Keys Disease

"Keys Disease," that infectious virus that temps every visitor to the Florida Keys to stay far longer than originally intended. (from http://www.squidoo.com/Keys-Disease)

How can you not fall in love?

First, an apology to anyone who reads this blog with regularity and enjoys getting updates on our little adventure.  The month of December seems to have gotten away from me, but not for the usual reasons of shopping and holiday preparation.

After my last post in which I talked about us not knowing which way to go, we spent a lot of time brainstorming and soul searching to find what we really thought would be the best option for us at this time.  We looked at boats again, but ultimately came to the conclusion that we just can’t afford that right now.  We talked about going West, but with the weather this time of year we ultimately decided to get as far south as we could and stay as warm as possible this winter.

So, we headed back to the Florida Keys, this time to find a place to stay.  When we first visited the Keys in November we knew there was something special for us there.  It’s the water, it’s the coconut palms, and it’s the laid back free-spirited vibe that one gets down here.  Short of moving to the actual Caribbean, this is the closest you can get and still drive to it, and it’s pretty great.

We looked at a half dozen apartments between Key Largo at the northern end of the keys and Stock Island, which is next to Key West at the southern end of the keys.  We ultimately settled on a small (400 sq. ft. or so) studio in Key Largo, with a deck that is twice the size of the apartment on a corner lot with two canals running by.  Included in the lease is 25’ of dock space, so some sort of boat is definitely in our future.

See, dock space!

After the whirlwind second tour of the Keys and a few days unpacking the RV and settling into the apartment, we made a mad dash back to NY to return the Rialta to my family and pick up our Honda Element and two kayaks and some other things we had been storing.  It was a brief visit, but enough to see both of our families, visit some friends, and give us a taste of the winter we have left behind.  After freezing our butts off in NY for most of a week, driving back into south Florida felt like driving into spring time;  layers were shed, windows were opened, the sun came out, and it was good!

We have been settling in nicely in our new digs.  After living in the 150 sqare feet of the motor home for two months, a studio apartment feels downright palatial.  It’s great to have a kitchen again, and a full sized shower.  What really sold us on this place though was the tremendous amount of deck and dock space with it being right on the canals.  We have already been visited by manatees a couple of times.  

As I write this, we are experiencing something of a cold front in the Keys, today’s daytime high is only expected to be in the upper 50s!  Imagine that!  At the end of December, we are experiencing the same weather we wouldn’t have seen in NY until late March.  Sold.

So, what does this mean for this blog?  Has our change in course been completed?  

In short, I don’t think so.  Living on a sailboat and cruising still loom large in our dreams.  Our new life in the Keys is probably just a port of call on our meandering journey through life.  But it is definitely a nice stop.

I will keep posting about our adventures, and this may turn into a more frequent "here is the cool place to kayak that we found today" type of blog for a while.  But I want to keep everyone updated on where we stand on our journey at large, how we are able to live this life because we chose to live simply, and ultimately how these “crazy” decisions have enabled us to live a life closer to our dreams.

What We Like (and Don't)

Parked in Charleston, SC

Well we’ve been living pretty much full time in the 160 sq. ft. of space allotted in our VW Rialta for about three weeks now.  Here’s a brief list of things we like and don’t like about it:

Like

Home is where we park

Life is simplified

Not having clutter

Freedom (though it’s quite scary sometimes)

Exploration, we’ve seen some truly stunning scenery

As winter gets closer, we’ve only gotten warmer

Cooking simple meals with a two burner stove

We don’t have a lot of clothes, hence it is simple to get dressed

We use our microwave as an extra cabinet rather than a microwave

It’s cozy

Friendly locals (more the further south we’ve gotten)

We can fit in most parking places in the city (only 22’ long)

We have a TV, but we don’t watch it (we watch the occasional movie or show on the laptop)

Dislike

Tolls

Staying at WalMart too much

The suburbs that we have to drive through to get to the Wal-Marts

Not having a sense of community – we miss our friends, and our local shops

Doing dishes in a mini-sink

Banging a knee or a head into something at least once a day

Having to move various items (ie. Fishing rods) to get to storage (ie. the kitchen cabinet)

One of us can sit while eating, the other has to stand (we’re sleeping on the dinette)

Things We Miss

The aforementioned friends and local shops

Unlimited hot showers

Laundry facilities

Dishwasher

Going out to eat more often – we’re on a very limited budget to be doing this

Being able to be “greener” (we had a worm compost at our house)

Grocery shopping for more than two days at a time

A couch

A kitchen table

--

All in all, this has been a great experience thus far.  We have our days where we look at each other and say “what the f*ck are we doing!?”, but the good experiences outweigh the bad.  In looking over our lists of likes and dislikes, it seems the things we dislike or miss are many of the conveniences that we take for granted when living in a house or an apartment: furniture, unlimited water on demand, etc.

Will we stay living in an RV forever?  No.  Our ultimate dream is still to live on a sailboat.  We are living in less space than the size sailboat we will eventually live on, so this has/continues to be a good primer for that.  In the meantime we will continue our travels on land, but keep the water in our hearts.

A Week of Transition

It's been a week since I left Albany, NY, my home for the past ten years.  I'd wanted to leave for quite a while now, so there haven't really been any feelings of nostalgia for it.  Of course I'll always miss my friends who are still there, but with our new mobile lifestyle I have faith that I will see them all again.

Our first stop after leaving Albany was at my in-laws on Long Island.  We were there until Wednesday of this week arranging and re-arranging our new 160 +/- sq. ft. of living space.  That's 10% of the square footage we had when we lived in our house.  We've gotten rid of so much, but we still ended up with two large garbage bags of clothes for Goodwill and some other miscellaneous errata that was donated.  It's good to know that our no longer wanted or needed items can have a new life with a new owner.

On Wednesday we left for Trenton, NJ.  An unlikely stop, I know, but we decided to take the opportunity to visit with some family there.  We ended up staying for two days as we found out that some other cousins were coming into town on the second day.  We hemmed and hawed about the decisions to stay, feeling like we had to get on to our next destination, but it dawned on us that we didn't really have to.  We don't have to be anywhere specific until at least the 30th.  The kind of freedom we are now experiencing is both liberating and frightening.

On the second day in Trenton we came upon an unexpected surprise at the Trenton City Museum located in Cadwalader Park.  There was a good art exhibit featuring local artists in the renovated 1800s summer home that the museum occupies.  The park itself was designed by the same fellow who designed Central Park in NYC, and Washington Park in good old Albany, so it was a nice place to spend an afternoon walking the dog and soaking up some sunshine.

We've noticed we are about two weeks behind the climate in Albany.  Whereas they got flurries last night and most of the leaves are gone, we have had temperatures in the 60s and there is still a lot of green on the trees.  If we plan this right, this nice weather will follow us all the way down the coast.

Today we left Trenton and headed for our first real destination:  Annapolis, MD, the sailing capital of America.  You see, even though we decided to "cruise" in an RV, we are still sailors at heart.  I'd much rather be anchored in a nice cove than boondocking in a Sam's Club parking lot, but such is life.  The opportunity to use an RV came along and we jumped on it, we'll get to the boat soon enough.

This week has seen a lot of change.  Change in the amount of space we live in.  Change in our schedules.  Change in the climate (at least our climate, I won't get into global warming here).  Changes in our spending habits.

We've finally started on our journey.  It's scary, it's overwhelming, it's fun and it's exciting.  This new life will take some getting used to, but we are living our life by our design and for ourselves.  There's no going back!

"Living the Dream"

A typical hallway conversation at my workplace:

Person 1:  "How's it going buddy?"

Person 2: (in a dejected and sarcastically toned voice) "Just living the dream..."

I hear this too often.  Why don't we just stop?  If you aren't living the life you want to live, living your dream, it is time to change.

The problem is that most of us think we have to work for forty or more years and sock money away to get to the point where we can go live our dreams, some would call it retirement.  Somewhere along that journey we lose our youthful ambition and the daydreams we had as children.  The simple fact is that almost anything is possible with enough determination and initiative.

What I mean is, I can't walk onto an NFL team as a quarterback (one type of dream), but I can get out of the work-a-day life I have been leading and start living life on my own terms.  It won't be easy, and it will take some sacrifice, but what is leading the life you want worth?

Too many people are unhappy, or just content with their lot in life.  But they assume that is how it is supposed to be: you work, save your pennies, and then "someday" you'll get to enjoy the things you are truly passionate about. 

Part of the reason for writing this blog is to challenge that assumption. 

Maybe I am crazy, but I feel there has got to be a better way.  There's got to be a better way than driving thirty minutes to work to sit at a desk under fluorescent lights while staring at a computer screen for nine hours only to turn around and drive thirty minutes home eat and watch TV till you fall into a fitful sleep only to repeat tomorrow.

My wife, Trisha, recently broke free of that trend.  By renting our house and getting rid of much of our stuff, she was able to quit her job to focus on starting a business for us.  It's nothing too fancy, no dot-com start up that will turn us into uber-billionaires, but rather a seasonal concession business that we can hopefully work at for an eventual six month on/six month off schedule.

I'll soon follow her out the door away from corporate America.  Our plans now include traveling south by RV for the winter.  It would be better if it was by boat, but plans change and we have to re-evaluate our situation and adapt to the challenges at hand.  We are sticking with our overarching plan of heading south before winter sets in, and we are still going to be looking for boats, while we journey in our "land-yacht".

I'll leave you with a quote from Bob Bitchin of Lattitude & Attitudes fame:

"Don't dream your life, live your dreams"

Decisions are a coming...

Sunset over Lake Champlain from Burlington, VT

As of around 10 this morning, we have to move out of our house by September 1st.  No, it didn't sell.  We rented it.

We put it up on Craigslist last weekend and on Tuesday night we showed it to a group of young guys, about our age actually, who we have ended up renting it to.  We put it up for rent on a whim, just to see if there was any interest.  There was no need for us to sign today, other than to give us incentive to get moving.  To shake off the rust brought on by the stagnation of the past few months.

So what next?

Option 1) My work has offered me a transfer to Burlington, VT.  We have an office there that has loads of potential to grow, and they see me as someone who could grow it.  This option has a lot going for it:  Burlington is a great town, there are good cruising grounds there where we could hone our skills in the next year or two, I'd have the potential to make more money.

Option 2) Move to the Caribbean.  I know, its kind of like cheating to just move there without getting a boat and cruising there, right?  But we were talking about it and thought, why the heck not?  It's easy to move to the USVI, and if we go down in October/November there are bound to be plenty of job openings in the tourist industry.  Fun stuff like being a mate on a sailboat.  Or maybe we start our own little business.

Obviously option 1 is the safe option and option 2 is the "what the f**k do you kids think you are doing?" option.  But life is short, we (probably) only get one shot, so we have to figure out what is really going to make us happy.

No one can give us permission to go with either option except ourselves.  We just have to have the courage to sign that permission slip and hand it to the principal and go...

Dead Blog?

 

I've read a few times that if you don't keep up a schedule of posting that you will lose interest in your blog and lose readership.  It makes sense.  The internet is a fickle place, with boundless amounts of information for every possible interest...

Well here it is almost a month since my last post!  In looking back at the blog over the past few months it seems that I was posting pretty regularly just before we listed our house for sale.  In those days I was full of optimism and really felt that we would have moved past this point in our lives by now (July).  Well we haven't, the house is still for sale, we have dropped the asking price by more than 17k and can't go much lower before selling it will eat into a significant chunk of our savings.

Everything else is on track though.  We have been saving money and paring down our possessions. 

We actually should be really content and happy with the life we have.  We have both received promotions at work in the last year, we have a nice house, and lots of other things going for us.  The problem is now that this dream of living simply on a sailboat has gotten into our heads, it just makes so much sense and we can't get it out again.

But I digress. 

The blog isn't dead, it is just that there hasn't been much "Changing Course" to talk about.  In keeping with the sailing analogies:  It seems the wind has been knocked out of my sails.

On the bright side, we are taking a three day live aboard sailing class this coming weekend on Lake Champlain.  I think a re-cap of the class will make for a good blog post.

Till then...

Fear & Permission

Chris Guillebeau is a well known blogger who writes about unconventional strategies for life, work, and travel.

This video resonated with me after the doldrums that we have been experiencing here lately.  The whole point of this change in our lives is to live without fear and not have to ask permission to do what we want.  I especially enjoyed Chris's points about how you cannot bargain with fear, or a crocodile, even if you play it "safe".

Life is unpredictable... 

...we should strive everyday to work towards our dreams.  No one but ourselves can give us the permission to go out and make these dreams real.

Doldrums

The "Doldrums" are an area around the equator in the intertropical convergence zone that are known to sailors for their light and variable wind patterns, often resulting in the boat having to motor through, or wait for a favorable wind shift.

While we are some 42 deg. North of the equator, that is what it has felt like around here lately.  We haven't made any forward progress on the sale of the house, and while we have looked at some boats we haven't found any particular one of interest.

So here we sit, seemingly adrift and waiting for a favorable shift in the wind...

What do you do to keep your spirits up when you get stuck in the Doldrums?

Plans & Schedules & Fate

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving" ~ Lao Tzu

"Those who fail to plan, plan to fail"

The second quote there is what I have heard from my Dad throughout my life.  I think there is merit to both.

As we get closer and closer to the start of our adventure, I hope to be able to transition more to Lau Tzu's line of thinking.  But it has been a mixture of planning, schedules, and the un-planned that has gotten us this far.

When we went to Jamaica for our honeymoon in 2006, I had never been on a sailboat, let alone to the tropics, before. There are moments in your life when time divides, when it splits to what came before and everything after it.  To me Jamaica was one of those.  It was totally un-planned but has largely determined the past four years of our lives.

Though our time in the Caribbean was transformational, the idea to actually live on a sailboat probably didn't hit until sometime in 2008, almost two years later.  We made a trip to the Newport, RI boat show and that was probably the beginning of the actual realization that we could in fact live on a boat.

Since that time, we have had a mixture of plans & schedules.  Our schedule got pushed off from last year due to the economy and real estate markets at large.  We deemed that it wouldn't be worth selling our house at the time for a variety of reasons.  So our plans and schedule changed. 

Our current schedule has us listing the house for sale within a month and to be moving south to find a boat by September.  That is, unless we find a boat here in NY before that (we have a few scheduled to be looked at in the next month), then our plans will be tossed aside and fate will have intervened.
 
There are people out there who spend so much time planning and preparing and trying to figure out the perfect conditions and set of equipment, that their boats never leave the dock. 

On the other hand, if we were to go buy a boat tomorrow and sail away with little experience it could be hazardous to our lives. 

But, yet again, there are people like Pat & Ali who bought a boat after a weekend of looking and circumnavigated the globe with a day's worth of sailing lessons.

For us, I think it will be a balancing act of these three approaches.  As of this writing, we have no intention to circumnavigate the globe.  We would however like to sail through the Bahamas and into the Caribbean, perhaps setting up shop in the US Virgin Islands for a while.  We believe that we can do that with a little more practice and "big boat" (30 ft. range) experience.

So, these are our plans, in no particular order:

• To buy a boat small enough to be in our price range, but big enough for the two of us. 
• To learn to sail said boat to the best of our ability.
• To live minimally and simply enough to make our lifestyle sustainable on less than $1000/month.
• To enjoy ourselves while we are young and try not to go back to "work" again.

 Who knows what fate will have to say about these plans...

One final thought:  I've read that the most dangerous thing you can have aboard a sailboat is a schedule.  This has to do with rushing to be to the next port despite the weather or other conditions.  I really cannot wait to not have a schedule.

How about you, have you had plans where you feel fate has intervened?  Or the converse, were fate has led to your plans?

Minimizing Your Life

I often wonder if we are strange for wanting to "run away" from our typical American life. I mean here we are in our late 20s and we have so much stuff. We have a house, two cars, a flat screen TV, clothes, bikes, boats; by all accounts we are firmly entrenching ourselves into the middle class. Yet all we feel is that we have to get rid of it all and change the way we are headed.

We've been taking steps in the past year to reduce our consumption and the amount of stuff that we own. Last spring we had a big yard sale and managed to trim some of the fat. We've also been donating clothes to goodwill and the like. Still so much more remains.

There is a minimalist movement going on in the country now that we've recently been paying attention to. Maybe you have heard of the 100 things challenge? The idea is to reduce your worldly possessions to 100 items or less. To us it sounds very liberating. I mentioned it to some people at work and they seemed somewhat intrigued, but couldn't image in doing it themselves.

So, this spring we will be having another yard sale, maybe two. In some ways we'd love to do an estate sale where people could just come into our house and buy our things as if we had died. That would certainly make it easy.

What doesn't go in the sales will be donated to charity, and when we move south we'll take the smallest U-Haul possible. One thing about living on a boat is that we won't be able to re-accumulate this much stuff.

11 Months Later

It's always amazing to me when you look back in time at how fast it seems to have gone, while the future always seems to to be so far away.

We started this blog almost a year ago to chronicle our journey towards a new life. Unfortunately we haven't made it there yet. The biggest obstacle to overcome has been the sale of our home here in upstate NY. A year ago the real estate market was looking pretty dismal and we decided to step back and regroup before going forward.

When last we blogged, we were determining whether or not to renovate the attic into a functional second floor. Well, we decided it would be best to go forward with the work in order to add more equity. The work began in September and by November of 09 we had a fully functioning second floor. Thus far everyone who has seen it has been very impressed, and we are hoping it will be the edge that helps with the ultimate sale of the house.

The plan now is to list our house for sale on or about May 1st, 2010. That will be the 4 year anniversary of when we bought the house. As always there is a list of projects we would like to complete in order to get everything in tip top shape before the sale. If we can get near our eventual asking price, we will have enough to break free.

It's hard to believe how fast the last year has gone by, and all that we accomplished with this house. In a short few months our lives will be very different, I can't wait to look back a year from now and see what we've done.