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What ways are you reducing your “Gear” outside of backpacking?


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Home Forums Gear Forums Gear (General) What ways are you reducing your “Gear” outside of backpacking?

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Viewing 25 posts - 26 through 50 (of 62 total)
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  • #2041625
    W I S N E R !
    Spectator

    @xnomanx

    That Land Rover will cost you more in lift kits, tires, roof racks, snorkels, gadgets, and monthly repairs than the mortgage on a country cottage.

    I like cyclist Max better.

    #2041627
    David Thomas
    BPL Member

    @davidinkenai

    Locale: North Woods. Far North.

    >"I don't want to settle down, get an apartment, get a day job. No! I pay no rent and I don't own a car, and I'm free."

    In my 20's I was working in a BP/ski shop, leading trips, and taking a lot of my own. We'd lead trips with young and middle-aged professionals who weren't comfortable planning a 9-day trip on their own, didn't have a hiking partner, or just liked the group energy. They'd hear about all my trips and lament, "When I was young, I didn't have the money for the trips, tools, and toys I wanted. Now I have a garage full of tools and toys but not the time to take the trips." They all encouraged me to keep doing what I was doing, at least for a few more years. I'm glad I did.

    After my seven-year "itinerant-bum phase", I settled down, and have been doing engineering ever since (although I still take about 10 weeks of vacation each year). I ended up advancing more quickly and ending up in charge of the professionals who got a job right out of college. Typically, they didn't have the people or life skills to sell projects, smooze clients, or handle difficult technical problems that would arise.

    Too many Americans are enslaved to their mortgage, their cell and cable bills and car payments. Keep being "Tarp Guy" as long as it works for you. I see people in Alaska who do it their whole life.

    #2041630
    David Thomas
    BPL Member

    @davidinkenai

    Locale: North Woods. Far North.

    >"I hear it takes two people to make them, though… so I should stop moving sometime before I'm 30."

    Or at least meet a girl who is under 30-35. The age 40 limit of fertility is true for some women but a disappointment for others.

    Men, however, are fertile much longer, so there's no rush on that front. I didn't have kids until 38-43. Lots of guys are much older.

    Or adopt.

    #2041633
    W I S N E R !
    Spectator

    @xnomanx

    Thank you Tam!!! That's the one.

    I've been wanting to find Dzjow's site for a while but forgot the name….Great blog that I lost in the shuffle somewhere.

    A bit of an aside, but check these tarp pics folks:
    http://dzjow.com/2011/06/08/tarping-with-the-grace-solo-spinntex-97/

    #2041634
    Max Dilthey
    Spectator

    @mdilthey

    Locale: MaxTheCyclist.com

    I led student groups for two years. It's exactly like herding younger brothers. I'm a good enough leader that I wouldn't mind doing it for a living for a bit, but I feel pushed by being intelligent to do something worthy of being intelligent.

    Right now, I write freelance, but I do it so quickly that a "work day" for me is like 3 hours long. The Max Dilthey that took 6 classes, two internships, a TA position, ran two clubs, and somehow fit a girlfriend in there is inside me, crying out to be busy and mentally challenged.

    I'm going to the Southwest to be a bike tourist and memoir writer for the winter. After that, we'll see if it's time for graduate school…

    This thread took a delightful turn into minimalist living. I don't know if I can properly impart how grateful I am to have fallen in with such a swell community.

    #2041637
    Max Dilthey
    Spectator

    @mdilthey

    Locale: MaxTheCyclist.com

    Oh wow, incredible pictures… now I really want to be Tarp Guy….

    #2041639
    Ian
    BPL Member

    @10-7

    I'll spare the BPL community of a multi page tirade about possessions but BLUF, it really comes down to if you own them or they own you. For me to purchase a several thousand dollar time trial bike would be unbelievably wasteful but not so for a passionate rider. I'm slowly becoming more purposeful with my purchases as I slide past middle-agedom but the reality is, it makes more sense for me to own a couple sleeping bags than to try and make one work from -20* to 100*. Also, some purchases don't work out as planned despite my best research efforts.

    Anywho…… I've traveled all over the world and I found Cambodians to be some of the most wonderful and resourceful people I've ever met. They've done much to fuel my dream of burning all of my crap and moving into a school bus in the Cascades.

    .Cambodia 1

    .Cambodia 2

    .Cambodia 3

    .Cambodia 4

    #2041642
    Desert Dweller
    Member

    @drusilla

    Locale: Wild Wild West

    Max check out the "Overland Journal".

    http://overlandjournal.com

    #2041652
    Max Dilthey
    Spectator

    @mdilthey

    Locale: MaxTheCyclist.com

    Oh, that is wicked. How does their subscription work when their demographic has no home address?

    #2041654
    Desert Dweller
    Member

    @drusilla

    Locale: Wild Wild West

    They are based out of Prescott, AZ. There is a yearly gathering at Flagstaff.
    Contact address is:
    Overland Journal
    3035 N. Tarra Ave.
    #1
    Prescott, AZ
    86301
    [email protected]

    #2041655
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    "Buy a house without a basement, attic, or garage."

    And resist the urge to buy stuff in the first place. It'll save you a lot of money, time and energy keeping track of it, and simplify your perspective on life.

    #2041657
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    "Is the real nirvana in learning to get rid of excess, or learning not to pick up stuff in the first place?"

    Both will lead you to a better place, but the latter will render the former irrelevant. Easier said than done in this hyper consumptive society, so I think in practice the former eventually leads to the latter as you gain life experience. Not many start out disinclined to pick up stuff, IME. There is just too much pressure to consume, peer, family example, and advertising, for most young folks to overcome.

    #2041660
    K C
    BPL Member

    @kalebc

    Locale: South West

    This thread has nothing to do with gear…

    #2041666
    Ryan Smith
    BPL Member

    @violentgreen

    Locale: East TN

    Nick,

    Welcome to the Dark Side! I saw a Niagara in the campground this weekend and it made me think of how yours was vandalized. Let the mods begin.

    Ryan

    #2041667
    Ian
    BPL Member

    @10-7

    "This thread has nothing to do with gear…"

    Your response has nothing to do with gear. Pffffttt!

    #2041674
    Nick Gatel
    BPL Member

    @ngatel

    Locale: Southern California

    "Welcome to the Dark Side!"

    Thanks, Ryan.

    It was really my wife's preference, but I have admit it is easy to set things up. We have camped 14 days in the past 5 weeks in it already.

    #2041683
    Nick Gatel
    BPL Member

    @ngatel

    Locale: Southern California

    "Oh, that is wicked. How does their subscription work when their demographic has no home address?"

    Ah, patience young grasshopper.

    Since you are embarking on a "homeless" existence for a while, perhaps I can provide some tips.

    When I was in my late 40's and going through a divorce in the late 1990's, I decided to live a really simple life — even though I had to pay alimony and child support. I knew I could do it, since I had done it in my early 20's. My house in Palm Springs was rented out and the tenants provided income for the mortgage.

    I got a job which required 100% travel. Meaning each week I was at a client's location. My office was in Michigan and I worked throughout Arizona, California and sometimes other southwestern states. My company paid for hotel rooms during the week and I got a daily per diem to pay for food. So this meant I didn't really need to live anywhere, although most people would have lived in a house or apartment on weekends.

    So I decided to live in my 8 foot tent trailer.

    starcraft
    Note: This picture was taken around 2003, since it is connected to a 2003 Expedition.

    I towed it to each city I worked in, usually living in a campground or BLM or USFS dispersed area during the week. If it was too far from my client to camp somewhere, I would stay in a hotel and just leave the camper in the hotel parking lot — but this rarely happened. The only difficulty I had was when I submitted a campground receipt in lieu of a hotel receipt. But my boss was convinced I had taken too much LSD in my youth so he let it go through.

    On weekends I would go backpacking or camping somewhere. All vacations and holidays entailed backpacking or camping too.

    I quickly learned that you cannot live in the US without a mailing address, especially for banking and government ID's. So not wanting to be reliant on someone to use their address, I rented a private postal box in the Phoenix area, which was about the central point of my travels. If was away from Phoenix for a few weeks, I could just call the postal place and they would package up my mail and sent it General Delivery to somewhere I would be.

    My pay was direct deposit. Even back then I could pay bills via Quicken and Bill Pay, so a paper check was a rare requirement.

    All my possessions went into a storage unit in Arizona. My mechanics tools, whatever backpacking and camping gear not immediately needed, my stamp collection, vinyl records, books, and clothes not immediately needed. It was a pretty small storage unit and I was surprised that all my accumulated belongings of almost 50 years fit in it.

    In the late 90's there was no broad band, the Internet was still in its infancy, and most companies used PROFS email. If you knew where to look, you could find pay phones with data ports. That is how I did my email each night — on a 1200 baud pay phone. No coins were needed because my company email connection was an 800 number.

    My home and business phone number was my cell phone. Back in those days cell phones were expensive, so I rarely used it. Most people in business relied on pagers and corporate dial-in voice mail systems, and that was my primary communication method along with PROFS.

    On the rare occasion I had to fly to my Michigan office, I would just park my camper and truck at the airport.

    And this is how I lived for two years. It was wonderful! And no one knew I lived nowhere. Probably couldn't have kept my job if the company knew. Even my family thought I lived somewhere.

    But alas, I fell in love, got married, and the new wife required a real house to live in. I got the Palm Springs house from the divorce and moved back in it. And now I have "stuff." I like my stuff too.

    It would be even easier to do today. But we still must have a physical mailing address, mainly because the government requires it for identification, income tax, social security, etc.

    #2041697
    michael levi
    Member

    @m-l

    Locale: W-Never Eat Soggy (W)affles

    I just want to say I enjoy max diltheys postings as he is getting ready for his next biking adventure. It especially makes reading a new thread more exciting. Gl.

    #2041702
    Peter S
    BPL Member

    @prse

    Locale: Denmark

    Just like your weight/caloric intake. You need to to get to a comfortable level first, and then balance intake and burn-off.

    The less you need to burn/sell/give away to keep the balance, the more money/time/energy you save.

    Live light!

    #2041737
    diego dean
    BPL Member

    @cfionthefly

    If I dont here Max telling us at least once a month what a great and speedy writer he is, I start to get worried. Glad your doing ok there buddy:)

    #2041742
    Max Dilthey
    Spectator

    @mdilthey

    Locale: MaxTheCyclist.com

    Thanks Mike! T-minus four days or so!

    Nick, I've got kind of a similar work situation going for me right now.

    My job pays me through Paypal. Since I'm still young, I've just been using my parent's address as my own for taxes and ID confirmation. I think digital nomadism is an exciting new prospect that hasn't been previously available to most people. T-Mobile just made their coverage global, and with any luck, Verizon will follow suite.

    I make about $1,000/month. From that, some goes toward paying back my student loans which are a very manageable 20k, and the rest goes towards food, phone bill, and bus/train tickets. I've "lived" in four states in the past two months, and now I'm headed to the southwest, and I have a sneaking suspicion that'll be a gateway drug to a trip to Australia or New Zealand, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

    I'm self-sufficient, I have two and a half years of health insurance before that takes a bite out of my paycheck, and I'm building a resume for stable work later. I can't complain.

    The idea of NOT owning property and living nomadic is really interesting. There's a lot of duality inherent in it. Success procured in a way which was once considered the realm of failure…

    I can tell when I talk with my Dad about it, he's thinking "Well, eventually he'll see the light and buy a house." He's very supportive (the man is my best friend) but the idea is completely novel to him and doesn't at all mesh with the traditional ideas of building a life.

    On top of that, hell, I might meet a girl and suddenly find myself completely, willingly, grounded.

    We'll see. Life Nomadic is working right now, and I'm definitely fulfilled. It's nice to talk with people who can appreciate the draw of it, because telling people around you that you live and work from a bike procures images of panhandling and freight cars and missing teeth.

    #2041743
    Jerry Adams
    BPL Member

    @retiredjerry

    Locale: Oregon and Washington

    a lot of people are fulltime in their RV

    google "fulltimer RV" and you can get lots of info how to get mail and stuff

    seems sort of claustrophobic to me. When I'm out for more than a week at a time I start getting ready to "go home".

    #2041744
    Max Dilthey
    Spectator

    @mdilthey

    Locale: MaxTheCyclist.com

    I'm the opposite of claustrophobic. I feel more at home in a 1 person tent than a big bedroom.

    #2041764
    Nick Gatel
    BPL Member

    @ngatel

    Locale: Southern California

    "seems sort of claustrophobic to me. When I'm out for more than a week at a time I start getting ready to "go home"."

    Jerry, it would seem so. Each year we do several trips of 1-2 weeks in our camper. During the day we are not in the camper, we are out hiking or doing other outdoor activities. We sleep in the camper, which is much larger and comfortable than a tent.

    I wouldn't mind full timing in a RV. of course I would still go backpacking. But my wife wants a "real" house to return to after an extended trip.

    #2041816
    Chris S
    BPL Member

    @bigsea

    Locale: Truckee, CA

    Well now I really want to visit Greenland.

    I like the one gun analogy as well. Reminds me of an inteview of saw with Trey Anastasio of Phish. He was talking about an old guitar amp he still uses and mentions that he thinks it's more important to be familiar with your gear than to have really good gear.

    "…rendering my 12-volt stuff obsolete for me, but they are too useful to throw away but hard to sell for much money."

    That's the problem I seem to be running into after upgrading some of my backpacking gear. Since I can't sell a lot of the older stuff for much money I end up keeping it as loaner gear that nobody ever needs to borrow.

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