live. work. dream.

It’s five a.m. and I woke up because my feet are itchy. Not because I have athletes foot or anything. No, it’s just that I’m too excited to get on the road again. After almost two months of living on the farm, we are packed up, hitched up, and ready for more of the unknown. We don’t really want to leave, especially in the middle of the season, but we have to, in order to complete our circle of the U.S. by June.

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Out of everything we have in storage, one of the biggest things I miss is our home gym. We had a lot of workout equipment, which actually got used for workouts and not as clothes hangers. We used to work out at least four mornings a week, running and lifting weights. So when we hit the road and all that went away, it was hard for me to observe any hard-earned muscle tone I had turn soft and pudgy. Now, even though we alternate between running and bicycling, without the gym equipment, gravity takes its toll, fast.

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One of the great things about workamping somewhere that does not require a full-time commitment is that you actually get some time to do your own thing. For us, that is trying to make a living online.

One of my goals for Jerry’s dog blog during our stay here on the farm was to develop his new Tripawd Discussion Forums.

I can now officially check that off my list. Thanks to the Simple Forum WordPress plugin from Yellow Swordfish.

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Ok, I admit it. During times of crisis, I completely freak out. The spaz button turns on, and I hyperventilate and run around, yelling out loud until I can get all the anger out, blame Jim, and then work on solving the problem. Jim, however, really pisses me off with his ability to remain calm during stressful events. To his credit, his method does work a little better. Don’t tell him I said that.

Take last week, for example, when I drove the truck straight into a muddy, grease filled ditch out by the side of Farmer Brian’s biodiesel garage.

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An interesting debate came up while troubleshooting and fixing our RV slide out leak.

El Jefe suggested that whenever dry-camping, we should turn off our water pump at night and when we leave the rig unattended for a long time. I  didn’t like the idea of doing this because the water heater needs to remain pressurized or the element could burn out.

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René noticed one day how the carpet by the wall next to Jerry’s bed was all wet. No, it didn’t smell like pee. So we immediately started looking for a leak.

The other side of the wall, inside the storage compartment with our freshwater tank, was also wet. So we thought the worst. But it could have also been coming from the bathtub since that was right above.

We confirmed there was no plumbing leak and were stumped as to how the carpet got wet, so we went into troubleshooting mode.

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There’s a lot of talk here about how “Old Florida” is disappearing. Kitschy roadside attractions are being paved over for gated homes along golf courses, and old timey family diners are being squeezed out by Chick Fil A and Olive Garden. It’s like this in a lot of the country, as Americans allow national chains to destroy the very things that make our hometowns unique.

We get a kick out of finding new, divey places to check out. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve found two great places that are sadly, a dying breed: Archie’s Seabreeze on Hutchinson Island, and Mrs. B’s in Vero Beach, off I-95.

We didn’t find them on our own; our online friend Chelsea told us about Archies, and the locals we met at Earl’s told us about Mrs. Bs.

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Did you ever wonder how campground hosts get jobs in places like Yellowstone, or along Lake Champlain? Chances are, they heard about it through the Workamper Association. They’ve been around for over 20 years, and their Workamper News is the best way to hear about adventurous job openings for everything from being an interpretive guide, to running trains for traveling carnivals!

Keep reading to see our movie with interviews from employers exhibiting at the 2008 Workamper conference we attended in Lakeland, FL.

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No, I haven’t been hungover for the past couple weeks. I’ve just been busy with a few more important things since my New Year’s Eve post when I promised to make this video about our coconut experience…

We started out making an instructional video about husking coconuts. But I just couldn’t bring myself to ruin the Harry Nilsson classic Coconut with me blabbering on about something of which I obviously know nothing.

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You never know what you might end up doing when workamping on a farm.

When the farmers went away for a couple days recently, I had my chance to milk the goat.

Fanny didn’t seem to mind. At least not too much …

So be prepared to learn new things when taking on an out of the ordinary workamping job!