Tag Archives: planning to leave home

organizing to work and live on the road

Are We Home Yet? Pros and cons of the freewheeling freelance life.

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Trip update: I am in Pinecrest, Florida, a village south of Coral Gables. My host is also a freelance translator, so her family and I have had plenty of time to work in our respective spaces around the house.

Seasons 52

A bicycle kit may get stares in fine restaurants, but it still gets service. Seasons 52 in Coral Gables.

On Saturday, I had dinner with Stefano, another colleague, and his wife Lucia, at Seasons 52 on the Miracle Mile. He has been freelancing on the road for more than 20 years, because his principal activity is missionary work – for which he is not paid. His translation work is their family income. Even without a bicycle, he has certainly proven that he can make a living while travelling to churches and missions all over the world, with and without his family.

Tuesday, another translation job came in, which kept me off my bicycle for two days. As I worked indoors, heavy rain beat on the roof. While I was working, ATIF, the local association of language mediators, invited me to present an all-day workshop at Florida International University, so I will be staying in the Miami area for an extra week. Considering the weather that awaits me up north, I cannot complain!

It is time to take stock of this idea. After four months on the road, how do I feel about it? Continue reading →

Money talks: louder, please (or softer).

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Trip update: I hated to leave Tampa, but I have people to see and appointments to keep in other cities. Tampa will remain a pleasant memory for the good company and the smooth roads. I really enjoyed running errands and meeting friends. Covering 100 km in a day just seemed so normal in a flat place like Tampa Bay. Continue reading →

Money talks: can I afford this?

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2014-01-12 Home in Tampa

Home in Tampa: cozy, convenient, clean and affordable.

Trip update: Saturday night I pulled into a cheap motel in Land o Lakes, exhausted from pushing against a stiff headwind all day. The first place to stay was so far down US 41, that I only had 30 km to my hotel in Tampa the next day. I am staying at the Suburban Extended Stay Hotel Airport in Tampa all week, enjoying a cozy little efficiency that has everything I need and nothing that I don’t.

The bounce box arrived in good condition (to my surprise), so I can reuse it. I will replace it with two smaller boxes at the next mail stop.

This week marks the end of the planned part of the Southern Swing 2013. I have spent the week assessing the first four months of the trip, and laying out the next three months in broad strokes.

I have not finished closing out the financial year for my company, but I analyzed the cash flow in the last quarter. That includes the three months that I spent bicycling from Keller, Texas, to Gainesville, Florida. The data should be adequate to determine if I am making enough to keep this up indefinitely.

The short answer is yes. Continue reading →

Office support on the road

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Trip update: Last weekend, I rode from Gainesville to Ocala, Florida, through the vast horse country in Marion County. Marion is one of the largest counties in Florida and has more horses than any other county in the USA. What I found surprising was that the oldest horse farm in Marion is only 50 years old, so the equine industry made a massive impact on Central Florida in a very short time. We are talking racehorses here, and the animals staring proudly at me across the fences were some of the most beautiful horses I have ever seen.

I spent four days with my high school classmate Tom and his wife Marcia. It has been a special pleasure of this trip to connect with people whom I have not seen for decades. I felt so very much at home, that I hated to leave on Wednesday, to continue my trip. I stayed with George and Susan in Inverness, thanks to the Warm Showers organization (www.warmshowers.org). They rode the Withlacoochie Trail with me, and showed me where to shop, eat and even get my bike fixed. They ride Cat-trikes, which are high-end recumbents made of aluminum. Very cool and very lightweight (www.catrike.com).

Susan and George head out on their Cat-trikes.

Susan and George head out on their Cat-trikes.

Now I am on my way to connect with the bounce box that I mailed from Gainesville. I am also looking forward to a mail shipment at the next stop, which brings me to the subject of this week’s article.

Continue reading →

No card, no service: insurance on the road

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Trip update: Staying with Rich and Mary in Southport allowed my blister to heal nicely. Sunday, we went to lunch in Panama City, getting there in Rich’s Grand Banks Trawler, Calypso.

Rich and his Trawler Yacht, Calypso.

Rich and his Trawler Yacht, Calypso.

On Monday, I let them give me another day off the bike by taking me to my next stop, Port St. Joe. It was one of Mary’s favorite shopping destinations, so we made it an outing.

Continue reading →

That hurt! Dealing with sickness and injury

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Trip update: The Southern Swing 2013 is swinging again. Last Saturday, I rode my loaded bicycle through the freezing rain to the bus station in Charlottesville, Virginia, and boarded a Greyhound bus for Pensacola, Florida. Pensacola is a pleasant city at the extreme western edge of Florida. To my surprise, it was colder there than it had been in Charlottesville, so I was glad that I had my winter bicycle kit on. It felt good to curl into a warm bed at the home of one of my shipmates from my Navy days. Continue reading →

Cutting the umbilical cord

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Trip update: I am still in Charlottesville, helping Daniel move things back into the house. I am living out of my bounce box in the guest flat (formerly my apartment), and I intend to leave it ready for the next visitor. Except for buying more groceries than normal, the situation is similar to staying with my cousins in Texas. I am taking advantage of the sudden return to Charlottesville to repack my boxes more rationally, as I described last week.

This is a good time to discuss the support that Daniel and Tracy provide me. Arguably, for me to live truly on the road, I should be able to cut the umbilical cord to home. Over the coming months, I will test different ways to replace these services: Continue reading →

What I left behind

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Trip update. Well, I didn’t really get down to a bicycle and a bounce box. Last Monday in a chilling rain, I shipped two boxes UPS to Charlottesville, Virginia. Actually, one of them would not have been there, had I shipped the ATA Conference stuff from San Antonio, but it made sense to send it to Houston, where I was not paying for a hotel, then take my time trying to organize the boxes.

Monday night, I boarded a bus for Charlottesville, Virginia. This represents something of an interruption in the Southern Swing, but it makes sense: Continue reading →

What to take

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Trip update. I am still in Houston, Texas, visiting with my cousins, and working on both a translation and business left over from the ATA Conference. I will be hitting the road the day after tomorrow, but not before hearing the Houston Symphony perform Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4. Houston is a full-size, proper city, and I am enjoying being surrounded by the conveniences and luxuries of a major metropolitan area.

Being here has allowed me to evaluate my packing. There are some things that I wish I had brought, and there are other things that I should have left behind. This week, I would like to discuss what I brought. It is a very personal list; anyone’s packing list for a trip like this will be unique. Continue reading →

The Repair Kit

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Trip update: I spent last weekend and Monday riding down the Old Chisolm Trail from Georgetown, Texas, to San Antonio. The famous site of the pre-railroad cattle drives snakes north-south along the Balcones Fault, where sharp hills look out over the plains to East Texas. Springs in the Fault and centuries of flash floods have cut rivers and arroyos across the path of the Trail. You can see them running below the bridges of Interstate Highway 35 and the railroad to Mexico.

In Austin, I relearned the lesson that roaming with a cellphone puts a serious drain on the battery. I had not been in airplane mode as much as I thought, but with the help of the technicians at Best Buy and Battery Giant, I determined that my phone was not dying yet. I bought a spare battery. It is in a waterproof bag with 50% charge, the best for long-term storage. The next day, I was more attentive about staying in airplane mode except to check messages every hour. The battery lasted just fine.

When I rolled into Austin, I could immediately appreciate why the League of American Bicyclists designated the city as a Silver-level Bicycle Friendly Community. It was more than the infrastructure (lanes, signs, etc.). There was an attitude in the traffic. With so many bicycles and pedicabs, the drivers just seemed to flow naturally with the non-motorized road users. Police in pairs on bicycles did not hurt, and reportedly, they are even-handed about ticketing bicyclists as well as motorists.

From loose cleats and clickety pedals to flat tires, I have already had to reach into my repair kit several times each week. Let’s see what’s in there. Continue reading →