Off the Grid, but Still Online
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
What is important is to recognize that choices exist. You do not need to work long hours on the office campus of a tech company who feeds you 2 meals a day and expects your life to be dedicated to your "work". You also do not need to live in a VW bus with a laptop on a solar panel. There is a spectrum of choices, with different people finding their ideal life at different points.
As in many things in life, making a conscious choice to follow your own path is best.
How much land do you have? Do you have water rights? If so, how hard/expensive were they to get?
What do you grow? Do you grow just for your own use, or do you sell some?
Do you do contract programming, or do you work for a single company? If for a company, how hard was it to get that set up?
How often do you go into the big city (Provo/SLC)? For what?
What's the biggest drawback (to you) of living this way?
Feel free to not answer any of this that you feel is too intrusive...
We mostly have focused on getting the property fixed up, and getting animals running over the past 2.5 years. Many people bite off more than they can chew, but I have a rule that we take on one new kind of animal or food procution at a time, and learn it well before adding more. It slows down the process, but I have seen too many people crash and burn by trying to do everything all at once. So for now, we have a flock of chickens that gives us more eggs than we know what to do with. We have bees for honey, and goats, which give us all the dairy we need, as well as some meat and fiber. We have fruit trees. This winter we are getting drop irrigation installed through a few dozen raised garden beds, so our veggie and produce production should be up to speed next year, hopefully. And we may start up a 2nd chicken flock for meat. I expect we have 2 more years of building out our property before we are truly self-sufficient.
I work full-time for a single company. We are a SaaS companies that has no office, and everyone works from home. Finding the job was a lucky break, but once I had the job, they could care less where I live, so I found a place I like and moved there. The job has its ups and downs, like any job does, but it is hard to argue with working from home, wherever and whenever you want. That being said, one of the main reasons I am not farther from Provo and SLC is that it is a nice safety net to know that I could get a job and go back to the commuting life if I ever needed to.
I go into Provo regularly - it is the closest Home Depot, as well as the closest place for lots of retails shopping and ethnic food. And it is only 15 minutes away, so coming from a larger city, it doesn't even feel like much of a trip. But we also do a lot in town - it is not that tiny, over 30K people. There is a movie theatre in town, groceries, ranch stores, some restaurants, etc. We head to Provo probably once a week for other things, up to Orem for a pet store and art supply stores maybe once a month. And Salt Lake? I really thought I would go to Salt Lake more than I do, but I have not been there in a long time. Maybe once a year for an IKEA run, or for a fancy date night with my wife.
The biggest drawback is social - living in a small town makes it hard to build up a large group of friends. It is easier on me because I am married with kids, and don't need much more than that. You also have less diversity around here. It takes a conscious awareness to try to expose my children to more that the world has to offer.
I'm near Hamilton, MT, a town of ~10k an hour from Missoula. Hamilton is home to Rocky Mountain Labs, the US's center for ebola research which attracts lots of scientists and post docs so it has kind of a collage-town-minus-they-undergrads feel. Also amazing outdoor recreation if you climb, ski, hike, hunt, fish, mountain bike or pretty much whatever.
We have ~4 acres with good water rights and a gravity fed irrigation system. We paid under 300k for that land with a large house in good shape on it. We do have electricity from the local rural electric co-op, a microwave link for high speed internet, a well for drinking water and propane for heat and cooking. You could pay under 200k for a smaller fixer upper in a less desirable spot still with enough land to grow some stuff.
We are basically at the level of having a (very) large garden but have some established apple trees and are putting in larger amounts of plum, appricot and peach trees and blueberries, raspberries and tons of strawberries. Maybe soon grapes...some people have had success with wine grapes in the valley we are in and we are in a good spot for it.
We grow things for for our own use though if we grow enough we will sell or trade...many of the species I list are just starting to do well in Montana thanks to global warming and newly developed varietals so I kind of view growing them as a research project. I plan on keeping engineering as my main money maker.
There are lots of full time farmers in the area and some great farmers markets and farm stands.
I work for a single company I connected with through hacker news. Before that I convinced my boss to let me go full time remote after working in the office for a few years. I work in a specific area of machine learning which is in demand at the moment and have enough open source contributions to convince people I can work from wherever.
I go into Missoula (70k people) about once a month for a Costco and specialty grocery store run. Hamilton has two micro breweries, a great coffee shop and good grocery and hardware stores and I could easily get by without the city but there are some things that are cheaper and easier to find in Missoula. Missoula is also a great outdoorsy, progressive, town with a thriving river surfing community.
Biggest drawbacks is that local politics at the moment is dominated by ridiculous tea party shenanigans. Even the conservatives seem to be getting fed up with the sheer incompetence of some of the candidates but there has been some elimination of local women's health services and other services like that.
I'm in the early stages of my transition; the mentality is solidly there, still working on infrastructure and tools, and money.
I'm about to sign off for the day, but I'll try to drop you a line later tonight so you can get in touch. We do like connecting with kindred spirits.
As a vegan, programmer, and someone very interested in leaving in nature and off the grid this sound like a sort of unicorn heavenly existence that only existed in 21st century fairy tales.
Nice blog, and good luck with you 700 square foot garden, I have it liked on Facebook! :)
Our home is/was a bit of a fixer-upper, and it's harder to get help with labor here (it exists, but it's expensive). But one thing I've noticed is that learning plumbing/construction/mechanics has been way easier than learning software. You definitely sweat more though.
Turn-key housing here exists too, it just comes at more of a premium. Also, your social life is obviously impacted. You're probably well-advised to already have a family or s/o (or just are comfortable being alone).
All told, I think this is a great option if you're feeling trapped in your career but have stockpiled some cash. It probably doesn't require near as much money as you might think to make the jump.
For us it's exactly what we needed to focus on our startups without going the traditional VC route. We'd love to see more people going this route. Let me know if I can help.
Our network (Co-Mo Connect) publishes network rollout status and maps at http://usage.co-mo.coop:8080/signupstatus.php
Before here, we looked at WK&T (Kentucky/Tennessee) http://wktelecom.coop/ That looked promising as well.
It was some work to even find these two networks, then finding homes within the service area and trying to find out if they were eligible was the next challenge. Lots of Zillow searches. If the home is pre-wired, they'll probably advertise it as such in the listing. I think the sweet spot (in terms of value) is finding a property that is eligible but hasn't had an install yet. In our case that meant eye-balling the neighborhood maps at a house-by-house level.
To find similar networks in other parts of the US I would start with Zillow searches (for "fiber") or Google searches for state + fiber + rollout, state + co-op + fiber, or state + co-op + Calix. Calix is a popular FTTH equipment vendor. You could also check their (or other vendors) press releases, which they usually issue when they partner with a new co-op. See http://www.ftthcouncil.org/OurMembers
I wish there were a friendlier UX for this. Our search lasted about 2 months. If anyone is interested in my area, email me and I should be able to help by finding properties before they hit MLS, qualifying addresses with the contacts I've made at the service provider/installers, and of course just driving around. It would be fantastic to build a hacker community here.
They just started the rollout and iirc it should be done at least in the towns by next summer.
Rsfiber.com is the site to check out
Another place that's got a high quality of life for low cost of living is St. Augustine, Florida. It's an architecturally significant city with several colleges, great art scene, wide beaches.
You don't need to look any further than the warnings in the post you're replying to for a response. If you're dating, prefer lots of social interaction, or attend a lot of big-city events, then you're going to have a bad time living in southern Missouri.
San Francisco is not a good place for straight women to date. No one talks about it, because it's not politically correct, but in my observations they come here, and are lonely.
There's just too many single women, and not enough men. I have a very attractive ex-girlfriend, and we had so many conversations about social life, or lack there of. It got to the point, where I took her out and watched what took place. Guys--way below her league wouldn't talk to her unless she aggressively talked to them first.
I know I get hammered because I'm not being politically correct, and yes--there's always the exceptions, but at least in San Francisco it's difficult for sigle women looking for a steady relationship.
I'll point out the politically incorrect thoughts, and save you time:
I shouldn't have stereotyped. I shouldn't have assumed some females are looking for a steady relationship. I shouldn't have mentioned looks/personality when I said "way below her league". I probally left out something that hurt someone deeply--sorry.
Some of us choose to remain close to specialized healthcare, that we trust.
You said you had a few acres. Are you planning a garden for the spring?
Any idea if there's some sort of meetup-alternative for tech-minded people moving into the area? Just based on this thread, Co-Mo Connect and other rural fiber initiatives seem to be attracting a fair number of developers/entrepreneurs. It'd be great to all get in touch with each other.
Folks should be free to use their imaginations and what's around them to make their own practical way. It doesn't have to be expensive, conventional or a work of art to be your own.
Check these out:
Castle on Wheels https://youtu.be/CnHGKUh-5O4
Floating, movable island http://dornob.com/recycled-paradise-amazing-man-made-floatin...
If you've made a conscious choice to follow your own path, why is the path you've found so similar to others?
It's hilarious when non-conformists end up conforming even more.
My parents moved out to a very small town from Toronto, Ontario when I was small. There was nothing for me there when I grew up, and all of the friends I had that stayed in the area are struggling. I went away to school and never really returned. I found that I was at a real disadvantage by having zero network and no relevant job skills pre-university. I've since made up for it and am doing quite well now, but I have 2 kids and them going to a good school is very important to me. I always wonder how people do it well, so I'm looking for information.
I rant on this because of a taste this weekend, trying with mixed-to-poor results to get my BioLite Camp Stove (otherwise highly recommended) burning a good fire suitable for charging electronics via its built-in thermocouple generator (using the compact solar panels was pointless given cloud cover), and even now a separate solar self-charging battery is sitting on top of my car recouping from the draining usage on the trip (oops, left something on).
I grew up in a semi-self-sufficient family, growing food and heating with wood et al. Seemed easyish then, but in retrospect my folks put a LOT of work into making it work smoothly. Going completely off-grid and still staying connected does seem a desirable state (a la "first world amusement" and "TEOTWAKI prepared"), but yikes it's a lot of work - moreso if your immediate companions aren't wholly devoted as well.
So instead I bring along a 5000MaH battery pack (weight is around 5 ounces), and a 15W folding solar panel that generates enough power to charge even on overcast days (though certainly much less than 15W). (the solar panel is not light, it's around 1.5lbs)
I would argue that there's a feedback loop in this particular case between the requirement of such effort, and the ability to generate it. The same sort of flow-state you get from e.g. playing Minecraft, also exists in the real-world equivalent of survivalist bootstrapping. Our brains were evolved to be stimulated by the survival tasks of our ancestral environments: moreso foraging and hunting than farming, but even farming still comes with very natural-to-us acts like crafting tools, clearing land, building shelter, herding animals, etc.
I think a lot of the dissonance between the modern values of convenience and efficiency/laziness, and the agricultural-era idea of a "work ethic", was simply that certain kinds of things that are "a LOT of work" just feel natural to humans, in ways where they're still work (and drudgery, at that, sometimes), but not nearly as draining to one's long-term motivation as modern "abstract" work is. Nobody ever got suffered from "burn-out" making nails to build their own house—which is amazing when you think about the level of toil involved. The sheer direct intuitiveness of the goal being pursued—make exactly enough nails to get a roof over one's head and keep out the cold—overrides a lot of the the feeling of repetitiveness of the base-level action.
(A dystopia belonging in an SMBC comic: a nail factory that used to be staffed with robots, but which is now staffed with humans wearing VR goggles having the times of their lives making nails because they believe they're doing it for direct survival reasons. Then the nails are used to build the crappy box-like apartments they pay for with their wages and go home to.)
Tactile work is more engaging and less stressful. It does not require constant multitasking or context switching. You concentrate. You also build up a certain skill at it, which allows you to feel good about what you're doing. (I.e. you go from just making nails to making good mails quickly.)
In many ways I find low-level manual tasks to feel more like "creative" office work.
My home has a yard that needs to be completely re-landscaped, and the manual labor for that has been such a rewarding and peaceful activity for me which speaks a lot to your point.
That said, I realized while buying supplies to build a wooden raised bed this past weekend that basic things like "screwing some boards together to build a raised bed" almost seems like an overwhelming task when I first approach it. I was stunned by this because when I was a teenager I was very crafty and always tinkered with things and would have thought nothing of this.
The only thing I can think of is that in this day and age of everything being simplified to a few mouse clicks or screen taps, everything else becomes a monumental chore by comparison.
In any event, I have my parts, and now I'm excited to put them together. And I even get to indulge the digital side of me as well by modeling out my yard in SketchUp so I can make sure I like the layout before I build things.
I'd also note that something as stupid simple as "putting in a path," once you learn how to do it, is incredibly rewarding to see with the finished product. I never felt that digging dirt was stressful--just a good workout. And the end result is something that gives me a nice sense of satisfaction every time I look at it.
Or that now you know what the tradeoffs are and that there is a whole set of things you don't know you don't know! My teen self would have rather built the raised garden bed than used it, so he wouldn't have planned for long term effects (will this weather all seasons well? will these railroad ties leech into the soil and kill me via my veggies? etc)
For me it was first the debate about cedar vs. redwood vs. pine. Pine doesn't last well and the cedar options at Home Depot were pitiful so that made the choice for redwood easy. I worked out that wood screws were probably easier than rebar or railroad ties to install even if it does mean a higher risk of the thing coming apart. I can always reinforce it with metal L-brackets at the corners down the line if I need to. Since I'm going to grow veggies, I needed to make sure there was nothing toxic, so I got raw untreated wood. I may or may not stain the outside with a natural stain, but I'll start by seeing how it looks once I sand it down.
The most frustrating thing in all of this is that I can find plenty of pictures for what I want online, but most sites are crappy fluff content without handy details of parts or considerations for how to build it. Clear SEO spam plays and oh my god so many interstitials and slideshows! Instructables was actually pretty decent, but I couldn't find a style of bed I liked.
I guess I just need to do more of these projects to get more comfortable with the considerations. Like all things, practice makes perfect, and after I build this first prototype I'll decide if I want to do the same style for the others.
Next up...figuring out my soil mix and then sorting out how to convert the old irrigation system the previous owner had at the house to a drip system on a few of the heads and get that running into the beds.
The greatest flow state I ever had was building a "raft" out of small logs and lots of cord on a rest day on a backpacking trip. It took hours to gather wood of the right size, break apart the pieces that were too big, scrounge around for all the cord I could find in my gear, arrange the wood in a sensible way, and tie it all together. During all that time I was so focused on the task that I don't think an unrelated thought even entered my head.
It was completely useless: I had nothing to use the raft for, except to swim out a little farther into the lake than I could by myself. The raft didn't even work very well! And yet building it was tremendously satisfying. I can only imagine the satisfaction one might get from a task of similar complexity, but that's essential to one's survival!
Yeah, this is the problem with trying to adopt new technologies. I like the idea of BioLite (and I have one) but it's just not a mature enough tech to support a lifestyle. I met the BioLite guys and they seem pretty proficient at using it to power their devices and cook, but I haven't been able to make it work with my routine.
For when I'm traveling via automobile, I've got a Honda 2000i Inverter Generator and a portable propane grill which do all of what the BioLite does and more. They're larger and less environmentally friendly, but they always work easily, and that's important.
When I'm hiking I use a JetBoil and having my phone in airplane mode most of the time usually gets me from outlet to outlet without problems.
This kind of off-the-grid described in the article isn't far from standard everyday life amenities 4-6 decades ago...
Some of the things they need even in this disconnected lifestyle - like the mobile home, laptops, books, solar panels, batteries and even the slippers have to be made by someone doing a 9-5 job somewhere. The idea of civilization to me is to take advantage of these specialists who are really good at doing or manufacturing some of the things I need and in turn I become a specialist in something (probably one thing) which I contribute back to the society - it's a barter. That I don't have to do all the things I need to do to survive, seems efficient and effective. Also, not all of the jobs are going to be able to afford this "luxury".
I don't mind people who want to disconnect, but when you've got a campstove, a phone, a laptop, photovoltaic panels, a car... you're still enjoying the fruits of progress & society with the rest of us.
The ones in this piece don't particularly seem to be that type, I suppose, so maybe it's not relevant.
I understand that hypocrisy is frustrating, but perhaps this situation is more illustrative of the fact that "The System" has so pervasively invaded free spaces (physical spaces as well as psychogeographic ones), than it is that these (or others) are just young punks who won't know any better until their older and wiser (like us -- by implication?). What criteria do their motivations not satisfy, and in what way do their actions or desires/beliefs/ideas impact you to the extent that it would provoke any reaction at all? Is it dishonest to say you're disconnecting and still wear shoes? That doesn't seem right to me.
I'm forever interested in why righteous motivations seem to automatically provoke feelings of judgement or disdain from some people, who usually make comparative observations about the relative purity of a project or intentions, against their own values and wisdom.
There are certain people for whom the simple act of someone's wanting to do something substantially different (and who knows, maybe better?) seems to be an existential threat. I'm not saying that your reaction here is that serious, but I've seen it in many others.
It just seems like there is a knee-jerk reaction from many quarters that finds any discussion about alternatives to simply accepting and living within the defined parameters of "The System", and I wonder where that often-vehement opposition comes from.
*typo edit
You like your laptop because it makes your life better. That makes me happy. But then you tell me the "The System" is evil, and makes nothing good, etc- it's not only hypocritical, but it stings just a little, as I am a member of the very system making your laptop.
I don't want thanks, I just don't want to be told I'm evil at the same time as you enjoy the fruits of my labor.
An off grid, self reliant lifestyle is very attractive to me. This is my counter argument for myself.
Sure, city's are a far more efficient use of land and energy, but at least in the US we still have a lot of open space.
PS: My only gripe is people think of this as a 'green' lifestyle. Generally, living in a city high-rise and using public transit is far better for the environment.
As you spread out the population, the cost of FedEx deliveries is going to grow. Now you can drop off goods in a city via a highly efficient train, have that switched to a truck, and have it delivered to the end customer.
If everyone is off the grid in the wilderness, that train becomes a lot less useful to deliver goods. Now you've got to reach a larger area to serve the same number of people.
> Web + Fedex means a lot of jobs can be done remotely
A lot of jobs can be done remotely, but that doesn't mean they could be done remotely without cost. Many people are less efficient when working remotely. I find communication to be much harder when remote than when in person, especially as issues get more complex.
Also, the US population density is ~100 people per square mile so chances are good someone within 1 mile of you also needs a package today. Sure, it's cheaper for them to drop off 10 packages at the same apartment complex, but even fairly remote areas can be surprisingly profitable.
That's exactly my point. The more people who need packages around you, the less it costs to deliver a package specifically to you. Going off the grid in remote corners sounds great, but part of the reason we moved to cities is because sharing infrastructure costs makes things more efficient.
>Also, the US population density is ~100 people per square mile so chances are good someone within 1 mile of you also needs a package today.
The US's population density is 100 people / square mile, but that doesn't tell you the full story. We don't live all over America, we are clustered into cities and towns, mostly on the coasts. There's a lot of desert and Alaskan wilderness with no one around bringing down the average. NYC alone is ~6% of the US population. The Northeast megalopolis is ~17% on ~2% of the land.
On top of that if you live in the middle of nowhere they simply don't deliver to you. So, if more people moved to the desert for whatever reason there costs stay more or less the same.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United...
Obviously there is more to package deliver than just the raw cost of getting a package from a local sorting center to the end of a rural driveway.
At the moment, a lot of the cheap rural shipping is being subsidized by the USPS.
This is only true because they subcontract these rural deliveries to USPS [1]. Without USPS, who's already required to go there anyways to deliver traditional mail, it isn't profitable.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fede...
Her "broadband" connection is a 2-6/2Mbps Wimax connection via an antenna on the roof to the nearest town a few miles away. It's still weird being able to sit out "in the middle of nowhere", talking to friends online, and order stuff I need and still have it show up the next day. Was a lifesaver when I stayed there for two weeks back in March after she had a hospital stay, and I needed a proper office chair and a folding table to act as a desk rather than using her kitchen table.
Was still able to work remotely just fine (most of my stuff was SSH to remote servers, and a web browser).
More surprising is that when I did the same thing earlier this month to help her after knee replacement surgery, that I could get T-Mobile LTE inside her house - back in March, I'd only been able to get it while sitting on the front porch.
Quite a change from a few years ago when all she could get was 21.6Kbps dialup, and I had to send her a literal pile of USR Courier modems with instructions "if you have a lightning storm and the modem won't work the next day, throw that one in the trash and plug in another from the stack."
With all due respect, that seems very decadent. Back when we lived in the sticks, the (simple) rule was to just unplug (from power as well as POTS) all electronic equipment when not in use. Never lost a modem to a thunderstorm in those days!
I couldn't depend on her to unplug everything every time there was a storm.
I love the idea of moving to Alaska or Canada in the wilderness, and figuring out how to survive and stay connected.
I'm thinking on the fly, but I think I would be contributing to society. My specialty is web programming and software architecture. I'd even go so far as to call it an art form.
I encounter a problem. Sleep on it for a few days, then bam, things settle into place and I spend a couple days solid programming. Those days that I'm "sleeping on it" if I'm at work, I'm often distracted by day-to-day tasks that usually could have been handled by someone else.
I'm not sold on the concept one way or the other. I do like the idea of a middle-ground solution.
I really appreciate your counter-argument. Good to think about at least.
Lifetime jobs at a single employer died in roughly my grandpa's generation. And I'm not that young. My father went into semi-retirement in the 90s and he RVed roughly all summer and due to lack of connectivity technology at that time, he only contracted in the winter unless it was an emergency (charged higher rate!). RV life is a lot simpler with a house and mailing address. I spent a lot of time in the 90s and 00s picking up my parent's mail and generally keeping an eye on their house, which wasn't so bad because they lived kinda between my house and my work at that time, once I had kids it was more of a hassle but I still made the time. I remember how creepy it was watching 9/11 coverage on their big TV when they were in some campground a thousand miles away, wondering if this is "the big one" and should they be packing up to come here or should I be packing up to join them?! Also when you get too old/sick you just move back into the house permanently, or take shorter RV trips anyway.
Anyway, in summary, a home base strategy with "far less than full time employment" works pretty well, and if you're going to have "far less than full time employment" you need to do something with your spare time between work, and some folks like to travel and camp in their extensive spare time. So you end up with people disconnected and wandering the earth, most of the time, yet occasionally slaving away 9-5. For my dad it was voluntary in a semi-retired state of being, but mere education and talent do not guarantee employment for anyone, so I'm sure for some its involuntary. I suspect most of humanity in the history of our species never had a job, or never had a 9-5 job, they had a life instead.
My grandfather never completely stopped working into his 80s... I don't have any elderly role model to show me how to retire and do nothing. Personally when I retire I'm going back for the chemistry degree I always wanted and who cares if there's no jobs... after all, I'm already retired!
Capitalism says that if a person wants to work 100+ hours a week and drive a Porsche, they can.
If another person only wants to work 10 hours a week and walk everywhere, they can.
Simply because Porsche sell $200K+ cars, does not mean I'm obligated to work enough to pay for that.
>have to be made by someone doing a 9-5 job somewhere
Actually, the person making those things could also have chosen to live a simpler life and only be working part time. It's their choice.
I did not interpret the point you responded to the same way as you. It's not about that individual's choice, but about the necessity for some person to be producing those products under those working conditions, in order for the off-grid folks to be able to consume them.
For some people, there's an implicit hypocrisy in visibly "opting-out" of a lifestyle if your new lifestyle necessitates that others have to fill in behind you. For others, yourself included I guess, it's just a market and anything goes.
Why do you assume those are the only working conditions possible?
>your new lifestyle necessitates that others have to fill in behind you
My lifestyle doesn't "necessitate" anyone to do anything. I buy solar panels because they are available and I can afford them. If all of a sudden nobody wanted to work more than 10 hours a week and solar panels were not available or too expensive, I would not buy them.
What each individual does with their time is up to them. When the world changes because of how people spend their time (i.e. stuff might get way cheaper, or way more expensive, or self-driving cars may or may not become a thing), I, and everyone else, will continue to re-evaluate their choices about how they spend their time, and adjust accordingly.
I moved to the Yukon 4 years ago, and a massive number of people live in this way. I.e. work less, own less, have way more time and live how you want. Hunt, fish, grow your own food, chop your own wood, and you can live a great life only working 20-50% time.
Also there are hardly any rules up here, and they're very weakly enforced, so you can more or less do whatever you want and "the world" will leave you alone about it.
If you go to Alaska, stay out of the big cities. They're just the same as the ones down south, but with more drugs. The small communities have all the cool people.
Photos and stories from my Yukon/Alaska adventures are at http://theroadchoseme.com
It's a bit like the cold (i.e. past -40 C/F) , you get used to it, and it pales in comparison to the beauty you are enjoying.
It seems out of the question for me on a EU passport to live long term in Canada. You're lucky!
I'm sure there are places equally as stunning in the Northern European countries.
I think so. It seems much easier to build things to handle the cold vs handle the heat.
You really just need fuel and insulation (for you and the house), and you can be quite comfortable.
Scorching heat though - there's really not a whole lot you can do except find shade and not move.
The harder something is, the more rewarding it is.
Also Canada has reliably much better snow, and way, way more wilderness.
It would definitely be harder to tour Africa in an old, beat-up Honda Civic than in a jeep, and it would be even harder to tour all of Africa without a vehicle, or without supplies entirely, blindfolded, and with your hands tied behind your back.
I'm driving a nice Jeep, which for me, is as challenging as I personally can handle, without it being painful and not enjoyable. At the end of the day I'm doing this for enjoyment, not for punishment.
People tougher than me ride motorbikes.
People tougher than that ride bicycles.
People tougher than that walk (yes, it's been done).
etc. etc.
There will always be someone doing something more daring than me, but I'm not interested in what other people are doing, I'm finding my own personal balance / limit of difficult yet enjoyable.
The rewards that come from challenges and difficulty are not often correlated with the amount or intensity of the difficulty, and even when they are, they are often inversely correlated. You need to take into account the type of difficulty (e.g. mastering a musical instrument vs enduring an abusive parent) and the predilections of the person trying to overcome the difficulty (e.g. many people who enjoy difficult challenges may not enjoy the challenge of living in a freezing climate). The challenges that you enjoy are what make you an interesting person, and so the simple statement that “the harder something is, the more rewarding it is” is not only completely false on its face, but it tells us nothing about you other than the possibility that you might be a masochist.
So one might say that they think that New Zealand provides the benefits with less of the challenges, but you could say back to them that the types of challenges that New Zealand lessens are for the most part the exact kind of challenges that you enjoy. An answer like that would better help people understand where you're coming from, which is good because you seem like a genuinely interesting person.
Normally that wouldn't be so bad, but I've just set off on two years around Africa, which means it's going to be a long, long time before I have 5 continuous years in Canada. Oh well, at least I can remain a permanent resident essentially forever.
That really sucks man!
[1] http://www.ym.fi/en-US/Latest_news/Publications/Brochures/Ev...
While Whitehorse is a city, I have world-class mountain biking from my backyard, and 20 minutes from town in any direction I have no cell reception and rarely see other people on the weekends. 3 hours from town we can be hundreds of kilometers from the nearest person.
Whitehorse can be a pretty magical place -- my old friends up there got me into paragliding (Sean Kitchen still up there ?), and I got to practice my fly fishing up there for lake trout, or head to Haines for the salmon run (I was always skunked, nearly always had a good time anyway), and good hiking and beautiful terrain around Haines or pass to Skagway...
I just assumed by your description you would be somewhere else, and it piqued my curiousity. Enjoy Whitehorse, good luck with your African trip!
Winter is also the best time to get around, because all the rivers and lakes are frozen, meaning you can go places where there are no roads (and there are very few roads - I've driven them all). So you quickly get into snowshoeing, cross country skiing, downhill/backcountry skiing/snowboarding, ice fishing, snow mobiling, etc. etc.
The days are short, so you do whichever of those in the dark you have to. Snowshoeing at 4pm in -35C crunchy snow looking at the bright stars/northern lights is a magical thing [1].
Basically, you get outside and do stuff. If you don't like winter, you'll likely leave, which is another amazing thing about the North - everyone that lives there loves it.
[1] My latest attempts at Northern Lights Photography http://theroadchoseme.com/northern-lights-2
So many questions, I always thought this was an interesting avenue to take when considering "working remotely".
Just a tent camper and when we left I had never towed anything before. We were prepared and knew what to expect so had no real surprises.
Not alone. I'm married. She does a mix of writing and editing and most of the day to day logistics.
Wow I've been feeling this exactly but never had such a good description. Great interview, thanks for posting.
I think DSL still isn't an option, so LTE is probably the best choice there at this point (it isn't super isolated, there just aren't enough people on the road to bother putting in a close enough box).
I could probably get fiber to the house here now, but running the gear would use more than my total current power budget. Also, I kind of like a more measured pace in the webpages I read.
My ideal machine would be something along the lines of - fanless Intel CPU, 14" 1080p or better IPS display, excellent backlit keyboard with TrackPoint, 12+ hour battery life for 60% screen brightness and wifi, 3+ USB ports, 512+GB fastest local storage possible (so PCIe x4/M.2 or something). I don't care for anything else although I would take an HDMI or DP out and Bluetooth if possible :)
(I'd rather disable the fan in software so I could turn it on as needed but have not gotten that to work.)
Some take it's meaning more literally, with grid meaning pipes or wires delivering services to your home.
So gas being piped into your generator would be on-grid, if it gets trucked in then that's off-grid. Electricity via wires is on-grid, electricity via a factory built solar cell or windmill is off-grid.
Others have a more poetic definition of "off-grid" as "self-sufficency" though it's hard to see where that ends, as there's no clear dividing line, even a child born in a remote rainforest tribe with no contact with the world will end up using tools and techniques passed on by local culture.
We bought a 2002 23-foot RV for $15k and renovated it to nicer furnishings than our $1.2k/month apartment near Dallas where she was working.
Now we live in it full time! We're only a month in, but it's been a blast, and something I can see doing for the foreseeable future. Every new city we visit we can explore at our own pace, while spending less than we would be living back home, and living in much more beautiful areas (I'm writing from an RV park near Lake Placid a five minute walk from the coolest waterfall I've ever seen).
When you can work remotely, there's not a lot of reasons to stay in one place.
My wife blogs about it at http://gogo.gen.co
There is no heat or electricity in my humble abode. We adjust amount of bedding and other details, depending on weather.
It has been an interesting experience. I want a house again, but I can imagine it being something small and simple with few amenities compared to most conventional housing.
I am still trying to work out those details. But very much enjoyed this article and posted a link to it on my homeless blog.
I love the contrarian thinking but want to make sure I'm accounting for legitimate cases my young mind might not conceive of. Or am I overthinking it?
Speaking from experience, the catch is you won't get to live the life of convenience and luxury that marketing has been pushing down your throat for the last 20+ years.
When you work less, you have less money, which means you spend less money, which means you often do things for yourself. Oil changes can be dirty, chopping wood can be hard work, and canning vegetables is a loooong process.
If you are afraid of hard work and want life to be "easy", by all means keep going to work and simply pay for everything. On the other hand, hard work is extremely rewarding, especially when it's for your own survival.
It's a choice, you're free to make it either way you want. I wish more people knew it was a choice they can make.
I've never lived like that, so excuse me if what I say makes no sense.
Can you not find an insurance policy that's affordable even when working part time? i.e. consider health insurance like other expenses that are very hard to entirely remove (some food, gas, car insurance, building materials, etc.).. i.e. most people wind up working something like 20-50% time to pay for those things, maybe after you add in health care you'll need to work 30-60% time?
Not possible?
Is health insurance the only thing to worry about? Any other reasons to save up a lot of money, or something to insure for?
For example, if a medical issue arises, insurance covers treatment, but if it's now difficult to sustain myself, am I now dependent on unemployment/social services (or savings)?
I lead a minimalist/nomadic lifestyle now, and always wondering if at some point the music has to stop and I have to integrate into the system as I get older (any kids, family aside).
Stop thinking up a list of things to worry about, and start doing what you want to be doing.
Nothing in life is permanent, so make a leap, try and out and see what you think. Maybe you'll do it for a few years, then go back to doing something else. You'll never know unless you try, so hurry up and go for it.
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7...
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7...
http://skie.net/uploads/landscaping-in-progress.jpg
Theres a 100+ page thread on the project here:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/34531-Plan-Off...
Its worse when you see someone preaching marxism like these hollywood actors and big bankers praising cuba, the che guevara and what not, yet fully enjoying the luxuries of capitalism.
There is much positive about living simply and remotely.
Now the negative: You might want to go to a decent restaurant at some point. Also, intelligent conversation is a rarity. The folks you meet and deal with in rural settings often have stunted world views and not much ambition. That, in my experience, is the biggest problem with going (in this case only partially) "off-grid" in a remote area.
One of the islanders let us see inside her house; a straw construction maybe 1m by 2m. And in the corner was a car battery powering a black and white CRT TV, powered by the solar panel on the roof.
(I could probably also talk about crofting in Scotland, a similar kind of remote lifestyle)
One of my biggest takeaways from our trip - which I think is extremely relevant to the message here - is that my goal will never be to NOT work. Not ever - even in retirement. The consensus strategy of spending 40+ hours of every week of your life saving up so you can enjoy retirement is, to me, a broken model. We met so many people who followed that model only to realize they didn't have the health or energy to enjoy all that they had worked a lifetime for. It's heartbreaking.
Work is a GOOD thing. The preferred solution - and I realize this is a high bar that we're beyond fortunate to even consider(more on that at the end) - is to find something you're passionate about and you wake up every day wanting to do. Obviously that's the old cliche of just doing what you love, but it turns out I'm one of those dullards who has to learn some of the cliche life-pro-tips through experience to truly understand them.
I'm a solo founder on a business that's just entering private beta, so I know first-hand that there's an entirely different discussion about delayed gratification and working at an unsustainable pace in the short term to build something meaningful in the long term... and that gets complicated. There's no rule of thumb that I know of.
I could write a book about this discussion, but in sum: I LOVE codingdave's comment, because he used two words that my wife and I ALWAYS use when discussing this: "conscious" and "choices". These words came up in every discussion we had on our travels when the topic came up. The people we met out there didn't get there by accident. They get there because they made choices. They lived below their means. They saved. They learned new skills. They took leaps of faith. VERY few of them were wealthy.
When we talk about this, I usually start to say that everything in life is a choice; that we ALWAYS have choices, but the sad reality is that isn't true for most people. I won't turn this into a political discussion, but will simply say that it would be amazing to live in a world where even the poorest of the poor have palatable choices that they can realistically make. In our current world, those of us who ARE fortunate enough to have some palatable choices can work towards making that a reality. For those that would call that a pipe-dream, there are easily identifiable challenges like affordable childcare that are super-realistic and would go a long way in the right direction. There are amazing organizations already doing great work in that sphere.
My business is somewhat tied to this topic. It's mentioned in my comment history.
PS: A grandfathered unlimited 4g plan and a cradlepoint is GOLD on the road. :)
I live in 85 westy that just recently passed smog after having to change the cat. BAR CAP repairs are a huge PITA and shops feel obliged to rip you and the state off with unnecessary repairs. You're better off paying cash to the esses in east San Jose to make it "pass."
For me, the latter is the American dream, not the former. I grew up with grandparents who came from farmers, loggers, and cowboys (actually driving cattle across states back before fences were all over), and I grew up hearing stories about the great depression and living in environments where things learned during it were preserved, and it was a way of life where owning land, even a small bit, was what gave you freedom. It was a way of life that encouraged self-sufficiency and survival skills. That way of life is under threat and much less tenable as civilization grows.
Let me give some examples: my great-great-uncle, always stressed to me the importance of water, and would scold me for wasting it. He lived through the depression and the dustbowl as a child, and even though he only had 10 acres, he had two wells and 5 rain-water collection barrels, (and about 7 of those acres were always growing some sort of food). I live in the city, and now have a house with 1.5acres, which is plenty for collection, so I was looking at getting a rain barrel. Well, come to find out, rain barrels are illegal in the city. So are chickens. Oh, and solar panels have all kinds of strange rules and laws attached to leases or the local eleco refuses to payback normal rates.
The point is that as urban areas expand, the decentralization of energy, food, and other resources is what can help contribute to self-sufficiency, but the local laws are often an impediment to this structure. In my example, I can perhaps understand the justification for a ban on city-chickens, but the arguments against rain-barrels or proper solar encouragement are a travesty to me.
The only way to get this sort of thing these days is to actually get a good property outside city limits.
Also, there is one other thing: property taxes. Before 1916, once you owned land, if you could grow food and had water that could be all you need (especially if you had good rock/timber sources for building). These days though, property taxes are so high in many regions that people who could otherwise be just fine off-grid end up forced semi-on-grid just to make enough to pay property taxes. (and I especially hear about this for the larger properties that used to be homestead land but have changed hands and no longer fall under those protections, so 100-1000 acres ends up super expensive, but a small plot is not so bad.
Just giving some extra perspective, and also, I would like to point out that there is quite a difference in the type of off-grid living depending on the area. I have spent time in remote locations in the rockies, and out in Cali, and the culture of the Cali off-griders is much more eclectic and hipsterish, compared to even desert dwellers in New Mexico, and then there are the Alaskans and Canadians up in the big expanses. I also consider this kind of living and attitude to be a key component of the "Western" attitude that many other people, especially from the city, just don't understand the level of freedom it can provide and how that freedom can change a person.
I have spent way too much of my time looking for land in the remotest of places, (even in boat/plane only spots) and I hope one day I find the right one. If you are wondering, the main areas left are New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Montana/Wyoming, Alaska and Canada. (I don't count Cali because I feel there are hardly any actually remote locations left, same for Colorado, it has wilderness but the pop is exploding so every mining claim and nook and cranny has an off-grider.) A big secret most don't know about is that the best land is land adjacent to national forests, (I got spoiled by growing up in such a place) or the golden find is the rare grandfathered land surrounded by national forest. There are islands but I'm a mountains guy, and when the meteor/asteroid hits and destroys the coastal regions I want to be high and dry.
But then it got really interesting.
The tree dweller was like right out of a movie or something, that was amazing and noble people do that.
Great article.