Roaming

Where am I?⌗

I’ve been wanting to write about what I’ve been up to the past couple of months and keep putting it off because I convinced myself that I need to write a long and protracted post about why I’m living in a travel trailer. Oh yeah, I live in a travel trailer now. But I don’t think I’ll delve into why I felt compelled to leave NYC and become trailerfolk because it’s really not that profound or interesting. Before anyone asks – it had nothing to do with COVID-19. In fact, this has been my plan for well over a year.

My new home The rig in Grand Teton

If you’re curious about keeping up with where I am. Check out WHERE AM I at the top-right of the screen any time. That’s hooked into my router’s GPS system and gets updated any time I’m online. It’ll show my last-known location any time I’m off-grid.

Let’s get these out of the way⌗

The three most common questions people have asked about this new and somewhat unorthodox lifestyle are

Where are you headed?!
How long are you planning to do this for?!
What are you doing?

So let’s go ahead and tackle each one of these…

Where are you headed?!⌗

Nowhere and everywhere. Everyone who knows me knows that I love the mountains and outdoors, so I’ll be spending the majority of my time either in the Rockies or Cascades, depending on the time of year. My original plan for this year was to spend a considerable amount of time in the Canadian Rockies, but the border shutdown has put the brakes on that plan for the foreseeable future.

How long are you planning to do this for?!⌗

I don’t know; this whole ordeal has been pretty sweet. A long time. At least a year, but I’d like to hit the 2-year mark if I don’t tire of ultra-confined living too quickly. I’ll be living in a mix of both on- and off-grid camp settings; wherever there is good LTE signal is a possible base camp. I may do a write up on my wireless setup and all the research that went into it. And how it all fails catastrophically in the more-often-than-you’d-think event of entire cell towers going down. Fun fact: most of Grand Teton valley loses cell data service entirely every day at 11:30 local time. All. Three. Major. Providers. So much for redundant service plans.

What are you doing?⌗

Mostly working. I haven’t taken a vacation almost all year. I work East Coast hours and then run, rock climb, or mountain bike in the afternoon. Granted my mountain bike is currently out of commission with a bum bushing in the rear suspension. Although I just put an order in for a Specialized Diverge, so I’ll be gravel biking like crazy soon.

I’ve also been fiddling with a lot of my side projects

Setting up Nextcloud for all my documents, pictures, etc. It’s been a great time.
Setting up my Linode server which hosts this site and Nextcloud. This site and the code that powers “Where Am I?” are both open source. Not that I’m proud of any of that source, but I do prefer to build things openly.
Wiring my router and drilling holes through the cabinetry of my brand new trailer. I don’t know if that project is worth a write up, but I’m proud to have only blown a single fuse.
One that has been on pause, but will be resumed when COVID starts petering out: https://soledrop.in

A few loose ends to wrap up⌗

I figured I should add a quick note about where I’ve been, where I am, and what’s on the horizon.

Past locations⌗

I’d love to write something positive about each one of these places, but I’m afraid it’d be too difficult to wrack my brain for good things to say about Boulder, WY. It’s simply not possible.