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| -rw-r--r-- | 2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt | 35 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | bus-amulet.txt | 17 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | camera.txt | 25 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | essays/everywhere-piece.txt | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | fict-book.txt | 8 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt | 131 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | travel-cheaper.txt | 6 |
7 files changed, 219 insertions, 5 deletions
diff --git a/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt b/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt index b27fd22..2303c50 100644 --- a/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt +++ b/2019-04-22_semama-santa.txt @@ -1 +1,34 @@ -Semana Santa +Semana Santa, holy week, is the roughly two week period leading up to and just after Easter. If you want to pin it down more than that you're not Mexican. There is no pinning down time here. That's one of the things you should leave at home if you ever come. Here time is vast and endless you must make yourself at home in it. + +The first of the public event was around Palm Sunday, which the locals celebrate with plenty of decorations and paletas, which get handed out to just about anyone who will take one. The paletas, melting in a increasingly intense dray season sun, represent the tears of Mary mixed with, um, fruit. The kids loved it anyway. + +<div class="cluster"> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-14_105833_palm-sunday.jpg" id="image-1995" class="cluster picwide" /> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-12_173655_palm-sunday.jpg" id="image-1993" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-12_172409_palm-sunday.jpg" id="image-1992" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-14_102409_palm-sunday.jpg" id="image-1994" class="cluster picwide" /> +</div> + +San Miguel has its own little special little tradition on Good Friday, which involves papier mâché figures called Judases. They are not, however, limited to figures of Judas. Everything is Mexico is layered and goes far below what things appear to be, so I won't pretend to know who the figures represented, but local political figures and other controversial people are common targets. + +The puppets get wrapped in firecrackers with one big on inside. They're strung up on a horizontal line and lit up. The fireworks cause the figures to spin for a bit and bam, the big one blows them apart. And it really blows them apart. Even for here this was a substantial blast that hurt your ears if you were at all close. + +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-12_165333_palm-sunday_Lyc7JeS.jpg" id="image-1990" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-12_171506_palm-sunday.jpg" id="image-1991" class="cluster pic66" /> +</span> +</div> + +Domingo de Pascua as Easter Sunday is known around here, doesn't have any of the non-religious associations it does in the states. I didn't see any Easter Bunny or chocolate eggs. It's a day people go to Mass and celebrate with their families. We dyed some eggs anyway. + +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-19_122742_easter.jpg" id="image-1982" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-21_085657-1_easter.jpg" id="image-1985" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-21_085208_easter.jpg" id="image-1983" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-21_085429_easter.jpg" id="image-1984" class="picwide" /> + +We also found some good pork belly tacos for lunch. I've never understood it, but something about travel causes you to find more and more things you like the closer and closer you get to leaving a place. + +<img src="images/2019/2019-04-21_125058_easter.jpg" id="image-1988" class="picwide" /> diff --git a/bus-amulet.txt b/bus-amulet.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0845239 --- /dev/null +++ b/bus-amulet.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +Is there any magic that's particularly helpful for a car? We're trying to keep a beloved classic car going (the Reliant Robin is the best car ever made and I'll fight anyone who says different). :) I've sprayed the outside and inside with hoodoo bath mix, and cleaned out the inside and given it a good vacuum. I think it appreciated it and is running nicely at the moment, but is there anything more that can be done? This type of car has been like our family emblem since the early 90s. + +ecosophia: JMG in lecture mode (Default) +From: [personal profile] ecosophia +I had to look up online to find out what a Reliant Robin is. What a charming little car! I'd encourage you to consider a talisman of Mercury, the planet that rules all vehicles; you can select herbs of Merrcury from any book on natural magic (including mine), get a small bag of orange cloth, assemble the amulet on a Wednesday during the hour of Mercury, say a prayer asking the energies of the planet to bless and protect the car, and then put the amulet in some out-of-the-way place inside the car where it can radiate its energies undisturbed. + +From: (Anonymous) +Thanks, I'll start gathering the materials. Looking at the list of herbs, I've already got two - lavender and linden - for the sleep amulets I've been making. :) + +Which moon phase will be the best to use? + +ecosophia: JMG in lecture mode (Default) +From: [personal profile] ecosophia +Lunar phase doesn't have much relevance to planetary amulets; don't worry about it. If you can, though, see if you can make it while Mercury is in Virgo, which he'll be in from the 30th of this month to the 14th of next month; Mercury both ruled and is exalted in Virgo, so any Mercury working done at that time will be unusually effective. + +From: (Anonymous) +That should be good. Would it be appropriate to burn an orange candle for eight minutes during the prayer? diff --git a/camera.txt b/camera.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5de1378 --- /dev/null +++ b/camera.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +I was recently testing the Hasselblad X1D. I only had the camera for a few days and I was sick for the first three of them. I lay in bed and played with it a little, but I ended up with only two days to photograph with it. Wanting to try it in a variety of situations I headed out just before sunset one night, hoping to do some sunset shots and then some twilight images. + +We've been in this area now for over two months. I had noticed quiet a few images that I knew I wanted to make at some point and having 50-megapixels at my disposal seemed like a good excuse to get out and shoot them. I read the kids a few stories out of the Norse Myths book they're currently enthralled by, tucked them in and then grabbed the camera and dashed out the door to catch the fading light. + +I realized before I'd gone far that I was too late for a few images, the sun was already behind the trees and would near the horizen by the time I made it to the lake. So I abandoned the lake idea and pulled over at the first decent looking field I saw. I got out spent a few seconds taking in the scene and then... pointed the camera and pressed the shutter. Well, that was boring. + +For nearly three years now I have been shooting everything with manual focus lenses and fully manual exposure. Everything. Landscapes, street scenes walking the cities, kids playing, running jumping swimming. I compose, I focus, I meter, I shoot, I adjust, I refocus I reshoot. It's a process, one that's become part of me at this point, which is something I never realized until I pressed the shutter on the Hasselblad and realized, oh, right, that's all there is to it. + +I felt less a part of the process, less invested in the result. + +I felt let down. Being out and doing nothing but shooting made me want to shoot more, that part was good, but it made me want my lenses, the feel of metal turning. Hard stops when I reached infinite, satisfying clicks when you turn the aperture ring, which of course doesn't exist at all on most lenses of the last twenty years. + +I worry this sounds fey and lame. Like some hipster lamenting the bygone era of records or lumberjack shirts. But then, I'm not really sure I care if that's how it sounds because that's not what I mean. I don't want some previous time to come back, I just think the technology of that time was much better than we might think. + +But then I have an attachment to the tactile parts of the process of making a photo. Possibly others do not. I enjoy the process of turning the focus ring and snapping through apertures. Sometimes I count them. That way I can focus on the scene and know what my depth of field is without having to look at the info on screen. + +and am glad that I have found a way to have the best of both worlds, analog process, digital and analog results. + +I don't really miss film the way some do, a little maybe, again the tactile part of standing in the dark, feeding and winding the film into the metal wheels, hoping it wasn't touching as you spiraled it on, but I certainly don't miss paying for film. And I'm far better at developing in darktable than I ever was at working with prints in the darkroom. + +Sometimes technology moves so fast and pulls us with it so fast we don't get a chance to process what we're giving up. I didn't start out with manual focus lenses because I was nostalgic or missing focusing and metering. I started out with them because I was frugal and they're cheap. My favorite lense, a Minolta 50.. f/2, which I suspect is no one else's favorite lens, cost me $20. My most expensive lens, which is a 100-300 zoom, which I pair with a 2X teleconverter, was a whooping $200. + +I got in because I was trying to get some good glass without spending a fortune. What I didn't realize was happening was that photography was again becoming a process in which I was a key participant. At first I missed shots all the time. I still miss shots, but far fewer. My focusing skills have become much better and I can meter a scene in my head within a stop or two without consciously thinking about it any more. I see the kids playing, backlit by the morning sun coming through the trees and I just sort of know that I'm going to want about f5.6 to hold them in focus but let the trees and light blur, and in this light, shooting at 100 ISO I should set the exposure around 1/80, maybe faster or slower depending on how much light is getting in the trees, but I know my starting point before I ever raise the camera to my eye. + +That sounds pretentious again perhaps, woohee, look at how skilled I am. But it's not skill, it's repetition. Do anything for a while and it becomes *second nature*. diff --git a/essays/everywhere-piece.txt b/essays/everywhere-piece.txt index b0b845c..6d2c078 100644 --- a/essays/everywhere-piece.txt +++ b/essays/everywhere-piece.txt @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ Stepping outside the traditional structures of modern life means re-evaluating t There are some things that make life easier, on the road and otherwise, but more things do not make life more easy. Quite the opposite I'd argue -- more things mean more things that can break down and more time spent fixing or replacing them. The simpler you keep things the less there is to worry about. -Which doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about. Like anyone with solar panels, we worry about hail. We get skittish around storms, but often that works out in our favor. One afternoon we were headed out of Colorado, bound for Canyonlands. To the south we watched as some gentle tufts of cumulus cloud built into something ominously dark, turning day to night. The distant mountains we were hoping to make camp in were swallowed into the darkness and we watched as lightning snapped out in front of the storm. +Which doesn't mean there's nothing to worry about. Like anyone with solar panels, we worry about hail. We get skittish around storms, but often that works out in our favor. One afternoon we were headed out of Colorado, bound for Canyonlands. We watched as some gentle tufts of cumulus cloud to the south built into something ominously dark, turning day to night. The distant mountains we were hoping to make camp in were swallowed into the darkness and we watched as lightning snapped out in front of the storm. We stopped and consulted the map. To the northeast there was a small bit of state land which was labeled with a campground icon, but there was no further information and our map is ten years old. We decided to give it shot though, it beats driving through a big storm. We cut off the highway and followed an increasingly narrow dirt road -- always a good sign if you're looking for secluded spots -- and ended up with a campsite all to ourselves, a canyon wall to one side and a bubbling river on the other. diff --git a/fict-book.txt b/fict-book.txt index c61c05c..50df2e1 100644 --- a/fict-book.txt +++ b/fict-book.txt @@ -1,6 +1,8 @@ -Her breath was a thin wisp leaking out her nostils, she slowed it even more, listening to her heart beat one two three four and then she slowly inhale and held it one two three she came around the tree saw the flicker in the corner of her field of vision, pivoted toward it and fired. - -The biggest one fell, the other two leaped forward as she half turned and fired again. The smallest hit her square in the chest, but was dead before they hit the ground together. The last wengon stood staring, sniffing, trying to decide. It walked closer, standing nearly over her hand, sandwiched between snow and fur, still curled around the handle of the pistol. It leaned forward and bit into the wengon lying on top of her. She twisted her hand to the side and fired straight up through it's belly. It recoiled and turned to run, but she was up and final shot, brought it down. +After Oil 5: Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology, and stories should be submitted by January 1, 2020 A family father who restores a wrecked boat on the shores of Lake Michigan in order to build a future for his family that will help them rise above their current station in the de-industrial world to lead lives of adventure and daring. he fixes up the boat he found, he makes sails of the skins of dogs, the largest easy to kill animal left in the area. He then takes the extra furs to a town at the mouth of the lock and attempts to sell them and gets laughed off the docks as backward, a yoken with skins in a world that doesn't yet need skins. He manages to get passage through the locks anyway somehow and navigates down the st. larwence river and out to sea. + +A young girl, patterned after the hummingbird's daughter and omakayas Mexus people, the ojibwe, the remnants of christianity clinging to power in the city. The high and lowland peoples. + +ON THE COOL OCTOBER MORNING when Cayetana Chávez brought her baby to light, it was the start of that season in Sinaloa when the humid torments of summer finally gave way to breezes and falling leaves, and small red birds skittered through the corrals, and the dogs grew new coats. diff --git a/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt b/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..97e5776 --- /dev/null +++ b/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt @@ -0,0 +1,131 @@ +We found this 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome on Craigslist in June of 2015. We drove up to Asheville North Carolina, gave it a quick, in hindsight rather ignorant, once over, handed the owner some money, and promptly [drove it](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2015/06/big-blue-bus) 200 miles back to our then home in Athens GA. Two years later we hit the road and never looked back. + +<img src="images/2019/2017-06-16_094935_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-1840" class="picwide" /> + +### What's it like to live in a 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome? + +Lots of people ask some variation of this question -- they want to know what it's like for two adults and three kids to squeeze into 90 square feet for years on end. Some people seem predisposed to think it's all great with endless epic adventures. Other people clearly have images of us living in the proverbial van down by the river. + +Neither of those are entirely accurate. If you really want to know what our life is like, [read the site](/jrnl/). Sign up for [the email list](/newsletter/) or [subscribe to the RSS feed](/jrnl/feed.xml) to get notified when I post something. What I try to record here is what our life is like. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-11_171018_garden-gods.jpg" id="image-1433" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-06-03_153115_trail-of-tears-sp.jpg" id="image-1402" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-08-01_152017_canyon-of-the-ancients.jpg" id="image-718" class="picwide" /> + +We love the way we live and wouldn't want to live any other way. But we're not you and this isn't for everyone. It just works for us. + +To answer a few random questions that pop up regularly in conversations curious people: Yes it's crowded. No we don't mind that. Yes we are close. No, our kids aren't perfect. Yes, there are days when I wish I lived some other way. Being sick in the bus is awful. + +Most of the time though, we're not in the bus. + +When you live in a small space you invert your spacial relationship with the world. You spend your time outside rather than in, and that was one of the main reasons we did this, to be outside more. To be part of the larger world. I wrote about this at some length for a travel magazine, in piece about [why we live in a vintage RV](/essays/why-a-vintage-rv). + +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-25_181026_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1668" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_190827_trinity-alps.jpg" id="image-933" class="picwide" /> + +The best part of the way we live is waking up in the morning and stepping outside. I'm outside from the minute I wake up until I go to bed. We cook outside, we work outside, we eat outside, we learn outside, we play outside. Only the weather drives us inside. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-08_065835_snake-river-rec.jpg" id="image-1623" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-18_173401_badlands.jpg" id="image-1653" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-08-26_190122_pawnee-grassland.jpg" id="image-1673" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-05-12_200059_new-orleans.jpg" id="image-454" class="picwide caption" /> + +I think it's worth pointing out that everything is not always sunsets and adventures. We struggle the same as anyone living in a house. Our challenges and struggles are just different. For example, when we owned a house I had to mow the lawn and clean the gutters. Now I have to change the oil and maintain an engine instead. In the end, it's probably about the same amount of work in either case. + +For me though, maintaining the Travco is more challenging, and therefore more fun. I'm still not an engine expert. I can't listen to a knock or ping and figure out what's going on right away. I have to spend more time thinking it through, asking people more knowledgable than me. And I end up turning to mechanics more than I'd like. But I'm learning, and that's what I enjoy in life, being challenged, solving problems, getting outside my comfort zone so I can expand it. + +Still, the bus is our home and when it breaks down, well, sometimes we camp on a mechanic's driveway. + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-21_062821-1_new-orleans.jpg" id="image-1192" class="picwide" /> + +Or I spend hours at the side of the road listening to the radiator boil over or getting covered in power steering fluid, transmission fluid, brake fluid. To live this way you have to be able to let go of the idea that there is anywhere else you need to be, anywhere else you *can* be. More than anything else, a vintage vehicle will teach you patience. Or you will lose your mind and sell it. + +<img src="images/2017/2002-12-08_120000-4__.jpg" id="image-1018" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/20170928_121417.jpg" id="image-894" class="picwide caption" /> +<img src="images/2018/2018-05-29_113845_mousetail-landing.jpg" id="image-1381" class="picwide caption" /> + +### You don't have to be rich. + +The other question everyone asks is *how can you travel all the time*? What am I some kind of rich asshole? Trust fund kid? Thankfully I'm neither. Most of the trust fund kids I've known have been pretty screwed up people. We're not rich, we're comfortably lower middle class. But as noted rock climber Eric Beck once quipped, "there's a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum." + +Which is to say that if you discard the value system of upper middle class America, you can find an amazing amount of time and money that you can use to do more interesting things than buying stuff. Yes, you need some money to live the way we do, but not much really. We live on about $40k a year. That's not much within the spectrum of US earning possibilities. + +I do recognize that the ability to make that kind of money while traveling is not available to everyone. There are more opportunities to do it today than at any point in human history, but that doesn't mean it's possible for everyone. I happen to be a writer and computer programmer, both which can be done from just about anywhere, so that's how I do it. And no, we don't have much in the way of insurance, we have some money set aside to cover the basics, but if something catastrophic happened, we, like many of you I'm sure, would be in trouble. These days I'm not sure that would be any different even if I had an office job, but either way, like I said earlier, living this way is not for everyone. + +For most people the difficult part of living this way is letting go of that value system that says you need to own a house, have amazing health insurance, a nice car, a bunch of stuff, and a huge savings for some perfect future when you can stop working. For me that ideology just never took hold for whatever reason, so I never had to escape it, but I watched others escape it and it did not look easy or fun. + +I've spent a good bit of time trying to figure out why I never cared about that stuff. Maybe I read Thoreau too young. Maybe I listed to too much punk rock. Maybe it was that I took those people at their word, that I accepted their values at face value: that complaining does no good, you do what you need to do and you do it yourself. You do it yourself so you can do it exactly the way you want, the way that works best for you, not the way someone else thinks you should do it and in the end it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks so long as you're able to look yourself in the eye at three AM and know that all is well. + +It's hard to write about these things without coming off like a jerk to some people, but I suppose that's okay. You can't please everyone. I'll assume since you've made it this far that you're good with it. + +The problem is a lot of people see my values as a comment on their own. Like I am somehow sneering down at people from the top of the #vanlife heights. Again maybe this doesn't come off right, but really, I don't care how you live. If you love living in a house, that's awesome. I am glad you have found what makes you happy. If you hate living in a house and want to escape it, well, I guess to some extent I'm here to say it can be done. Maybe. + +### Why live this way? Because the worst part is going home. + +The why part two: I wanted to give my kids something close to the childhood I wish I'd had. + +Which is not to imply I didn't have a good childhood. I've had an incredible life. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure this isn't a dream (which now maybe you're thinking oh god, what as asshole, and I know, I know, but really I have nothing to complain about, my life has been grand. If I die tomorrow, I would miss my family, but I would at least feel like I had lived deliciously well). + +I grew up traveling a lot, something I'm very grateful to have experienced because those were always my favorite moments. Mostly I remember camping and hiking. The mountains, the beaches, the deserts. I remember being outside, the smell of pine needles, the dust in your nose as you step out of the tent to see what was for breakfast. I remember living outside for a week, sometimes two, and then going home. It was always such a drag to go home. + +I wanted my own kids to have that life. I wanted them to live outside, but I didn't want them to have to go home. I wanted to spare them the pain of watching the real world fade in the rear windows as they headed back to suburbia. I wanted to go out into the wilds and never come home. I wanted that to *be* home. + +The Travco was a way to give my kids that. + +### The 1969 Dodge Travco Motorhome + +Really, do you care that much about me? Probably not. + +Let's talk about the bus. It's way cooler than I am. Let's face it, we live this way because of the bus. + +<img src="images/2017/2017-09-22_082038_valley-of-fire.jpg" id="image-839" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-06-27_140005_chaco-canyon.jpg" id="image-648" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-06-17_122600_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-592" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-05-23_125431-1_buscher-state-park.jpg" id="image-530" class="picwide" /> + +They do not make vehicles like this anymore. I never even liked motorhomes until I saw a Dodge Travco. The sweeping curves, the 1960s electric blue, no other vehicle ever made was quite like this. Even the Travco is really only the Travco from 1966 to 1970. I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow this thing got made and a few survived. + +I spend just about two years gutting and refinishing ours. You can can checkout an older post on [how it looked when we got it](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2016/12/1969-dodge-travco) (complete with Velvet Elvis). In the end we had something vintage on the outside and livable on the inside. All the wood paneling inside and vinyl seats coverings are new, but the layout, shape, design and cabinets are original. + +<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_165008_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-931" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_122148-1_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-920" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-01_163448_raysville.jpg" id="image-2032" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-01_163510_raysville.jpg" id="image-2033" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-23_071030_st-george-island.jpg" id="image-2034" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2019/2017-04-23_071407_st-george-island.jpg" id="image-2035" class="picwide" /> + +To say the Big Blue Bus, as our children named it, stands out is an understatement. There is nothing else on the road that even remotely compares. + +Ours is not pristine. I hit a tree stump in northern California and did some damage to the fiberglass on one side. Fortunately it's low enough that you don't notice it unless you're really looking. The paint is faded in places, but it has that nice, vintage patina that things get after 50 years in the sun. We've talked about repainting it, but so far that's not made it to the top of our list. + +As cool as the outside is, the inside is my favorite part. The way the sunlight streams in the windows in the mornings, there's a warmth to the wood and the curve of the window and the pine trees on the other side of the window, it gives you a kind of joy I've never had from any other home I've lived in. We live in a magical blue and white tube basically. I mean, who doesn't want that? + +#### The 318 LA Engine + +I would call the Chrysler 318 the best engine ever made. But then, I'm biased. Still, almost every person who asks, the conversation goes like this: + +*What's that got in it? 440?* + +*Nope, 318.* + +*318?! Damn. That's a great engine. Bet it's slow up hills though...* + +*It is.* + +And it is, but it's a nearly bullet proof engine. I've dragged its 50-year-old self over 16,000 miles across the United States and all the way to 10,000 feet. We did blow a head gasket once, which destroyed a cylinder and required quite a bit of work. Otherwise though we've replaced the things you'd expect to replace driving an older engine around for years. + +One of my favorite parts about the 318 is that you can walk into just about any auto parts shop in the western hemisphere and find nearly every part you're going to need. The only thing I've ever had the hunt down in a wrecking yard was an exhaust manifold. + +### Conclusion + +I'd be lying if I said I loved every day in the bus. I love almost every day though, and as long as the view from the front door looks like this: + +<img src="images/2018/2018-02-03_111150_rutherford-beach.jpg" id="image-1120" class="picwide" /> + +Or this: + +<img src="images/2017/2017-06-27_140005_chaco-canyon.jpg" id="image-648" class="picwide" /> + +And as long as my kids continue to love calling it home, home it will be. + +[^1]: For the record, [this](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uZPXfg8VAxM/TgVMHIlVNKI/AAAAAAAAAok/rvpcY_OCqzA/s1600/caravan%2Bside%2Bdoors.jpg) is the first image I ever saw of Travco. Yes, I remember it. diff --git a/travel-cheaper.txt b/travel-cheaper.txt index fe6231b..f1dbcfb 100644 --- a/travel-cheaper.txt +++ b/travel-cheaper.txt @@ -1,3 +1,9 @@ +The consumer education system has conditioned you to think in terms of products, you need to step back in ask bigger questions to find more interesting and sustainable answers. For example, the question, *should I buy this camera?* has no good answer without first asking *how to I create photos that make me happy?* It may be that some particular camera really does help in that quest, but more likely, it doesn't. More likely what you need to learn is technique and acquire skills like composition and reading light. + +These too are things that can be commodified, write a tutorial, wrap it in advertisements. Write a tutorial, mention gear, link to it with affiliate links. The latter of these is too me, the least offensive provided it is done well and honestly, e.g. not linking to the Lieca Q2 only because it's super expensive and earns you a bunch of money if anyone buys it. It's also not well known, but Ebay has an affiliate program as well, which means you can link to earn money off of second hand purchases, which I think it wonderful. Most of the affiliate links on this site go to Ebay searches for whatever the item may be. There are very few things I suggest buying brand new, though ironically in the context of this article, digital cameras are one of them. + + + Takeaways to reduce travel spending: * better planning means more boondocking and less money on camping * change of diet from mexico means less on food |