Day 2 - Terror

By Jason

Your Account is Overdrawn. 

Funny how that subject line pops right out from between "People you may know on Google+" and "✈ This One’s Big! 72 Hours Only -- Flights Starting At $49, $99, $129, or $149 One-way*".

Day 2 and we're out of money. Shit.

Is Quotewizard still hiring? 

This snapped me out of my early morning daze pretty abruptly. Log in real quick to the bank, see what's going on.

Turns out we had a couple of unexpected expenses come in and I'd not left enough money in the checking account to cover them. In a spasm of thriftiness, I'd over-transferred my money to my savings account. 

So, we're not out of money (Less the $10 damn dollars the bank charges for the convenience of transferring electronic money from one pretend ledger to another in the case of overdraws). But the next thought is this:

Very shortly, we will have no income. 

This is like the antithesis of the American Dream. Soon we're gonna be bumming around the world, working where we can, but probably can't count on a stable or reliable source of funding. And that was the point, right?

From here on out, every dollar I spend is gone, not to be replenished. When we run out, the trip is over, and real life is back on. Any financial mistakes I make now are coming right out of my dreams.

Deep breaths.  

Budget, finances, saving, philosophy

We're going to write a lot about budgeting on this blog, so I won't go crazy with it here. We talked last night about content here, and who was going to do what, and I think JT is a bit more suited to cover the practicalities of how we actually pull this off. But here's the rundown from a very high level:

1. Average budget is shooting for $100 a day. At this level, we have enough funds saved to cover us for well over a year of travel AND have money in the account to help us reintegrate into our lives.
2. We are going to attempt to hit this goal with the help of generosity. In practice this means couchsurfing, work exchanges, rideshares, and plain ole' mooching off you, our friends.
3. We're going to cook our own food, stay in budget locations, and avoid peak travel times. We're going to be opportunistic in our traveling as well, not being so rigid in our planning that we can't take advantage of a good deal or chance to do something cheap. 
4. Where we can find contract work, we will. So if you know anyone who needs a brilliant writer or master spreadsheet jockey, please let us know. 
5. When the money is out, the trip is over. Full stop. 

What this means, in practice, is that the trip is much less a yearlong vacation and much more a yearlong pilgrimage. In a very real sense, money and time have become the same thing for us.

The philosophy is that we can make do with less, increasing the value of our experiences while decreasing the costs. How many times in our lives do we spend a large amount of money on things that fail to live up to their expense. If you spend $60 going out to the club and buying drinks and living it up, how does that compare to buying a $6 bottle of wine and spending an afternoon with your friends in a park? Was the club 10 times more valuable to you as an experience? Will you even remember it?

See, the funny thing is that we're all living in this money/time dynamic, but the abstraction of modern living makes it hard to see. I work (give my time) for my money, and I spend my money (my time) to acquire things of value. All too often, those things are very heavily advertised to me as solving all of my problems. Houses, cars, alcohol, clothes will get my happiness, confidence, satisfaction, sex. And there's a huge part of my brain that is panicking at the thought that I'm extracting myself from all this promise. 

I'd hate it if it sounds like I have the answer to things. I don't. My only hope is that by forcing ourselves to live at length in a minimal fashion we'll get closer to finding out what is truly valuable.

 (PS - for a huge dose of humble pie of a financial nature, check out this thread on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1g2t15/whats_the_most_pathetic_thing_poverty_has_forced/

I'm so grateful to my parents that I never had to experience this. I feel like we should all save pieces of this post to read for the next time we get really annoyed that the wifi is spotty at Starbucks. Every time I start thinking that I know what living is all about, I should reread this.)

Day 1

By Jason

Monday. The day of dread. Early mornings, groggy meetings in the kitchen. Fart around on Facebook, Reddit, Marketwatch, Google News. Chat with coworkers about the weekend. Anything to delay the inevitable. There are potentially panics waiting for you in that report, in those emails. Something went wrong over the weekend. 

Something always goes wrong over the weekend. 

The project you so glibly tossed to yourself Friday afternoon is now half a day behind and you've got to get it done. Past You is a dick for sure. That guy didn't do his job, drank too much this weekend, played too many computer games, wasted his time.  

You always waste time.  

Now you're over-tired, stressed out, got a headache, and disappointed in yourself.

So grab a Cliff Bar, get your second cup of coffee, and buckle down. You've got to get this week going so that you can get to the weekend. 

 Stop.

This Monday is different. I'm enjoying an americano out of the hugest cup I've ever seen in a little bank-turned coffee shop, having just had a hour long conversation with my best friend who isn't my wife. He's just about to go to bed (time is different in Germany, I guess). We talked about politics, and privacy, and PRISMs. It's part of a 16 year conversation we've been having, the end of which will only happen when we either A.) Fix the world or B.) Get too old to care. 

My best friend who is my wife still has a week of work left, so I'm pretty certain she's not going to love this post. Don't worry, love. It gets better. Way better.

Ok, if you're still with me, here's the Cliff Notes version of what's going on:

1. We took some great trips, saw how big and small the world is at the same time.
2. We decided to uproot ourselves and drift in the wind, seeing what we could see. 
3. We fantasized that we could determine a whole different way of living this life outside of what we like to call "The Plan".  
4. We saved up enough dough to do it. 
5. I quit my job last week. She quits her job this Friday. 
6. As soon as we get the house wrapped up (rented or sold) we're on our way. 

I can (and probably will) talk at length about my opinions on The Plan, but suffice to say that I've become pretty damn skeptical about American Dream Trifecta of Nice Stuff, Nice Family, Nice Job. Having been fortunate enough to achieve these goals at a young age, I discovered that they don't carry with them the enlightenment and contentment I thought they would. The thought of just building up my pile over the next three decades is pretty stifling to me, so in characteristic fashion I decided to toss it all out and see where we land. 

So that's what we're doing. Planning to see how folks are living. Getting off The Plan, getting on the road. 

Thirty is the new twenty, right? 

Portland: 1 City, 2 People, 48 Hours, $300

By Judy

Last September, J.D. and I took a 48-hour trip to Portland, challenging ourselves to spend only $300 between the two of us. We made many decisions on this trip in order to stay within the confines of our budget, but had just as good of a time as if we had spent twice as much.

Travel:

Just before leaving Seattle, we filled up our gas tank, spending $3.99/gallon, which lasted until we returned on Sunday night. On our way, we ate snacks and leftovers brought from home, rather than buying chips and candy from the gas station.

Cost: $44.01 (11.006 gallons)

Lodging:

We stayed at the Northwest Portland International Hostel where we paid a total of $126 for the two of us for two nights in a six-bunk room. It was a great location, and we meant a lot of really friendly travelers there.

Cost: $126

Food:

One of the first things we did after getting settled was to take a walk to the local Trader Joe’s, where we picked up groceries. We also bought a lighter when we were out, for $1.25.

Back at the hostel, some other travelers offered me some extra spaghetti and J.D. at a leftover sandwich he’d brought from Seattle.

For breakfast on Saturday and Sunday, the hostel provided bread and jam, which we supplemented with eggs (6 eggs used each day), scrambled with cheese we had bought from Trader Joe’s.

We’d also bought clementines and a box of risotto, neither of which we ate. One of the clementines turned out to have spoiled, which affected the rest of the bag. We meant to eat the risotto for dinner on Saturday night, but ended up nibbling on leftover bread and cheese, which was probably a mistake. We put the box of risotto on the “free shelf” in the kitchen before we left.

Portland has a thriving food truck scene, and it took us a long time just to decide where to eat. We settled on Euro Dish, a Polish food truck. I have had better pierogies, but the stuffed cabbage was excellent.

I wanted to make it a point to eat at Pok Pok, the James Beard award-winning restaurant while there, so we went on Sunday before leaving town. Most importantly, I wanted to try their wings and their drinking vinegar. Looking over the menu, we very carefully chose our food, and ate them mindfully, enjoying them all the more for how thoughtfully we had chosen them. Back home, on any normal day, we would have ordered anything we wanted off of the menu, without much of a glance at the price. We also would have likely taken home a box of leftovers, which we may or may not have eaten.

I also wanted to hit up Voodoo Donuts. They are so popular, that I had to wait in a line outside while a couple finished getting married inside the shop. They were good, but not the best donuts I have ever had.

Cost: $71.28

Trader Joe’s: $21.03 (Mushroom & Herb rice risotto, Name Tag Lager, ABC trek mix, Charles Shaw Pinot Grigio, Clementines, Eggs, Crumbled feta w/ Mediterranean herbs)

Lighter: $1.25

Euro Truck: (2 Traditional Polish Cuisine Combo #2) $11.50

Pok Pok: (drinking vinegars, fried rice w/ house-cured sausage, wings, tip) $34.50

Voodoo Donuts: (2 donuts) $3

Friday Night Entertainment

After we put away our groceries, we sat on the patio and smoked and drank, talking with other people. We decided to go out with a couple of them, first to a bar called Gypsy, and then to one called Blue Moon. The prices were not great at either, but most enjoyable part was the company. One of the guys we were with was from Scotland and we talked for at least an hour just about the possibility of Scottish independence.

Cost: $26

Gypsy: $10 (1 Widmer Hef, 1 tallboy PBR, tip)

Blue Moon: $16 (our contribution towards sweet potato fries and 3 small pitchers split between 4 people)

Saturday Entertainment:

That day, we drove over to the Rose Garden, which is free. We could have opted to pay for the Asian garden adjacent to it, but decided instead to carefully examine each pristine rose instead.

We also roamed around downtown, through the market on the waterfront, and over to Powel’s City of Books. I love books, and was quite proud of having restrained myself.

That afternoon was the first University of Michigan football game of the year, and J.D. couldn’t miss it. We watched the very intense game at Marathon Tavern—just the kind of dive bar we like. We had brought half a pack of cigarette with us from Seattle, intending to ration them out, and when they were done, so be it. But this game was intense! That, the novelty of the cigarette machine in the bar, and the fact that our favorite brand of cigarette had a price tag of only $6.50, caused us to splurge on a new pack. A guy bought a round for the house, so we got a free mini-pitcher of beer. The Wolverines lost, but we still had a great time.

That night after drinking on the patio with a crowd of fellow travelers, we walked a few blocks to Couch Park, where we smoked, and eventually over to a bar called Underdogs, which had both ping pong and foosball tables. Our group struck up a conversation with some other bar-goers, one of whom challenged J.D. to a ping pong game, saying he’d crush him. The Wolverines may have lost that afternoon, but J.D. won the ping pong game.

Cost: $30.50

Rose Garden: free

Downtown, waterfront, Powell’s: free

Marathon Tavern: $21.50 (PBR, cigarettes, tip)

Underdogs: $9 (PBR, tip, ping pong)

Sunday Entertainment

After checking out, we spent most of the day in Cathedral Park, a park on the Willamette, beneath a bridge, whose supports are reminiscent of Gothic arches. We talked about life, the afterlife, or lack thereof, and what makes life worth living. When J.D. and I met when we were 14, these were the things that made us fall in love. Sometimes in takes traveling, getting out of our daily routine, to rediscover them.

Cathedral Park: free

Shark-Diving in Gisborne, New Zealand

By Judy

As we sat on the boat, waiting more than an hour for mako sharks to show themselves, we started to despair. This is all our fault, J.D. and I said under our breath to each other. We pretty much wasted a day of vacation with a last-minute drive from Wellington, New Zealand  up to Gisborne just to dive with sharks, and now here we were, without a fin in site.

We had met up with one of our oldest friends, Jim, while he was on leave from Afghanistan, along with his fiancée, also on leave from Afghanistan, and some other people from her unit. So while we felt bad about wasting a day of our vacation, we felt bad for wasting a day of their leave. Not to mention the $300 (NZ) that we’d spent. Of course, we were welcome to come back again any time within the next year if we didn’t see any sharks that day, but what were the odds any of us would be back in New Zealand in the next year?

Dean, the owner of Dive Tatapouri, decided to take the boat over to a different spot and try our luck there. Indeed, our luck started to change before we even got there. Speeding along in the boat, we spotted a giant pod of dolphins. Dolphins usually swim in pods of about 20 individuals, but there must’ve been about 50 of them, happily keeping pace with our boat, slowing down, speeding ahead, jumping our of the water for a better look. I sat on the bow of the boat, the biggest grin on my face. As a kid, I had been obsessed with whales. This was perhaps one of the happiest moments of my life, and I felt as if I was nine years old again. A mother and baby swam beside me, perfectly attuned to each other, zigging and zagging like they had rehearsed it. 

I almost asked if we could forget the sharks and just swim with the dolphins, but eventually we parted ways with the pod.

When we  got to the new site didn’t see sharks right away but started fishing instead, Dean explaining that the struggling fish might actually draw sharks better than chum. The wriggling fish did the trick, and J.D. and I hopped into the diving cage in a hurry. Everyone else had already taken a turn in the cage, practicing for the shark encounter. Everyone, but me. I was too busy worrying I’d failed everyone. Sharks are attracted to heartbeats, and mine raced, not just with the six-foot mako so close, but getting the hang of my snorkel, and gripping the cage to stay down below. Close to me, the torso of a skipjack wafted, attached to a rope. When the mako gripped it in its jaw, struggling to free it from its teather, three rows of shark teeth showed themselves to me, six inches from my face. Never does one realize just how many teeth a shark has until confronted with them.

After about ten minutes, J.D. and I got out of the cage and back in the boat to let someone else have a turn. Since we were already fishing to attract the sharks, Dean let us reel in the catches. Not wanting to waste anything, they kept the skipjacks for bait and the very similar-looking tuna for people food.

One of our friends reeled in a goofy-looking goblin shark. It didn’t look nearly as menacing as the mako, with its bulbous nose writhing out of the water. J.D.’s first fish also put up quite a fight, and when it was finally visible just below the surface, I thought he’d landed a piece of detritus. As he lifted it out of the water, a basketball-sized octopus emerged.

Dean tossed the octopus in the cage, where Jim and  another one of our travel companions, John, were diving. Busy as they were watching the mako, neither had any idea what was going on above the surface. As John tells it, the octopus slipped through the middle opening of the cage, right in front of the mako, with the chum in between them. Rather than tentacle versus fin, beak versus jaws, it was more of a stare down than a fight. The octopus swelled out, frantically waving its limbs. In John’s words, it did its “I’m a big scary octopus dance.” And the shark was the first to back off.

The whole way back, we fished. Dean also made a detour to check out a coral reef, and would have taken us diving there, had the boat been equipped with the proper anchor.

When we returned to shore, Dean invited us to lounge at his place for as long as we wanted. Dean told us all about the local fishing and farming industries, the balance of nature in Maori beliefs, and introduced us to his family.

Near the shop, was a hut. I’d been eying. I wanted to go in, but I was a bit shy in asking, so when he offered to let us take a look, the anthropologist in me leapt for joy. Inside, it was filled with relics from Dean’s family. Carvings and weavings hung on the walls and on benches. Leaning against the wall of one bench was a framed family tree.

We all split a bottle of champagne John had bought, and the guys at Dive Tatapouri presented us with sashimi from a couple of the tunas we had just reeled in, served simply with a bit of soy sauce. It was ill-cut, with chewy connective tissue, tendon and silverskin crosscutting many pieces. A sushi chef may have cringed, but it was the best sushi I had ever had, or possibly ever will have.

If you’re going to New Zealnd, do whatever you can get to Gisborne and to Dive Tatapouri. Drive all day if you have to.

For more information on Dive Tatapouri, visit: http://www.divetatapouri.com/