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diff --git a/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt b/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4ebae98..0000000 --- a/pages/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,130 +0,0 @@ -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 an endless epic adventure. 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](/essay/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 <span class="strike">probably about the same amount of work in either case</span>. Just kidding, it's way more work to maintain a house. I had forgotten. So yeah, we have challenges, but not nearly as much maintenance as a house. - -Besides, for me, maintaining the Travco is more challenging, and therefore more fun and rewarding than mowing the lawn. Again. 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 knowledgeable 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/2017/20170928_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 I guess. 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 $36k 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. 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 never really 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 other values as a comment on their own. Like I am somehow sneering down at people from the top of the #vanlife heights here. 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 an asshole. And I know, I know it sounds cliche, but really I have nothing to complain about. My life has been grand. If I die tomorrow, I will 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/pages/about.txt b/pages/about.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 91265cd..0000000 --- a/pages/about.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,85 +0,0 @@ -<img src="/media/img/bio.jpg" alt="Scott Gilbertson" class="circle-pic" /> - -Luxagraf is [written and published](/technology) by Scott Nathan Gilbertson. - -I am a <a href="/jrnl/" title="the travel jrnl">writer</a>, <a href="/jrnl/" title="the travel jrnl">photographer</a>, <a href="dialogues/">birder</a>, and would-be mechanic. <br /> - -For the past five years my wife, our 3 children, and I -have lived mostly outdoors, in a 26-ft long [1969 Dodge Travco motorhome](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome). We call it <em>the big blue bus</em>, or home, for short.<br /> - -<hr /> - -<img src="images/2019/2017-06-16_094935_trinidad-and-around.jpg" id="image-1840" class="picfull" /> -If you'd like to follow along, sign up for the newsletter [*Friends of a Long Year*](https://luxagraf.net/friends/) (explained [here](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2020/11/invitation)). There's also an [RSS feed](https://luxagraf.net/feed.xml) if you prefer. - -<hr /> - -### Particulars - -#### About The Big Blue Bus - -The big blue bus gets its [own about page](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome), but what a lot of people want to know is, what engine does it have? So I'll save you a click: it's a Chrysler 318 LA. Yes, it's a little slow on hills. - -#### About me. - -I'm a freelance writer. I like writing about life on the road, engines, cooking, birds, and my personal, somewhat eccentric, ideas about life and how to live it. Unfortunately I have thus far not figured out how to pay the bills writing about just those topics. - -To pay the bills I mostly end up writing about technology. Over the years I've written extensively for *Wired* (where I've even been on staff for some years), *Budget Travel*, *Consumer Digest*, *Ars Technica*, *GQ*, *Epicurious*, *Longshot Magazine*, and other magazines, newspapers, and websites. - -I used to have a section in here about editors because I would not be nearly as good a writer if it weren't for the editors I've worked with. To keep things shorter, I'm reducing it to just say thanks to my wife Corrinne, who gets first pass at everything I do (whether she wants it or not), William Brandon, Laura Solomon, Michael Calore, Jeffery Van Camp, Nathan Mattisse, Leander Kahney, Alexis Madrigal, Evan Hansen, Gavin Clarke, Ashley Vance, and Paul Kunert. - -And extra special thanks to Maria Streshinsky, Executive Editor at Wired Magazine, and Adam Davies, my one and only formal writing teacher. - -If you're thinking there's no way freelance writing pays the bills, you're right. My wife also works. She's a reading specialist, teaching structured word inquiry to children age 6-15. You can visit her website, [Cumulus Learning]() for more details. - -#### About Stuff - -I get emails about stuff. What _____ do you use to ______. A lot of this is my fault, I have written a lot of product reviews for *Wired*. People believe I am a stuff expert. Here's a secret about product reviewers: we hate stuff. Stuff gets in our way and there's nothing we love more than we get to send the stuff back to the people who made it. And thankfully everything I've ever tested went either to back to the company that made it or to Wired's end of the year charity auction. Still, because people email me about what stuff I actually buy, I wrote a [whole page about the stuff I use](/technology). The essential stuff I use every day is: - -##### Photography -* **[Sony A7RII](https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/interchangeable-lens-cameras/full-frame/p/ilce7rm2-b)** - It takes pictures. -* **[Minolta 50mm f/2](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=minolta+50+2+md+-1.2+-mc+-1.7+-58mm&_sacat=0)** - A 40-year-old lens you can buy for $25. Over half of the photos on this site were taken with this lens. For $25, and another $20 for an adapter to fit the Sony, you have a spectacular setup. No autofocus, but you don't need autofocus. -* **[Darktable](http://www.darktable.org/)** - My favorite app for developing digital images. The initial learning curve is steep, but hang in there it's worth it. It's so much more powerful than Adobe Lightroom. - -##### Writing -* **Pen and paper** - The nice thing about writing is it requires almost no gear, all you need is a pen and paper. I go for ball point pens because they're waterproof (relatively), usually a cheapo Bic of the sort you find for free in hotel rooms. I write in notebooks of all shapes and sizes and have no real preference. Except no spirals. I hate spiral binding. -* **[Vim](http://www.vim.org/)** - This is the text editor I used to type things up, including these words right now. It's very powerful, but it does take some practice before that power becomes apparent. - -##### Publishing -Luxagraf is created by hand, with a lot of tools loosely joined. Most of these tools are free software that you too can use and modify as you see fit. Without these amazing tools I wouldn't be able to do this -- many thanks to the people who created and maintain them. - -* [GeoDjango framework](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/gis/) -- Behind the scenes this handles a few things, like geographic queries and putting everything on a map. If you have any interest in working with geographic data, this is by far the best tool I've used. -* [Python](https://www.python.org/) -- GeoDjango is written in Python (a full list of modules used is the [README](/readme), which I in turn run on a [Linux server](http://www.debian.org/). [Nginx](http://nginx.org/) serves the HTML files you're looking at here. -* [OpenStreetMap]( http://www.openstreetmap.org/) -- I use OpenStreetMap data for all the maps on this site. OpenStreetMap is like the Wikipedia of maps, except that it isn't wrong half the time. Whenever I feel skeptical about the so-called collective power of people on the internet, I remember OpenStreetMap and feel a little better. - -### Extended about (updated 2022) - -Lordy, you're still here? Okay, well, then you're either past the whole *why should I care who the fuck you are* thing or you're frothing at the mouth with hatred, but for some reason loving that hatred, which is odd. If that's you, here's a simple solution: [stop visiting](/dear-internet-commenter). You’ll feel better, and I won’t miss you because I never knew you existed. Good? Good. Let's get to the interesting things. Why write all this? I dunno, I guess it's the kind of stuff I enjoy reading about other people. I thought I'd return the favor for someone else. - -#### Purpose - -Why make this site? Why write things down at all? I think about this all the time and honestly, I'm not sure. It takes a tremendous amount of time to write, edit photos and think about what we've experienced and then put it up here -- I must get something out of it, I'm just not sure what. I think maybe I do it to find out what I think about things. I rarely know what I'm going to say about anything until I start look at photos and thinking about experiences, organizing them in my head into stories. I could do all that without posting it here I guess though, so I'm back at I don't know... the people I get to interact with? - -Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the web as we know it, once said, "for me the fundamental Web is the Web of people. It’s not the Web of machines talking to each other... [the] machines are talking on behalf of two people." - -Unless you're reading this from the same town I wrote it in, for most of history, up until the mid 20th century, it would have been impossible for you and I to connect in any way. Until the 21st century the best I could have hoped for was to reach you via a magazine, newspaper, etc, or you to reach me the same way, but there would be no way for us to reach each other in return (maybe via a letter to editor?). I suspect in the future this will be true again. But right now we have this moment, with these tools we can reach each other and I think that's pretty wonderful. How could you not want to participate in that? So I do. - -#### What to Write - -For the most part I write about what interests me, but I've noticed over the years that I am drawn to the people I meet, and the parts of a place that don't make sense at first or even repeated glances. The details that feel out of place are usually the interesting things. Why does this bird only come to *this* place? Why are there petroglyphs in this canyon and not this one? Why does this trail cross this ridge? What are those boulders doing up there? Why are there paintings of bunnies in a museum? Why does Wall Drug have 5 cent coffee? What is this island of rock and tree doing in a sea corn? - -Those are the more creative posts, but I aim for at least one post a week so sometimes I just write about whatever we've been doing. I think of those posts as posts for the grandparents and friends, but everyone gets to read them. - -#### How We Explore - -The word *travel* has a lot of baggage, I avoid it. I think of what we do as more like itinerant living. I suppose you could call it nomadic living, but nomadic people typically live within a fixed area and move around in it seasonally. We don't say in a fixed area. We do move seasonally though. - -Because so much of our lives are spent outdoors, we necessarily follow the seasons. To some degree anyway. As I write this we're sitting out an ice storm in South Carolina so it's not like we avoid winter, but at the same time we head of the UP in summer, not winter, and we're looking at the coast of Mexico for the winter, not the summer. When you spend as much time off-grid as we do you have no climate control. That means you sweat (and shiver), but it also means you pay attention to the weather and try to find places where the weather suits your clothes. - -#### Home, Everywhere - -We've travels several different ways and eventually settle on what I call the turtle method of travel: slow, and carrying our home with us. This way of living allows us to avoid hotels, AirBnBs, restaurants and other places that exist primarily to extract money from tourists. Not that there's anything wrong with tourists. We're tourists too. I try not to turn up my nose at tourists, but I don't want to spend all my time with fellow tourists and I don't want to participate in the tourist industry when there's real people out there I could be paying instead. - -Having your house parked nearby allows us to spend more time in places we wouldn't otherwise get to see, and in some cases to get closer to the local people. Not only does it keep you out of the tourist traps like hotels, it gives you a place to invite people into. You aren't just invading people's place in the world, you have a way to let them invade yours. It's been my experience that this creates an entirely different dynamic and relationship (not universally for the better, but often enough). - -Having your home with you gives other people a reason to approach you, especially if your home happens to be, say, a [bright blue 1969 Dodge Travco](/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome), which it seems to afford a certain amount of unearned goodwill no matter where we park it. So there's that too. diff --git a/pages/blogroll.txt b/pages/blogroll.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6ac5f2e..0000000 --- a/pages/blogroll.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,30 +0,0 @@ -Remember when everyone had a 'blogroll' and that was how your discovered other cool sites? It's a shame that got lost somewhere along the way. I think it's still an awesome way to discover cool sites and meet new people. Here are some of the people that enrich my world. - -### Travel Writing - -I don't follow many travel blogs. Time was people wrote about how they looked at life. I liked that time. Now it's all about how your life looks, and I'll be honest, I don't give a shit what your life looks like. Luckily there are still some wonderful travel websites that don't suck. Here's my reading list: - -* [Notes From the Road](http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/) -- If you only click one link in this list, make it this one. - -* [Beau Miles](https://beaumiles.com) -- Beau Miles makes these gorgeous films about his adventures in [getting to work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysgH_rkfGSE), [sleeping in trees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysgH_rkfGSE), and [eating beans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYsTlfhDSDY). I know that *sounds* boring, but that's only because you haven't seen them. Check out his [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm325cMiw9B15xl22_gr6Dw) for more. - -* [Sailorama](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCirYAT7CafNatSyJH3-O4pQ) -- okay this one is videos, not text, which means I only "read" it when we have access to reasonable bandwidth, but it's always entertaining. I've also learned a lot about video storytelling from the <strike>Maiweh</strike> <strike>Rosa</strike> Inesperado crew. If you only click two links in the this list, make this the second. - -* [Bumfuzzle](http://www.bumfuzzle.com/) -- Discovered this by chance when researching Travcos and it's become my favorite travel blog -- sailing, racing, driving, you name it, they've done it. - -* [Vagabond Journey](http://www.vagabondjourney.com/) -- I first started [following Wade Shepard's site](http://www.vagablogging.net/the-future-of-vagabonding-and-long-term-travel.html) back when I was [editing Rolf Potts' Vagablogging.net](http://www.vagablogging.net/vagablogging-alumni.html). If my math is right, Wade has been traveling continuously for over 15 years now. There is not much about travel that he has not figured out. - -* [Dinghy Dreams](http://dinghydreams.com) -- Another sailor. I follow a lot of sailors/boats. Love the writing on this site. - -* [Inhab.it](http://inhab.it/) -- I can't remember how I found inhab.it (I think we have a mutual friend maybe?) but I'm glad I did. Click this one too. - - -* [PMags](https://pmags.com) -- I believe Paul Magnanti is a kind of thru-hiking folk hero, but I just like hearing about his weekend trips around the southwest. - -* [Early Retirement Extreme](http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) -- Jacob Fisker stopped blogging a while ago, but everything he wrote remains good advice for anyone looking to extract themselves from the consumer mindset. - -* [Charlene Winfred](http://charlenewinfred.com/) -- I found Charlene Winfred's blog while researching the Fuji X Pro 2 for a Wired review and was blown away by the amazing mix of beautiful landscapes and street images, a combo that you don't find much. Turns out she's a nomad too. - -* [Expeditionary Art](http://expeditionaryart.com/) -- I love this site and am wildly jealous of the amazing artistic talent on display here. - -* [Shifter, Dan Milner](http://shifter.media) -- I discovered Dan Milner from Charlene Winfred's site. There's a lot here to love, even if you aren't a photographer. diff --git a/pages/castagraf.txt b/pages/castagraf.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 770a0ae..0000000 --- a/pages/castagraf.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9 +0,0 @@ -Castagraf was an online poetry magazine published by me, Scott Gilbertson, and Laura Solomon who was its editor and all around brilliant leader. I just wrote the code. Castagraf put out six issues back in roughly 2000-2002. At some point between then and 2009 I forgot to renew the domain name and some domain squatter swiped it. I managed to get .net back and continued to host the old issues for a while longer. - -Unfortunately Castagraf was published using Flash, which no longer works. - -Castagraf took shape back in days when CSS 2 was just getting off the ground. Web browsers sucked at CSS. I was a perfectionist about layout and typography so I used Flash for pixel-perfect results. In the process of watching Flash fail, I became, and continue to be, a strong advocate for open standards on the web. I have lost data to proprietary formats. You will too. Trust me. - -Castagraf, like Flash itself, is basically lost to time at this point, still it deserves some placeholder for its existence. Life moves on, this page is all that remains. - -Laura Solomon is now co-executive director of Wisconsin's [Woodland Pattern](https://www.woodlandpattern.org/). I currently (2020) write for Wired Magazine and my own website, the one you're on right now. diff --git a/pages/dear-internet-commenter.txt b/pages/dear-internet-commenter.txt deleted file mode 100644 index a2e2ca2..0000000 --- a/pages/dear-internet-commenter.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7 +0,0 @@ -We are fellow denizens of an especially lovely planet full of wonder and beauty. Okay, it's true. It's also full of ugliness and horror. But let's focus on the positive for a minute. - -That the good news. The bad news is that even in the best case scenarios we only get to ride this lovely planet around our sun some seventy-five or so times. That's assuming we're well fed, clothed, sheltered and in good health. Most people of the world are none of those things. Some of us are, which is incredibly fortunate for us. - -I say this mainly to offer some perspective on why I have elected not to engage in a conversation with you. It's nothing against you specifically, but here's the thing: most likely you disagreed with something I wrote and want to express that. I understand that desire. But remember, my thoughts and opinions don't have to match yours. Yours are equally valid. And not only do these topics not really matter in the grand scheme of things, I don't matter in the grand scheme of your existence and there's nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. - -This doesn't mean we shouldn't care about each others' opinions, it just means that, given the constraints of our existence here on earth (it's very time limited), we probably both have better things we could be doing -- walking in the sunshine, playing with our kids, watching the sunset from a mountain top, making coffee by a fire just before sunrise, eating tacos, or what have you. There are a lot of amazing things to do out there. Arguing on the internet is not one them. diff --git a/pages/homepage.html b/pages/homepage.html deleted file mode 100644 index 8a97512..0000000 --- a/pages/homepage.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3 +0,0 @@ -<p>We’re a family of five who live full time in a vintage 1969 Dodge Travco RV. We’ve been at it for three years now. People want to know <a href="https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome">what it’s like for five people to live in a 26ft RV</a> and <a href="https://luxagraf.net/essay/why-a-vintage-rv">why we live this way</a>.</p> -<p>The short answer is simple: because we like it and we can. If you want more than a soundbite, <a href="/jrnl/">read through the journal</a>. If you like it, sign up for <a href="/newsletter/">the email list</a>, or <a href="/jrnl/feed.xml">subscribe to the RSS feed</a>.</p> -<p>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. If you’re interested there’s a guide section with some <a href="/guides/">advice, tips and tricks for those who’d aspire to live full time in a van or RV</a> and there’s more about me on the <a href="/about">about page</a></p> diff --git a/pages/homepage.txt b/pages/homepage.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 594c530..0000000 --- a/pages/homepage.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5 +0,0 @@ -We're a family of five who live full time in a vintage 1969 Dodge Travco RV. We've been at it for three years now. People want to know [what it's like for five people to live in a 26ft RV](https://luxagraf.net/1969-dodge-travco-motorhome) and [why we live this way](). - -The short answer is simple: because we like it and we can. If you want more than a soundbite, [read through the journal](/jrnl/). If you like it, sign up for [the email list](/newsletter/), or [subscribe to the RSS feed](/jrnl/feed.xml). - -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. If you're interested there's a guide section with some [advice, tips and tricks for those who'd aspire to live full time in a van or RV](/guides/) and there's more about me on the <a href="/about">about page</a> diff --git a/pages/technology.txt b/pages/technology.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4c4bae0..0000000 --- a/pages/technology.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,50 +0,0 @@ -*Updated 02/21: I had to take out the part about not have a phone or a drone because I have those now. Does that make my a hypocrite? Maybe? Probably? Anyway, times change, etc.* - -Sometimes people email me to ask how I make luxagraf. Here's how I do it: I write, take pictures and combine them into stories. - -I recognize that this is not particularly helpful. Or it is, I think, but it's not why people email me. They want to know about at the tools I use. Which is fine. I guess. Consumerism! Yay! - -Anyway, I decided to make a page I can just point people to. There's no affiliate links and I'd really prefer it if you didn't buy any of this stuff because you don't need it. I don't need it. I could get by with less. I should get by with less. I am in fact always striving to need less and be less particular. - -Still, for better or worse. Here are the tools I use. - -## Writing -### Notebook and Pen - -My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I do have several notebooks though. One is in my pocket at all times and is filled with illegible scribbles that I attempt to decipher later. The other is larger and it's my sort of captain's log, though I don't write in with the kind regularity captains do. Or that I imagine captains do. Then I have other notebooks for specific purposes, meditation journal, commonplace book, and so on. - -I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. I used to be very picky about pens, but then I sat down and forced myself to use basic cheap, clear black ink, Bic-style ballpoint pens until they no longer irritated me. And you know what? Now I love them, and that's all I use -- any ballpoint pen. Ballpoint because it runs less when it gets wet, which, given how I live, tends to happen. - -### Laptop - -My laptop is a Lenovo x270 I bought off eBay for $384. I upgraded the hard drives and RAM, which brought the total outlay to $489, which is really way too much to spend on a computer these days, but my excuse is that I make money using it. - -Why this particular laptop? It's small and the battery lasts quite a while (like 15 hrs when I'm writing, more like 12 when editing photos, 15 minutes when editing video). It also has a removable battery and can be upgraded by the user. I packed in almost 3TB of disk storage, which is nice. Still, like I said, I could get by with less. I should get by with less. - -The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have [written about elsewhere](/src/why-i-switched-arch-linux). I was also interviewed on the site [Linux Rig](https://linuxrig.com/2018/11/28/the-linux-setup-scott-gilbertson-writer/), which has some more details on how and why I use Linux. - -## Photos - -### Camera - -I use a Sony A7ii. It's a full frame mirrorless camera that happens to make it easy to use legacy lenses. I bought it specifically because it was the only full frame digital camera available that let me use the old lenses that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes, though the RAW files from the A7ii have wonderful dynamic range, which was the other selling point for me. One day when the A7Rii gets cheap enough I may pick one up because the dynamic range is even better. - -That said, none of the A7 series are cheap cameras. If you want to travel you'd be better off getting something cheaper and using your money to travel. The Sony a6000 is very nearly as good and costs much less. In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period, but doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses. - -### Lenses - -All of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I am not a sports or wildlife photographer so I have no real need for autofocus. Neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are things I want in a lens. I want, for lack of a better word, *character*. I want a lens that reliable produces what I see in my mind. - -One fringe benefit of honing your manual focus skills[^1] is that you open a door to world filled with amazing cheap lenses. I have shot Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss, Hexanon, Tokina, and several weird Russian Zeiss clones. In the end I sold almost everything but my Minoltas. Minolta Rokkor lenses tend to reliably produce results closest to what I imagine when I look at the scene. - -Roughly 95 percent of the time I have one of two lenses on my A7II: a Minolta 50 f/2 or a Minolta 55 f/1.7. I bought the first for $20, the second for $60. About 90 percent of the images on this site were taken with one of those lenses. I prefer the 50mm for non-people images and the 55mm for portraits. - -I also have a Canon FD 20mm f/2.8, and a Minolta 28 f/2.8 that I use in cities. For portraits I use the Minolta MD 100 f/2. For animals and birds I have a Tokina 100-300mm f/4 which happens to be Minolta mount so I use a Minolta 2X teleconverter with it to make it a 200-600mm lens. It's pretty soft at the edges, but since I mostly use if for wildlife, which I tend to crop anyway, I get by. I also have a crazy Russian fisheye thing I bought one night on eBay after I'd been drinking. It's pretty hilarious bad at anything less than f/11, but it's useful for shooting in small spaces, like the inside of the bus. - -I also recently reverted to film by buying an old Minolta 35mm rangerfinder, the AL-S. I primarily shoot Tri-X 400 and develop it myself using Ilford chemicals. - ---- - -And there you have it, the technology stack. I am always looking for ways to get by with less, but after years of getting rid of stuff, I think I have reached something close to ideal. - -[^1]: If you've never shot without autofocus don't try it on a modern lens. Most modern focusing rings are garbage because they're not meant to be used. Some Fujifilm lenses are an exception to that rule, but by and large don't do it. Get an old lens, something under $50, and teach yourself [zone focusing](https://www.ilfordphoto.com/zone-focusing/), use the [Ultimate Exposure Computer](http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm) to learn exposure, and just practice, practice, practice. Practice relentlessly and eventually you'll get there. |