Category Archives: working on the road

Budapest: the BP-17 Translation Conference

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The BP-17 Translation Conference main program opened on Friday morning, 5 May, at the belle époque Urania Theatre. A series of 18-minute TED-X style talks filled the day from 09:40 to 21:00 that night. Talks, coffee breaks, lunch and supper all took place at the theatre. By the way, BP stands for “business + practice,” although we had fun making up all sorts of other expansions of those two letters (http://bpconf.com/story-bp-translation-conferences/). Continue reading →

Balatonfüred to Budapest

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Wednesday the 3rd of May, I awoke to an overcast morning with the threat of more rain. The air smelled fresh as it does in a clean place with the air recently rinsed. I had planned to take the 13:59 train to Budapest, so I rose late and fixed myself a leisurely breakfast. I rode to the station (only 600 m away) with almost an hour to spare, just to be sure that I had not read any signs wrong. The station had walk-on access to the platform from the street. Continue reading →

Lake Balaton: Keszthely to Balatonfüred

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Monday was May Day, also Labor Day and a major holiday in much of the world – especially the former Warsaw Pact countries. I knew that everything would be closed, so I had bought some yoghurt and brioches at the 05-22 market last night for breakfast. My neighbors (two Germans, one Austrian, one Swiss) all drove off to find breakfast, I know not where. Continue reading →

Into Eastern Europe: Kazlje to Keszthely

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As I passed from Italy into Slovenia on Wednesday, the 26th of April, the rain began to fall lightly. The border was only 12 km from the town of Kazlje, where I would be staying with Couchsurfing hosts Marco and Arletta. Sežana disappeared suddenly. I found myself on a well-paved highway rolling gently through a thick wood. Continue reading →

Updating the great experiment (2013-2020)

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Leaving Georgetown, TexasSEVEN YEARS AGO, I set out on my bicycle to see if I could support myself exclusively from my work (translation) while living on the road. For the last quarter of 2013, I rode the Southern Swing 2013, which you can read about by choosing that category in this blog. A lot has changed since then, and today I want to discuss those changes. Continue reading →

Important lessons (re)learned (2020)

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When this blog was six weeks old, I summarized what I had learned from the three rides to date. Seven years and many thousands of kilometers later, those lessons have stood the test of time, but I have learned a couple of new ones. I had not met Cheryl back then, and my mentor has taught me much more than I could have learned alone.  Continue reading →

Update: lessons learned from the GNI 2012.

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Starting this week, I will begin a series of updates to the posts about working on the road. It is, after all, the reason that I started this blog, and much has changed in eight years. Enjoy! Continue reading →

Maintaining your languages

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Answering my challenge, Ask Me Anything, my friend Gio from Miami wrote:

“How do manage to keep your languages active and up to date while on the road?” Continue reading →

Keep the car or not? The rest of the story.

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2014-04-25 jetta port bowIf you are considering your first extended ride, and you live alone, you may wonder what to do with your car. If you have already done a tour, you may wonder whether you need a car. I have been on both sides of the question. I hope this helps. Continue reading →

Getting a good night’s sleep

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The winter holidays see many of us stressed out with too many commitments. At this time of year, I hear more complaining about “not being able to sleep,” and it seems a good time to bring up some research I did six years ago on this subject. It turns out that there is more to interfere with sleep during the holidays than just a shortage of time.
Continue reading →