From fd060979ecc63cc0438f68bf0a3cdf4b4ae6cfe1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: luxagraf Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2019 22:57:42 -0600 Subject: worked on se renta piece --- se-renta.txt | 147 ++++++++++++++--------------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 33 insertions(+), 114 deletions(-) (limited to 'se-renta.txt') diff --git a/se-renta.txt b/se-renta.txt index b9c23f9..fbe2759 100644 --- a/se-renta.txt +++ b/se-renta.txt @@ -1,44 +1,50 @@ -I like airports -- liminal zones between worlds fascinate me even when those zones are only between national borders -- but I really dislike flying. I dislike the process of it the way that everyone dislikes it, but I also dislike parachuting into a place, so to speak, without any context of how you got there. Airplane travel also is far worse for the environment[^1], and, to me at least, feels gratuitous in a way that buses, trains, autos and RVs do not. As I've written before, I like the planning process, I like driving in, I even like traffic sometimes because it teaches you something about the place. - -We spent most of December at our friends' house while they were back in the states for the holidays. Aside from saving our asses from homelessness, it was a really nice house and had a lot of books. One of the books I read while we were staying at their house was called Gringo, by Chesa Boudin. I was not a huge fan of the book overall, but Boudin captures my dislike of plane travel in one rather tidy little sentence: "Airplane travel predisposes us to superficial, compartmentalized knowledge of a country, while land travel forces us, often uncomfortably, into contact with more everyday realities". - -Arguably, you can go further. Bike in and you'll understand it that much better. Walk and you'll know it rather well indeed. Since walking more than a few miles with a three year old isn't a lot of fun, we effectively parachuted in, as you do. And despite having been here three months I still I feel like I do have a superficial, compartmentalized understanding of the area. That feeling is compounded by the difference in language and culture. It's relatively easy for us as Americans to go from Georgia up the UP, spend the summer there and come away with reasonable understanding of the area. It's impossible to do the same when spanning cultures and throwing in different language for good measure. - When we left Dallas a few months ago our plan was to be gone six months. We were going to spend the winter down here, stay warm, improve our Spanish a bit and go back to the bus. Then we were going to spend the Spring traveling the southwest, see some areas of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that we hadn't seen yet, and then head up to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana when it got hot, to spend the summer at higher, cooler elevations. Then we'd swing south again when it cooled off and come back down to Mexico and work our way down the west coast of Mexico for the winter of 2019/2020. It was a pretty good plan I thought. It still is a pretty good plan. But as the man said, it's important that you make them, but it's rarely to actually follow a plan for too long. And that one, much as we still like it, is not going to work out for us. At least not on the timeline we'd envisioned. -There are a variety of reasons it's not going to happen, one of them is money. To get where we want to go in the bus, we need to rebuild the engine. We need more power on hills and the only way I've come up with to do that is to either drop in something bigger, a 440 or the like, or rebuild the 318 to get better compression, which means boring out the engine, new pistons, new manifolds on both ends, probably a new transmission and quite a few other things that are not cheap. It's all doable, but it takes money and we lost about 50 percent of our income earlier this year. +There are a variety of reasons it's not going to happen, one of them is money. To get where we want to go in the bus, we need to rebuild the engine. We need more power on hills and the only way I've come up with to do that is to either drop in something bigger, a 440 or the like, or rebuild the 318 to get better compression, which means boring out the engine, new pistons, new manifolds, probably a new transmission and quite a few other things that are not cheap. It's all doable, but it takes money and we lost about 50 percent of our income earlier this year. -I don't want to sound like I'm complaining or asking for money, I'm not doing either, we're very fortunate to be able to do this and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not grateful for everything we've been able to do. If we had to sell the bus and go home tomorrow I would have no regrets. Even Marco Polo went home eventually. We're not ready to do that yet, we're not even sure that means anymore, but sometimes you do have to adjust things if you want to keep going. +I don't want to sound like I'm complaining or asking for money, I'm not doing either, we're very fortunate to be able to do this and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not grateful for everything we've been able to do. If we had to sell the bus and go home tomorrow I would have no regrets. We're not ready to do that yet, I'm not even sure what that means anymore, but sometimes you do have to adjust things if you want to keep going. -It's a tad boring for those of you just following along, but I'm going to get into the subject of travel and money because talking about money is super helpful for anyone who's thinking of doing what we do. I searched high and low for anyone willing to talk about how much it cost to travel the U.S. by RV before we left and came up with very few hard and fast numbers. Consider this digression my contribution to anyone searching for information on how much it cost to travel the United States in a 1969 RV. +I'm going to get into something very few people seem get into: money. It takes money to travel. For a point so obvious, this one gets little press. Before we left I searched high and low for anyone willing to talk about how much it cost to travel the U.S. by RV and came up with very few hard and fast numbers. Consider this my contribution to anyone searching for information on how much it cost to travel the United States in a 1969 RV. -We track our spending to the penny, so I can give some pretty accurate figures at the monthly level. However, that's really not going to tell you what you need to know. The real answer is that how much is costs to travel the U.S. by RV really depends on where you are, how many of you there are, and how you travel. +First though we need to get some terms down. We track our spending to the penny, so I can give some pretty accurate figures at the monthly level. Ultimately though this is not how much it costs. The real answer is that how much is costs to travel the U.S. by RV really depends on where you are, how many of you there are, and how you travel. -That said, here's a rough number for a family of five, barring unforeseen expenses -- which is a euphemism for months where the bus doesn't break down -- we spend about $3000-$4000 a month on average traveling the U.S. +That said, here's a rough number for a family of five: $3000-$4000 a month, baring unforeseen expenses -- which is a euphemism for months where the bus doesn't break down. -Yes, that's a big spread. The reason is that roughly 30-40% tends to be food, which varies tremendously depending on where we are in the country. The west is much more expensive in nearly every regard, relative to the midwest and south, but especially in food. Generally speaking the $4000 a month areas would be California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, etc. The midwest and south are cheaper for us because food is cheaper there things rounded out to just over $3000/month. +Yes, that's a big spread. The reason is that roughly 30-40% tends to be food, which varies tremendously depending on where we are in the country. The west is much more expensive in nearly every regard, relative to the midwest and south, but especially for food. Generally speaking the $4000 a month areas would be California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, etc. The midwest and south are cheaper for us because food is cheaper there. In the end things rounded out to just over $3000/month[^1]. -On the flip side of that equation boondocking tends to be easier out west -- there's lots more BLM land, which means you can find a free place to stay much easier -- so you spend less on camping (except in California, Calfornia is just expense). If you're on the Gulf Coast it's going to cost you upwards of $30 a night in most of Florida (unless you know where to look). +On the flip side of that equation boondocking tends to be easier out west -- there's lots more BLM land, which means you can find a free place to stay much easier -- so you spend less on camping (except in California, Calfornia is just expense). If you're on the Gulf Coast it's going to cost you upwards of $30 a night in to camp in most of Florida (unless you know where to look). Another thing worth noting is that throughout the course of our trip we've spent less and less per month (except for last winter in California, which puts an irritating bump in the nice downward sloping graph I generated). There are two reason for this I think, first, we're getting smarter about boondocking and finding cheap camping, and two, we went back cross the country to the south and midwest where food is cheaper. -Final point -- we do it for less. We could probably cut our food bill by 30 percent if we dropped the organic meat and eggs for conventional and changed our eating habits a bit (in fact we have by necessity here). We don't, or we didn't in the U.S., because we didn't need to. As I noted in the post on food, food is one of life's most important elements to me. Not that good food has to be expensive, but good quality ingredients in the U.S. are going to cost you even if you do what we do and mostly shop at Asian and Hispanic grocery stores. +Final point -- we could do it for less. We could probably cut our food bill by 30 percent if we dropped the organic meat and eggs for conventional and changed our eating habits a bit (in fact we have by necessity here Mexico). We don't, or we didn't in the U.S., because we didn't need to. As I noted in the post on food, food is one of life's most important elements to me. Not that good food has to be expensive, but good quality ingredients in the U.S. are going to cost you even if you do what we do and mostly shop at Asian and Latin grocery stores. So what's the point of all this money talk? The U.S. is considerably more expensive than Mexico. We spend just over half our U.S. monthly spending here in Mexico, sans bus. You probably could have guessed that, what you probably would not guess is why. Part of it is that some things are cheaper here. Though really, not that much cheaper. I'd say food, which makes up the largest part of our budget, is about 30% less here. That's nothing to sneeze at, it helps for sure, but it's not the real reason it's cheaper for us to live in Mexico. -When I take a hard look at the spreadsheet, and then rotate it sideways to get a new perspective, what really jumps out is the "miscellaneous" category. I don't get real fine grained with spending categories so miscellaneous holds everything that is not gas, food, lodging or vehicle repair. Basically it hold the non-essentials. That category doesn't exist in Mexico. After spending some time meditating on this I've a very simple answer: in Mexico you are not constantly bombarded with advertising. +When I take a hard look at the spreadsheet, and then rotate it sideways to get a new perspective, what really jumps out is the "miscellaneous" category. I don't get real fine grained with spending categories so miscellaneous holds everything that is not gas, food, lodging or vehicle repair. It holds the non-essentials. That category doesn't exist in Mexico. We have spent less than $200 on misc spending in four months of living in Mexico. + +Why? It's pretty simple, we don't have access to Amazon.com. + +But wait, you're travelers, you live in a bus, you don't buy useless stuff, you can't where would you put it? -Mexico has pretty much everything the United States has, especially here in San Miguel, my wife brought home duck fat yesterday for crying out loud, we're not in the boonies, we're not just eating beans and tortillas. The difference is that it's not all in your face 24/7. Shops here do not have windows, most do not even have a way to browse through stuff. Half of them you can't even get to the stuff yourself. Instead you walk in, tell the person what you need, the person asks small medium or large and then goes rummaging around to find what you want. +I know right? But it turns out they makes some pretty small and expensive useless stuff you can fit in the bus. + +Why do we buy it though, surely we know better? We do know better and yet we still buy it, The spreadsheet does not lie, so why? + +After spending some time meditating on this I've a very simple answer: access. + +Mexico has pretty much everything the United States has, especially here in San Miguel. My wife brought home duck fat yesterday for crying out loud (it was only $2). We're not in the boonies, we're not just eating beans and tortillas. The difference is that here all the stuff you could buy is not all in your face 24/7. + +Shops here do not have windows, most do not even have a way to browse through stuff. Half of them you can't even get to the stuff yourself. Instead you walk in, tell the person what you need, the person asks small medium or large and then goes rummaging around to find what you want. Everything you buy here comes from your own mind first and is found second. -In the United States everything is presented and then your mind decides what to buy. +In the United States everything is presented and then your mind decides what to buy. On the internet literally everything is right there at your finger tips. -One of these models will leave more money in your pocket than the other, full stop. +One of these purchasing models will leave more money in your pocket than the other, full stop. And I know, I know. I like to think I am immune to advertising too, that I am smarter than the advertisers, that I resist the never-ending onslaught "buy this stuff". @@ -50,21 +56,20 @@ Take away the access and we spent less. Mexico also takes away the access, so we I am not immune. You are not immune. We all fall for advertising. -Advertising is a debased form of magic, which is another way of saying it's powerful and you probably are not aware of its power in any conscious way. - -I know I am not. However, now that I'm outside its sphere of influence a bit, I've noticed something -- I don't want anything. Maybe that's not quite true, I want much less. So much less that I became aware of it, I noticed how much less stuff I wanted. At first I thought I was maybe a little crazy, but we've talked to couple of Americans who've been down here a few months and they've noticed it too. +Advertising is a debased form of magic, which is another way of saying it's powerful and you probably are not aware of its power in any conscious way. I know I am not. However, now that I'm outside its sphere of influence a bit, I've noticed something -- I don't want anything. Maybe that's not quite true, I want much less. So much less that I became aware of it, I noticed how much less stuff I wanted. At first I thought I was maybe a little crazy, but we've talked to couple of Americans who've been down here a while longer than us and they've noticed it too. -I think part of it is access. I can't use Amazon down here. Or I can, but it's a huge pain, enough of a pain that we just don't. And effectively that means the rest of the internet too, ordering stuff off the internet isn't practical so we don't do it. Since we know we can't do it we don't bother looking things up to see if we can get them. Interestingly I don't feel like I did this much before, but my spreadsheet says otherwise (my uncle and my wife's sister's family could also say otherwise, given how much stuff we shipped to their addresses). +A good example of this for me would be camera lenses. I use old, manual focus lenses. In the course of the trip I've bought and sold about a dozen, and there were many more I wanted to buy. I used to follow all the used lens websites and would lust after various expensive hard to find lenses that I wanted. Wanting gives you a hit of dopamine. So nice. Not wanting takes away the dopamine. This is biochemical source of buyers remorse, once you have something, no more dopamine from wanting it. You have to move on to wanting something new. This will never end. Nothing you ever buy will satisfy you. It can't, no dopamine. Subjected to this cycle of wanting we become like a rat in cage, running on a wheel, around and around, chasing that hit of dopamine in an endless loop -- desire gratification dissatisfaction, desire gratification dissatisfaction. -A good example of this for me would be camera lenses. I use old, manual focus lenses. In the course of the trip I've bought and sold about a dozen, and there were many more I wanted to buy, but since I can't get them shipped down here I started paying less attention. I used to follow a few used lens websites and would lust after various expensive hard to find lenses. +Once you see yourself doing this you can't unsee it. It's horrible to realize this is you. That you are a lab rat in someone else's experiment. You also start thinking more broadly about other things. I started obsessing more and more about where my attention goes and how that affects me. -Once I started thinking about the idea that what I wanted, what I thought I needed might just be the result of constant advertising I didn't even notice, I started thinking more broadly about where my attention was and how that was affecting me. So I decided to stop reading all the lens sites, to stop reading the forums and instead starting paying more attention to the photographers whose images I admired. I started directing my focus to craft rather than gear. I spent more time thinking about things like composition, texture, tone and all the other bits of craft that actually make good photos rather than any particular lens. Not only have I not bought a lens since, I've become much more satisfied with the ones I own. +In the case of the lenses I stopped reading all those sites and redirected my attention to actual photographs. I started directing my focus to technique instead of tools -- things like composition, texture, light, tone and all the other bits of craft that actually make good photos. Not only have I not bought a lens since, I've become much more satisfied with the ones I own. -This dovetails with a lesson we learned early on in the bus -- once you realize you can live without something, get rid of it. Once I realized I could live without reading about cool new camera lenses I sat down and scrutinized every website I read on a regular basis and got rid of anything that was likely to make me want stuff. +This dovetails with a lesson we learned early on in the bus -- once you realize you can live without something, get rid of it. It will never become more useful by existing in your closet. It is either useful right now or not at all (tools are the only exception to that rule). Once I realized I could live without reading about cool new camera lenses I sat down and scrutinized everything I read on a regular basis and got rid of anything that was likely to make me want stuff. +I wanted off that wheel. +If you like to travel there's a good chance you have more D4 dopamine receptors than the average person, which makes you especially prone to wanting, which in turn makes you susceptible to advertising, which in turn, ironically, makes you less likely to be able to save up the money to travel. -If you want control over what you consume, you're going to have to strengthen your will. So long as you are surrounded by signals that are trying to get you to spend money on crap, it is going to be an uphill battle. If you can I strongly suggest removing yourself from the signals -- think about where your attention is going and how you can redirect it to craft rather than stuff. What does this have to do with traveling? Well we sat back and took stock of things, what we all wanted to do, and we decided that we wanted to stay here in San Miguel for longer than six months. Not too long after that we found a house that was just about perfect for us so we signed a year lease and we're staying here. We're staying here to slow down for a while, to work on some projects that require the kind of deeper focus that's difficult to manage on the road, to get better at Spanish, to try to move beyond a superficial, compartmentalized understanding of the place we're in, and to save money, both because we can live a little cheaper and because we spend less here. @@ -80,98 +85,12 @@ There are other reasons, the kids wanted to do somethings that are hard to do on -but there are things more powerful. The most important of those is your will. - - -If, like most people, you can't pick and move to foreign country for a month then you're going to have to try to change in the midst of the battle so to speak. While possible, this is much much harder. And again, while I like to think I have mastered this, my spreadsheet says otherwise, so take this advice with a grain of salt. Chances are good that this actually much harder than you or I think and you're going to need to put in more effort than I'm suggesting. - - [^1]: This is endlessly debated on the internet by people looking to justify which variety of travel they support. Based on what I've read at the [Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies][1], as well as Michael Sivak's work for the University of Michigan Transportation Research on the energy intensity of both driving and flying, a family of 5 driving, even in the bus, puts less carbon in the air than flying. Would it be better to do neither? Yes. As for the whole climate change debate, I managed to pick up enough of an understand of energy flow and the laws of thermodynamics back in high school to realize that billions of tons of infrared-trapping gases into Earth’s atmosphere is going to fuck things up as it were. The fact that Earth’s climate has changed drastically without human interference in the past should really just demonstrate how idiotic it is to tinker with a system clearly vulnerable to destabilization. -[1]: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/ - - - - +[^2]: To arrive at that figure I also threw out all our early spending on bus restoration. If you haven't been following along since the beginning, know that we went ahead and hit the road with no water tank (no plumbing at all for the first two weeks), no propane system and no solar system. Solar especially makes our actual monthly spending considerably higher for the first year, but assuming you're not remodeling on the road, you won't have these expenses so I left them out. -The most important thing is to develop your will. I am serious. Start doing exercises to develop your will. For example, force your self up out of the chair right now, turn away from the computer and walk to the nearest wall. Touch it. Come back and sit down. Repeat this at random during the day. Is it pointless? Absolutely. So is lifting weights. The principle is the same. So choose a deliberately pointless thing to do, and do it. Then do another one. Then do the same thing every morning for a week. - -One will-building exercise I do periodically is what I call, for lack of a better phrase, micro travel. It works like this: pick a place at random in the city you live, somewhere you've never been. Choose a time and make an appointment with yourself. Now go work out all the details of getting there, if possible use public transit or walk. Then meet yourself there and make sure you're there on time. Now enjoy a few minutes exploring the area and head home. - -I'll leave thinking up other exercises to you, but the point is to develop your will, to have control over your life. It takes a little time to see and feel the effects of this, it's quite subtle, but it will cascade throughout your life in a number of interesting ways, I promise. One will be better control over your impulses. When you walk into, say Target, to buy a new toothbrush your newly developed will will make it easier to walk past everything else and only buy the toothbrush. - -Eventually your will may help you recognize that stores that have everything are too much for your will. It would be cleverer to buy that toothbrush at a smaller store with fewer things, because it's easier to remove temptation than resist it. Think of it like dieting. If you're trying to eat less ice cream it's much easier to not walk down the ice cream aisle at all than it is to walk down it and without buying anything. - -This also leads into my second suggestion for buying less stuff: change your habits. It's convenient to go to Target and get everything you need in one place, but chances are you're going to spend more than you intended without realizing it. In fact the entire experience of being in Target has been engineered to increase the chance you'll spend more than you intended. Every time you enter a store you are entering a hostile environment designed to extract your life energy from you. - -Oh sure it's all abstracted so you don't have think of it that way. Still, strip the abstraction and relationship is pretty clear, you trade hours of your life for shit you buy at Target. You get up the morning and go to work. That's a day of your life you just traded for paper tickets. Why do you need those tickets? To put a roof over your head and food in your stomach. Pretty much everything after that is not strictly necessary. So once those basics are met you're in th realm of swapping your existence on earth for stuff. - -The less stuff you buy, the less you need to work. By extension, the less time you spend in places designed to extract money from you, the less of your life you'll have to trade for stuff. - -That's a habit you can break -- going to all-in-one-place stores -- but there are other habits you can build that will help immensely as well. - - - -One of the things I've been at pains to avoid is making it sound like we don't like the United States. In fact we do very much, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world and has some of the wildest and safest wilderness you're ever going to enter. - -Unfortunately, the United States is not the best travel value for us. Without an income we'd have to dip heavily into savings to travel the states in the bus. - - -Takeaways to reduce travel spending: - * better planning means more boondocking and less money on camping - * change of diet from mexico means less on food - - no more sausage for breakfast - - more tortillas, less bread for lunches - + bread is special occassions - - use oat/rice flour from bulk bins for pancakes - - shop mexican markets, asian markets - - go meatless twice a week - - drop organic/grass fed, eat less of it - * having propane fridge would mean less trips for ice, longer away from money spending opportunities - * doing bucket laundry to get by, with full laundry once a month would do the same (again, fewer money spending opportunities) - * no more lenses, amazon orders, ever. - * use local libraries - * have corrinne get meds down here. - * start with forays into mexico, but gradually reverse -- here becomes our home base with forays into the states - - * how much less? Don't know but I think we could do - - $1200/month groceries - - $500/month camping (if we go over, better hole up and boondock) - - $400/month gas (if we're heade over, better hole up) - - $500/month repairs and incidentals - * So at reliable $3000 a month we can get by pretty much anywhere - - Need the ability to take a serious breakdown and keep going, what does that look like? - - maybe $5000- $8000 savings for repairs - -The real question becomes, how deep should our savings be for bus repairs? -Or should we take what we know, downsize our vehicle and get even further out there? - - What would that take? - * initial outlay for vehicle -- $5000 - * restoration and outfitting -- $9000 - - What could we sell the bus for? - * Maybe $13,000? - -If we keep the bus what needs to be done? - - Engine - - Transmission - - Additional solar panels - 160W flex for 280, 100W flex for 205 ~ $600 for 320W or $400 for 200 - - MPPT controller $400 - - 12V fridge - $1000 vitfrigo - - rear rack - $220 - - shelves in closet $80 - - toilet aqua magic iv $120 - - paint bathroom - - redo area around air-con/shelf with pots and pans - - counter water damage around sink - - leaks? - -600+400+1000+220+120+80 - -Travco window seals: +[1]: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/ -Cr Laurence is where I got mine but when installed I cannot slide the window, but it is closest I have found . I lubed no luck so next step is to take some of the flock out with knife or grind. Another source is dk hardware is where I found my vent window flex channel -John Galloway Sorry the cr Laurence came from dk hardware and vent window flex channel came from Pelland -New headlights: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G72SKQ/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1&fbclid=IwAR0QSHKWOv2pU8uKkvs_EPP-6kJQeRQORaVkiqvEcCl9OREacIma95WRAzo (as per Paul Zueke) -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2