Heather and Scott's Adventures

Spending Update

2012-01-15T03:36:00.000+11:00

Since part of our "freedom" to adventure involves TIGHT finances, I thought I would give a quick update on the spending situation. I'll keep it brief, this is a new thing for me to share. We've been in Baja for 2 months, and I've kept a log of all of our spending. Our slow pace and the cheaper diesel has been nice.

Camping/Visitor Visas: $130
Diesel: $300
Water (30 gallon fill up ~ $5): $24
Laundry/Car wash: $30
Food/Alcohol/Other: $1022
Monthly USA mail service: $25/month
Vehicle liability insurance: $196/year

You can easily get a picture of where we spend our money - stuffing our faces. We live well and we do not compromise on the things that are important to us. I am thankful everyday for what we have.

TOTAL COST PER DAY: $25

Happy hour at Frank and Kim's in Los Barriles

Los Barriles, Baja

2012-01-07T05:31:00.002+11:00

After our adventures at Punta Chivato we made our way south, with a few stops, to the windsport mecca of Los Barriles. We were on a bit of a mad dash trying to catch our friends, the Purwins family, who drove down to Los Barriles from Portland for their 3 week (!!!) holiday. We managed to catch them 2 days before they were going to head back north. I regretfully didn't take ANY pictures while we visited.

A stop on our way south at Juncalito beach backed by the Sierra de la Giganta mountains. Absolutely stunning.

Another reason we wanted to stop in Los Barriles was to catch up with Frank and Kim who bolted down here from the San Fran area to meet us. They hand-delivered some spare bike parts, a new car stereo, and essential booties for Scott. The booties were supposed to be spares, but we inadvertently left Scott's old booties at the previous surf spot. We can't thank them enough! As a bonus, we got to catch up with our friend, Rodney, who has always been a part of our Baja experience (in San Carlos) starting in 2000. It wouldn't be the same without having Rodney around.

Scott and Rodney greet Frank and Kim as they arrive in Los Barriles

We've found ourselves "stuck" in Los Barriles for the past 10 days visiting friends and finally getting our kiteboarding skills honed. You would have thought we were good kiteboarders by now, but you would be mistaken. We started kiting in 2003 near here (in La Ventana) but as we returned to the USA we pretty much quit kiteboarding. We took it up in 2009 during our travels in Australia. We haven't specifically travelled to good kiteboarding locations during our travels in OZ or NZ. We managed to get some good kiting in, only when the stars aligned. Los Barriles offers us some free beachfront camping, a town with all the supplies we could ever need, friends of the windsport persuasion, and some fantastic weather. I'm having trouble finding a reason to leave.

Our camping spot in front of the kite beach in LB

Link to December Pictures

Noche Buena at Punta Chivato

2011-12-25T07:42:00.000+11:00

by Scott

If there's one dish that Baja is famous for, it's fish tacos. Our first day south of the border, we stopped for roadside fish tacos in San Quintin. Since then, we've been rolling our own, and I've gotten a little bit cocky about it. Unlike New Zealand, my fishing here has been very successful. I tell Heather to just let me know when she wants fish tacos for dinner. I've never failed to deliver. Usually in less than 30 minutes. I'm like the Dominos of fish tacos. One time, it took one cast. Last night, the fish tacos would have been free.

We were at Punta Chivato on the Sea or Cortez. I spent several hours snorkeling with a spear -- not a spear gun -- that George from Abreojos gave me. I managed to get a scorpion fish. That was my intended target, but I was disappointed when I got it out of the water. It was much smaller than I thought. I hadn't accounted for the magnification under water. Everything looks bigger! Lesson learned. Sorry fish. He did swim away, so I hope he lived. I gave up spear fishing, deciding to wait until evening to get the rod and reel out.

Heading out for a snorkel at Punta Chivato

Later that afternoon, as we were returning from a run, we started collecting firewood near the lighthouse. As we were doing so, a massive feeding frenzy started just off shore. There were fish flying all over the place. We watched until the boil got close enough that we could see the large fish creating the frenzy. I sprinted the quarter mile back to the truck with an armful of firewood. Then, I sprinted the quarter mile back to the point with my fishing pole. My lungs were burning as I made my first cast. The lure had barely hit the water when it was savagely attacked. Seeing the long slender body, I was hoping it was sierra. Unfortunately, it was a 2-foot-long barracuda. We've eaten barracuda once, and I don't have fond memories, so I threw it back. Another cast. Another barracuda. After catching and releasing half a dozen of them, I realized that the sun was getting low. If I was going to catch anything other than barracuda, I needed to go down to my snorkeling spot.

This time, I am walking. I see Heather coming towards me. Every few steps, she stops, bends down, picks something up, and throws it in the water. What is she doing? Skipping stones? No. She tells me I just missed a crazy event. Thousands of mullet have beached themselves. She calls them mullet. Neither of us know what they really are. Sardines? Shad? Who knows. They do have an upturned nose, so for this story, we're going to call them mullet. Some are wounded, some are not, but they're all exhausted. Heather is picking up the those that show a will to live and throws them back. Some swim away, others return to the beach, preferring a slow death in the sand versus being eaten alive.

While Heather is feeding the barracuda, I walk down to the snorkeling spot, passing thousands of soon-to-be-dead mullet. When I reach the reef, it takes only two casts before I hook a fish. I can tell it's not a barracuda. It fights hard and dives deep. Then, everything stops. He's rocked me. This is a term I've just learned. Some fish will lodge themselves in the rocks rather than fight in the open water. That's how I lost my first lure in Abreojos. I tried a few tricks that George had suggested: plucking the line like a guitar string, letting the line go slack. Neither worked. A couple times, the fish took off with the slack line, but quickly rocked himself again. Now, my line is wrapped up at multiple points on the reef.

The sun has already set, and light is fading. I'm willing to lose the fish, but I don't want to lose my lure. I wedge my pole in the rocks, loosen the drag, and start running for the truck. On the way, I see a big tumbleweed. That'll be great for getting the fire started. I pick it up and keep running. Heather sees me coming. That's not a fish. Where's his fishing pole? What is he carrying? Breathing hard, I tell her to go make sure I don't lose the rod and reel. She doesn't ask questions, not even why I'm carrying a tumbleweed.

As Heather runs down the beach in her flip-flops, I get out the inflatable paddleboard and start pumping furiously. The wind is too strong to paddle directly to the reef, so I run down the beach carrying the 10-foot, 30-pound paddleboard. When I finally paddle out to the reef, Heather is standing there with the pole. And a beer. Where did that come from? When I grab the line and try to track it back to the fish, the line ends up wrapped around me. Eventually, I free the line from the rocks, though not from my neck. The fish is still on the line. It's a spotted bass, and he's even more tired than I am.

A more relaxing time before we took the boards in the water

Dangling the fish from the lure in one hand, while paddling with the other hand, I tell Heather she's not going to believe this. In addition to the silver spoon, there's also a mullet in it's mouth! The mullet is still alive, so I throw it back. Heather takes the paddleboard, while I walk back with the fish. And the beer. Halfway down the beach, I look down at my catch. Heather's not going to believe this. He's coughed up a second mullet -- tail first!

It is dark. I have to fillet the fish by headlamp while Heather prepares the fixin's. We eat fresh fish tacos with a cold beer, Tecate's limited edition winter bock, Noche Buena (good night). We laugh as we tell each other our versions of this fish story. Both of us agree -- that was a lot of work for one meal. Was it worth it? Yeah, it was worth it. Noche Buena indeed.

Link to December Pictures

Breakfast Date in San Ignacio

2011-12-24T07:28:00.000+11:00

San Ignacio is a surreal date palm oasis in the middle of the Baja desert. Most travelers drive right past San Ignacio on their way to the southern part of Baja. The popular attraction of San Ignacio is the mission church in the town square. What seems to get missed by most visitors is the lagoon that has been formed by damned springs that are next to the town. In 2003, we blasted through this area on our way south. We quickly drove into the town square to have a look at the mission. Afterwards, as we were driving out of town, we took a picture of the water oasis - from. our. vehicle!

Since then, San Ignacio has been on our radar, especially after discovering our fondness for dates. While we were in Australia, we became enamored with Medjool dates (usually imported from Iran). They were $25/kg so we never bought them, but Scott's employer provided them every Friday (until they didn't). San Ignacio has dates dropping all over the place -- our tires are covered with them! We bought 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of dates for $3. This morning we had date pancakes while we relaxed under the shade of the date palms. They don't taste exactly like Medjool dates, but I'm not complaining.

Dates drying in town. Scott enjoying date pancakes with the morning mist over San Ignacio "river/lake"

Our first day in town, we went for a hike onto the mesa overlooking town. When we came back down, we found ourselves in someone's backyard. We navigated to one of the back-streets and headed in the general direction of the town square, where we were parked. As we were walking, a little boy biked around us, and we exchanged holas. After he biked past us, he circled back around. On his second pass, he yelled "son gringos (you're gringos!)". "Si (yes)"! A few minutes later we walked past a man who said, "adonde (where are you going)!?". As in, "why are you white people anywhere but the town square?". I guess our gringo-ness was definitely out of place.

We camped at Don Chon RV Park for $5/night (70 pesos). At first, it seemed like a pretty sketchy place. It has no amenities, except for a pit toilet. Frankly, I would rather dig my own hole. However, we were pleased to spend 2 days parked right next to this fresh water oasis with amazing scenery.

We SUPed to the source of the San Ignacio "river/lake" -- it was a warm water spring!

While Scott was fishing the first night, he caught a tilapia. The campground owner came to collect her money and told us the only fish in the lagoon were tilapia and carp. Scott stopped fishing. He says that tilapia are generally too small to justify killing/filleting. Someone is becoming quite the picky fisherman!

"Don Chon RV Park" aka "RV Riverside Park"

Even though we stayed only a couple of days, I felt sad when we left. If we didn't feel such a pull to the ocean, I could spend a lot of time in San Ignacio.

Link to December Pictures

The Myth of Mexico

2011-12-23T02:06:00.000+11:00

by Scott

We're currently in the small fishing village (and surf/windsurf mecca) of Punta Abreojos. It's quite different than other Baja towns of it's size. There's a noticeable lack of litter, paved roads, really nice commercial and personal pickup trucks, and the locals aren't interested in pandering to the gringo tourists. It's great!

Serious money in these trucks in Abreojos

The secret is a very successful fishing co-op. It employs a couple hundred people who catch lobster and collect abalone, both of which are shipped to China. We hear that they make $35-50k per year -- great for Mexico.

A lot of people think of Mexico as a 3rd world country. It's not. Mexico is by no means rich, especially Baja, but many countries we will be visiting will be far poorer. Here's a partial list of per capita GDP's from the IMF (2010).

I've included the countries we're planning to visit, as well as some places we recently visited, and a few others that we have no plans to visit, but are just plain interesting...like China. For all the talk about China becoming the world's largest economy and dominating the globe, blah, blah, blah, it's important to recognize that China is still a very poor country, about the same as El Salvador. Mexico, on the other hand, is nearly twice as rich as China!

RANK COUNTRY $USD
====================

6 United States 47,123
9 Australia 39,692
11 Canada 39,033
32 New Zealand 27,460
55 Chile 14,982
61 Mexico 14,266
67 Panama 12,397
69 Venezuela 11,889
71 Brazil 11,289
75 Costa Rica 10,732
83 Colombia 9,445
85 Peru 9,281
90 Ecuador 7,951
91 Belize 7,894
93 China 7,518
94 El Salvador 7,442
114 Paraguay 4,915
115 Guatemala 4,871
118 Bolivia 4,584
121 Honduras 4,404
125 Iraq 3,599
131 Nicaragua 2,969
170 Afghanistan 998

Abreojos... Open Your Eyes

2011-12-15T06:45:00.000+11:00

Nine days ago we decided to head to the Pacific side of Baja for Punta Abreojos. We arrived in the evening and slowly found a camping spot right outside of town. We managed to park right at the famous surfing point dubbed "Burgers" where we were able to surf for a few days. I can't believe we've been in the area 9 days already!

Moonrise at Punta Abreojos with the sunset reflecting in our box

We've been in some dolphin-y areas but Abreojos is out of this world. The dolphins are everywhere. They are close to shore, slowly bobbing along, and a bit off shore, jumping, playing, and fishing. Along with the dolphins are seals, sea lions, pelicans and more osprey than we've ever seen. This can only mean one thing -- the fish are PLENTIFUL. Scott confirmed this by catching kelp bass, sierra, and corvina. Fish tacos galore.

While we were camped at "Burgers", a gringo couple (George and Deborah) drove by, gawked at our truck, and stopped to chat. We talked long enough that they learned that we wanted our toy box painted white (it gets very hot in the sun). It turns out that they were having some body work done to one of their vehicles, so that evening, George arrived with Francisco to check out our box and give us a price on painting it. The next day, we drove to George and Deborah's house and had the box painted by Francisco for $60.

It's white now!

The box-painting day was Scott's 41st birthday (12/12). Deborah prepared an amazing birthday dinner -- clam chowder, halibut casserole, and Mississippi mud pie. It just so happened that they received the most rain they'd seen in 8 years, so we ended up parked at their house for 2 days while the box dried. Scott became good friends with Gypsy, their 2-year-old Boston terrier, who pulled out an endless supply of toys. George and Deborah were extremely generous while we squatted at their house. They made our stay in Abreojos quite memorable (along with the surfing and sea life). I hope that we can pay it forward.

Link to December Pictures

The Life of Oscar

2011-12-07T12:12:00.001+11:00

By Scott

We received sad news this morning that our cat, Oscar, died. He had been losing weight over the summer, and we were worried about him. Soon after we left this summer, Heather's mom took him to the vet, who suspected cancer.

Oscar was never really "our" cat. He used to be our neighbor's cat when we lived in Vancouver. Then, he became our cat. When we left for Australia, he became Heather's parent's cat. But really, Oscar was never anyone's cat. We were all his people.

When I met Heather, I wasn't much of a cat person. Despite her allergies, she has always adored cats, and thanks to Oscie, I now do too. He was not shy. Soon after moving into our house in Vancouver, he waltzed into the garage and demanded attention from Heather, who was more than happy to accommodate. This is how he behaved with everyone. He didn't care whether you were a cat lover or not. If you had two good hands and a warm lap, he'd consider you a worthwhile project. Once, I threw down a pair of work gloves while working in the yard. He ran over to them like it was a dream come true -- his own pair of hands.

For the first year, we never fed Oscar. He was not motivated by food at all. He would run across the street to greet us when we returned from a bike ride, or come around to the back door in the evening and meow until we let him in. Eventually, we started having sleepovers. Our house came equipped with doggy doors. We soon unlocked them, and Oscie quickly learned to come and go as he pleased. Once, he even managed to drag a live pigeon, that was nearly as big as he was, through two of those doggy doors before I intervened. The pigeon lived. Oscie was not pleased.

It soon became apparent to our neighbors that Oscar was spending all of his time at our house, yet they were still feeding him. They asked if we wanted to make it official, and we said yes. He continued to come and go as he pleased, coming in to wake us up in the morning for a drink of water. He was never picky about food, but he insisted on drinking water straight from the faucet. I'd stumble out of bed, turn the faucet to a trickle, then go back to bed. When he was finished, he'd curl up in my arm and take a nap until I got up. Then he'd sleep on the bed for another couple hours.

When we decided to move to Australia, we knew we couldn't take Oscar with us. It would have been a brutal plane trip, a couple thousand dollars, and a month-long quarantine. We offered our neighbors the chance to take him back, but they were happy to let Heather fly back with him to her parents' house in Michigan. Oscar wasn't happy about flying, but he loved roaming and hunting in his new domain, sleeping on Gary's head, and earning the name King Oscar from Vickie. We were so grateful that they took him in. Not only was it comforting to know he had a loving home, but we also got to see him when we visited the states.

It's sad that Oscar's gone, but he lived a good life, lived it on his own terms, put smiles on a lot of faces, and died quickly and peacefully. We should all be so fortunate. We'll miss you little buddy.

This was the last time we saw Oscie. He made us so happy. He watched us drive away that day.

Our Secret Spot

2011-12-01T02:56:00.001+11:00

Big teeth (for crushing shells) and large dorsal spines

Punta La Gringa in BDLA served us well, but we felt it was time to leave after the weather started getting a bit odd, with unpredictable winds blowing from all directions (not at once, but close). The day before we left, Scott caught his second Baja fish after only a few casts - still using the "small" rod and spoon (la cuchara). Again, we had to ask someone what it was, and if we could eat it. Turns out, it's a "Triggerfish" and that we could safely eat it. I have to admit, it wasn't as tasty as the scorpion fish. I'm starting to get picky about my pescado (fish) these days.

On the opposite side of the peninsula from BDLA is the famous "seven sisters" surfing region. We stopped in Santa Rosalillita for a couple of days thinking we might get to surf the famed point break there. We quickly realized that this wave wasn't going to appear unless a VERY big swell event occurred, so we headed south to a place called "The Wall" at Punta Rosarito -- the most famous of the sisters. The road in took us over an hour to navigate and it was only about 10 miles. The surfing was fun, but there was quite the scene of gringos, all hailing from California or Oregon. It was as if we hadn't left the USA.

My own little pescadero

We left The Wall due to the strong winds. The wind made it impossible to surf, yet we couldn't kite either, due to the offshore direction. We went exploring to find a beach that would work for kiting. We discovered a secret spot we named Playa Del Tigre because we would not have made it without El Tigre's four wheel drive. This was solely due to driver error, as Scott drove straight into a soggy marsh while saying, "I wonder why that other route goes around this section?"

We arrived on a windy day with less than an hour of daylight. Scott got in a short kite session in some nice waves--he thinks he might be the first person to kite here. The wind direction was side-off, the ideal direction, yet the curvature of the sandy beach ensured a safe backstop if anything went wrong. It really could be a dream spot. We don't know yet because the wind hasn't returned, but we'll wait. There's no one else around, it's free, there's a good SUP wave right in front of our truck, and there's surf potential nearby. Scott even managed to paddle out on his SUP with his fishing pole. He quickly caught a rock bass that we enjoyed in some veggie soup. We only left Playa Del Tigre because we were nearly out of water, food, and underwear. Now, we're loaded up and heading back.

Kiting near some abandoned palapas (complete with huge bird's nest on top) at Playa Esmeralda.
A morning SUP session with some glassy baby-waves at Playa Del Tigre.

Link to November photos

Bahia De Los Angeles

2011-11-22T06:46:00.000+11:00

We had read and heard about Bahia De Los Angeles (BDLA), but found it hard to believe that it was really as gorgeous as all the hype suggested. BDLA is a detour off the main highway on the Sea of Cortez side of Baja. A few days ago we decided to take the detour. We were blown away when we arrived at Punta La Gringa, our camping spot for the past 4 nights. This place is magical -- sunrises, sunsets, water, cascading mountains, islands, dolphins, fish, birds.

Sunset and sunrise from our camp at La Gringa

Scott caught his first Baja fish! It was a "scorpion fish" that turned out to be excellent eating. We had to ask the local fishermen what it was, and if it was okay to eat. He said it was one of the best, but that the skin can be toxic to humans when it's alive. Fortunately, the scorpion fish looked so scary that Scott was carrying it around with his Leatherman pliers.

The fisherman laughed when he saw Scott's fishing gear. He said that Scott's fishing rod was too small and couldn't believe that he had caught the scorpion fish using a salmon spoon. All along, we thought Scott's fishing pole was huge -- it is a steelhead rod that my dad gave to Scott for the "big fish" of the sea. The locals were using huge rods nearly the size of our old windsurfing masts.

After making scorpion fish tacos and filling the night air with yummy smells, Scott stepped outside to find his shoes missing. Earlier that night a truck with a bunch of people had driven by. We were convinced they had stolen Scott's stinky, silver Crocs. This freaked us out. If people were willing to steal our shoes just after sunset, while we were sitting in the truck, we were concerned about our personal safety.

Bahia De Los Angeles from Punta La Gringa

Not to worry. Earlier in the evening, two coyotes had been circling the truck while I was out watching the sunset, so I decided to grab the headlamp and search a little farther away from the truck. Sure enough, the coyotes had ran off with his Crocs and left them down the beach. A section of one of the straps was eaten. Another good lesson for the gringos -- don't leave ANYTHING outside of your truck in the desert.

Link to November photos

Tarantula Sighting

2011-11-21T06:37:00.001+11:00

After a day of getting groceries, filling the water tank, doing laundry, washing the truck, and finding internet we camped just off the road to Punta San Carlos (PSC). PSC was our destination for many years starting in 2000 when we made our first drive down to Baja. It's funny to look back on that trip and recognize how our travel style has changed. Our first time, we were so scared driving into Baja that we crossed the border and drove non-stop until hitting the beach at PSC. I didn't pee all day and Scott peed in a jar. We only stopped long enough to fill up on gas about 6 hours into our drive. Gringos estupidos.

Lunch stop near Catavina

After the PSC road, we stopped for a "recreation break" near a placed called El Marmol. We rode our bikes out to the ruins of a marble (marmol) mine where a schoolhouse had been built entirely of marble. Neither of us are very big on ruins and really, we never would've made the trek out to the marble schoolhouse except it was a good excuse to get on our bikes. As we suspected, it was just a pile or rocks that really didn't impress us much. BUT!!!! as we were biking out, I saw a tarantula crossing the road. Check out the video of Mr. Tarantula below. By the way, Scott was biking so far ahead of me he missed out on the sighting.

Link to November photos

The Cheese Has Run Out, Time To Drive To Civilization

2011-11-16T09:26:00.000+11:00

Quatro por quatro -- que Bueno!

After our fantastic run of weather and fun at Punta Baja, we got hit with a day of rain and strong wind. We hunkered down in the truck and tried to stay immobile for 12 hours straight. Admittedly, I got a little stir crazy. It sort of reminded me of our worst weather events in New Zealand. The next morning, Sunday, we somehow decided (mostly due to some miscommunication), that we would try to drive from the beach back to the nearest town, El Rosario. It happened to be spitting rain, at the time. We had heard about what happens to Baja's dirt roads after rain, but we never really internalized the significance of the advice. As we were told, the desert roads turn to ice. Seriously. There is a 2-inch layer of sludge that forms over the dirt that imitates ice. The truck made it a couple of miles before we pulled off and decided to wait for things to dry. There were multiple times where the truck was sliding SIDEWAYS. We are really thankful for the lesson. Even with 4wd, it's not really worth getting stuck, or worse yet, rolling the truck.

Before we drove out to Punta Baja, we bought 2 pounds of cheese - un kilo. That was 7 days ago. We are nearly out of cheese. This is always a good sign that we need to head back to civilization.

Link to November photos

Punta Baja is the Sheet

2011-11-15T09:22:00.001+11:00

Secluded SUP-land (even got the moon in the pic)

We arrived at Punta Baja 5 days ago and found a beautiful, deserted beach where we have fallen into our new routine. Morning starts at 6 am (daylight savings helped this). We drink our coffee and mull over our plan for the day. The plan? So far, the plan has been to SUP (stand up paddle board) all day until we literally have trouble eating dinner due to exhaustion. We've taken some walks around the area to explore as well. One evening we inadvertently picked up a scrappy, but friendly little dog at the fish camp. She followed us 2 miles back to our truck. She indeed made it back home and then did it again the next evening.

Scrappy little perro who followed us everywhere

When we aren't walking or SUPing/surfing, we are reading Spanish phrase books. I'm frustrated but determined. The great thing about Spanish is if you can figure out how to pronounce all of the vowels and consanants you're halfway there. Unlike English, the words sound exactly how they are spelled! I've got the the "i" down -- it's pronounced "eee". As in, this place is the sheet. Both of us have trouble remembering to pronounce "v" as "b". Today we were out in the water with a guy named Fernando. According to Scott's translation, he works as a night-time security guard at the fish camp. According to my translation, he works in health and social services in nearby El Rosario.

The tequilla is flowing and as we predicted, our route through Baja has been sloooow. Muy despacio.

So much Tequilla in the grocery store

Link to November photos

We Made It To Baja

2011-11-15T09:18:00.001+11:00

The pretty drive along highway 3

It's been a long time coming. We've been working our way towards Baja for so long that I thought the day would never come. We crossed the border at a town called Tecate, about 40 miles east of the infamous Tijuana crossing. We chose Tecate because the drive was reputed to be very pretty through the northern Baja wine country. Additionally, Tecate is a smaller and safer town than Tijuana. We scared ourselves silly reading about the random drug-related violence in Tijuana.

The border crossing turned out to be perfect. We parked at the gas station on the USA side so that we could walk across the border to get our tourist visa at the immigration office. We walked back to our truck (through USA customs, of course) and then crossed the border by vehicle. As you drive up to the crossing you are given either a green light, which means don't stop, or a red light, which indicates you must pull over for a search. Supposedly the lights are random. We got a red light, and had a 30 second search of our toy box. That was it!

Fidel's "RV Park"

The drive south was very pretty and quite easy. We stopped in Ensenada (about 2 hours south) for some groceries and then made our way to a campground a little past San Quintin called Fidel's El Pabellon. (picture). We made a few "wrong" turns beforehand trying to scope out other options. The dirt/sand roads in Baja are no joke. 10 miles = 1 hour of driving. Needless to say, we rolled up to our campground at dark. Fidel's El Pabellon RV Park is $9 for ocean front "secure" parking with hot showers. During the next day I chatted with Fidel and learned that he's been running the RV park for 20 years. He's 41 years old, has 3 kids (24, 22, 10), 3 grandkids, and 10 brothers and sisters who all live nearby. Yep, you read that correctly, he is 41 and has a 24 year old son. SHEEESH, that's no way to enjoy your teenage years. When he was married (!!!) and having kids, I was just getting my driver's license.

Clifftop lovely-ness at Punta Baja

We're so glad to be in Baja. The days are sunny, the food is plentiful and inexpensive, and we are finally adventuring. We are currently parked at Punta Baja about 40 miles past Fidel's. It was a 10 mile dirt/sand road out to the beach that took us an hour to navigate. Poor El Tigre. When we arrived, we found a fish camp with lots of boats and some houses/shacks. We asked the only person we could find if we could park for the night on the clifftop overlooking our morning surf spot. He said "no problema". A couple of days later, we moved about 2 miles down the beach to a different clifftop spot away from the fish camp.

All I know is that our Spanish needs some work. We are getting by, but it's pretty rough. Along that note, I was proud of Scott when Fidel mentioned that his "espani" was very good. We learned that "espani" is what we call "spanglish" - Gringo spanish. Since espani is really all we aspire to, Scott was pretty happy to hear it.

Link to November photos

The Toy Box

2011-10-31T04:06:00.000+11:00

by Scott

While we love the living quarters of El Tigre, the layout is not ideal for gear storage. From the start, we planned to mount a box on the back, with a bike rack mounted on top of the box. The question was where to find a suitable box. We considered many alternatives. We looked at patio boxes. I tried to find a big, old chest freezer. I thought about building my own. Ultimately, we spent the money for a massive custom aluminum box.

The shop that built it caters to the commercial trucking industry, yet at 85" x 33" x 31", it's the biggest single box they've ever built. For our gearhead friends (or english-speaking internet-savvy banditos), a list of toys is at the end of this post. The only items in the truck are the small kites/bars, wetsuits, fishing pole, and guitar. Of course, the bikes are on top of the box. For the banditos that have read this far, in addition to the two locking latches, the box is secured to the frame with a locking hitch pin and a cable lock. The whole thing weighs about 350 pounds, so bring amigos.

Kiting

Kite - Ozone C4 7
Kite - Slingshot Rev 9
Kite - Slingshot Rev 11
Kite Harness - Dakine Tabu
Kite Harness - Pro Limit Eve
Kiteboard - Airush Switch 132
Kite/surfboard - Stretch Ratboy 5'6"
Kite/surfboard - Slingshot Tyrant 6'2"

Surf/Paddleboarding

Surfboard - T&C V-series 6'4"
Surfboard - Santa Cruz Pumpkin Seed 6'6"
Surfboard - Channel Islands K-step 6'9"
Paddleboards - C4 Waterman Rapid Rider iSUP 10'0" (x2)
Paddles - Werner Carve (x2)

Wetsuits

Wetsuit - Ripcurl 4/3mm
Wetsuit - Quiksilver 3/2mm
Wetsuit - Ronstan 3mm Farmer John
Wetsuit - Billabong 5/4/3mm
Wetsuit - Ripcurl 3/2

Bikes

Mountain bike - Specialized Pitch Pro
Mountain bike - Haro Xeon

Fishing/Guitar

Fishing rod/reel - vintage Wright & McGill/Shakespeare
Guitar - Line 6 Variax 700

Other box items

5 air pumps
biking accessories
spare truck parts
spare tire
2 beach chairs

Truck Preparation

2011-10-27T03:31:00.000+11:00

We've spent the past 5 months preparing ourselves and our truck for extended, overland travel through the Americas. At the time we purchased the truck, we didn't realize how lucky we were to get our hands on a Provan Tiger. To the untrained eye, a Provan Tiger looks like a slide-in truck camper. The cool thing is that it's actually an integrated motorhome, where you can walk between the cab and living quarters. It's everything we ever wanted -- 4x4, diesel, a roomy living space, in a very small footprint.

We've made some major improvements to the truck (1994 turbo diesel Chevy Silverado), as well as the living quarters. Now that we are in the final weeks of preparing to cross the border, it's been fun to look back on everything we've done. Almost all of the upgrades were preemptive fixes. The jist of it is that Scott has done an amazing amount of work to get the truck ready for adventuring in isolated areas.

When I was starting my research on overland travel in the Americas I found a lot of blogs with vehicle modification information. It was interesting and very informative to see the cost associated with such a venture. What follows is a very boring list of modifications and cost.

1994 Provan Tiger Camper Modifications ($4500)
General:

Instant Water Heater (Removed old 6-gallon water heater) $120
Vinyl floor covering (replaced old carpet) $30
New/bigger drawers, refaced cabinets, new doors, new hardware $400
Exterior shower (scott's absolute favorite addition) $50
New foam bed $120
Custom 7' x 2.5' x 2.5' aluminum box $776
Re-routed plumbing and electrical
Custom battery box $100
Towel bars, shoe holders, clothes hooks, etc. (major Ikea-fest) $150

Electrical:

12-volt 4.3 liter NovaKool refrigerator (replaced Dometic 3-way fridge) $1000
LED lights (replaced incandescent energy-hogs) $100
135-watt solar panel (in addition to the original 80-watt) $400
Xantrex C35 charge controller $143
TriMetric battery monitor TM-2025 $205
2 x Trojan T105 6-volt 235 amp-hour batteries $295

1994 Chevy Silverado K2500 Turbo Diesel Truck Modifications ($6000)
Mechanical:

Replace upper and lower ball joints $463
Replace pitman and idler arms $360
New KYB Monomax shocks $240
2 additional leaf springs from Oregon Spring $600
6 new Michelin LTX AT2 tires $1430
Diamond Eye 4-inch exhaust (replaced 2.5-inch! exhaust) $500
High Efficiency Air Filter $57
New radiator thermostat $23
Replaced harmonic balancer/pulley $100
New high-output water pump and gaskets $220
Upgraded radiator fan clutch and fan blade $200
New PMD (pump mounted driver) mounted remotely (away from engine) with heat sink $280
Synthetic transmission and differential fluid change $400
Synthetic engine oil $60

Other Truck Mods:

Stereo/MP3 player $50
Husky floor liners in cab $160
Custom seat covers $160

Spare Parts (approx cost $500)

5 x Fuel filter $84
5 x Oil filter $70
Fuel pump relay $13
Fuel pump $86
Fuel pump strainer $20
Crankcase breather element $52
Oil pressure switch $26
Radiator hose upper and lower $50
Wiper blades $11
4wd actuator $120
Serpentine belt $30

Overland/Travel Equipment (approx cost $750)

Lug nut cover/lock $25
Locks for all of the exterior access doors $10
Locks and cables for gear and vehicle $80
Ridgid brand cordless oscillator/drill set $136
Craftsman 192 piece mechanics tool set $126
Lots of other random tools and fix-it stuffs (i.e. DUCT TAPE and adhesives) $100
GPS Garmin Nuvi 1450 $170
Guidebooks and road atlas' $100

Portland, Oregon Part III - Enjoying the Journey

2011-10-08T05:57:00.001+11:00

Spending limited time with family and friends during the past 6 months, has made me realize that being present in the moment is essential. Often times it's hard to put down the to-do list and forget about "the destination" (whatever that is) and really take in the surroundings. Our nomadic lifestyle makes it hard to really connect with people. Enjoying moments of camaraderie and friendship has been great for my spiritual wellness. At times I've felt overwhelmed with family and friend's generosity in hosting us for meals and having us stay at their house. Not to mention the fact that Holly has let us use her car while she is away. I can only hope that I will pay-it-forward as we continue our travels south.

Juliet and then Geri hosted us for some great vegetarian fare. I've done a horrible job at capturing all the delicious meals people have served us. These two pictures are from almost a month ago when the weather was nice and warm. Lovely memories.

I don't claim to be new on the live-in-the-moment subject. Other people have said it much better than I ever could:

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.

Too often we are so preoccupied with the destination, we forget the journey.

We stayed at Nooby's house (pictured 1st), then we moved to Holly's condo, before we moved into Andrea's house (pictured 2nd). All the while, we've been able to use Holly's car. Like I said, I am overwhelmed with the generosity.

Andrea cooking us eggs for breakfast -- DELICIOUS. Bruce bought us pizza and we enjoyed hours of fantastic conversation.

Portland, Oregon Part II

2011-10-02T17:04:00.000+11:00

Portland never ceases to amaze me with all the cool things you can do in the city or just outside the city. How 'bout a night laying on a hillside watching 1200 swifts (those are birds) roost for the night? If that's not cool enough, we watched a falcon pick off one of the swifts for his/her dinner. When nature and good friends collide, I am very happy.

Good friends, drinks, and NATURE!

Last week I had the opportunity to prove that I'm younger than I look. It didn't work because I barely made it past 11 pm. Regardless, I had a great time with some friends at The Voice Box belting out songs in our own personal karaoke room. Nope, we weren't in Japan, just Portland.

Voice Box. Yes, I'm killing a Fergie song.

An hour west of Portland we went to a beer fest in Hood River (aptly named Hops Fest). We definitely missed our favorite IPA drinking buddy, my dad. As is common with Hood River, it was sunny and warmish while Portland suffered from it's common ailment -- dark and rainy.

Standing in front of Hops vines. Scott and Juliet seeing dollar signs?

On a more serious note, we probably won't finish our todo list for at least a week and possibly 2 weeks. Oh well, I guess we need to find more cool stuff to do in Portland in between chores.

Portland, Oregon

2011-09-20T03:02:00.000+10:00

Over the past few months, I've felt so overwhelmed with stories from our USA adventuring that I simply haven't documented anything.

It all started with the 4 months we spent with my family in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During this time we visited Scott's family including 3 visits to his brother, Skip, in Indiana and 1 visit to Shane, in Kentucky. Yep, I have a relative in Kentucky! Similarly, I'm sure he says, "Yep, I have a relative that lives in a truck".

We reluctantly left my parents, sister, and our most epic workshop in Ann Arbor to start our drive west. Thank you, Dad, for letting us invade your man-space for nearly 4 months!

The truck, the workshop, and our kitty saying goodbye to us.

You might be asking why we started driving west when our ultimate goal is to head south into Baja, Mexico and beyond. We lived in the Portland, Oregon area from 1995-2008 (I actually didn't arrive until 1997). We would never pass up the opportunity to visit dear friends and as a bonus, sample lots of awesome beers and have endless opportunities to see live music.

Some of my lovely lady-friends (where is Nooby?)

We've been in Portland for 9 days and have spent nearly EVERY day/night enjoying our friends' company. A day hasn't gone by when we didn't say, "Damn, I freakin' love Portland". Our livers seem to be holding up too!

My friend Dan put together a great blog post about his weekend seeing old friends (us included!) and seeing live music last weekend during Musicfest Northwest. The way he described his weekend is how I would describe the entire week for me (except for the "winter" part):

Occasionally a Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday can be so filled with people, places, adventures, and things I love, there is little time to muddle my brain with the guilt, doubt, and mundane details that normally take priority. On those very rare weekends we eat, drink, and pursue fun with such fervor that it's as if there is no tomorrow, no Monday, and certainly no one ominously reminding you that, as in the current epic novel I'm reading... "Winter is coming".

A great development since we've been in Portland is that one of our friends, Holly, offerred up her condo and her car while she is gone! We have to move out of her place in 6 days but we can use her car during the duration of our stay in Portland. El Tigre is taking a hiatus while we are driving around Portland running errands. Any ideas for a unique and thoughtful thank-you gift?

Holly's loft that we are calling home

We are currently working through a very large to-do list. Most of this falls in Scott's lap which presents an interesting dilemma for me -- do I try to help or just stay out of his way? It turns out my role falls somewhere in between...

Quick Update on our Progress

2011-08-18T11:42:00.000+10:00

I've started many blog posts over the past couple of months and then just never finished them. I had ambitions of doing something more than just an "update" post - maybe something about what it's been like to spend the past 4 months in Ann Arbor with my parents and sister. I hope I can write a blog post about that soon (sneak peek: it's been nice sprinkled with lots of truck-stress).

Mom, Dad, and Oscie have put up with us for the past 4 months!

In the meantime, here's a little update. We have been madly working on the truck to upgrade lots of components, both inside and out. You know how this goes -- once you decide to fix/change one thing, it's a cascade of 5 more things. As I write this, Scott is working on both the plumbing and the electrical system. The beginning stages of our work had us researching and purchasing lots of things online. The credit card was smoking. That was the easy part. The hard part is installing everything (Scott has done 99% of it). I hope to also write a blog post about the upgrades and include some pictures of the truck. At the moment, it is not picture-worthy.

Yep, that's Scott underneath the truck in a white bunny suit in 95 degree heat

The latest plan is that we will drive out of here next Friday and head to Lexington, KY to visit's Scott's bro. After a quick weekend visit, we will take El Tigre across the country for our next stop in Portland, Oregon. I expect that we will be in the Portland vicinity for the month of September. We have many friends in the Portland area that we can't wait to visit. We are also excited to slow things down a little and do some adventuring in the northwest. We probably won't slow down too much, since we have lists and lists of things to do/buy before we cross the border to start the Pan-American journey.

Great Faces, Great Places

2011-07-27T00:20:00.000+10:00

El Tigre is now officially a South Dakota resident. We paid sales tax and got it titled and registered, all for a few hundred dollars. The "Great Faces, Great Places" state makes if very easy for full-time RVers to give them money. Admittedly, we slipped a few notches down the cool factor scale by getting rid of the old Colorado plates.

South Dakota license plate: "Great Faces, Great Places"

After we picked the truck up in Pagosa Springs, and visited our friends in Denver, we drove to Scott's brother's house (Skip and Amy) in Indiana. Here, we started the laborious process of making El Tigre "our home". Skip spent countless hours refacing our kitchen cabinets and making new drawers and doors.

Skip and Scott burning the midnight oil in Skip's workshop

Along with all the interior work, Scott ordered $1500 in auto parts that were delivered to my parent's house. He's working on making El Tigre a lean, mean, cool machine. He's also becoming an expert on the mechanics of the GM 6.5 L diesel engine -- at least I hope so, as the drive shaft, radiator, water pump, oil cooler, and fan clutch, all of which are sitting in my Dad's barn, probably need to go back in.

One of many auto part deliveries

Van Update. It's not a Van!

2011-07-11T14:46:00.000+10:00

So much has happened since we last checked into the blog. So much, and yet, so little... The exciting news is that we did in fact find our 4x4, diesel, Pan-American dream mobile on eBay, and the transaction went better than anyone could ever dream. It is a a Provan Tiger Camper built on a 1994 Chevrolet K2500 Silverado Truck.

When we flew to pick up the truck, Gary, the previous owner, drove over an hour to pick us up at the Durango airport. Then, he drove us back to his home, where we were greeted with the sight of our new (old) truck and the high-altitude beauty of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Gary and his wife opened their home to us for the next couple of days while we got the truck ready to drive back to Michigan. Kelly fed us salmon, asparagus, and roasted potatoes for dinner with homemade raspberry pie for dessert! If we ever sell the truck, I hope we can make the buying experience for the next person as pleasant as they made it for us.

Scott, Gary, and Kelly pre-yumfest

People have asked why we wanted a 4x4 or a diesel. The reason we wanted the 4wd is a little more obvious. We plan on driving it from here to the tip of South America. There will be roads and beaches that would be off-limits for a traditional 2wd van. As for the diesel question, diesel fuel is a bit easier to come by south of the border, the engine has a longer life, and it gets better ~~gas~~ diesel mileage.

It's been 3 weeks, but we still can't stop calling our new truck "the van". Every vehicle we've ever traveled in has been a van...Toyota LE, Toyota Previa, Ford E350, Toyota Hiace, and a Ford Transit. We've never been the type to name our vehicles, so it's been hard not to call it "the van". We're still trying to get used to calling it "the truck" or "the camper", but it's definitely NOT A VAN!

Van Shopping: Strike Two

2011-06-22T00:00:00.001+10:00

by Scott

What is it with 1998 Coachmen Starflytes? Soon after our first deal fell through, we found two more Starflytes in Florida, one on ebay and one on AutoTrader. The one on ebay, despite being 13 years old, looked like it just rolled off the showroom floor.

From the start, I had my reservations about Bill, who sells RVs on ebay under the username belmar13. He has excellent feedback, but his personality was that of the stereotypical used car salesman. What concerned me most was his attitude toward my request to have the van checked out by a mechanic. He acted like it was a personal insult, claiming it was the first time anyone had ever requested such a thing. When I insisted that I wouldn't be spending $20k on a sight-unseen vehicle without a mechanical inspection, he relented, but he took it to his mechanic--the guy that does all the work on his RVs before he sells them. Before the mechanic finished inspecting it, somebody hit BuyItNow for $21.9k. The van was gone. Bill called the next morning to tell us that it sold, and that it was out of his control. Fair enough. That was actually kind of classy. Maybe I was wrong about Bill.

We were a little bummed about missing out on the showroom van, but what could we do? We kept searching. Every day, I would search Craigslist for Starflytes. Every day, both ebay and RVTrader would email me with any new Starflyte listings. Imagine my surprise when RVTrader found yet another showroom Starflyte. It was just like the other one. It was in Florida, just like the other one. It had 4 new tires, new brakes, and a new timing belt, just like the other one. The VIN number was 1FDJE30L5VHB78959, just like the other one! It was the same van! But, instead of $21.9k, it was now only $13.8k!

What the hell? Did the mechanic find something catastrophic? Did Bill "buy" his own van to take it off the market? Did Bill sell a lemon that someone else is now willing sell at a $8k loss? If that's the case, why did the ebay buyer gave Bill excellent feedback, "A +++++ Seller - Great RV - Thanks for throwing in a Keylime Pie." Whatever's going on here, I'm soooo glad we're not part of it...though I do like keylime pie.

Carpenter Ants Eat More Than Wood

2011-06-06T00:07:00.000+10:00

It took 2 weeks in my parent's barn for our favorite Slingshot Rev kite to get completely destroyed by a colony of carpenter ants. After a search on Google, I found that they primarily nest in and around wood structures. Why did they choose our nylon kite and polyurethane bladder? We spent a couple of hours repairing the massive holes in the nylon and the 20 or so holes in the bladder. It seems to hold air but we haven't taken it on the water yet. There were no other ants in the barn, and this is a big barn. We are completely baffled. This was a VERY expensive lesson.

Van Shopping: Strike One

2011-05-30T02:22:00.000+10:00

by Scott

A week ago, we thought we found our dream van. It turned out to be a nightmare.

We found the 1998 Coachmen Starflyte via ebay. From the start, Steve Marks, the alleged name of the alleged owner seemed sketchy. He had only completed 2 transactions on ebay, and one of them was the sale of a similarly sized motorhome just over a month ago. We figured he was a dealer, but he vehemently denied that, claiming he sold that one for a friend. He said this one was his personal motorhome, and that he was selling it to upgrade to a 32-footer. This conflicted with the explanation from his alleged brother, Anthony Marks, who told us on the phone that Steve was selling it due to financial problems. Hmmm.

When we ran the VIN check, we found that the last title change was in 2002. This was odd, since Steve claimed to have bought the van 5 months ago. When pressed on this, he claimed that he didn't have the money to transfer title at the time, but that he had just transfered it. Hmmm.

By now, you're probably wondering why we weren't running for the hills. Well, conveniently, the van was located in Brentwood CA, which just happened to be 5 miles from our good friends and fellow adventurers, Frank and Kim. They generously accepted our invitation to check it out. They set up an appointment, but when they arrived, no one was home. Furthermore, there were no signs of the van. There were boats, trailers, and other high-end toys, apparently for sale, but no van. Hmmm.

By now, we'd had it. It was one thing to waste our time, but now we were wasting our friends' time. I called Steve to demand an explanation for standing up Frank and Kim. He denied scheduling an appointment, insisting he had never even talked to them! For once, he wasn't lying. It turns out that the appointment was made by his alleged nephew, who hadn't relayed the message. Frank and Kim returned and everything checked out. It drove well and was clean inside and out, just as advertised. The following day, we had it inspected by Lemon Squad, a mobile inspection company. Again, everything checked out, including the "ownership documents and title".

Now, I have to diverge a bit to talk about Lemon Squad. I ordered the inspection online on Saturday. On Monday morning, I called to ask for a confirmation when the inspection was scheduled. The woman on the phone indicated that this was not standard procedure, but that she'd email me. A couple hours later, not having received an email, I called back. Keep in mind, this is Monday morning. I ordered on Saturday. Lemon Squad advertises same day service on most early orders, and the auction was scheduled to end on Tuesday evening. Also, I wasn't even asking for same day service, just confirmation that the inspection had been scheduled. Andy Dabbs, the owner of Lemon Squad, went off on me. He said that I had an attitude, that I was telling him how to run his business, that he'd never had a customer like me in the 3 year history of Lemon Squad, and that it would probably be impossible for him to satisfy me. It turns out he was right on that last point (maybe the first one too).

Back to Steve. Recognizing that he was a liar and a reseller, but feeling good about the vehicle, we bid and won the auction. We called him on the phone to schedule a time to take delivery. We had proposed flying out Sunday and closing the deal on Monday, but he pointed out that Monday was Memorial Day, suggesting we'd have to do it Tuesday. We went ahead and bought plane tickets for Sunday, assuming we'd just spend Monday with Frank and Kim. The next day, Steve informed us that he might not have the title by Tuesday. This was the title that he had already claimed was in his name and would be presented to the winning bidder. Now, he said that it was in the mail, and should arrive any day. Yeah. Bye Steve.

Back to Lemon Squad. I emailed to ask about the "ownership documents and title". I quickly received one of many calls from Lemon Squad owner, Andy Dabbs. It turns out that their inspector saw the current registration, but didn't record the name, nor did he cross check it with a title or driver's license. Andy sent his inspector out to review the documents a second time. Introducing...Mikie Bobby Cruz!

The van was not registered to Steve Marks or Anthony Marks, but to 19-year old Mikie Bobby Cruz! Since the last title transfer was in 2002, apparently little Mikie Bobby bought his very own motorhome at the tender age of 10!

Andy, who does a one-man good cop/bad cop routine, argued that this was no reason to back out of the deal. After all, we had a registration and a driver's license -- who needs a title?! Ultimately, he offered me a full-refund on the inspection, and told me never to call Lemon Squad again. Minutes later, good cop Andy called back -- twice! He left an apologetic message, gave me the names of two of his competitors (sabotage, I guess), and indicated that he had changed the wording on his checklist to avoid future problems. Whatever, at least the refund offset some of the cost of canceling our plane tickets.

We're done now. For the sake of anyone who might be doing some research before buying this van, here is all the information we have about the players. Contact us if you want the AutoCheck or Lemon Squad reports.

Van/RV: 1998 Coachmen Starflyte E350
VIN: 1FDJE30L8VHA89810
Seller: Steve Marks
Ebay Name: cheyenne_shelby
Email: my05sierra@yahoo.com
Phone: 209-642-3447
Address: 2301 Empire Ave Brentwood CA 94513
Seller's "brother"/assistant: Anthony Marks
Registered owner: Mikie Bobby Cruz

Back in the USA

2011-05-30T01:38:00.000+10:00

We made it back to the USA without a hitch. I think I'm getting the hang of the 30-hour travelfest involved with flying from Austral-Asia to the USA. We sold most of our stuff but couldn't part with a surfboard, kiteboard, 2 kites, 2 snowboards, and a few items of clothing. We've been back for 3+ weeks and still haven't felt the need to buy anymore clothing -- I think this nomadic lifestyle is really starting to stick.

1am at the Detroit airport. 30+ hours of travel and we still squeaked out a smile.

After a great week visiting with my parents, sister and nephew, we took my dad's truck down to Indiana to visit Scott's sister, Becky, and her family. We had never visited Becky at her home. It was also our first visit with Nick, her husband, and their two kids Cayden (4) and Camren (5). After a bit of hiding upstairs, the boys introduced themselves to Uncle Scott with a baseball to the skull. We had so much fun with them over the next 24 hours -- playing Cayden Ball, watching T-ball, and eating at Shake 'N Shake (because it's all about the shakes).

Next, we drove to surprise Scott's brother, Skip, at his college graduation party. Skip is no ordinary college student. He is 39 years old with 4 teenage kids. We are so impressed that Skip stuck with it for four years during an incredibly hectic time for his whole family. They thought we were still in New Zealand, so the surprise was priceless, as was the look on Skip's face (see below).

We are back at my parents' house in Ann Arbor. I call it the 5-star resort -- all-you-can eat and drink, fluffy bed, a free gym membership, manicured lawn, spa-like showers, our own car, wireless internet, a TV in every room, fresh coffee waiting in the pot every morning, and our favorite orange kitty.

Repetition is a Sign

2011-05-01T17:36:00.001+10:00

by Scott

We are in the final days of our year in New Zealand. The gear is gone, and it's raining, so I've found time to record a song I wrote last year in Australia.

The song was inspired by Ann Arbor's Chris Bathgate. He writes beautifully mysterious songs with lines like:

I twiddle my thumbs at the rag I've become and wait for the world within
cause all I need is the night as my steed and a kiss to serve as my shield
cause it's comfort and ease on evenings like these that turn all my poisons prose

It takes a secret decoder ring to figure out what he's talking about, but it's undeniably poetic. Unfortunately, my brain doesn't work like that. Simple chords. Simple lines. Simple man. Simple mind. Repetition is a sign (mp3).

My band in a box--every van dwelling songwriter should have one

Ruakaka Kiteboarding

2011-04-27T12:08:00.001+10:00

Eve and Heather at Mair Rd

by Scott

Several weeks ago, while hunting for kiteboarding possibilities, we stumbled upon Ruakaka. Lucky us. Within minutes of arriving, Dave, the local kiteboard builder (Decay Kiteboards), kiteshop owner, kite instructor, and cable park entrepreneur was offering us demo gear. Later, he gave us a tour of his factory, let us plug in the van, hosted a barbecue for all the kiters, and even cleaned and cooked a fish I caught.

We kited for a couple more days until the wind died. Heather, excited to finally meet another female kiter, finished off the remaining wind with a girls-only morning session with Eve (from Switzerland).

Thinking the wind was over, we said our goodbyes, and hit the road, but like many kiters, we couldn't quite escape Ruakaka. For no-wind days, Dave has built a cable park--think wakeboarding behind a boat, but without the boat or the wake. OK, maybe more like kiting without the kite or the need for wind. See (and listen) for yourself, as Heather, inspired by Eve and coached by Dave, almost lands a backroll.

With no wind in the forecast, we said our goodbyes again, only to end up back in Ruakaka a couple weeks later. Again, Dave hooked Heather up with a small kite and Decay board, allowing both of us to be on the water at the same time -- a rare pleasure. We did an epic 20km (12 mile) down-winder from one end of Bream Bay to the other. The day was capped off with a big kiter gathering back at Dave's with fantastic carbonara pasta and freshly made Kiwi pavlova.

There was no wind the next morning, so we again said our goodbyes. With a flight back to the states in 5 days, we aren't planning to be back in Ruakaka, but until the plane is on the runway, you never know.

Make the Most of Every Day

2011-04-19T10:46:00.000+10:00

by Scott

As I approached my 40th birthday, I was thinking about getting old. That led to memories of my dad and grandpa. Dad always greeted Grampa with, "How are you doing?" Grampa always replied, "It's no fun getting old." That was as close as he ever came to complaining. I can still hear Grampa saying it, and after visiting Grampa, I can still hear my Dad repeating it. It seemed like a song waiting to be written.

It didn't have to wait long. The dark rainy New Zealand winter was forcing us to spend a lot of time in the van. Unfortunately, for the first time in almost 20 years, I was without a guitar. Never again. I had to work out the song in my head. Poor Heather had to put up with endless renditions of me whistling the guitar solo. After searching New Zealand's eBay equivalent for a month, I finally broke down and bought a used guitar and a calculator-sized digital recorder.

I spent the next month playing with my new toys - recording, re-writing lyrics, and arranging drum tracks. I was hoping to have the song finished by Christmas, but a funny thing happened - summer! The sunshine and long days meant less time in the van and less time for music. Now that the rain is back, and the days are getting shorter, I've found time to finish it. Click here to enjoy it while you can (mp3). Getting old ain't much fun.

Plan The Plan's Planny Plan Part II

2011-04-18T12:02:00.001+10:00

It's been 1 year since we posted our planny plan for leaving Australia and moving to New Zealand. Since then, we've found adventures in the many nooks and crannys of NZ, and had a wild ride navigating the unpredictable weather. In 13 days, we will be on a plane heading to the USA to start another era of "hsadventures". Many people have asked, "what's your plan now?".

We will be landing in Detroit and staying with my parents in Ann Arbor. Our initial focus will be on visiting family/friends while shopping for our next vehicle and it's contents. What type of vehicle that will be is still up in the air, but it will be dictated by the planny plan.

So, what is our plan for the next few years? A little back-story first. While reading various travel blogs over the past year, I came upon a surprisingly large contingent of people (mostly Americans and Canadians) who have driven from Canada all the way to the tip of South America. Yep, that includes Mexico, Central America, and South America! As soon as I started reading about the possibilities, I was hooked. It didn't take long to convince Scott that this should be our next goal (surfing possibilities = happy Scott). So, there you have it. Our plan for the next many years is to drive the Americas -- all of 'em. You can imagine the logistics that are required for such an endeavor -- just the kind of challenge and excitement we are looking for. We will finally learn Spanish, too. We still aren't sure if we will head south in 2011 or 2012. Depending on what we learn about the weather patterns in Central America, we might want to stick around North America for a bit.

This takes me back to our next vehicle. We know that we want 4WD, but aren't sure what we will find that meets our needs. We hope to find a van that has already been customized as an RV that we can tweak a little and then convert to 4WD. Thi$ i$ ea$ier $aid than done. We also need to consider vehicles that are easily serviceable in Central and South America. Another complication is the fact that we really don't want to buy a used vehicle in Michigan (salt on roads = rust). During a cursory check for used vans and RVs, I found quite a few in Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Looking at vans in these states would involve more logistics. Do we buy a new one? Do we get an empty van and convert it ourselves -- plumbing including shower, electrical including solar panels, propane including cooking and heating, etc? We'd prefer not to start with an empty van.

Scott has already spent many brain hours on the gear we will want while traveling through the Americas. Surfboards, kiteboards, kites -- how many and which sizes? Bikes -- fancy full-suspension or simple hard-tails? The backcountry snowboarding equipment will probably have to wait in Ann Arbor until we can accompany it on a plane trip back to South America. The gear shopping is a time-consuming challenge that we will be focusing on over the next couple of months.

Scott told me the other day that he hasn't been sleeping well. I think he's got the planny plan on his mind...

Maybe we Shouldn't Park on the Beach Tonight

2011-04-07T06:38:00.001+10:00

We were near the northern tip of New Zealand when the Japan earthquake and tsunami occurred. The earthquake struck during the night, and we happened to be parked nearly on the beach. In the morning, the radio warned of the potential for the tsunami to reach the northern tip of New Zealand. At first, I ignored the warning. After 10 months of not being in Northland, I forgot that we finally were in Northland. We moved the van.

Later that morning, we ran on the beach, and walked up the stream feeding into the ocean. We watched waves of water run UP the stream every 8 minutes. The waves were small, but it was fascinating to realize the power of the tsunami. The waves had traveled across hemispheres and 5500 miles. Scott tried to catch a big trout with his bare hands. It had been stranded in the shallow water by the rapidly rising and falling stream, but it flip-flopped it's way to safety.

About a week later, we were at Bayley's Beach on the west coast. Here, you can drive onto the beach, even with a 2WD vehicle. We thought it would be epic to park the van on the beach for the night. It happened to be the equinox (spring or autumn depending on which hemisphere you're in). The moon was the closest it had been to the earth in 30 years. Thus, the tides were expected to be extreme. Keeping this in mind, we hung out in the van, watching the sunset, and carefully watching the rising tide as it inched towards our van. High tide was scheduled for 10pm, so we figured if the van wasn't swept away by say, 10:30pm, we would probably be okay for the rest of the night. Come 9pm, a large surge of water lapped at our tires. We decided to find another place to sleep. The next morning, we drove back to Bayleys, only to find that the ramp on the beach was closed. The massive tide had flooded at least 50 feet beyond where we had been parked.

Maybe we shouldn't park on the beach tonight...

Link to March Pictures

White Sand Beaches and Rooster Rest Areas

2011-04-04T15:43:00.001+10:00

White sand tropical-ness

It was about about 1.5 months ago that we started our adventures in Northland, the region north of Auckland. It is much more tropical than we had ever imagined. In many parts, there are no more than 20 miles between the east and the west coast. The fine, sugary, white sand beaches on the north and east coasts are my favorite. The west side has black sand beaches created by volcanic rock that was carried up the coastline from Mt. Taranaki.

Rooster rest stop

A weird
thing we noticed in Northland was the abundance of wild roosters at the roadside picnic and rest areas. We suspect people simply dispose of their male chicks, since they only need one rooster. One night, we were really tired, and we couldn't find one of our epic camping spots. We decided to park along the road at a rest area. It was still very dark when a dozen roosters introduced themselves. At one point, I think they had our van surrounded. There was no sleeping-in that morning.

Link to March Pictures

Ode to The Van

2011-03-10T12:38:00.001+11:00

Now that our time in New Zealand is quickly coming to an end, it's time to pay tribute to our trusty stead, THE VAN. Anyone who reads this blog may remember my post about 10 months ago that suggested the stead was less than trusty.

It turned out that all of our troubles were related to moisture in the connection between the control module and the injector pump. Moisture in New Zealand?! Once we got that fixed (and everything that it damaged), all was good. We assumed that our streak of bad luck would continue, but it didn't. We've come to trust and even like our van.

What follows will probably be quite boring for most people. It documents how we manage to live quite comfortably in a 17 x 6 x 5 foot box.

Increased size alone was a big deal. The box in Australia was 15 x 5 x 4.5 feet. Also, our van in Oz was a cargo van--no windows. This van had a massive number of windows, enabling us to enjoy the New Zealand views while eating and hanging out.

One of the unique and surprisingly useful features were the custom mini-awnings. We call them "Sylvias", after the previous owner who invented them. They are absolutely ESSENTIAL for ventilation while it is raining.

Next, is the little gem of a water heater that runs off propane and heats water on demand. This type of water heater is typical for motorhomes. It provided HOT showers for us even while the temperature outside was near freezing on the mountain. I'll never have another van/motorhome without one.

Other van-living luxuries I won't be able to live without are a fridge and a little sink. Previously, we used a cooler for our food. Hunting down ice was a never-ending battle in Australia. We never thought a sink would be worth it, but it sure was nice to be able to clean dishes inside while the mosquitoes buzzed around outside.

Things we could live without are the microwave (never used), toilet (never used), and the king-sized bed. Funny enough, we've never owned a king-sized bed except for in this van!

Link to February Pictures

Swell Bent

2011-03-07T18:07:00.001+11:00

by Scott

It's a bit of an understatement to say that I've been hell bent on surfing the last couple years. After breathing, surfing has been second on my priority list. Eating? I can do that when I take a break. Sleeping? I can do that when it's dark.

Any time we get near the coast, I start doing research on surf spots and checking the swell forecast. Then, just in case the forecast is wrong, I have to go to the beach to check it out myself. Heather hasn't quite shared my enthusiasm.

This wasn't "the spot"

After a few good days in Australia, I decided we were ready for shortboards. We switched from a 7'10" and 7'6" to a 6'6" and 6'5". Both of us struggled, partly due to lack of skill, but also because we didn't stumble upon the right place at the right time.

Our nomadic lifestyle is actually not conducive to surfing. It takes the right size swell, from the right direction, at the right beach, with the right wind...and we need to be there when it happens. A better approach would be to stay at a spot known for good conditions, but patience is not one of our virtues.

In New Zealand, we have even shorter boards that we can store in the shower--a 6'4" for me and a 5'6" for Heather. Despite the small boards and our lack of skill, we finally got lucky and stumbled upon several days of good surf at a remote spot. I'm not even going to disclose the location for fear of spoiling it. It was so good that we don't even have pictures.

On the last day, conditions were perfect--head high waves, no wind, and no people. Just me, Heather, and a friendly local named Dennis. I was the first one to paddle out. I caught the first wave and rode it 100m all the way to the beach. It was the best wave of my life. The second wave was bigger and better. It was the new best wave of my life. This trend continued all day, as I watched from the back side as Heather caught the best wave of her life. She still doesn't quite share my enthusiasm, but she's getting there.

Link to February Pictures

Rock Gym

2011-03-02T13:39:00.003+11:00

by Scott

In our previous life, after a day of sitting on our butts in a cube, we would head to the gym for some exercise. Even during our year-long trip in North America, we kept our 24-Hour Fitness membership active for the occasional workout and shower. In Australia and New Zealand, there is no big chain fitness center with locations outside the cities, so we've been forced to get creative.

It's easy enough to work the legs: jogging, biking, hiking, stair steps, and our favorite, running up sandy dunes. It was a little harder to figure out how to work the upper body. Sure, we can do push-ups anywhere, and playgrounds are good for pull-ups, but both get a little boring. Attending a few strength training classes with Heather's Mom inspired us to try some new things.

For a mere $15, Heather bought a set of elastic bands. These things are great for the traveling fitness fanatic. There are 3 different bands, each color coded to indicate resistance level. With some discarded PVC pipe, I made an extra set of handles so we can work out simultaneously.

We've also realized that a rocky beach is like a free gym with an infinite variety of dumbbells. The downside is that the dumbbells aren't labeled, but it doesn't take too much effort to find a reasonably matched pair. The upside is that we never have to wait for someone else to finish using them, there's no nasty gym smell, the views are to die for, and we can take a refreshing dip when we're done.

UPDATE: Comments from our Scottish Highlander fitness consultant inspired the driftwood caber toss -- thanks Doug MacChilders!

Link to February Pictures

Sliding Down Rocks at Rere Rockslide

2011-02-28T13:16:00.001+11:00

The Rere Rockslide is a natural 180 foot rock incline with just enough water pouring over it to entice the kid in all of us to risk serious injury.

I had anticipated Rere Rockslide for a couple of weeks. Various tourist publications suggested that this "natural wonder" could best be enjoyed with a boogie board, inner tube, or blowup mattress. We assumed that the town near Rere Rockslide would have loads of used boogie boards in their second-hand shops. However, when we arrived during a very hot day and asked at the visitor center, they pointed us to the nearest Warehouse (NZ version of Walmart).

Since we didn't want to buy a new board, only to throw it away after a few slides, we headed to all of the second-hand shops. No luck. Next, we trudged around town in the 90 degree heat, on foot and in the van. The Warehouse was sold out, and our next best option was a $30 board at a lawn and garden shop. We couldn't bring ourselves to pay that much for a piece of foam that we would use for 30 minutes and then throw away.

As usual, Scott had a "great" idea. We bought $4 worth of foam padding at a second-hand shop that we planned to wrap around my little surfboard. We thought this was a good idea until we got to the rockslide and discovered how long, rocky, and bumpy it is. We didn't want to risk breaking the surfboard, so we used a cracked boogie board from the trash can at the parking lot. The first slide turned out pretty well (the ending is the best part):

You can watch the following two videos to see how the rest of the slides turned out:

If you can't tell from the videos, we both rode down the rockslide on our hands, knees, and toes for most of the way. The board got stuck on one of the diagonal cracks. You would think we would have cut our losses at this point, but we didn't. Both of us tried again, and both of us lost the board before the end. Our elbows and wrists were sore for days -- I thought I might have broken something. Now that 3 weeks have passed, I can look back on it and kinda laugh (while cringing).

Link to February Pictures

Random January News: South Island to the North Island

2011-02-09T11:48:00.000+11:00

How many places can you travel from the east coast to the west coast to the north coast to the south coast to the west coast and finally to the east coast again, in a vehicle, in a span of 4 weeks? We put the van to work over the past month as we traveled from Christchurch on the east coast of the South Island in a very round-about way to the east coast of the North Island.

Scott worked up quite a thirst on our hike

In order to get to the west coast from Christchurch you must travel over one of the mountain passes. The quickest route is over Arthur's Pass, where we enjoyed a few glorious, sunny, and warm days in the mountains. As we hiked down from Avalanche Peak, we spotted Devil's Punchbowl Falls across the valley, and had some fun taking pictures. Living so close to waterfalls for so long in the northwest, you'd think this would have occurred to us before. Surely other people have done it. Show us your pics!

The wild, unpopulated, and gorgeous northwest coast of the South Island was definitely a highlight. It had been a while since we had been around native forest. Unfortunately, many parts of New Zealand are logged for grazing or forestry business -- they don't tell you this in their "Clean, Green, 100% Pure New Zealand" tourist brochures. We just learned that NZ has the 2nd most endangered forest ecosystem in the world (2nd to Burma). Here's my 2 cents: less sheep and cows -- more greenery.

We had a self-imposed deadline to get to the Wellington immigration office by the end of January. This was to allow time to buy a plane ticket if our visa-extension application wasn't approved. We decided to get to Wellington on a Sunday night so that we could get to the immigration office bright and early on Monday morning. Wellington is the North Island port, the capital of NZ, and home to one of the bigger immigration offices. We managed to pick a bad day to cross the Cook Strait, as it was stormy, windy, and rainy -- only slight sea sickness this time. We woke up early and hurried to the immigration office only to find that it was "Wellington Day" (!!!???) and all government offices were closed. DAMN. Our patience was rewarded with a visa-extension approval and a sunny day on Tuesday. It was our 3rd time in Wellington and the first time to experience anything other than rain, wind, and cold. In fact, it was downright beautiful weather. Our visa was extended from March 30th to May 30th. We still haven't decided exactly when we will fly back to the USA (probably sometime mid-May).

From Wellington, we traveled up the west coast of the North Island, chasing wind and waves (and sunsets) but after a couple of days we headed to the east coast where we made a stop at a place called Castlepoint. We had never expected to go out to Castlepoint as it's a big out-and-back drive for something unknown. We were so glad we made the drive. Castlepoint is an unusual limestone reef/peninsula/island-like formation with epic beach driving and good surfing and hiking options. I went overboard taking pictures of all the seals lazing on the beach and rocks.

The hot weather is taking it's toll on the seals too

Summer on the east coast of the North Island is kicking our butts a little bit at the moment. I know no one in the snowy USA wants to hear about the hot and humid days/nights but honestly, it's not very comfortable -- this morning we woke up and it was 84 degrees in the van. SO HOT AND HUMID. I don't expect this to last for very long so we're trying to enjoy it for what it is -- good surfing and swimming weather!

Link to January pictures

Random December News

2011-01-12T14:00:00.001+11:00

We spent nearly half of December hoping that Scott would get over his mystery illness. I'm writing this in January, and happy to report that the illness has disappeared. Luckily, for his 40th birthday, he started to feel well enough to enjoy the best kitesurfing session of his life at Colac Bay in the far south.

Fish Feel

We headed west after our ER visit in the southern-most city of Invercargill. We found plenty of amazing freedom camping spots on the southern coast. At one of the great camping spots, Scott decided to fish in a small lagoon, right next to the ocean, where he caught his first brown trout. He ran up the steep hill to get me from the van so that I could witness his catch. As we were running back down to the lagoon, the conversation about whether we would kill the fish began. Despite the fact that I eat meat, I still have issues with the idea of someone, especially us, killing something. After a few moments of back-and-forth conversation about whether we should eat the trout, Scott reminded me of his recent track record, convincing me that this might be our one and only chance to eat fresh NZ trout tacos. I had a sad feeling all night about the fact that we killed the fish. Why don't I feel that way about the chicken and beef that I eat? I think everyone should have to kill their own meat -- it would make us much more thankful for what we put in our mouths everyday. A few days later, we found this graffiti (pictured) on the pylon of a bridge near a large reservoir.

Clifden Caves

Not many tourists make the trip all the way to Invercargill. We benefited by finding some great off-the-beaten track experiences. One notable find, was the Clifden Caves. This underground cave system was denoted by a sign on the highway labeled, "limestone caves". You park along the road, cross over a private-property fence, and climb down a hole beneath grazing sheep. We found ourselves crawling, shimmying, and climbing through some impossibly narrow, wet, and muddy spaces. The limestone formations were very cool. It was surreal to emerge from the caves, 2 hours later, into blazing sunshine, with the temperature 20 F degrees hotter than in the caves.

As we headed back north, we zipped through some areas that we had already visited, including the incredibly scenic area around Queenstown and Wanaka. We even found ourselves back in Timaru, the little city that had kept us warm and dry during the big northwesterly storms in October. During our trek northward, we also passed through Christchurch and the surrounding area. It was fun to be in the area during the summer, since all of our prior experiences in Christchurch were during the wet and cold months. One of the memorable times near Christchurch was at a "locals-only" free camping area that we found on Lake Ellesmere. We met Greg, a Kiwi originally from Alaska, his adopted son, and his son's biological father. The three of them were traveling together for the holidays. Greg is a fellow engineer, kiter, kayaker, mountain biker, and all-around adventurer. We kited and kayaked with him for a few days, and we even met up with him a week later, where we learned how to play parcheesi in his recently purchased motorhome. It's always fun to connect with like-minded people. We spent New Years Eve at the camping area on Lake Ellesmere where we went to sleep at 10pm. We were "treated" to a small fireworks blast around midnight, but other than that, 2010 went out with a whimper.

Link to December Pictures

The Three Questions for 2010

2010-12-28T10:19:00.002+11:00

Today, I had the pleasure of briefly chatting, electronically of course, with one of my dear friends, Aly. Since it was recently Scott's birthday, she passed along her "3 birthday questions" that I decided would be a great way to end 2010 on our blog. Both of us answered the questions without looking at the other's answers. We also answered them pretty hastily.

The questions Aly poses to her friends every year for their birthday are: what are 3 things in the past year you are proud of, 3 things you learned, and 3 things you're looking forward to in the next year? The answers to these questions are really the essence of living. I wish I could hear the answers from all my friends and family -- get prepared.

HEATHER

3 things in the past year you are proud of:

Pulling off our move from Australia to New Zealand with hardly any issues, including getting rid of all our "stuff"
Finding some great secret adventure spots in NZ -- off the beaten track
Making it through a NZ winter, living in a van

3 things you learned:

They don't call it the "roaring forties" for nothing -- NZ weather pretty much sucks ass
All about how diesel engines work -- thanks to the failures of our campervan after we bought it. Luckily, all of the issues were fixed and it's running like a charm (I know I just jinxed us).
Virgin Blue Airlines lets you travel with 2 pieces of "sporting goods" that can weigh up to 50 lbs each, FOR FREE!

3 things you're looking forward to in the next year:

Heading back to the USA for a visit with family/friends
Buying a new home (van) and customizing it from scratch
Getting better at kiteboarding
For the record, I have way more things to say in this category than any of the others

SCOTT:
3 things in the past year you are proud of:

Blogging
Writing and recording more songs
Catching and filleting my first trout

3 things you learned:

Way too much about diesel injection systems
The UK should be thankful that the Holocaust overshadows their brutal colonial history
New Zealand isn't nearly as clean and green as they want tourists to believe

3 things you're looking forward to in the next year:

Outfitting a new van
Cheap good beer, wine, and liquor
Getting better in the waves, both surfing and kiting

Happy New Year to all our family and friends. Wishing you a year full of proud moments, learning opportunities, and great expectations.

Link to December Pictures

Guacaganoush or Babagamole?

2010-12-22T09:21:00.001+11:00

by Scott

One of the fun things about our necessarily frugal lifestyle is that it encourages us to get creative with our food. When we are near civilization, we cruise the supermarkets for deals. Often, we end up with perishable items that must be consumed within a day or two. For example, today, we needed to eat avocados and eggplant. Heather sauted the eggplant with onions, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil, then mixed it with avocado to make a Mid-East Mexican dip we called guacaganoush or babagamole. It was fantastic.

Other times, when we are far from civilization, we have to make do with the items in the cupboard. I've come up with a couple good salad dressings. One was a raspberry sesame vinaigrette made with raspberry preserves, malt vinegar, olive oil, and sesame seeds from the bottom of an empty bread bag. The other one was simply a mixture of the juice from a can of beets and olive oil. Unfortunately, I didn't have any seedy dregs for that one.

If you try any of these recipes and don't like them, go outside and exercise for 3 or 4 hours and try again. That usually works for us.

Sick in Southland

2010-12-12T13:09:00.001+11:00

Just as we decided to head into The Catlins region of the South Island, Scott developed an unusual sickness characterized by intense abdominal/back pain and extreme fatigue. The Catlins is a remote area in the southeast where you are lucky to find cellphone service or radio, much less medical services. I learned what it feels like to travel alone because during the 5 worst days of his illness, he could barely sit up (much less walk). Walking alone on a beautiful beach or through the forest just isn't the same when your partner isn't there. We kept thinking he might be getting better because he would feel slightly relieved every morning. On the 5th night of his sickness, he woke up at midnight writhing in pain. Luckily we had arrived to the city of Invercargill earlier that day, so we were only 20 miles from the nearest ER.

The pain slowly subsided while Scott laid on the narrow ER table between 2 - 8 am. The ER team couldn't find anything wrong with him after a quick physical exam in addition to a general blood test, urinalysis, and stool analysis. He still has generalized pain in his abdomen, so when we get to the next population center, we will find a GP and request some more specific tests for ulcers.

How apropos that this all occurred as he approached his 40th birthday, which happens to be today! That $600 New Zealand insurance policy will definitely pay off. In the meantime, because a possible ulcer is in the cards, no beer for the birthday boy.

Link to December Pictures

Sea Creature Encounters in NZ

2010-12-09T15:44:00.002+11:00

Over the past few weeks, we've spent time mostly along the southeastern coast of the South Island. Scott found a used surfboard, and we are in full-on summer mode. Too bad the weather isn't necessarily in summer mode. Is that what happens when the next land mass to the south is Antarctica? For every one day of 75 - 80 degrees, we get 5 days of 60 degrees. There is some fantastic scenery, and lots of sea lions, seals, and dolphins, so we are happy to explore despite the dreary weather.

The most exciting and memorable thing in the past few weeks has been our surf session with a pod of the rare and endangered Hector's Dolphins. They are the smallest dolphin in the world and can only be found off the coast of NZ. They were very playful and quite curious as they zipped around us and under us with amazing speed. As long as we were out there, they never strayed far from us. Many times, they popped out of the water within inches of us while never letting us touch them. Priceless.

Snuggling in the sand

The southeastern coast is home to the NZ sea lion. We've learned that the NZ fur seal that we started to see on the northeast coast favors rocky shorelines, while the sea lion favors sand. It's been really exciting walking along the beaches to find sea lions resting. A good way to spot a sea lion on the beach is to look for flying sand, as they sweep it over themselves to keep cool. One day, we were relaxing in the van, overlooking Blackhead beach near Dunedin, watching a couple of surfers. Next thing we know, it looks like there are 3 surfers. One of the guys had another "surfer" almost right on top of him. We watched a sea lion (the other surfer) chase the guy out of the water and UP THE BEACH. The guy was running through knee deep water with all his might, while the sea lion was riding the shore break to get to him. Sea lions are amazingly quick out of the water. It turns out the guy escaped unscathed. I laughed for days.

We spent a few days at the Taieri river mouth where Scott caught one small trout while fishing. The toughest fight came from a cockle that wouldn't let go of his hook. Who knew cockles chased lures?

Fiesty cockle

We watched some locals collect pipis at the mouth of the Taieri river and decided to give it a try. Pipis are like small clams and in fact, taste exactly like the baby clams that we've bought at the grocery store. We couldn't get them to clean out their system (ahem, poop bag) so they were full of sand. The cleaning process was ridiculously tedious. A bucket of pipis resulted to about a cup of meat. Never again. This story sounds very familiar to our experience with the fresh shrimp we bought in Australia, and the blue crab given to us by a friendly Aussie.

Bucket full of pipis

It is the start of peak tourist season, and we are starting to feel the effects. We were the first ones to arrive, around 3pm, to a seemingly epic camping spot overlooking the ocean. Since the camping spot is published in the tourist literature and is only $6, I had a sneaking suspicion that it would turn into a madhouse come 8-9 pm. Unfortunately, I was right - reason #1001 to freedom camp?

Awesome campsite before anyone else arrived

In the morning I took a walk along the beach, over the rock walls, and surprised a little fur seal trying to get some shuteye on his private bed of kelp amongst the rocks.

Flippers tucked up

Link to November Pictures
Link to December Pictures

They Call It Freedom Camping

2010-11-19T10:13:00.001+11:00

Kiwis call what we are doing "freedom camping". It's essentially camping outside of motorhome parks and designated campgrounds. We do it for many reasons. Number one, it's free, but just as important is that we aren't packed into a small space next to another campervan. Most of our freedom camping has been in amazing locations overlooking an ocean, a river, or the mountains. Inevitably we've had to "park up" (that's another Kiwi and Aussie saying) on a neighborhood street or in a paved parking lot. The last time we had to do that, the Christchurch earthquake shook us awake at 4:30 am.

In populated areas, freedom camping is frowned upon. Part of the reason is because there are so many rental campervans roaming the small country from December - March, and they all seem to "park-up" in the same locations. It doesn't take long to learn that the beaten path is not the best place to find peace and quiet. Locals blame trash and "human waste" on freedom campers. We take huge issue with this accusation as all of the freedom campers we've ever seen are more likely to pickup garbage than leave it. I think those McDonalds bags, empty cigarette packs, and beer bottles are probably from the local kids enjoying their secret party spot. In fact, this past Friday, we were awakened at 1:30 am by a car full of people throwing their beer bottles over the cliff into the vegetated sand dunes above the ocean. In the morning, the parking lot was littered with garbage from the Friday night partiers.

One of the more beautiful camping spots we've had recently

When we are in populated areas, finding a good camping spot takes some patience and ingeniuty. We usually spend time looking at maps, riding around on our bikes, walking the area, or hiking to a lookout to scope things out. Our general requirement is that we aren't in view of any houses, we have some sort of a view (sunset, ocean, nestled in a forest, etc), and that it's quiet, without any threat of hoons (punk ass Kiwi kids) waking us up in the middle of the night (that's the hardest requirement to meet). Bonus points for a flat spot, light winds, and no trains. Generally, we park in a public location -- never on someone's private property.

Summer Has Sprung in New Zealand

2010-11-15T08:04:00.000+11:00

It doesn't seem like very long ago that the sun was setting at 4:30 pm and the relentless rain caused everything in our van to grow mold. I remember looking up the sunset times online, desperately yearning for the days when the sun would set at 9:30 pm and the rain would end. Despite my catastrophizing of the rain and mold situation, we've survived to see some really fabulous weather and long days. Summer is definitely knocking on our door. We've already managed to kiteboard a couple of times, which is surely a sign that the weather (and water) is getting warmer. Plus, the dank smell of mold in the van has been replaced by the sweet mango-like aroma of the local wildflowers.

Scott taking a freshwater dip before dinner

We are currently in Dunedin on the southeast coast of the South Island. Dunedin is a very large city for New Zealand standards (pop. 125,000), with a third of the population being students (Otago University). It seems that we've fallen into a familiar pattern of staying somewhere for at least 2 weeks before moving on. This allows us to learn about the area, the recreational opportunities, the secret camping spots, and the good shopping (mostly groceries since we eat a lot). Since this will be the last big city we'll see for a while, we are spending a fair bit of our time doing chores, bike repairs, van maintenance, and stocking up on supplies. Also, Scott is desparately searching for a used surfboard before we hit the desolate area south of here that we call the Baja-of-NZ.

The Trout Drought is Over

2010-11-09T08:04:00.000+11:00

by Scott

I was secretly hoping that writing about my poor fishing performance would reverse jinx me. It apparently worked. As the sun was setting on a small lake outside Alexandra, I decided to make a few casts. I tied on a black rooster tail spinner. On my second cast, retrieving at a moderate speed along a rock ledge, I felt the unmistakable bite of fish lips on steel. The fight was on. I landed what may some day be a 5-lb perch.

He'll have to get smarter if he ever wants to be a 5-lb perch

A few casts later, I also caught a small rainbow trout. I had to throw it back because we'd already eaten dinner, and Heather wouldn't allow a dead fish in the van overnight.

Trout Wishing

2010-10-25T18:21:00.001+11:00

by Scott

Several months ago, I met a Kiwi mountain biker who read me the riot act for traveling around NZ without a fishing pole. With all the ocean-side, lake-side, and river-side camping spots, not to mention the high cost of seafood, he thought I was crazy. Soon after that, my father-in-law recalled his cousin's story about the fabulous fishing in NZ. He claimed that you had to hide behind a tree just to bait your hook. So, I finally bought a fishing pole, and the weather has improved enough that I've done a fair amount of fishing over the past month. I've found some beautiful spots, but I haven't had a single bite.

Trout wishing on Lake Wakatipu near Queenstown

I'm starting to think the story about having to hide behind a tree to bait your hook was not because the fish are so eager to bite, but because the water is so damn clear that the fish can see what kind of bait you're using and actively avoid it.

Link to related pictures

Queenstown Part II (The Good)

2010-10-22T14:48:00.004+11:00

Portable yurt

A large storm hit Queenstown and the surrounding mountains during the first weekend we arrived, that dumped 2 feet of new snow. This coincided with the end-of-season closing of the local ski resort in the Remarkables mountain range, aptly called "The Remarkables". We were able to use their road to access some incredible backcountry snowboarding and equally incredible camping in the portable yurt. The mountain road rises sharply from Queenstown into the steep mountains. The van got quite a workout. On much of the upper road, we had to drive in 1st gear. We even had to use our chains for the first (and probably the last) time.

Winding and steep road from lake to mountain

Kea like bike seat foam

One day, as we were climbing up for the last run, we heard the ominous call of the Kea, the world's only alpine parrot. We didn't see them in the parking lot, so we didn't put the bikes inside (note to self: birds can fly). We watched helplessly as they flew across the valley toward the parking lot. When we got back to the van, sure enough, a gang of kea had chewed through our brand new bike cover and finished what they started on Scott's bike seat. Luckily, when Scott put on the tire chains, he happened to put the heavy cordura tire chain bag over my brand new bike seat, so it survived unscathed.

Snow-us

As is typical this time of year, the snow ranged from powder on the south facing slopes to corn on the north facing slopes to ice and/or slush depending on the time of day. When all we could find was heavy wet snow, we gave up on snowboarding and made a snow-us.

Link to related pictures

Queenstown Part I (The Bad)

2010-10-20T15:55:00.002+11:00

Gorgeous scenery in the Queenstown area

Since we arrived 10 days ago in Queenstown, the "adventure capital of the world", our experience has been a mixed bag. Our first impression of this tourist town was not good. As we drove into Queenstown, we were overwhelmed with the blatant consumerism and tourist-targeted money grubbing. Bungy jumping, bunjy swing, 4WD tours, paraglide, parasail, skydiving, helicopter/plane tours, alpine slide, monster truck driving, flying fox, jetboat tour, kayking, rafting, river diving, the list goes on... Luckily, the surrounding landscape, dominated by snow-capped mountains and a large glacial lake, is so breathtaking that you can almost forget about the overdeveloped center of it all. The area was the sight for many scenes from The Lord of The Rings -- all of those scenes where you think to yourself, "Where is that?!".

My clipless bike shoe was dismantled during the crash

We prematurely panicked when we found ourselves amongst the trendy shops, raucous springbreak-like 20 somethings, and rich tourists. We quickly retreated out of town to reassess our options. We found a nice bike trail along the lake, and started to feel better about the area. That quickly changed when I had a head-on collision with another cyclist on the bike trail. It was a blind corner and both of us were going pretty fast. He put his head down and bashed it directly into my bicep -- good thing he had a helmet on to sustain the impact from my big pipes. The guy kept asking me if I was okay. At first, I couldn't answer him. Both of us stood up, and I realized that the sole of my shoe was gone -- a testament to the force that removed me from my bike. As I hobbled up the trail, the guy asked me for the 20th time if I was okay. My answer: "I'm fine, I just need to get the sole of my shoe...". I did, in fact, find the sole of my shoe. Fortunately, I only had to hobble about half a mile back to the van. I must have landed on my arm, because I was convinced that it was broken. I decided to postpone the hospital visit until the next day, but in the morning, I was shocked at how much better it felt. However, with the "broken" arm feeling better, I noticed the other deep bruises all over my body. Looking back on the accident, I feel sooooooo lucky that I didn't break anything -- what a major bummer that would have been.

Stay tuned for Queenstown, Part II...

Link to related pictures

Ohau We Love Backcountry Snowboarding

2010-10-13T19:02:00.002+11:00

Portable yurt in Mt. Dobson parking lot

We finally managed to pull ourselves away from Timaru and head towards the mountains again. The weather forecast was for sun, light wind, and warm temps so we revisted the Mt. Dobson parking lot with our portable yurt (the van) and spent 3 days in the backcountry. We stayed until the last day of the season, afterwhich, they closed the private access road.

Next, Scott had scoped out the Ohau skifield, about 2 hours southwest of Mt. Dobson in the Ohau Mountain Range. Our backcountry ski book had suggested that even if the skifield is closed for the season, you can request access at the bottom of the road at the Ohau Lodge. We headed to the

Lake Ohau in the background

lodge and expected nothing more than a quick transaction to pay an access fee and/or get a key to unlock the gate. What followed was a very weird interaction with one of the co-owners of the Ohau Lodge. At first, he told us "no, we don't let people up the mountain when there is snow and danger of avalanche". Scott pushed back, saying that our backcountry book suggested that they allowed it. The manager told us they allow people up there in the summer, but not right after closing the skifield (which had been the day before). He went on to tell us that they hadn't locked up the buildings or property. Although Scott continued to push back, both of us were resolved to leave and started turning to head out the door. The manager then started asking us where we were from, where we had been, what we were doing, etc. Annoyed, Scott gave him short answers. It turns out, the manager was worried that we were locals (the accent didn't give us away?) and that we would soon be telling everyone about the poaching opportunity in the Ohau backcountry after the resort was closed (again, it was in the book!).

Hiking up from Dumbell Lake in the Ohau Range

After he felt assured that we weren't locals, he told us he would unlock the gate for us, and he didn't charge us anything. We still don't understand why he played such games with us, but we'll be prepared next time. There is a lot of public land in NZ that can only be accessed via private roads, so this may happen again.

The following 2 days were bright, sunny and magnificient on the mountain. The views of Ohau Lake below us and the southern alps were the best part. Since the snow wasn't the best, we were happy to leave after a couple of days. Only one casualty -- we lost a hub cap on the road up (or down?).

A baby huck in the Ohau Range

Link to related pictures

Domestic Bliss in Timaru

2010-09-29T15:09:00.001+10:00

Watching the sunset from our free
and legal camping spot in Timaru

We rolled up to the sunny town of Timaru (pop 27,000) over 19 days ago. We were unaware that we would be spending so much time here. Soon after arriving, an "Australia sized storm" hit New Zealand and grounded us for more than 2 weeks. The NZ Herald called it the "biggest storm on the planet". The gale force winds (80 mph) and snow in the mountains lasted 2 weeks. They say that they have lost half a million lambs due to the cold weather and storms. Yes, lambing season is at the end of winter -- poor little lambs. During the storm's fury, we just happened to pick the only place in the country that was sunny and dry! In fact, today, Timaru had the highest temperature in the entire country (23.3 C = 74 F). I forgot to mention that we are in the southern part of the South Island, usually not the warmest place. We are stupidly still holding out for some snowboarding.

Sun Conures in the free aviary in Timaru.
They never left each others side.

If you're going to be grounded due to weather, Timaru seems to be the place to be. It has large parks where we can run and/or bike everyday. One of the parks has an aviary that we visit almost everyday (you know you're getting old when the highlight of your day is the aviary). We got to be pretty good friends with the big white cockatoo...after we started bringing our old bread (shhhh). When he wanted more bread, he would say "hellllooo". They also have a pretty beachside location with FREE and LEGAL campervan parking. They request that stays are limited to no more than 3 nights. I guess we broke that rule, but they don't seem too motivated to enforce it at this time of the year. Lately we have been venturing out of town to some clifftop sleeping spots. During the harvest moon, we watched the moon rise over the ocean for a few nights -- I almost needed my sunglasses!

Watching the full moon rise

The library has free wireless where we spent the past few days repairing a massive computer crash on our 13-month old HP laptop. Why do we still own stock in HP? I'm writing this post while reinstalling all of our software and backed-up files. During the frenzy of realizing we lost all of our photos, documents, etc. from the past 6 months, I learned that our Visa credit card gives you an added year to the manufacturer's warranty on items that you purchase with the card. If I hadn't been able to fix the computer, this would have been a great option for us. Who knew?! I write this hoping to encourage other people to take advantage of this little perk if your card offers it. Some credit card companies may require you to register the product with them when you purchase it, but that's not a bad thing, as it is probably easier than tracking down your original receipt.

No pharmacy visit needed

Timaru's retailers have received more money from us than any other place in New Zealand (van repairs do not count as retail). Scott bought a spiffy new wetsuit, and we also bought another portable hard drive. You can probably guess why we purchased the portable hard drive. We also bought our replacement propane tank here and "donated" our old one to the local gas-supply shop.

When we first arrived in Timaru, Scott was having pain in the tooth that was root canaled in OZ last year. The pain had slowly built over the past month (something he never told me). Turns out, he had to get it extracted. The whole dental experience was fast, friendly, and inexpensive. Scott had 3 appointments, including a tricky extraction, two x-rays, narcotics, and an emergency follow-up where he got antibiotics. The dentist counted out the penicillin capsules, put them in a small brown bag, and wrote the instructions on the bag. The whole thing (including meds) cost $193 USD.

Timaru has been good to us, but I think it's time to move on.

Link to September Pictures

Backcountry Snowboarding in The Two Thumbs Range

2010-09-21T12:37:00.002+10:00

After the earthquake in Christchurch, we stuck around for a few days because the weather was sunny. Eventually though, we got a fed up with the constant aftershocks waking us up at night and the lack of safe tap water. We headed a few hours south to the Two Thumbs Range. Because the snow level was high, we drove to Mt. Dobson, home of the highest carpark in New Zealand. Our backcountry ski book didn't mention Dobson as a potential spot, but Scott had a sneaking suspicion.

Hiking back up after our first run down the backside

The expedition didn't start well. The snow in the muddy parking lot was slushy, and the mountain was a complete whiteout. We decided to climb up just for the workout, but when we made it to the top, the clouds parted and the sun broke through ... cue the singing angels. We really couldn't believe our eyes. It was absolutely breathtaking. Massive mountains all around us! As heavy clouds approached, we found a run down the backside of the ridge that was softened by the sun -- my first time riding on pure corn snow. I'm hooked on the corn. For the uninitiated, corn snow is snow that has gone through repeated melt-freeze cycles and is usually found in the spring. In the morning, corn snow is an unforgiving hard crust, but with sun exposure, the frozen corn kernels separate to provide excellent boarding. If you can't have powder, corn is the next best thing!!

Great sleeping in the Mt. Dobson lot

To avoid having to drive back up in the morning, we asked the Dobson manager if we could spend the night in the parking lot. He agreed, and we ended up staying for 3 nights. The second day was a bust.

Hanging out in the snowpit

We climbed to the ridge just in time for the clouds to create a complete whiteout. Given the surprise clearing on the first day, we dug a snow pit and waited for 2 hours, hoping for a repeat. No such luck. The clouds never cleared, and we got cold, so we headed back to the van. Bummer. Our final day made up for it, as we had some quality corn with sunshine all day. Scott said it was the most beautiful day he's ever spent in the mountains. The pictures don't do it justice.

Scott's "two thumbs" pose

A downturn in the weather forced us back to sea-level, where we headed to a small coastal town called Timaru. Timaru deserves it's own blog post. After a few days waiting for the weather to settle, we went back up to the Two Thumbs Range. This time, we decided to access the range via Fox Peak skifield. In the valley, as we started to climb towards Fox Peak, we encountered a small bridge. It was labeled "cars only", with directions for other vehicles to ford the river. Um, not possible for our van. The river was deep and the rocks were massive. WTH? The sign said the bridge had a load limit of 2500 kg with a maximum width of 1.9 meters. Our van weighs more than 2500 kg and the wheels are 1.8 meters apart.

Loaded up, with a frown on my face

Since we didn't know any better, we made the decision not to cross the bridge. In all honesty, I would have done it in a heartbeat, but Scott is the one that keeps us safe, risk-free, and alive. I willingly, but unhappily, went along with Scott's next idea, to put our snowboard, boots, clothing, and poles in our backpacks and bike up the mountain. This feat would be hard even without 60 lbs on our back. We lasted about 10 minutes before we turned around. We realized we couldn't keep our front tires on the ground, and I could barely balance with so much weight on my back. That was our last-chance snowboarding opportunity before "the largest storm of the century" hit New Zealand. Blizzard conditions have been raging for over a week. Thank goodness for sunny Timaru!

Link to September Pictures

Propane In The Ass

2010-09-19T15:57:00.001+10:00

This morning, just as I slapped a drippy piece of egg-covered bread onto the skillet, I noticed that the flame on our two-burner stove was unusually low. Luckily, the water for our coffee reached a reasonably hot temperature just before the flame completely disappeared. We had tried to refill our propane tank last week, but learned that the 10-year safety check had just expired. The town we are in doesn't have any testing stations, so we figured we would wait and get it tested when we finally made it to a "big" city (do those exist on the south island?).

It was Saturday, and the most obvious option was to wait until Monday to get the tank re-tested somewhere (at least 120 miles away). I didn't even have to say it because Scott said it first, "We can't wait until Monday, with no hot shower, no coffee, and no cooked meals!".

Lucky for us, we just happened to have 3 hours to spend trying to figure out how to get propane for an "expired" tank. The first idea was to drive to the various gas stations, hoping to find one that would not notice the expired date stamp. Strike one. It turns out that it's a $5000 fine for filling an expired tank, so all of the operators were very diligent.

Next, Scott came up with a potentially brilliant (albiet also illegal) idea. We bought a metal letter/number stamping set so that we could stamp the tank ourselves. This didn't work, as the stamp actually chipped the paint off for every strike of the hammer without leaving a legible number. It definitely didn't look professional or realistic. Strike two, but we were able to return the stamping set for a refund.

We drove and walked back and forth between a few stores to discover that we could buy a new propane tank for $65. Unfortunately, the new tanks have a different connector, which requires a different regulator, and another $25. By this time, it really was our only option. We were happy when it rang up for $5 less too. These are the kinds of things you spend hours on when you are retired.

The worst part is that we have a perfectly functioning, expired tank (and regulator) sitting in our van that we have to get rid of. It would be nice if someone could use it, and it would be even nicer if someone could use it AND we could get a little bit of money for it. At the very least, we need to find a responsible method for getting it out of our small living quarters.

Really, You're Retired?

2010-09-13T18:26:00.001+10:00

Are we planning on ever working again? No. How is that possible? This question was asked in many different ways during our visit with friends and family. The answer is that we were fortunate to start our careers without any college debt, we were well-paid in the high-tech sector for over a decade, we do not have kids, and we are happy with a lifestyle that most people would find intolerable.

The seed of early retirement was planted during our year-long roadtrip during 2003. After our year off, we went back to our lucrative high-tech jobs, bought our first (and only) house, and bought lots of stuff to fill it. After returning to work, I had a gnawing sense that I was trading my happiness for a life of working for the man. While Scott was still finding some satisfaction from his mechanical engineer job, I was determined to find a way to use my brain to help others. This is why I decided to go into nursing. Additionally, I felt that a nursing career could offer us a way to travel (my ultimate goal) with the easy option of working intermittently. During the two summers I had off while I was in nursing school, I read every book I could get my hands on related to early retirement and financial planning. I also spent time organizing our money and analyzing our spending. We had been so busy making money that we never took a look at what we had, and what we actually needed.

My favorite book and our guide for early retirement is "Work Less, Live More" by Bob Clyatt. His premise is simple: if your investments grow more than you spend, you'll never run out of money. Specifically, he advocates a highly diversified portfolio of mutual funds and bond funds (mostly index) that assumes a long-term average appreciation of 4%, adjusted for inflation. Obviously, a target return of 4% is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It is a conservative approach to capital preservation based on statistical analyses performed over data from the past 100 years (engineers will appreciate Clyatt's approach).

There are obvious risks associated with our plan. What if the past doesn't predict the future, and our money does not appreciate by anything close to 4% adjusted for inflation? What if one of us gets very ill or hurt? Well, one thing we are trying to do is to spend even less than our 4% budget allows. This is especially important in the early years of our retirement (analogous to saving early when working), as this will provide a buffer for the later years. If one of us gets ill or hurt, the other one can always go back to work, either temporarily or long-term. This is not ideal, but it is hardly the end of the world. We've done it before.

Earthquake in Christchurch

2010-09-07T11:38:00.001+10:00

The quake hit at 4:30am on Sept. 4th. We were jolted awake when the van started rocking violently. We had insulation press-fit into our windows, so we couldn't easily peek out the window to figure out what was going on. With our hearts pounding out of our chests, we both started yelling (to who or what, we're not sure). I managed to pop out some insulation, while Scott bolted towards the cab to look out the front window. Scott, who assumed it was punk-ass kids cow-tipping the van, was yelling in his tough-guy voice, ready to kick some ass in his underwear. I was pounding on the walls, convinced that we were somehow hooked up to a tow truck. I was freaked when I looked out in the parking lot to see nothing. No cars, no people, no tow truck, no wind. The quake lasted long enough to solidly imprint the experience in our memory. We didn't really figure out what was going on until we heard the alarms from the shops all around us. At a magnitude of 7.1, the earthquake was the largest in NZ in 70 years.

After listening to the radio for an hour, we managed to get back to sleep around 5:30. We woke up talking about what kind of damage might be sustained around the city. I still laugh when I think about Scott's main concern, the guitar shops. "What about all of the guitars that they hang by their headstocks swinging around and banging like wind chimes?"

It's been interesting listening to the media coverage of the quake. As you would expect, everything is sensationalized. At first, we thought it was a gross exaggeration to characterize the earthquake as a catastrophe. After all, no one was killed, and there were only two serious injuries. However, over the past couple of days, we've seen pictures of destroyed buildings in downtown Christchurch, and while biking around the Port Hills and the small port town of Lyttleton, we were very surprised to see lots of collapsed brick chimneys and massive cracks through rock, brick, and concrete.

The aftershocks have been non-stop. We heard there have been over 70 of magnitude 5.0 or greater in the last 48 hours. The Auckland-based radio station talks about a city of half a million people who panic with every aftershock. That's funny. We saw a lot of fellow bikers on the road just hours after the main quake. They didn't seem to be in a state of panic. Neither did the joggers and walkers. Nor the shoppers at the market. Or the rock climbers without helmets!

The biggest issue so far seems to be damage to the water and sewer systems. There are many people who don't have water, power, or sewer. Lucky for us, the van has the trifecta.

Link to September Pictures

August Adventures in NZ

2010-09-02T15:42:00.000+10:00

Watching baby seals playing in the Ohau Creek waterfall was our most notable and unique experience this past month. The Department of Conservation estimates that up to 200 baby seals "hike" up Ohau Creek to relax and play in the waterfall, while the adult fur seals hang out on the ocean shoreline. We found the seals during a rainy, cold day, so it was hard to get decent pictures. We watched them for nearly 2 hours -- I could have stayed longer. I smiled and laughed the entire time. They were so unafraid of humans that we found a couple of them scooching up our hiking path as we were heading back to the van.

The month of August also marked our first backcountry skiing adventure in 2.5 years. We were anxious to dust the cobwebs off the backcountry gear. It turned out to be a bluebird day for our climb up Mt. Ruapehu on the North Island. Unfortunately, since it's a massive, exposed volcano, the snow was very windblown and icy. Snowboarding down was downright treacherous. On the first day, we got a late start, due to a flat tire, and then had some route-finding issues. Therefore, we had to wait until our second day (another bluebird!) to make it to the top, where we peered down into the crater lake (pictured).

We were in a bit of a hurry to travel south in search of better snow. With bad memories of our puke-inducing ferry crossing in June, we started watching sea and weather forecasts weeks before booking our tickets. Our patience was rewarded with an almost-windless, sunny, FLAT-water ferry crossing! To be on the safe side, Scott bought a box of ground ginger. He read that it's a natural remedy for sea-sickness, although when I tried his very strong ginger tea, it came close to inducing flat-water sea-sickness.

On the South Island, we had some great hikes and some mediocre mountain biking before our first real backcountry snowboarding in the Craigieburn Range. We had been keeping an eye on the forecast so that we could be on the mountain during a clear day. When we got to the mountain carpark, I noticed at least a dozen endangered keas. These alpine parrots are rare (only 5000 in NZ) and are quite cute. Within minutes of parking, they had destroyed our bike seats. Apparently they are veracious with anything rubbery on cars and bikes. It was a little too late when a couple of people warned us that keas would go after our bikes. We put the muddy bikes inside the van while we snowboarded.

The mountain weather changes so rapidly here that you can't even count on a 24-hour forecast. We didn't expect to get 2 days on the mountain, so we hadn't provisioned appropriately. Our second day found us eating PB & X sandwiches because we ran out of J. The PB & maple syrup came out the winner. The PB & strawberry yogurt was kind of like washing down a PB & J with milk gone bad.

The snowboarding itself exceeded our expectations. It put smiles on our faces for days. Since then, we've been itching to go back, but the weather hasn't been cooperative. While waiting, we had over a week to explore the area around Christchurch, including the gorgeous Lytelton Harbour and the nearby beaches. When dry, the Port Hills are probably great for mountain biking, but since it was wet, we had to settle for road biking on our full suspension mountain bikes.

How and Why Do You Live In a Van?

2010-08-22T17:35:00.002+10:00

During our trip back to the USA we encountered a lot of great questions about what we're doing and what our plans are for the future. I love having friends who will ask all the questions that everyone else wants to ask. The common themes were: how could we really be retired? and what is it like to travel/live in a van? Reactions from friends ranged from enthusiastic to dismissive to disgusted when we described our life and our nebulous plans for the future.

After our final year of work in Sydney (that ended in March 2009), we gradually got rid of everything we owned except for what we could fit in or on our current van. Stripping our life down to the bare minimum, has helped us learn what is really important to us. There are very few things we miss about our old money-making/money-spending life. I definitely miss friends and family. We used to like going out for dinner and drinks, but really, we just like being around friends and family, so the venue doesn't matter. Scott misses his instruments and the unique music scene in Portland. I also really miss having a washer, dryer, and vacuum cleaner at my finger tips -- yes, I am an obsessive cleaner, and it seems to be getting worse the older I get. Both of us really miss electricity and fast, cheap internet access. We are surprised to have learned that we don't miss having a house (a garden would be nice though), nor do we miss going out to dinner. Since we have so much free time, we would rather cook for ourselves. I notice that the things that used to seem annoying or troublesome in our old life, are a non-issue now that we have time. For instance, in the warm climate of OZ, I usually hand-washed all of our clothes (including our sheets!). Like my mom says (who is recently retired), the things that you could never find the time to do, are now what you spend your time doing.

Do we get bored? No way. Van-living and traveling requires a lot of ingenuity and planning. When we aren't working on logistics, we are outdoors as much as possible. The things that keep us un-bored are endless and usually involve rigorous activity. I wonder how many years our bodies will tolerate it? We assume our priorities will change. As long as we have something that engages and challenges us, we will never be bored.

Northern Hemisphere Visit in July

2010-08-19T11:16:00.008+10:00

We recently flew back into Auckland after a 5-week visit to the northern hemisphere. It was timed perfectly with the crappiest of New Zealand weather. Per usual, Portland had incredible summer weather. We had a whirlwind visit with as many friends as we could (8 days total). I cherished every moment. Maybe short visits are good for one reason -- people don't have time to get sick of me. Thanks to the Slighterallis and the Childers for providing places to stay. At first it was hard to impose, but both of our hosts made it really easy to feel at home. We honestly wanted to stay way longer. Dan and Juliana let us borrow their roadbikes (plus helmets and bike shoes!) to use while they toiled away at work. It was fun to roadbike after 1.5 yrs of riding only heavy, fat-tired mountain bikes. Robyn not only architected the addition to their house (our guest room), but stocked it like a high-end hotel. Actually, it was even better, as there was Bridgeport Hop Czar in the minibar fridge, and it was free!

My parents were great hosts in Michigan while we stayed for 3+ weeks, which gave them plenty of time to get sick of me. They feed us so well and gave us so much during our stay. My mom gave me a bounty of delicious facial lotion, serums, sunscreens, etc. It is definitely a luxury that I won't give myself. Now, every morning and evening when I rub some lotion on my face, I think of my parents. Now that my mom is retired, we spent a lot of time with her during the day. We were pleasantly surprised to find that my mom's twice-weekly strength-training/cardio class absolutely kicked our butts. We couldn't walk straight for 4 days after the first class. How cool that my mom is able to do that kind of stuff now that she is retired!? We spent some quality time in the evenings and on the weekends with my Dad as well as my sister's family. To pass the great summer-weather days, we did a lot of yard work and Scott partook in a fair bit of fishing. Oh, and we also ate and drank A LOT! We also squeezed in a too-short visit with one of Scott's brothers who lives in an even hotter locale than Ann Arbor in the summertime.

My parents have fully adopted

our kitty, Oscar, who was tortured during 8 hours of flying (and layovers) from Portland to Detroit in April, 2008. I think he has finally forgiven me for that hateful plane trip. We miss him so much.

Upon our return to Auckland we were once again reminded of how wet it is here. We ran into van troubles before we could even leave the hotel parking lot. We had to wait a few days to get our van into the local diesel garage. We learned that there was water sitting in various electrical connectors under the hood, which disabled not only the accelerator pedal, but also the diesel fuel pump. It's still a mystery how the water got there, which worries us since it could easily happen again. After 3 days and $500, we were back on the road. We still don't trust the van and are constantly worried about every noise we hear. We've even kicked around the idea of trying to sell/trade the van during the high tourist season and buying a smaller more reliable Toyota van (sans shower).

I thought I would try and finish this blog post on a happy note. The following sunset picture was taken on the North Island of NZ as we were heading down to Wellington (at Te Hora beach) for our ferry to the South Island yesterday. We had a fantastic parking/camping spot right on the beach with a river running next to us. Grin.

Australia Retrospective

2010-06-26T19:51:00.003+10:00

Now that we've been out of OZ for nearly 2 months, we've had some quality time to reflect on the fun times (and not so fun times). We really miss the prolific wildlife in Australia. The bird life and random wildlife sightings are definitely a thing of the past. We've seen a lot of ducks and dead possums in NZ.

We recently reminisced about the hilarious "bad" camping experiences we had over our year in OZ. The first one happened on the east coast of NSW (Woolgoolga) where we parked the van in a quiet riverside park. We were woken up at 3 am by drugged and wigged out people trying to imitate dogs and kookaburras. At first we thought it was only slightly annoying, but it got so loud, that we almost lost it. We got dressed and drove out of the park only to hear the most wigged out of the group scream at us, "F***ing surfers". I was so out of my mind and tired that I found myself angrily yelling back, "You f***ing bogan bi***!!!!". Afterwards, I was shaking. I was so upset and pissed off. Geez, I guess I don't deal well with wigged out people when I am tired. We got up before the real kookaburras that morning.

Our next interrupted night of sleep happened in Western Australia (Geraldton). We parked in an ocean side park that wasn't really very quiet, but we wanted to cook on the grills and watch the sunset before we went off to sleep. Around 4am, we were woken by the sound of something hitting the van. Scott got out to figure out what was going on, only to find a bunch of juicy, red tomatoes on the ground next to our van. Stupid kids. We ate the tomatoes the next day in our egg burritos -- yummy.

Almost all of our bad-sleep nights were due to hoons of some sort, but one night, we had the misfortune of hosting a little mouse in the van during his midnight snack. In retrospect, we should have just popped in the ear plugs and let him eat the entire bag of rice cakes. How much could a little mouse possibly eat in a night? Instead, we went to war. He kept us up ALL night with his scurrying around and munching sounds. At first, we setup a makeshift water-bucket trap that he managed to avert. Next, we busted out the old-school mousetrap with a wad of peanut butter on it. He ate the peanut butter without setting off the trap. He had Scott so busy trying to figure out where he was, that we were convinced there must have been a least 2 mice making such a ruckus. During the heat of the battle, Scott accidentally left the jar of peanut butter open on the table next to my head in bed. We discovered this mistake when the mouse brushed next to my pillow. I know if my parents or Melissa are reading this, they can imagine the squeals and yelping -- something like "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee". Scott set the trap for a final time, and after we started drifting off to sleep around 6am, it snapped and the war was won. Not a lot of sleep that night.

Probably the most infamous night of interrupted sleep came near the end of our time in OZ. We were parked at one of our more favorite spots, a boat ramp overlooking the ocean in Gerringong, NSW. Per our usual setup, we had all the windows and doors open (with mosquito netting to keep the critters out). Around 4am, we heard a guy mumbling something so close to our heads that it was like he was in the van. I started screaming expletives and Scott turned on his tenor, big-man voice. We thought he was trying to "break" into the van or worse yet, do something to us while we were sleeping. It turned out the guy was so piss drunk that he could barely talk. He was a young guy, dressed in a gladiator costume, and completely lost. He told us he lost his phone and when Scott said, "you lost your phone?", the kid slurred back, "yeaaah, do you have it?". He thought we had his phone? After we convinced him to leave us alone, we realized how much we scared the hell out of him. I think he was so drunk, he didn't even know he was next to a van, much less a van with the door open and people sleeping in it, or that he was a couple feet from falling off a steep cliff!

I suppose when you read all of these things, you might worry that we sleep in dangerous situations. Although, considering that we only had these few instances of weirdness in an entire year of free camping, I think we did pretty well.

New Zealand is Down Underer

2010-05-22T12:20:00.006+10:00

I had hoped to be in a happier place before I wrote another blog post. We're coming up on 3 weeks of fusterclucking after our arrival in Christchurch NZ. As I had mentioned in my previous post, our plan was to rent a campervan while we shopped for a van of our own. This, in fact, did happen, and we managed to find a phat campervan that we will hopefully live in for the next 9-12 months (visitor visa is still under review). Why are we still hanging out in Christchurch in an unhappy state, then? The day after we bought our van, on a cold morning, Scott noticed that he couldn't shift into 2nd gear. During our test drive, he hadn't noticed a thing wrong with the shifting. Fast forward 2 days, and we are sitting in the lobby of "The Gearbox Company", with the owner telling us that we will have to spend at least $1500 to fix our transmission. We had to sleep in the driveway of the garage because it was a 15-hour job that spanned 2 days, and ended up totaling $2500. Thanks Ford, we bought a manual transmission because of your shitty automatics and you still can't get it right. You can imagine what went through our heads for the days that followed. Did we get suckered by Grandpa Steve and Grandma Sylvia? I had hoped to take pictures of the van after we bought it, but we lost our camera. When will the bad karma stop?

While we were dealing with the van issues, we had ordered a fancy bike rack that we could mount on the back of our van that would allow us to open the back doors with the bikes mounted. The estimate was that it would take 2-3 days to arrive. "The Motorhome Shop" finally called us back, after 5 days and MANY phone calls to tell us the rack was "lost". Seriously? We called another shop, 6 hours north of here, who ordered it for us. We are set to pick it up 4 days from now.

You may be wondering where the bikes have been during our fusterclucking. This is where I should interject some optimism. If either of us had just a sliver of optimism in our personality, we would probably be really happy right now. We don't, and aren't, but what follows are all the things we should be really happy about.

We flew out of Sydney with 216 lbs (98kgs) of luggage. After only 20 minutes of sweating and arguing with Virgin Blue about their documented luggage policy, they allowed us to check all of our luggage FOR FREE. Virgin Blue has a crazy (good) policy that counts each sporting item as 5 kgs of your 20kg limit. You can bet we took FULL ADVANTAGE of this -- I get the feeling no one has ever abused the policy like we did. Maybe this is what started the bad karma streak.

When we arrived in Christchurch, we stayed in an airport hotel. When we checked out, I asked them if we could leave our bikes, snowboards, kiteboard, and surfboard in their storage room for a week. The receptionist happily agreed and we ended up leaving everything for 2 weeks. Thank-you Sudima International Hotel.

The 2nd day that we arrived, we found the nearest library for some internet access. The library/community center bathrooms had FREE HOT SHOWERS! If it isn't clear by now, free hot showers are a dream when you've been living in a van, especially coming from warm Australia to cold New Zealand. So, our city fusterclucking has been calmed a bit by some nice showers. Our new van has a hot shower, but it is really small. Poor Scott doesn't have much room for scrubbing. We may have to invent a wall-mounted loofah scrubber for him. It also makes the van really steamy -- why in the world would you install a shower, in a van no less, without a vent over the top of it!? Sorry, this is supposed to be the optimistic part of the post.

Our van will hopefully serve us quite well in the colder/wetter climate of NZ. It has a shower, hot water, fridge, microwave (stupid!), sink, 2-burner stove, propane heater, and a huge bed. Unfortunately, most of these things don't work for long unless we are plugged into power at a campground which we don't plan on doing. We have an auxiliary battery (charged by the main battery when we drive) that will power everything for a little while, before it gets sucked dry.

More happy stuff in NZ: lots of kitties, cool laid back people, great libraries, excellent exchange rate at the moment (1 USD = 1.5 NZD), and loads of exploring to be had!

Thanks to Dan and the Flight of the Conchords for this blog post title.

Plan the Plan's Planny Plan

2010-05-01T11:21:00.010+10:00

I guess it's been a while--or maybe never--that I've given an update on the big picture for our adventure plans (thank you Todd for reminding us). While it may be obvious based on all of our downsizing and selling-off talk, I should clarify that we are moving from Australia to New Zealand in a few days. We've been in OZ just over 2 years and have definitely become fond of many things about this place. My mom asked me the other day if I was "excited" about moving to New Zealand. I couldn't enthusiastically say "yes". At the moment, thinking about NZ conjures thoughts of logistics and "planning the plan's planny plan".

We will arrive in NZ on Tuesday May 4th. We will get a rental campervan, and will use it for a week while we shop for a campervan of our own. Since my birthday is on May 13th, I guess my birthday present will be a new (old) van. New Zealand is the most campervan-y place we've ever been to. When we visited the South Island for a week last year, about 90% of the vehicles on the road were campervans. This means there are also lots of used campervans on the market. Since it is the start of winter, we will probably find it very easy to buy a van at a good price.

We just dropped off four 40 lb boxes to the post office that will get shipped to NZ. 160 lbs of clothing, sporting goods, living items, and some tools -- seems excessive doesn't it? We have spent hundreds of hours sorting through all our stuff trying to pare it down to the absolute minimum. We've been taking a lot of our stuff to Vinnies (St Vincent De Paul--like Goodwill or Salvation Army).

The other day, one of the volunteers met us as we took stuff out of the van and started going through it in front of us. He said he would probably be throwing away everything we brought. Basically, if the item didn't look clean/new, it was going to the landfill. it. It made me so upset to realize that much of the perfectly functional stuff that gets donated to Vinnies is just put in a landfill. In fact, he told us that they throw away 2 TONS of stuff every DAY!

Back to the planny plan, we hope to spend at least 6 months and hopefully more like 12 months in NZ. We are bringing our mountain bikes, kiteboarding gear, and snowboards. We hope to enjoy some mountain biking and kiting in the dryer/warmer times and to snowboard the rest of the time. We haven't snowboarded in over 2 years -- that is something we are definitely excited for.

We have our sights set on Vietnam and Thailand for 2011. We'll see what happens...you can never plan on the plan's planny plan.

Selling our Soles

2010-04-21T17:51:00.012+10:00

The past couple of months have been dominated by the logistics of selling our stuff. We're still having fun, but we haven't really taken pictures of our adventures for at least a month. All of the pictures on the camera are the items we were putting up for sale. In a previous post, I think I alluded to us having reduced our "stuff" down to what could fit in (or on) our van -- still way too much.

The windsurfing gear was the biggest and stupidest thing to bring to Oz. Really, we should have sold the windsurfing gear in the USA. We only ended up using it a few times. When we finally managed to sell it (3 boards, 5 masts, 3 booms, 10 sails, etc.), it was for a song. Wavesailing in Oz just isn't as popular as we had assumed, probably because many people, like us, have switched to kiteboarding. This will be the first time in 12 years that we won't have any windsurfing gear -- a nostalgic event, given how this sport dominated many years of our lives.

Our main tool for selling things has been eBay. There have been a few surprises -- a used Leatherman sold for $60! Six months ago, we bought a used roof luggage box for $150 and we just sold it for $225. A Yakima Rocket Box that we paid $280 for 10 years ago at GI Joes (RIP) sold for $417! Most things, we were just happy not to put in a landfill. We've had much more success selling Scott's stuff. It seems that most girls here don't buy wetsuits, snorkeling gear, biking jerseys, etc. I guess we shouldn't be surprised. We've seen very few girls surfing, kiting, or biking. The only item I managed to sell was a pair of $120 near-new Dansko shoes for $25 -- lucky girl.

We've given away most of our clothes and shoes, except for what we're wearing now and some winter items for New Zealand. Even though I hadn't worn some of these clothes for years, it was still hard to say goodbye. However, now that they're gone, I definitely don't miss a thing.

Our biggest concern was selling the van, but with 2 weeks to go, we've found a

buyer. He put down a hefty deposit, didn't negotiate, and is accommodating our travel schedule. Our net loss on the van after 2 years will be less than 1 month's rent at our Sydney apartment -- almost too good to be true. It scares me to even type it. I've only done half of a happy-dance, hoping not to jinx us.

Fields Full of Teddy Bears

2010-04-14T20:17:00.021+10:00

I usually prefer to write about our adventures soon after they occur, but the last few months have been so fast and furious that I haven't made time to write. The month of February was full of adventures. Our locations varied from South Australia through Victoria to Tasmania. When I look back on February and March, I mostly remember the wildlife encounters and the fantastic scenery. A specific highlight was traveling "The Great Ocean Road" in Victoria. It proved to be as spectacular as all of the hype suggested. On top of the incredible coastal rock formations, we spotted our first (and only) wild Koala on a short forest hike near the coast.

We drove to the Port of Melbourne where we boarded the "Spirit of Tasmania" with our van. We were amongst hundreds of other motorhomes and caravans traveling to Tasmania. The 10-hour boatride proved to be quite rough. Both Scott and I narrowly escaped without tossing our PB & J. The 2 weeks we spent in Tasmania were quite memorable. Tasmania is mostly uninhabited, with extensive national parks (NPs) protecting the wilderness. Tasmania funds their NPs by charging the tourists $60 for a 2 month pass. This is the most expensive NP pass in all of Australia.

We disembarked the "Spirit of Tasmania" around 7pm and stopped 30 minutes down the road to witness some Fairy Penguins coming out of the ocean to feed their chicks, who were patiently waiting for their nightly feeding on the shoreline. I think I said "sooooo cute" at least 20 times. The Fairy Penguin is the smallest of all penguins and the adults only get to be around a foot tall. This is hard to imagine (until you've seen them), after having watched all the movies depicting the massive Emperor Penguins endemic to Antarctica, which reach 3 feet tall.

We saw a Tasmanian Devil cross the road while we were driving. We learned that these animals are plagued by an extremely unusual and fatal cancer. It is only one of three recorded cancers that can spread like a contagious disease. The cancer is passed from devil to devil through biting. The live tumour cells aren’t rejected by their immune system because of a lack of genetic diversity among Tasmanian devils. After learning this, these scary and ugly looking creatures suddenly seemed cute and helpless.

As we were traveling across the Bass Strait to Tassie, we read various tourist brochures.

One of them described Narawantpu NP as a place where you can see fields full of wombats. The wombats in the brochure looked like teddy bears! I quickly decided my goal in Tassie was to see these fields full of "teddy bears". On our last night on the island, we stopped at Narawantpu NP and watched a full moon rise over a field full of teddy bears (and kangaroos!) -- mission accomplished.

Tassie reminded me how much I love climbing mountains. We spent almost everyday hiking or biking up a mountain (much higher than anything on the mainland). Cradle Mountain, the most famous on Tasmania, lived up to it's fame. The climb to the top required some difficult

scrambling on jagged boulders, but we were rewarded with expansive views of the valley and surrounding mountains. To our delight, Tasmania also has some fantastic free camping, with views over the ocean or across a valley.

Another memorable part of Tassie was visiting the capital city of Hobart. Hobart is on the southern coast of Tassie, and it is flanked by 4200 ft Mt. Wellington. Without a doubt, we feel that Hobart would be on our short list of places we could live. A laid back city with an ocean, mountain, and rivers within miles of each other.

We were worried that we would regret only allowing 2 weeks to explore Tasmania. We were right.

Mosquito Bait

2010-03-01T08:19:00.001+11:00

We've got a new business idea. We are advertising Scott as mosquito bait. Growing up in Indiana, Scott would get ravaged by mosquitoes, but the rest of his family was left alone. When I sleep next to him, I never get bit, but he wakes up with welts all over. As a business proposition, we can guarantee that if you are standing or sitting near him, you will not get bit by a mosquito. This would work well for small weddings, bbq's, picnics, pool parties, or other summer gatherings. It works perfectly for mosquitoes and pretty much any other biting bugs, most notably the midgies and march flies that we've encountered recently. There will be a surcharge for excess skin exposure--extra for topless and even more for the full budgie (Australian for Speedo). It will be well worth the money--way better than a bug zapper.

Ice, Ice Baby

2010-02-13T21:45:00.002+11:00

by Scott

We've gotten used to most of the idiosyncrasies between Australian and American English. For example, without feeling like posers, we can now say, "how are you going?" instead of "how are you doing?". We say "g'day", "no worries", and "cheers" like we were born down under. In almost two years, the one thing we can't do is ask where to find a bag of ice in the grocery store. Inevitably, we get a blank stare. Sometimes, they think we want cigarettes. Sometimes, we have to spell it. Sometimes, they will repeat, "a bag of ice"? We'll excitedly say, "yes, a bag of ice." With a puzzled look on their faces, they will reply, "sorry, I don't think we have that". When we express amazement that they don't have bags of frozen water in cubic form, they say, "oh, ICE!" How many different ways can you pronounce a 3-letter, 1-syllable word? We only have 3 more months to figure it out. Maybe we'll have better luck in New Zealand, the home of "fush and chups".

Time Flies in Dub-yay

2010-01-05T21:00:00.009+11:00

Our arrival to Dub-yay was punctuated with Scott getting violently ill overnight in the middle of the desert. While we were driving, he complained of not feeling well. Before he could fall asleep that night, he was leaning out the side of the van. It's a mystery, because we were eating mostly non-perishable food during the drive. Our guess is some nasty roadhouse water, since most of the water is trucked in and is non-potable. He was back to normal in 24 hours.

As soon as we arrived to the west coast, we went for a much needed dip in the ocean (after hours of 100 F driving), and watched the sunset over the Indian Ocean. We've managed to watch the sunset almost every night for the past 5 weeks, and have enough sunset pictures to last our lifetime. We are now on the south coast of Dub-yay, and will assuredly miss the guaranteed sunset viewing every night.

When we first arrived on the west coast, we headed north pretty quickly, as we had been warned about the heat, and it would only get worse. The mid-northern section of WA is like driving on the moon. We would drive for 5 hours without seeing anything but wild goats and roadkill 'roos. We were rewarded with some wild dolphin feeding, crystal clear snorkeling, and some brilliant turquoise water and white-sand beaches. It didn't last long because it was just too hot during the day. We covered about 2000 miles in a week as we made a beeline north and then back south again.

The swarming flies caught us by surprise, as we had assumed that they were only bad in the outback. They don't bite, but they swarm your face and body until you think you might go mad. Luckily, we had some mesh fly hats that we had bought during a similar attack of flies in Ontario, Canada in 2003 (these were the biting variety). We found ourselves hiding in the van when it wasn't windy, as the wind was the only remedy to the fly madness. I was the first one to inhale a fly, but Scott has managed to inhale 3 flies and snort at least one so far.

One of the reasons we drove to WA during this time of the year was for the consistent, strong winds for kite/windsurfing. Along with keeping the flies away, the wind has definitely provided most of our active entertainment since we arrived in WA. The wind has also taught us a valuable lesson -- don't park near a sand dune for the night with your windows/doors open. It happened one fateful night when we had to move the van in the middle of the night because it was getting pounded with sand from gale force winds that erupted overnight. The next morning, I was disgusted by the amount of sand that was piled everywhere. It took an entire day for me to clean the van and all of the items in the van.

One of the few non-windy diversions, as we drove south, was snorkeling with 5+ ft manta rays in really shallow water. We saw them from the shore, and hurried back to the van to get our snorkeling gear. The rays come into shore in about 10 inches of water where we could barely fit our heads under the water. It's pretty cool to be able to swim with such massive, relatively harmless creatures.

One thing you can't help but notice in WA is the prolific mining culture/economy. The mines (alumina, bauxite, etc) have created an immense amount of wealth and jobs throughout WA. It's so prolific that people talk of "the mines" as if we know where and what they are talking about, even when "the mine" is 10 hours away. We met an older couple yesterday who pull in $200K by working at the mines -- he drives a truck and she cleans! They told us that the schools had a shortage of teachers because a bunch of them quit to go work in the mines!

2010 got off to a bad start when I went for a swim on a very hot evening and dove under a wave (on a really steep beach) only to smash my face on the sand (maybe some rocks based on what happened to my face). I've heard of "keeping your nose to the grindstone" but this was like putting my face on a belt sander. After the pain of the first couple of days subsided, I've realised the worst part is going to be dealing with the sun and water on a face that doesn't have any skin.

Dub-yay

2009-11-28T22:47:00.007+11:00

We blew through nearly 3 weeks of our tourist visa trying to get rid of much of the stuff that we had previously stored for free. We said goodbye to the whitewater kayaks, paddles, snowboards, skis, sleeping bags, a tent, a fancy camping chair, thermarests, windsurf equipment, kiteboard, etc. It was something that we put off doing because it was "free" for us to ship everything to OZ and then to store it. We also had delusions of somehow shipping all of that stuff to NZ. It is amazing what can accumulate when you have the space for it.

Over the course of a couple of days, we went from thinking that we would travel down the east coast of NSW, hugging the coast until we hit Western Australia (Dub-yay), to making a bee-line across the country to WA. One day south of Sydney, some local windsurfers warned us that the west coast can get unbearably hot in Jan/Feb, and if we wanted to get some windsurfing in, we needed to go "now". It took a good 48 hours of talking about it, and letting it sink in, before finally embracing the idea of driving for 10-days straight without any real adventuring. It would be like a windsurfer at Cape Hatteras NC telling us that we should really be in Baja, upon which we say, "okay, let's drive". Dub-yay is like another country, and most east-side Australians will never visit it in their lives. We're excited for some good ol' west coast exploration, complete with sunsets over the Indian Ocean.

The route we took is famously called the "Nullarbor" because it passes the Nullarbor Plain (Null + Arbor = No Trees = No Shade). The drive is hot, without much to do for days. On the bright side, the big sky gives way to amazing sunsets and fantastic, secluded, and sometimes cold, desert camping. The gas prices went from $1.09/L ($4.25/gal) to $1.67/L ($6.60/gal) as we drove from the east to the middle of nowhere. Now we know why people have gas containers hanging off their vehicles. We saw big kangaroos and emus crossing the road, just like the signs warned (alas, no camels or hairy-nosed wombats). Both of us have mastered the index-finger-off-your-steering-wheel wave that is customary with all passing vehicles. We're still trying to figure out what time it is. We just passed a sign saying, "Turn your clocks back 45 minutes"!!! What?! Dub-yay, it really is another country.

En Zed

2009-11-28T22:41:00.003+11:00

Our quick trip to the south island of New Zealand (En Zed as the Aussies call it) started with a bit of a flurry at the Sydney airport. The ticket agent told us that we could not enter NZ because we did not have a valid visa to re-enter Australia. Our plan was to exit Australia on the expiration date of our visitor visa (Nov 4th) so that we could apply for a 3-month ETA (a sort of automatic electronic visa). In order to apply for an ETA, you must be out of the country. So, here we stood, with a flight to NZ in order to get an OZ visa, but NZ wouldn't let us enter without an OZ visa! Perhaps if we would have been more savvy about the potential strict visa requirements of NZ, we would have realized that this wouldn't work. We spent some time running around the Sydney airport trying to find an immigration office . We learned that the immigration office was beyond the security gates, and that we would have to go into the city if we needed an immigration office. Plan B: We decided to have another chat with the airline folks and beg for their help. Scott managed to get the 3rd JetStar employee to admit that the work-around to our dilemma was simply to purchase a 1-way ticket from NZ to USA to prove to NZ that we wouldn't stay in their country indefinitely. Apparently Air New Zealand had seen this situation many times because they were pretty quick to issue us a 1-way, fully refundable ticket. So far, this workaround has still cost us dearly because Air New Zealand hasn't issued us a refund. They require loads of documentation proving that we still aren't in NZ. You'd think the fact that we asked for the refund AT THE SYDNEY AIRPORT would be enough proof that we are no longer in NZ.

Although our trip to NZ was only 1-week, we managed to see a fair bit of the south island. Rugged mountains, glaciers, rivers, waterfalls, ocean... kinda like our sorely missed home of the great Northwest, USA. The first morning we woke up to see snow-capped mountains that had been covered in clouds on our arrival. The feeling I had was hard to describe. Mostly, I felt extremely nostalgic for for some cool (as in temperature), mountain-y type adventures. We are looking forward to braving the winter in NZ this year with our split-snowboards in tow. We are a little bit worried about the rugged and exposed conditions of the mountains, but hope that we can find something that will suit us. We just wanna rip up some powder (sans crevasses, avalanches, and ice). The winter days in NZ are also quite short, which will test our adventurous spirits while living in a van.

On our way back into OZ, we were harassed at immigration because they were suspicious of our intentions as tourists. What, most people don't go on a vacation for... ever? We assured them that we were tourists and were told that we needed to go to the immigration office in the city if we didn't want to be hassled again at immigration. Turns out, it was really easy for us to get a 6-month tourist visa (minus $500 for the "application"), so we get to stay down under until May 4th.

Big Night Outback

2009-11-28T22:37:00.002+11:00

We made a second visit to our favorite outback pub for the authentic country atmosphere, and most importantly, the special (and strong) brew on tap. It was a 60 km round trip detour, but well worth it. While we drank our first beer, I commented on how one thing I liked about the place was that we seemed to be invisible. We certainly were the only non-locals, and yet, during our first visit, no one seemed to even notice that we existed. In retrospect, maybe we were just too looped on the brew to realize that everyone was staring at us. About 5 minutes after my comment, one of the locals came over to chat with us. This fella was originally from Sydney and he decided to move out to the sticks (did I mention there are 20 houses in the town?) to take over the family property. He left the pub around 6pm. We didn't remember his name, but when we reminisced about the night we called him "Bald Guy". Bald Guy must have opened up the flood gates because we quickly met Brad Pitt, Eyebrows, Town Drunk, and 34-year-old Grandma among others. While Bald Guy told us a story he referred to the local pub goers as "publicans". "Publicans" seems to refer to the more raucous pub goers -- the ones who stay out past 6pm.

Eyebrows made some eyeglasses out of straws and rested them on the bushes above his eyes. This was his "trick for the tourists". His comment to Scott was, "See, you're not the only one that can wear glasses". Eyebrows lives alone, got his buffet dinner to go because he doesn't like eating in public, and though we never confirmed it, he suggested that he lives in one of those ubiquitous rain water storage tanks. Eyebrows is Brad Pitt's dad. Brad came into the pub with a big hole ripped across his nipple on his flannel shirt. He was smart, witty, and told us lots of crazy stories about being a butcher. Also, he was really gorgeous (ala Brad Pitt), even though he was very rough around the edges -- kinda like Tyler Durden meets Crocodile Dundee.

During our first visit, I had noticed one of the publicans who had a deep, gnarly cut across his nose. I didn't need to bust out my nurses training to tell that this guy had all the signs of a classic drunk. Town Drunk (TD) was touched to learn that we had visited the pub before, and that I had noticed his injury. He was also very touched that I cared to ask him how he healed up. Bald Guy was TD's boss. Turns out, TD has a heart of gold and couldn't have been more kind to us. He asked us multiple times if we "got a proper feed" and if we wanted to stay at his place for the evening. We couldn't quite convince him that we'd already eaten, and that the van was probably more comfortable (most certainly cleaner). Unsatisfied with our brush-off of his invitation, he suggested we come by in the morning to see the wild Kookaburras that he had befriended. Turns out, he feeds them with his left over butcher meat, and in return, he can pet them. Everyone we met had some sort of a part in raising and/or butchering meat.

Later in the night, 34-year-old Grandma chatted with us a bit. During the conversation, it came out that her 19 year old daughter was "on her second child". Sitting next to her were her other two boys -- one was 15 and the other was 8.

Most of the folks we met were shocked to learn that we had visited the pub before and yet came back. Apparently they don't get many repeat, non-local customers. When we left the pub, we just couldn't stop smiling. The night had been even more fun than the first time. The locals were genuine, kind, and hilarious. The stories they told us kept us laughing for weeks. They truly live in a different world, not one we'd want to live in, but a great place to visit.

Carma is going to get you

2009-11-28T21:28:00.003+11:00

by Scott

It's a long story, but some of you may have heard about how I ran over a homeless guy with my car back when I was at Stanford. OK, I didn't really run him over. I just pinned him between the bumper of my car and the car in front of me...at least, until that car decided to bolt through the red light.

Here's the short version. My backpack was stolen out of my car while I was at a concert in San Francisco. When I discovered the broken window and missing pack, I went looking for a phone. In my irrational rage, I befriended a homeless guy named Cliff. He convinced me to drive him around SF so that he could show me the pawn shops where I would likely find the computer that was in my pack. Along the way, I saw another homeless guy walking down the sidewalk with my backpack! I pulled a U-turn, and he started running. when he tried to cross between me and the car in front of me, I pinned him between our bumpers. After getting my empty pack back, I drove both him and Cliff around the block to retrieve some of the contents that had been dumped. In the process, I soon discovered that I blew out my brake lines to avoid amputating the man's legs. Fortunately, I had a stick shift and a functional emergency brake. After getting my calculater and day planner back, I calmed down and offered to drive the limping homeless guy to the police station if he wanted to press charges. He declined, being far more interested in a $20 bill than talking to the police. The story continues with another brake-less trip to SF to meet with Cliff to retrieve some books, a not-quite-stealthy attempt on my part to stake out the SF thieves' market, and an unsuccessful police raid on an empty warehouse. I never got the computer back.

Fast forward 15 years for the carma. We were getting our kite fixed at a shop in a small strip mall with a small parking lot--maybe 12 spots. As people do in Oz, we parked in the only shade we could find, which happened to be at the end of the lot, in front of the Lissa Rosa Italian restaurant. We decided to walk to get groceries while the kite was getting fixed. As we were walking, the owner of an adjacent business warned us that the restaurant owner parks in our spot. There were no signs, and I noticed that the restaurant didn't open until 11am, so we left the van, and I told her we'd be back before it even opened.

As we returned, just before 11am, a woman in a Toyota Camry started yelling at us, "why did you park there?!" It was Lissa Rosa, and she was pissed. Heather offered to move the van, but Lissa kept at it, telling me that she pays for those parking spots. I told her that since she pays for those parking spots she should pay for a f*#@ing sign saying so. That pushed her over the edge. In her haste to box us in with her car, she hit me and knocked me to the ground. I got up and slapped back her side mirror. At that point, she got out of her car, took her keys with her, and said she was calling the police. For what, we weren't sure. Probably not to report herself for vehicular assault.

When she returned to inform us that the police were coming, we once again offered to move the van, but she wouldn't let us out. Even the owner of the adjacent business tried to reason with her, telling her to just move her car, but no. She kept badgering us about parking in her unsigned spot and claiming that I said f*@# you, when I did not. Getting nowhere, we walked a few doors down to check on the status of the kite. He had just finished, and while we were paying, the police arrived to ask if anyone was the owner of the white van. We said yes, and they asked if we were ready to leave. Again, we said yes, and that was it. The police told Lissa to move her car and she did. She was still talking to the police as we drove off smiling and waving. I'd like to think she got charged with something--vehicular assault? unlawful detention?--but probably not. In any case, watch out Lissa Rosa of South Tweed Heads NSW. It may take 15 years, but carma is going to get you.

Open House

2009-09-17T08:13:00.005+10:00

We don't live on the Street of Dreams, but we do live on our street of dreams. We often joke about the "things we do to maintain our lifestyle". Some of the sacrifices we've made include living in a steel box, taking cold showers, frequenting public restrooms, using laundromats or a sink, and drinking cheap wine. One of the payoffs is gorgeous views like the sunrise from our bed this morning:

We put together some really short videos of our steel box living situation in case you wondered how 2 adults can live out of a minivan -- at least it's a long wheelbase minivan.

THE EXTERIOR (14MB video):

THE INTERIOR (24MB video):

August of our Lives

2009-09-05T07:41:00.005+10:00

Our theme for August seemed to be centered on jumping (or swinging/sliding) into freshwater swimming holes in the tropical north Queensland area. This area has 2 seasons -- wet and dry. We are visiting during the dry season, but are reaping the benefits of the plethora of rivers, creeks, and streams carved during the wet season. The water is not warm. In fact, it is quite cold, but I have gained an appreciation for cold-water swimming. It feels so refreshing to jump into freezing cold water and then warm yourself in the sun or with a towel. The air temperatures are starting to rise so much that I've even started to *enjoy* a cold shower. The grand finale of our waterfall tour was swimming in the pool at the bottom of Wallaman Falls, an 800 foot single-drop waterfall with a 60-foot deep pool. From the edge of the pool, the waterfall looked like a mist but when we swam near it, the wind and water resembled the worst rain storm you've ever experienced. We certainly couldn't get close to the "center" of the falls.

We spent the end of July saying, "Damn, we need to get farther north". It was cold and rainy and the days were very short. We got north pretty quickly and encountered perfect day and night time temperatures. In fact, we didn't see a drop of rain for a month!

We've spent the last few (very hot) days of August saying, "Damn, we need to get south!". An issue we have with the tropical north is that there are so many biting bugs. You can't see the bugs until they bite you, and still, you have to look really closely to distinguish them from the small freckles on your skin. It's very unsatisfying to kill these biters after they have had their way with you. Scott more than I, is very allergic to the "biters". We call them "biters" but the Aussies call them "midgies". They can get through the finest mesh screen so on a hot night, with a fine mesh screen between the less hot air and our bed, we're easy prey. In fact, today, I couldn't find a square inch of skin on Scott's body that didn't have a bug bite. We are starting to be much more liberal with the bug spray, DEET be damned.

One of the many great things about traveling in a van without much of a plan is that any plan can change overnight. Until August our back-of-the-envelope plan had been to drive north from Sydney, then head west across the northern section of the country (the outback), then head south along the entire west coast, then head back east in order to get to Sydney all within 3 months (due to visa requirements). This turned out to be way more than we could swallow after we did some mileage and gas calculations. We were talkin' an extra 7000 miles during 3 months that we could easily just put off until we came back from our visa "leave". Not to mention, that gas currently costs $5 per gallon. So... we are thoroughly exploring the east coast for the next 2 months and then we will head south then west during the summer months -- Tasmania hear we come!

Speaking of visas... We had originally thought we could get a 1-year tourist visa when we applied in May, 2009. Unfortunately we were only granted a 6 month visa, so we have to exit the country by Nov. 4th. I've purchase tickets to the south island of New Zealand for a quick 1-week "exit" so that we can come back to OZ to finish our adventuring in 2009/2010. The requirements are such that we can come back into the country on a short tourist visa that will allow us to stay up to 3 months at a time over a 12-month period.

Swingers

2009-09-02T19:55:00.005+10:00

It is most appropriate to follow our previous blog with another entry related to Scott busting his ass while swinging. This time it was a rope, not a vine. The pictures prove that we had many successful swings on this rope. The one swing I decided to document with video, ended with Scott careening into knee deep water. You will notice in the video, that the sun caused a glare just as I followed him over the water. The only indication to me that he broke his swinging implement, was that the splash happened way before I had expected. It turns out that the rope only slipped a couple of feet and didn't actually completely break. Luckily there were no injuries. This seems to be the advantage of swinging over water, rather than rainforests. Video below:

George of the Jungle Needs Universal Health Care

2009-08-06T20:04:00.007+10:00

by Scott

I can't really blame a cartoon for my penchant for swinging on vines, though I did watch a lot of George of the Jungle when I was a kid. I also used to swing on a vine over the ravine in the woods behind our house in Indiana. That ended when one of the neighbor kids fell 15 feet and broke his arm. His dad then chopped down the vine. In any case, here I am thinking about turning 40 someday, and I still can't pass by a vine without taking it for a swing.

Lucky for me, the rain forests of Australia are littered with vines. Not so lucky for me, not all of them are swing worthy. In the Eungella rain forest in Queensland, there was a vine hanging directly over the path, just out of my reach. However, if I jumped, I could bat it uphill, run up the hillside, and hold onto a small tree until it swung back. I gave it a good tug to make sure it was stable, and then swung out over the trail. I was cautious on the first attempt, but started pushing it on the next couple swings. Heather captured this picture, but it's hard to tell that I'm a good 12 feet above the rocky ground.

Not wanting to miss out on all the fun, Heather took a couple swings. I tried to take pictures, but they didn't turn out very well. We decided to try video. Bad idea. I decided to go big. As you can see in the video, I went big, but not in the manner I intended. The vine immediately started coming down, but like a good captain, I went down with the ship, never releasing my death grip on the vine. Watch as my head bounces off the edge of the trail.

Don't hold back your laughter. Heather didn't. She did stop the video, but after I recited all known curse words, she started laughing hysterically. I didn't immediately get the joke, but after realizing I wasn't too hurt, I saw the humor...and saw it over and over again in the video. Since the damage to my head was all internal, you can only see the damage to my back.

While this is primarily a comedy, there is a moral to the story. Australia has public health care for all, and private health care for those that want it. Heather worked in both the public and private hospitals. Someday, we will return to the United States, and I really, really need universal health care. I could go the employer provided route, but that means employment, which means work, or pretending to work. Both cut into my vine swinging time. The other route is private insurance, but seriously, what for-profit company is going to sign up to cover me? I need a public option. After all, your own private nurse can only do so much, especially when she's laughing.

Rust, Rain, and Dolphins

2009-07-24T06:14:00.010+10:00

I had to take a look at our pictures from the start of June to remind myself of what we were doing 2 months ago. We endured quite a bit of rain during June, which is supposed to be one of the dryer months in NSW. The worst floods in 30 years occurred approximately 2 weeks after the other record breaking storm. This storm was unique from the other because it came out of the east, causing massive waves that tore up the coastline. Shipwrecks that had never been discovered were uncovered. The rain caused a few problems for us, most notably very rusty bike components. We are now equipped with removable chains in an effort to mitigate the rust attack.

Despite the rain and cold, we had one of the most exciting days surfing on our new shortboards. This experience was exceptional mostly because we were completely alone on a gorgeous beach, with a pod of at least 30 dolphins. They seemed to be toying with us as they lifted their dorsal fins above the water only inches away, then quickly disappeared into the murky storm-stained ocean. We had to guess where they might pop up next. Dolphins compete with sharks for food, and are also known to ram into them with their heads to keep them away. This thought is awfully comforting when you are surfing with dolphins. We've also officially graduated to surfing on shortboards. Although we are proud of our progress in surfing, I usually always feel like the biggest goompa on the water. I can't say that I've had any ripping surf days yet on my new board.

We were also treated to our first of many whale sightings along the NSW coast. For about 2 weeks, we could look out into the ocean and always see a Humpback whale breaching (coming completely out of the water and landing on it's back). Even from very far away, it's an awesome sight. We met many Aussies who had never seen a breaching whale. At first, we were appalled that people who live in coastal cities/towns hadn't seen something that we saw many times a day. We realized that it was probably because they're indoors, working during the day when you can actually see the whales (not to mention the daylight hours are quite short during the migration months).

One of the more unique things we saw was a cave full of "glowworms". We visited the cave at night and found it completely filled with bright blue stars. The glowworms are actually larvae of a flying insect that glow to attract prey into their sticky, silk snare lines that hang from the cave ceiling. The glowworms spend most of their lives as larvae. Once they become an adult fly, they don't feed, and only live long enough to reproduce. Cool!

We made it to the northern border of NSW before turning back south for Sydney in order to catch a flight. During one of our nights, we had another mouse episode in the van. It turned out that in fact the mouse was not IN the van and that it probably wasn't even a mouse. We still don't know what it was, but the teeth marks on my flip-flops look a little bigger than the mice we've seen. Your guess is as good as ours as to what chomped the hell out of my flip-flops (I had left them on the ground outside of the van). Check out the remains in the picture to the left.

Leeches, Bandicoots, and Flooding

2009-05-22T13:58:00.009+10:00

Wednesday started pretty mellow, with a morning walk and workout in Nambucca Heads. This coastal town is nice and even quite scenic during stormy weather. We decided to head inland to the rain forests of Dorrigo, a World Heritage listed National Park since the weather was forecasted to be incredibly stormy for the next 4-5 days. As the day progressed, so did the intensity of the rain. We managed to get a couple of hikes in, and found our first hike to be an amazing display of vines and massive rain forest trees. We also discovered our disdain for leeches. During our second hike, we stopped at our destination (a large waterfall) and noticed the small leeches all over our clothes. I made the mistake of taking my shoes off to get rid of the leeches only to discover more attaching to my clothes, socks, shoes, etc. These leeches are much smaller than the "Stand By Me" ones, so they can burrow through holes in shoes/clothing much easier. The one shoe I took off had at least 10 small leeches inside. I had 2 pairs of socks on so I decided to "let it be" and get the hell back to the van. When we returned to the van, we discovered only one of our headlamps had enough juice. With one small LED headlamp, we de-clothed and de-leeched in a massive wood/stone picnic shelter while the storm raged around us. A small leech had burrowed through 2 pairs of socks and I had a small bleeding wound for hours. As the rain continued to pound, I cooked dinner in the shelter on our stove and Scott built a fire. Since we only had one headlamp, the entire process was a bit belabored and dim. After I chopped into a big butternut squash, I left it on the picnic table as I stepped away from the stove. When I stepped back to the stove, a large marsupial face was there to greet me in the dim light of the headlamp that Scott was wearing. Of course I over-reacted and ran away, while Scott grabbed his weapon -- our dinner plates. After he told me it was a bandicoot, I came back to check it out. We thought he would run away but he grabbed our butternut! I screamed "HEY!" and as he turned his back to us, Scott slapped his bum with our dinner plates and he went soaring off the picnic table.

The heavy rain continued all night. Being in the van was like being in a Jiffy popper. Luckily, we had earplugs. In the morning, we half-joked that we may not make it out of the park since they were predicting major floods. We made it out, but not without a big leech attaching to the top of Scott's foot after he had stepped out of the van for a few moments in the morning. I have to admit, it's kinda fun to put a little salt on the leech and see it detach (as long as it's not attached to me).

Skipping the morning coffee routine, we drove along the 10km dirt road through dense and gorgeous rainforest in the pounding rain. After some rough spots in the road, Scott happened to look out his window enough to see that the roof rack with 2 surfboards and a FULL rocketbox, had come completely off and was just resting on the van roof. OMG, this could have been horrible, but the only casualties were a few dents in the roof and Scott's very wet clothing.

The longer we drove, the more we realized that flooding was a very real possibility and that we needed to get out of the bush and into a town as quick as possible. As we drove down the mountain, two waterfalls that had been small the day before were now raging out of control. Both of them were pouring water onto the roadway but not enough to prevent us from driving past them. After we arrived into the valley, we learned that the waterfall was over the road. We had narrowly escaped being marooned in a small mountain town for days.

We are 2 days into the flooding and it is the worst they've seen in 30 years--over 8 inches of rain in 24 hours with more on the way! We are trying to ride the storm out in Coffs Harbour, a town of around 60,000 (much bigger than anything we've come across in the past month) -- I don't know how long I can do the library-aquatic center-shopping mall-laundromat routine!

The Pub With No Beer

2009-05-17T18:28:00.011+10:00

It is very rare that things exceed our expectations -- mostly because we are a pair of cynical and jaded folks. Last night was quite the exception. After an epic, bordering on ridiculous, bike ride up to a 2700 ft peak (that surprisingly included 2 other 2000+ ft peaks), we decided that we should drive the extra 15 km to a pub in the middle of nowhere that seemed to have the potential to be a tourist trap. The "Pub With No Beer" is famous for the Slim Dusty song of the same name (Slim Dusty is like the Elvis of Australia). There was a bit of advertising hype about the pub on the information center map, and our Lonely Planet guide seemed to hint that it was a shameless tourist trap. They were wrong!! Or, maybe it's just different on an off-season Friday night.

This place is located in a "town" with a population of 50 in the middle of nowhere. It has it's own brewery (Murray Brewery), a beer can museum in a restored church, and the locals on a Friday night are the best entertainment you can find. Besides that, the Murray Cru is the best Australian beer we've had. It's 8.8% ABV, which is quite heavy for an Australian beer. Before offering the beer to us, the bartender asked us if we were staying for the night. We told her we had our van and weren't sure where we were going to park. She told us we could stay "here" (meaning the parking lot, I assume) and told us about the showers attached to the large deck (too bad we already showered in the bush with bottles of water!). After ordering a few of these beers, the next bartender asked us who would be driving. This seems a common concern here in Australia, where the legal driving limit is 0.05 BAC. After I told him we were staying in our van, he gave me another.

The main reason we decided to go the pub in the first place is because we wanted a massive supply of potato wedges after our biking. We ordered the wedges, but had to wait 30 minutes for the kitchen to open. The "cook" came out to tell us that they were out of sour cream. This was a travesty! Quintessentially Australian, sour cream and sweet chili is the only way Scott will eat his wedges now. Lucky for us, we had some just-purchased, late-date sour cream in the cooler. Things got even better when we ordered our 5th beer and found out it was happy hour...$3.50 schooners!!!...unheard of in Australia, so we had a 6th and called it a night in the parking lot of The Pub With No Beer.

Random 1-month van livin' news

2009-05-12T16:36:00.007+10:00

It's been about a month since we started our van living. Things started a little rough with a week of rain. I've always said that living in a van is fantastic unless it is raining for an extended period. Nothing dries, you can't hangout outside, and the condensation on the inside of the van in the morning is gross. We've got things pretty dialed now. We absolutely love the public facilities and off-road areas where we can camp. Speaking of those public facilities, we just discovered a massive covered pavillion in Crescent Head, NSW that has power hookups, free electric BBQs, and shelter from the common evening squalls. All of these things are what people pay $40/night for in the campgrounds, but it's free if you look around the corner.

We are doing a lot of surfing and biking and have so far decided that Crescent Head is the best place for us to hone our surfing skills. We've been here over a week and despite leaving yesterday, we found ourselves back here again. We still haven't left our state of NSW. The days are short (sunset around 5 pm) and it's not very warm (70 degrees) so it would behoove us to drive way farther north. New South Wales has some amazing coastline and scenery so we have decided that the short days and cooler weather are worth it.

A couple of weeks ago we learned that the $480 that we spent requesting a 1-year tourist visa, was denied. We were informed that 1-year tourist visas are rare and require "compelling and compassionate" applications. What the hell does that mean? We were given a 6-month visa and have to leave the country before we can get another entry (November). I guess we will have to spend our money elsewhere Australia! New Zealand, Bali, Thailand?

A couple of weeks ago we parked close to a river off a dirt road in the bush. We usually have a window and our sliding door open with mosquito netting during the night. We woke in the middle of the night to rustling of a plastic bag. Scott woke me up and I told him it was "just the wind". Sure enough, it WAS something in the van. For a while I was curled in a ball afraid to look out from under the covers as I was sure it was a goanna (big ass lizard) or a snake. Turns out, it was a mouse who was very interested in our tomatoes. The next day we set an elaborate trap with a cantilever over a big container of water. We headed out on a long bike ride and when we came back to the van we hoped to find a plump mouse floating in the bucket. The trap was never tripped and we never heard the mouse again -- smart little thing escaped.

Including our friendship with the local mice, we have had some great run-ins with lots of kangaroos and large birds of prey. There are some albatross-like birds that feed while we surf and I have managed to hit one of them while surfing. In fact, today, the bird got run over by the wave and as I tried to stand up on the wave, he rolled over my board! I don't imagine I'm the first to hit one of these guys since they seem quite nonchalant about humans, surfboards, and waves.

The latest P-I-the-A is our main computer must have a crack in the keyboard electronics board because we have lost both the "h" and the "g" key. The password to login included a "g" so we had to beg the local cafe to use their USB keyboard in order to login to the computer. I've managed to remap the keys to other rarely used keys but I'm sure we will be losing t, y, b, n soon. Time to shop for a new laptop and backup our pictures.

We have mastered the art of cooking all our yummy meals on a hotplate BBQ -- since these are free and readily available throughout the parks. Thin crust pizza and portobello mushroom sandwiches are our latest craze. Whenever we are near grocery stores we stock up on supplies for these all-time favorite meals.

Karma

2009-04-18T19:49:00.006+10:00

I’m sitting watching the sunset on Toowoon Bay and listening to Scott work through a new song he has written. We’ve managed to exit our working life in Sydney and start our trip around OZ. Things started to get really hectic about 2 weeks ago when Scott managed to get all of his instruments (FINALLY) onto eBay. The good thing about this is that we got rid of the major bulk of our belongings but of course, this was quite painful for Scott. Despite being extremely non-materialistic (is that a word?), he is the first to admit that his instruments mean the world to him. The skin on our fingers were raw and peeling from so much packing tape. We are still carrying around a few items in the van waiting for people to pay us so that we can mail the damn things!

The night before we had to exit our apartment, we realized we were scheduled to exit on the Sunday (by 10 am) of a 4-day weekend that included Easter Monday. One thing we’ve learned about Australians is that they take their weekends and holidays very seriously. We couldn’t resist the urge to stay in our apartment one more day as we KNEW no one would be stopping by to make sure we had left. I did try to email the rental guy to ask if we could stay a couple more days but he never got back to me. True to form, no one stopped by and we managed to stay one more night in the apartment. We had everything moved out of the apartment except for our toothbrushes and a few food items. Karma was working hard against us though. Around 8pm on Sunday (the night we were not supposed to be in the apartment), both of us left the apartment together to get something from the van. We came back to the apartment only to realize we had locked ourselves out. This is serious bidness since we couldn’t really call the rental agency to ask them if they had an extra key, without a really good story about why we were still in the apartment. After a few expletives and many natural bursts of adrenaline, I suggested that maybe we ask our neighbors if I could try and climb around the brick wall between our balconies. Scott was very skeptical and our bewildered neighbor (who didn’t speak much English) managed to mutter the word “d a n g e r o u s”. I was determined. It turned out that it was quite easy to scale the wall because my foot had a nice 6-inch ledge. Did I mention the apartment was on the 8th floor?

We were lucky enough to have our building manager (thank you Wayne) hook us up with some free storage in our old apartment building. Unlucky for us, it was in the garbage compactor room and the smell will surely permeate EVERYTHING we store. We tried to put plastic bags over everything we expected to eventually want in our van but I somehow doubt this will keep the smell out.

We’ve been living in the van for a week and we’ve only managed to get about 120 miles north of Sydney. At this rate, we’ll get around the perimeter of OZ sometime in 2012. Although the weather is starting to get a bit chilly (high of 70 degrees), we are still having so much fun exploring the areas close to the place we called home for a year. We have spent lots of time actively adventuring as well as some well-needed time in the basements of our brain (gotta credit that phrase to The National). Bedtime = 9pm and wakeup = 6:30am. Perfect.

Off The Grid

2009-03-21T20:48:00.005+11:00

I think I have to thank my friend Dan for suggesting the title of this blog. I've been extremely remiss in writing anything on this blog for the past 3 months and in an effort to be inspired, I asked Dan what the topic of my next blog post should be -- he suggested "Off The Grid". According to wikipedia: "The term off the grid or off-grid refers to living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities". So much has happened in the past few months that it has been hard for me to capture anything properly in a succinct blog post.

We were informed sometime in January that the owners of our apartment wanted it back and would like us to vacate by March 15th. Despite our polite request to extend this date, we were given no mercy. Instead of trying to find another place to call home, we decided that maybe we should start our off-the-grid living sooner rather than later. It actually didn't require much debate on our part to decide that we would start our Oz van tour about a month after we would have to leave our original apartment. Since our eviction, we've moved into a furnished apartment until April 12th, afterwhich we will officially be off-the-grid (but still online!). My parents visited for 2 weeks in Feb/March which turned out to be loads of fun. It is so fun to be a tourist in the Sydney area. Scott and I took almost 2 weeks off to spend time touring around the area with Mom and Dad Matthews -- pics are here!

Since we were fortunate enough to move a large part of our "stuff" here on a sea-container, we have had so much "stuff" to get rid of! I have always been very proud of our simple-living until I realized that we actually have sooooo much stuff. For the past month we have been trying to sell, sort, and give away almost everything we own. The pictures to the left are from our 24 hours of packing and moving from our former apartmant to our new 1-month apartment (I think we logged at least 5 FULL elevator rides). If feels so good to literally get down to only a few items of clothing and a few pairs of shoes!

So what is the plan? We plan to apply for a 1-year visitor visa that we can tack onto our current work visa. We will take a year to tour this massive country and visit as many things as we can. Our tentative plan is to go around the perimeter of Oz rather than cutting across it in any form. I've found the 2 most common questions are, "Then what?" or, "For how long?". During these odd economic times, I find it hard to convince anyone that living off-the-grid is our plan foreva. Instead of trying to convince or explain why/how we will travel and semi-retire until we're cripple, my typical response to "then what", is "I don't know" (maybe we'll explain it all in a book someday!). I DO know that we will not return to any life that involves a 9-to-5 job. There's too much to do and see in this world for us to spend our days working. I'm not opposed to working and/or making money but at this stage in our life and financial situation, we really don't plan on doing it very much. Both of us feel it is important to take these days of health and energy to do what we love and to raise our spiritual wellbeing.

I soon hope to have more time and energy to write some blog posts about our adventures. Stay tuned.

Love letter to Australia

2009-01-07T19:52:00.018+11:00

Scott and I just got done with a fantastic 2 week van adventure south of Sydney. We had some revelations during our fun times. We realized that for a country the physical size of the United States but the population of Ohio, it has an amazing infrastructure of roads and facilities. By facilities, I mean outdoor showers, picnic tables, and electric grills at almost every beach and park. We traveled only 120 miles south of our home and found amazing scenery and numerous state and national parks. This country does an amazing job of preserving nature and ensuring green space is available everywhere (probably the advantage of such a low population!). I can't say more about the gorgeous and diverse beaches as well (and we've only seen 1/100th of the coast!!!)

On Christmas day, we road biked to the Mxxxxxxxxa Rain Forest in Bxxxxxxo National Park. A few miles from the park, at the turnoff, there was a sign saying the park was closed. We continued on. How do you close a national park, much less, a rain forest? About a mile later, we passed a group of people who had parked their cars along the road, and were having a picnic in the ditch. They called out to us that the park was closed. We continued on. Sure enough, we got to the entrance, and the gate was locked…open every day but Christmas. There was a sign saying the area was under 24-hour surveillance, but we climbed over the gate and passed over the bicycles. We had the whole park to ourselves. Even better, the whole trail system was built on platforms, so we actually got to road bike through the rain forest…probably the only people in the world who've done that. Had we been caught, I'm sure the fine would have been thousands of dollars, but we escaped unscathed…except for a leach that attached himself to the back of Scott's leg. The leach let go after I coated him in the remnants of our mixed salted nuts.

We managed to explore some amazing beaches and find some lovely camping spots to park the van (fo' free!). One of our favorite ones (pictured here) was at the boat ramp in Gerringong where we were able to sleep right next to the breaking surf and wake up to an amazing view from the van. One morning we decided to hike up the ridge above the van. The view was fantastic but in order to get to the view we had to pass under an electric fence that, much to my surprise was ACTIVE! Scott, the Indiana farm boy, didn't seem phased by me getting electrocuted , but I was very freaked. It took my breath away -- I wonder if that's what it's like to get tazered?

Another highlight was snorkeling at Jervis Bay, about 3 hours south of Sydney. We saw all sorts of fish, and swam along side a manta ray with a 5-foot wing span. That was the coolest. You think of rays as being flat, but it was thick. It's head was easily the size of a human's. I had a close encounter with a big lung fish—sort of a hybrid between a catfish and an eel.

We were excited to finally see some wild wombats while we were driving at night. These things are MASSIVE guinea pigs. They remind me of the black guinea pig I had growing up that I named Remus. During our biking adventures during the day we saw lots of wombat burrows (pictured on the left).

I can't write a love letter to Australia without mentioning the fantastic (albeit expensive and polluting) Sydney New Year's Eve fireworks display that we enjoyed from our balcony. It was extremely novel to see such an amazing display, that growing up we always saw on TV (since Australia celebrates NYE waaaay before the United States).

This trip got us very excited and optimistic for the adventures we will be having in the very near future around Australia.

Who inspires you?

2008-12-19T09:16:00.007+11:00

I've recently been touched and inspired by two people who I don't know. One of them is a friend of a friend who has a blog titled "inspired adventurer". She used to live in Portland, but now has been traveling the South Pacific for almost a year. I don't know her exact story, but it appears she caught the same bug that we did, and decided something needed to change. She travels like we hope to do someday very soon. My favorite quote on her blog: "It's never too late to become the person you might have been." -George Elliot

The next woman who has touched and inspired me and Scott is Christina Bockius. She is a kiteboarder from Hood River who recently died a few days after breaking her neck while kiteboarding in La Ventana, Baja. This is where Scott and I spent a month kiteboarding during our travels in 2003. Her obituary brought tears to both of our eyes. She was noted to have sayings like: “We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time,” and “Life’s too short to be in a bad mood.” She was a mother, wife, and amazing athlete. She spoke 4 languages. She was happy.

What I've gleaned from both of these amazing women is that life really is too short to do things that don't make you happy. I've always felt that if I could ever find a bit of inner peace and daily joy, it would also find it's way into the hearts of other people. These women have done that for me. Thanks Sara and Christina.

Lost In Translation

2008-10-20T20:26:00.004+11:00

Until recently, we haven't actually had many problem with our slight language differences here in Australia. It IS the same language (English) right!? The other day at work, the conversation turned to a "country" near England called "Island".

I would rate my knowledge of world geography as average, or maybe slightly above average, so I was surprised and humbled to realize there was this country called Island in the UK that I had never heard of! There were quite a few people sitting around participating and/or listening to the conversation. One girl actually asked me if I "seriously had never heard of Island?". There were a couple of comments about me being a self-centered American, etc., etc., but I'm not really phased by those comments because I think it's true! Admittedly, I was a little embarrassed based on the reactions of the people sitting at the lunch table, but decided to drop the subject with a shrug of my shoulders, saying "who knew?".

I arrived home that evening and quickly googled "island country". I also got Scott scouring the internet with me, trying to figure out where this elusive country actually was. Both of us concluded that it didn't exist and my workmates were full of it...

Fast forward two weeks -- Scott and I were on a run together and I had a revelation -- ISLAND is not a country, but IRELAND is!!!!!! Two things screamed through my head. First, I needed to find every single person at work who listened to that conversation to tell them I knew that IRELAND was a country. Second, if I really knew my geography, it would have easily occurred to me that these crazy-speaking people were talking about Ireland, not Island. UGH -- I'm a dumbass. I asked a few of my co-workers to say "island" and "Ireland" consecutively. Guess what -- it sounds EXACTLY the same. I now ask people to spell words that I don't understand...

To Kill a Magpie

2008-09-26T16:57:00.006+10:00

Spring is in the air and the local birds are actively chasing each other, displaying their mating rituals, and defending their nests. Despite loving all of the birds here, I am now terrified of the Australian magpie. A magpie is a very large bird that looks a bit like a crow with black and white feathers. Last month, Scott told me about a certain magpie that dive-bombs him every morning on his bike ride to work. Scott put a pair of glasses on the back of his helmet (pictured here) but found it wasn't enough to keep the bird off his helmet. It was hard for me to appreciate what this was like until it happened to me. My first time, my sunglasses flew off my face from the sudden impact. A week later, I had decided to avoid Magpie Lane by biking down a parallel street. Much to my dismay, another roosting magpie went after me. I definitely wasn't expecting it. When she hit my helmet, I let out a loud scream, while my sunglasses went flying off my head again. This time they landed in the storm drain -- of all places!!!! I stopped to see if I could get my glasses out of the storm drain but was quickly run off by the whoosh-whoosh sounds above my head. A little girl was watching this all transpire while she was waiting for her school bus. The locals have informed us that the magpies will continue this behavior until December when they are done making babies. Scott figured out that he can keep the magpies from actually bonking his helmet by raising his hand above his head. I wonder if the people in the neighborhood know what he's doing as he rides down the street saluting to the magpies. Since losing my sunglasses in the storm drain, I have decided to turn around before reaching Magpie Lane. I'm willing to sacrifice 1 mile of bike exercise to avoid the magpies. Along with asking Scott about his day at work, I also usually greet him after work by asking, "Did you get magpied today?"

UPDATE: A few days after this posting, a friend of ours sent us a link to the Sydney Cyclist forum titled "Magpie Season". Our magpie was listed (Ryrie Street) with a viciousness rating of 3 out of 10. I seriously can't imagine what 5 out of 10 or even 10 out of 10 would be like! These birds are crazy. The author of the posting at the link above says, "What's to stop the bastards from taking your ears off? In years past we have been left bloodied, but unbowed... We haven't dared to go back recently to see if s/he or his/her offspring are still patrolling." This forum also has a picture of a more creative measure to deter the blood letting (pictured on the left).