a hot meal after a full day on the road. Life on the road provided unlimited opportunities to meet ordinary people – rich and poor, American and Mexican, city dwellers and country folk – and all four of us learned to appreciate the individuality of the wide variety of people we encountered.

We are now taking orders and will ship the book as soon as we’ve got it – with any luck it’ll be by the end of this month. For those wondering, we will have it on Kindle but that will happen after we have the print version ready.

Click here to order your copy now!

******

Follow us on Twitter: @familyonbikes and Facebook: Family on Bikes

Get our posts delivered directly to your email inbox – sign up here!

Presale on now! Twenty Miles per Cookie: 9000 Miles of Kid-Powered Adventures is a post from: Family on Bikes. Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive your free e-book: Bicycle Touring with Children; A Guide to Getting Started.



Syndicated from nancy, via Family on Bikes, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

pacific dreams and real estate schemes

October 30, 2011 in idle musings, pacific ocean, Panama, the sea, village life by anna | Permalink

The original post by anna was posted here, you can comment there!

Santa Catalina is a fishing village circled by real estate sharks. There is already blood in the water and so it is only a matter of time before the feeding frenzy begins in earnest.

But right now you can still meet a surfer from Devon there who attended the same boarding school as Winston Churchill yet walks and talks with the angels and aspires to draw all his sustenance from sunlight. Or spend the sunset hour over a cup of tea with a ex-SWAT team Memphis policeman turned soul searching beach bum. But I cannot claim that any of the charaters involved are fictional and their stories are probably not mine to tell.

You can lie on your back on a cliff top listening to the waves roll in against the shore and pick out the constellations you recognise in the night sky in real darkness. At this time of year, before midnight, Scorpio sits low towards the horizon in the south west. But if you happen to wake in the wee early hours not so long before dawn and raise your eyes to the heavens it is Orion, Pelaides, Tauras and Gemini that you will find there. And tonight Venus will rise just above the thinnest sliver of a new moon above the island.

You can find opportunity to ponder the statement that you are more likely to get struck by lightening than be attacked by a shark. And then be provided with proof through encountering a guy who makes his living diving, surfs in his spare time, and, of course, has never been savaged by any form of marine life. His father, who cannot swim and so clearly is more in danger of drowning than being eaten by a shark, has had the misfortune of having been struck by lightening twice. You can try to imagine the mathematical equation that might accurately describe the myriad possibilities and probabilities contained in those relationships.

In a village you can discover that what to some people are incorrigible problem neighbours, to you, turn out to be a series of shy and serious children who come to your door for help with their homework or to borrow the hoola hoops you happen to have leaning up against the wall by the back door or ask to use your bicycle pump or occasionally beg a little cooking oil or salt on behalf of even shyer adults. Their mother – or maybe it is an aunt - will stand quietly in the background observing. Later, if a horse happens  to wander through the yard in the rain and you manage to catch the beast and return it to its place, tethered to the shared fence, that same woman might promise that you can ride it on a day when the sun is shining.

You can observe first hand the relative merits of a big stick and harsh words or a small treat and a lot of kindness in the realm of dog management and use the information to extrapolate various other lessons about life.

Syndicated from anna, via 1000 WORDS, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning

October 29, 2011 in book review, pacific ocean, sailing, swept, torre deroche by nancy | Permalink

The original post by nancy was posted here, you can comment there!

I’ve often said that riding a bike is something anybody can do. It’s pretty easy really, especially if you compare it to sailing across the Pacific.

Swept: Love with a Chance of DrowningI just finished reading Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche and my thoughts were confirmed – riding a bike around the world is way easier than floating the ocean in a great big bathtub.

Torre decided to face her fears and head out in a boat rather than face the possibility of losing the love of her life. Together she and Ivan spent a couple of years exploring tiny islands dotting the Pacific – but to get there they had to cross the big, wide ocean itself.

Swept is a delightful book and Torre is a great storyteller. She takes you along for the ride and you’ll feel her fear and her elation. I especially enjoyed her colorful descriptions.

  • Advice comes in many forms and there is no shortage of it going around. Finding a voice of reason between the kamikaze brave and those who are too afraid to leave the dock is a challenge. Conflicting opinions have me agonizing around the clock, trying to decide which items are imperative and what’s a superfluous safety measure, equivalent to, say, wearing knee pads and a helmet while riding public transport.
  • This doesn’t seem real. Apparently, we’re running away from an enormous, menacing vessel weighed down by the tonnage of shoes, cotton T-shirts, or plastic bouncy balls in quantities that could flatten us. I only know this because of little dots on a screen that look like Pac-Man food.
  • It’s only midday, but bars are blasting pop medleys to drunk crowds. I am alarmed to see so many porcelain-white travelers slamming back rows of shots, getting messy under the hot sun. Tomorrow, many of them are going to wake up with hangovers and sunburns that look as though they’ve been slapped on the back of the legs by Cuban bongo players; binge-sunbathers wearing the imprint of yesterday’s outfit. I know the feeling.

Torre graciously consented to answer a few questions for me:

I simply cannot comprehend the idea of jumping into a great big floating bathtub and heading out to the middle of the ocean. No way, no how. How did you bring yourself to do it?

Before I met Ivan, I said to my friends, “I want to meet someone who rocks my world.” It’s funny how you get what you wish for! I was feeling restless and bored, and I wanted to do something radical to shake up my life, so I left my home in Australia and moved to San Francisco for a year. Then … along comes this guy with a boat who offers to sail me home to Australia via the South Pacific islands, and I felt like I had only one choice: jump aboard. I was terrified of the ocean, but I was more terrified of returning to Australia alone to resume a stagnant, pointless life.

Torre DeRoche

Once you left shore, there was no escape. There was no hotel to duck into when the weather turned bad or no way to get additional food if you ran out. Once you left the dock, you were committed – hook, line, and sinker. Tell me about that – what was the worst part about it? Were there are aspects of the decision that were surprisingly easy?

We stocked plenty of food and water (enough for 6 months), but we didn’t have a fridge, so we had to live off long-life food. I missed fruit, vegetables, meats, and dairy products. We were tragically handicapped when it came to catching fish, so dinners mostly consisted of a canned something-or-other. I’m not sure if you’ve ever lived on a diet devoid of fresh produce, but if you have, you’ll know that the colon doesn’t thank you for it.

As for the easy parts: life became a breeze once we arrived in the islands and set down our anchor. Then, weeks slipped by as we relaxed, swam, read, and explored.

The main reason I can’t imagine sailing around the world is the tedium of it; looking outside and seeing nothing but miles and miles of blue water. For days on end. I know the ocean changes, but does it really change enough to make it interesting?

It’s funny – I’d ask the same question about bike touring! When I returned home from sailing, I went on a road trip across Australia. I intended to drive from Melbourne to Perth. Lots of people warned me that the Nullarbor Plain is really boring. “I’ve sailed a frickin’ ocean, I can handle ‘boring,’” I said. But a week into the road trip, I was bored! I made it as far as Adelaide (a quarter of the way) before I did a U-turn.

So I guess all that rolling blue is interesting. It lulls you into a meditation, which is a bit like watching campfire flames. It forces you to appreciate small things, like the shape of the waves, the fluffiness of the clouds, the intensity of a sunset, and the phases of the moon. But after 26 days without any land in sight, I longed to see something other than fluffy f@%&ing clouds.

You didn’t talk much about weather. Did you pass through any really horrid, dreadful, oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-die storms way out in the middle of the Pacific? Or was Mother Nature your friend during that time?

No, we never had any major storms. If you’re careful about your passage-making, you can generally avoid anything too hairy. We were careful, and we also got lucky. We had some rough weather, but no perfect storms or hurricanes!

How much of a help were you on the boat? All along you talk about Ivan driving it, but then at one point you lose power and you suddenly jump into gear and take over. Had you learned that by helping throughout the journey, or just by watching? Either way, color me impressed.

When we were anchored, I did half the work. I cooked, cleaned, repaired, organised, scrubbed, and polished. I studied books, ropes, and sailing techniques, and I even read a book about fibreglass repair (a gripping read!). A lot of what goes on aboard a boat is logic, so when something went wrong, I just used my sense of reason to figure it out.

Because I was so seasick whenever we went out to sea, Ivan did all the sailing and navigation, while I snacked on Bonine. Though I never had to do it alone, I felt capable of sailing the boat just from observing it for two years. Sailboats are intuitive – it’s a dance with the wind.

What’s your life like now? What adventures lay on the horizon for you?

My life is a lot different. I’ve become a risk-taker, and my values have changed radically. There’s a quote that goes: “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” These days, I’m losing sight of the shore a lot.

Order your copy today!

******

Follow us on Twitter: @familyonbikes and Facebook: Family on Bikes

Get our posts delivered directly to your email inbox – sign up here!

Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning is a post from: Family on Bikes. Sign up for our monthly newsletter to receive your free e-book: Bicycle Touring with Children; A Guide to Getting Started.



Syndicated from nancy, via Family on Bikes, leave comments there!

No tags for this post.

« Older entries