We all know the truth, yet how many of us avoid seeing it?

Our lives go by too fast, and one day we’re left wondering, “what happened?” All those cool things we dreamed of when we were younger got put on the “someday” list while we we were being “responsible” workers or entrepreneurs, attempting to carve out a reputation (hopefully good), keep our heads above water and stash some money away for that “someday” when we were going to get to do what we really wanted to do.

The trouble with that scenario, as many of you know, is that someday usually arrives when we’re far too old and decrepit, or dead, to enjoy it.

I’m not knocking those pursuits. Hey, if you want to be the fat man in the BMW, that’s your prerogative. But Jim and I always wanted so much more than a status symbol with a balance due.

From 2001 to 2006, a series of events led Jim and I to chuck it all and say “screw it” to the conventional life we were leading. Those events, though tragic and hopeless at the time, turned out to be blessings in disguise.

Because although we thought we had carved out a life that was adventurous, when we finally added up how much time we spent at our desks, versus living life with Jerry doing cool stuff in the woods, work always won.

Even as entrepreneurs, we were robbing ourselves of the very freedom that being self-employed was supposed to bring to us!

Once Jerry got sick, we knew time was of the essence. It was our chance to spend the last of our days together, living a life without routines or obligations or bills. With dogged pursuit and prayers to the universe, we made it happen. It was probably the first time we realized that all things truly are possible, if you truly want it bad enough.

Live Your Dreams, Work Less

Which leads me to the whole point of this post; right now we are listening to a life-changing book by Tim Ferris, called “The 4-Hour Workweek.”

• If you have ever considered shedding your current lifestyle for one that you know will bring you true spiritual happiness, this book is for you.
• If you’re in dire need of a real income, you can’t afford not to get this book.
• If you have ever wanted to live an adventurous life instead of toiling away in your cubicle, this book is for you.
• If you want to know how to keep your life on track without letting things like Facebook, television and the pursuit of money suck the life out of you, you must read this book.

I”m not getting paid to write this, Tim Ferris never even sent me a review copy. I was told about this book by fellow adventure traveler, Sam, who urged Jim and I to check it out. I had always heard about it but the title put me off; it sounded like a cheesy get-rich-quick self-help book. But Sam’s a smart guy, and he’s got a good life with Kim, on the road and at their rancho in New Mexico, so I decided to get the download, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. Thanks Sam!

“Whether you’re an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, The 4-Hour Workweek is the compass for a new and revolutionary world.

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan—there is no need to wait and every reason not to.

Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, high-end world travel, monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint.”

We are only into the first hour, but already we’re digging it. Everything Ferris says, we can relate to; we’ve already made the move to live a life that brings us real inner happiness, so we nod in agreement with everything he says, laughing and raising our fists going “Yeah!”

Where we are finding The 4-Hour Workweek more applicable to our lives is in how Ferris demonstrates how to be more efficient at making money, while pursuing the adventures that we want. That’s where Jim and I need the help (especially when it comes to making money!).

Stop shouldding all over yourself. Soon you’ll be dead, or close to it. Will you be able to look at your life and feel content, knowing that your dreams were fulfilled to your heart’s desire?

Or will you have spent the best part of your years as the fat man in the BMW, sitting in traffic, wishing you could be somewhere else?

Earlier in that day of the Texas flash flood that nearly swept our trailer away a few months ago, we watched the odometer in our truck turn 77,777 miles. While that evening was full of excitement, normally such an event would be a big deal.

Well, at least for me.

On long stretches of highway, what I used to consider numerical anagrams are always something I look forward to. Then I learned at Google University that the proper term for such a sequence of digits is a palindromic number. These are numbers that read the same forward and back. And when the mileage gets up there like it has on our Dodge, it’s fun to figure out the next palindrome we’ll reach in our travels.

OK. It’s  no exciting, rip roaring, click you heels kinda fun. But it does give a long haul driver something to think about for a few miles. Like what would be the next palindromic number in sequence in our example here? Hint, we passed that over a thousand miles ago.

The first few are easy. Not including single digit numbers, they begin with 11, 22, 33, 44… etc. The fun, however, doesn’t really begin until you get to much larger numbers, like 101,101 for instance. Maybe we’ll hit that one during our next season on the road down south.

I signed up for NüRVers because it has to be the best social networking portal for fulltime RVers who break the stereotypical fulltimer mold. But then again, it must be the only one too. Aside from RVblogz, that is.

We have social sites for every segment of society. René is into her tweets and Facebook. Jerry lives on at Twitter, Dogster and ZooToo. I just keep my LinkedIn profile fresh.

If I have my way, I’ll never have to use my connections to land a job working for somebody else ever again. But LinkedIn is one social business network that makes a nice little safety net, if I ever had to dust of my résumé that is.

Its also a great way to keep in touch with old coworkers and colleagues. And I get a kick out of updating my status with things like “gone fishing” or “Heading South for the Winter” while others talk about provisioning servers or recontextualizing some brand paradigm to maximize market penetration.

Done that thanks. I’ll take my mobile lifestyle and workamping anyday. That’s why I started the LinkedIn Workampers Group. I also stumbled upon the RV Enthusiasts LinkedIn Group. If you’re LinkedIn, check ‘em out. You won’t find me on Facebook.

“Home” … it has a weird sound to it.

After nearly three years on the road, it’s strange settling back in here at Jerry’s Acres knowing that we’ll be here until it’s time to head south again next winter. We were only here a couple months before hitting the road again last season, and having returned I suppose we are officially Snowbirds now, or Snabbers rather.

Though I thought Snowbirds were supposed to travel away from the snow! It was snowing when we left last October, and as I look out the window now it seems we are living in a snow globe, and someone is shaking it really hard. Just a couple weeks ago we were sweating it out down in Texas – running the A/C all day, thinking it was time to head “home” … now we wondering when we might be able to stop wearing multiple layers!

The good news is, I must have done something right with my directions for how to winterize a mountain home.

After doing our best not to fear the worst for the past few months, we returned to a clean house, perfectly intact, where everything came back online without any problems. No broken windows, no burst pipes, no critters trapped inside, no worries. We were even prepared to spend a few nights in the RV, having no idea what to expect upon our return. But considering this crazy weather, I’m certainly glad to be inside, next to the fire.

Bonus: My motorcycle even fired right up after sitting stored over the winter. Before we left, I had added some Stabil to the gas tank and turned off the fuel line, letting it run dry. I disconnected the battery, wrapped the bike in moving blankets and forgot about it. Then, a couple months ago I got to wondering, “Can the water in batteries freeze?” Well, apparently not, at least not this time.

Best of all, we had a welcoming party greet us upon our return. The day after we got back, René spotted a moose walking down the road past our house. The next day, we saw two moose cows and a calf – the same one we saw last year I believe – crossing our property while out for a walk. And earlier today we had a nice little training session with Wyatt learning not to bark at deer right outside the window.

It’s good to be “home” … but don’t worry, we have lots of stories to catch up on from our not so recent adventures. And before we know it the time will come to head back out on the open road in our home sweet home on wheels!

René recently cut out another quote and taped it inside our bathroom cabinet door:

“At its core, adventure is the willingness to commit to an uncertain outcome with and open heart and an open mind.”

I don’t know where she got that one or who said it, but her timing is impeccable as it certainly applies to our latest adventure.

Had we known of the uncertain outcome that awaited us at By The River RV Park in Ingram, Texas, alongside the lazy Guadalupe River, we might have left after our first night. But who would have thought this pretty park could be covered in water within the next 24 hours? And after nearly three years on the road, we’ve come to expect the unexpected. Without such an outlook, panic may have set in even earlier than it did the other night.

No, that first photo is not a picture of the park. It’s just where we ended up spending the night, along with all the other rigs from the park, which is a very good thing considering how events of the evening unfolded …

Earlier in the day, we had walked across a spillway path over to an island on the river across from the park. It’s where they allow tent campers – of which there were none, fortunately – and the path was clear of water. We later took the short drive to nearby Hunt, TX to see Stonehenge II – noticing along the way various river crossings that would clearly become impassable with the slightest rise of the river. A sign of things to come. Later that night, three people would be washed downstream after trying to cross the river there. One has yet to be found, another spent most of the evening up a tree crying for help.

Upon returning to the park, I noticed only an inch or so of water covering the path we had walked. That would soon change.

At about 10:00 p.m., the park manager showed up only suggesting that we “may want to hitch up and be prepared to leave” – a high water advisory was in effect until midnight. I figured we had plenty of time and decided to dump our sewer, not knowing where we might be in the morning. While doing so, I walked over to the river bank and noticed it was much closer.

The water was about 8′ higher than it was, and only about 5′ lower than our site. I poked my head in the trailer and told Rene, “Uhh… we might just want to leave now and beat the rush. Come check this out!”

Our pace hastened, we disconnected our power and water, and proceeded to get going. That’s when we heard the sirens, saw the fire truck and noticed emergency personnel suggesting we hurry up because, “This end of the park floods first.”

Gee, thanks for letting us know now, I thought.

A look over their shoulder showed the water about another two feet higher. Everything was fine, it was pretty exciting, but that was it. Then we couldn’t hitch up.

This is when it started to get scary. Multiple attempts to connect the trailer resulted only in a frightening clunk. Apparently I had bent something while trying to hook up in such a hurry. Fearing the damage was permanent and we would be forced to leave the trailer, Renee scrambled to determine which belongings we absolutely needed to grab and I remembered something I learned when getting SCUBA certified: Panic = Death.

Each time I jumped out to adjust the legs of the trailer up or down, there were more volunteers trying to help. One wearing a safety vest and helmet, diligently tried to calm down René. Another tried to assist me by holding our hitch plate level. Clunk. I panicked and tried to force the hook up.

That’s how I pushed the trailer legs off their blocks, causing the fifth wheel kingpin box to slam down on top of our truck bed rails. Doing my best to remain calm, it was clearly time to poop my pants. But no time for that. I wasn’t leaving without our home. The water was another foot higher. I raised the trailer, pulled out from under it and started dismantling our hitch. I think that’s when René really started freaking out.

I quickly confirmed the hitch was still functional and put it back together. One last attempt after adjusting the trailer height again – with the park manager holding the hitch, and me holding my breath – we connected, but it didn’t feel like it. I knew something was wrong. The manager insisted he heard it click, and he must have. I was clearly out of my mind and the water was another foot hgher.

Side Note: Old time RVers throughout our travels have more than once made the same comment one fireman did as we waited for our trailer’s legs to retract: “Are those things moving?” he said. The Arctic Fox may indeed have the slowest retracting legs in the RV industry. But this time it seemed to take an eternity. With water lapping at our site, we were on our way, just in time.

We joined dozens of other RVs up the hill in a church parking lot for the night, hoping the trailer wouldn’t fall off, wondering if we would be able to unhitch. As more continued to show up, one frantic woman asked if I had a fifth wheel. She said someone needed help getting their trailer out because they had no way to pull it. My heart shrank as I had to say no. Our Pullrite Superglide requires a kingpin adapter to function without damaging the hitch and/or trailer.

Walking down to survey the damage the next morning, I noticed our site had clearly been under at least a couple feet of water. All the RVs and trailers did get out, some with their sewer hoses draped over their bike racks. Others who left theirs behind. With only our end of the park truly getting flooded, we feel very fortunate to have our home with us. We moved on to a park down the road a in Bourne called Top Of The Hill RV Resort, thinking we might need to be there a while waiting for hitch parks. But upon further  investigation, the damage done was nothing a few whacks from a hammer couldn’t fix.

Epilogue: As we were leaving the morning after, I noticed a trailer tire was low. Pulling away in hopes that we would find a service station soon, we immediately pulled into a tire shop right across the road. We had not one, but two punctured tires.

I guess when it rains, it really does pour. Especially in Texas. After all the excitement, I did little math and calculated that the river was rising a foot every five minutes. That may not sound all that fast, but consider the gentle slope of the terrain and it’s easy to imagine that flood approaching like an incoming tide – we don’t need to, we were there!

Whenever I go MIA around here, it usually means I’ve been wrapped up is some major project – one that probably has something to do with three legged dogs. This time is no different.

I haven’t written since that silly Valentine’s Day post because I have been busy launching the all new and much improved Tripawds Gift Shop. This required dusting off the old right brain bits and lubricating my creative gears to come up with loads of new graphic designs for inspawrational three legged dog t-shirts, cards, stickers, mugs and other gift items.

It was fun designing all these new graphics, and it felt good doing it for something I am passionate about, without some client breathing down my neck telling me to make the text bold and red.

Oh, wait … the type on our new Tripawd Power design is bold and red! Well, not really… it’s Cooper Black actually, and more of a crimson. But there I go digressing, here’s the link if you want to talk about typefaces.

I would like to think this represents some of my best work. But that’s not saying much considering I haven’t done any real graphic design work since we sold our business nearly three years ago. But it is a nice feeling knowing that I still got it – if I ever really had it, that is. And it goes to prove that graphic design is like riding a bike, in more ways than one.

If you think you may have lost the touch, just jump back into your favorite Adobe product and start pedaling. And if your chain falls off and you just can’t get it to work right, call a professional. Anyone need a logo?

My wife told me not to get her anything for Valentine’s Day. I suppose I should be thankful for that.

“Let’s just send each other love letters,” she said. But it’s not like I can keep any secret shopping from her anyway, living 24/7 together in a 200 sq. ft. box. Nor can I get all crafty and surprise her with the type of personalized greetings I used to make with all our printers and graphic production equipment. So hear goes…

Dearest René,

I’ll keep this brief, because even the most eloquent words cannot convey the depth of my love for you. I cannot count the ways I love thee, for there are just not enough numbers. I know I don’t express it enough, but without you, I am but an insignificant spec lost, alone, in this big scary universe. You don’t just complete me. You make me all that I am.

With you by my side, I am a happy man. Your smile brightens my every day. And a night never goes by without your comfort giving me peace.

Above all, I am eternally grateful for everything you do. All that we have enjoyed, all that we have become, I owe to you.

Thank you for being mine.

xoxoxoxoxox

~ Your Sappy Valentine

PS: Remember this?

Our rig has been parked on the streets of L.A. for the last few weeks, while we catch up on the chisme with family and friends. Life here is as hectic and noisy as it gets, and every day Jim and I are reminded of why we chose to leave urban living behind.

We started 2009 with one goal; find Jerry’s Acres. Seven months into it, we did. Our Colorado retreat now sits underneath several feet of snow, waiting for our return.

With that behind us, we’re getting the other big part of our life in order, namely, making a real income again.

Our defnition of “real income” is different from most people’s. While we would love to be able to spend money on the finer things in life (like picking up a $20 bottle of wine instead of our old standard, Two Buck Chuck), we also aren’t willing to surrender our freedom in order to do so. My very short gig at Satan’s Castle was a good reminder about that.

People wonder, what do we do. How do we make any money? Well, we don’t do any one particular thing anymore. We don’t want to have one business again. And we don’t want to rely on one job to bring in money. We believe that putting all of your eggs in one basket is risky business, much moreso than varying your skills and finding multiple ways to generate income.

For us now, tiny bits of money trickle in from various web-based outlets that utilize our technical, design and writing skills. In 2010, we’ll work on building up our income revenue streams in these areas.

The money is iffy, the hours are long and uncertainty always looms over our heads, but we are much happier than we ever were in our previous lives. While we are still officially in the red and dipping into savings, I know that 2010 will be the year we are back in black, finally. It would be great if we could actually contribute to our retirement accounts once more. When that happens, I’ll know that we’ve truly been successful these last two and a half years.

On that note, I’ll say “Adios!” to 2009, and give 2010 a great big welcome. May this year bring the prosperity, joy and peace that we all need more of in our lives.

And many thanks to all of you for being a part of our world. Life would be pretty boring without you!

By the time we left our mountain home in between snowstorms, it felt like an episode of M*A*S*H with us bugging out and heading South before getting hit hard. On a side note, a weather report from Red Feather lakes last week said it was -2 degrees back home.

But we did have time to winterize the place, which based on that report, we are very glad we did.

In addition to a few minor exterior repairs, below are the steps we took to ensure our house survives the severe Colorado winter.

Steps for Winterizing Mountain Home:

• Close and/or cover all heating vents.
• Remove all food from premises.
• Clean out refrigerator.
• Remove all ice from freezer and shut off water supply to ice maker.
• Turn heater thermostat off.
• Turn off fuel supply and/or electricity to furnace.
• Turn off fuel supply and/or electricity to water heater.
• Turn off well pump.
• Drain well water pressure tank.
• Drain hot water heater.
• Drain water from and insulate any outdoor hose bibs.
• Drain water from all interior faucets.
• Flush toilets to drain tanks and remove excess water in bowls.
• Plunge out excess water from all waste water traps.
• Plug dry toilet bowls with rags.
• Plug all sink and tub drains.
• Expel water from lines using air pressure, if equipped.
• Lock all windows and close blinds/curtains.
• Deploy preferred rodent deterrence.
• Plug any exterior holes with steel wool to prevent rodent entrance.
• Set nail mats in front of all windows and doors to deter bears.
• Unplug any phantom load items, TVs, stereos etc.
• Provide contact information to neighbors.
• Pray that all is well when you return.

What is a nail mat you ask? We wondered the same thing when we discovered the picket fence looking things with nails sticking out of them in the garage when we bought the place. (See photo above.) Turns out the previous owner made these bear unwelcome mats to place in front of all the windows and doors, with the screws pointing up. Let’s hope they work!

The previous owner also told us he never winterized the place, but he was often up there on winter weekends. We told this to a couple neighbors, and they both said, “He was lucky!” We’ll be gone a few months. And considering this was the first time we ever had to do anything like this, we’ll see if these steps did the trick. Talk to us next Spring.

I’m proud of my little warehouse worker. Just yesterday she vowed not to let it get to her, that she would just do her job the best she could and punch her clock like a good worker bee would.

This morning she apparently stood her ground and told them something completely different, and was then sent home early yet again. We got to walk Wyatt together, and now she’s taking a much deserved nap. It’s good to have Margie home again, but I’ll let her tell the rest of the story.

It sure would be nice to know what happened to all those lucrative overtime hours we heard about though. But then again, I also heard that consumer sales for this Black Friday weekend were up a whopping 0.5% from last year too.