Remember when you brought that new-to-you car and you couldn't wait for morning to drive it? You would look for reasons and think of places to go just so you could get behind the wheel. That is kind of the way we have felt since we put new tires on the Coachmen. We are so anxious to get on the road. To try on the full-time lifestyle, if even for a few months. Just to experience that feeling, being on the road and no particular place to go (other than the wedding, then we have no schedule).
We will also have no existing concerns while traveling this summer. No worries about income. No thoughts about where we will go to make a dollar. Other than the truck being operational, this will be a realtively care-free excursion.
But, if this were an actual deployment towards full-time, finances would indeed be a very real concern. As we wrote earlier, we will take to the road with just $10K if all goes as planned. So this trip is not only a shake-down tour, but a financial viability test rum as well. Our blog is doing well. We are averaging 100 page views a day! But at this rate it will barely pay for a bundle of firewood. Mary has busied herself reading about various ventures that generate income for other folks on the road and assessing what variations we might be able to utililize.
There seems to be a multitude of writing opportunies across the internet. This summer we are hoping to find out if we are able to committ to a schedule and write, write, write pages of commentary. Years ago, while I was living in Madison, Wisconsin, I had a backpack that went everywhere. Since it was a college town, it was quite common to see folks with backpacks in grocery stores, coffee shops, resturants, and laundry mats. I had several spiral notebooks I carried, along with a variety of pens. I had several fountain pens which I was quite fond of using to write. I didn't have expensive pens. Though I did treat myself to one I found irrestible. I had walked through the Madison Modern Art Museum on State Street, and there I saw a beautiful teak wood fountain pen. It was a tiger stripped dyed green. It was $65, but I had never splurged for a pen before, and I had to allow myself this one extravagance. I tend to buy those Shaffer Calligraphy kits, the ones with 3 or 4 pens and different color ink, that I find at the warehouse clubs for $12-$15. I would load each pen with a different color ink to reflect the mood I was in as I wrote.
I would wander down to the Canterbury Book Store
for coffee and write for 2-3 hours. That is what Mary and I will need to do if we are to have our words work for us. Once we develop that "stream of consciousness" I believe we will be able to produce more worthwhile stories and interesting commentary.
We will also be trying out the smart phone as a modem. My Toshiba laptop has a wireless card already. We will be bringing Mary's desk top (which will need a wireless card) as we update our website(another story altogether) and continue our blog. This will give us real time experience in creating from the road.
June 13, 2011 seems so far off, yet is the habit with time, too close to relax.
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