did you know

Stumbled across this posting on a tumblr site I follow and couldn't resist sharing with you. Being so young and now undertaking this journey with a baby, we certainly feel the dismay of those around us when we tell them our plan. But we feel it's important that each of us follow our own path. Maybe it's not for you. And that's fine. We don't begrudge you that. It is, however what we feel strongly about. Something we feel we need to do for our own satisfaction. Enjoy. This pretty much says it all.

"Did you know, you can quit your job, you can leave university? You aren’t legally required to have a degree, it’s a social pressure and expectation, not the law, and no one is holding a gun to your head. You can sell your house, you can give up your apartment, you can even sell your vehicle, and your things that are mostly unnecessary. You can see the world on a minimum wage salary, despite the persisting myth, you do not need a high paying job. You can leave your friends (if they’re true friends they’ll forgive you, and you’ll still be friends) and make new ones on the road. You can leave your family. You can depart from your hometown, your country, your culture, and everything you know. You can sacrifice. You can give up your $5.00 a cup morning coffee, you can give up air conditioning, frequent consumption of new products. You can give up eating out at restaurants and prepare affordable meals at home, and eat the leftovers too, instead of throwing them away. You can give up cable TV, Internet even. This list is endless. You can sacrifice climbing up in the hierarchy of careers. You can buck tradition and others’ expectations of you. You can triumph over your fears, by conquering your mind. You can take risks. And most of all, you can travel. You just don’t want it enough. You want a degree or a well-paying job or to stay in your comfort zone more. This is fine, if it’s what your heart desires most, but please don’t envy me and tell me you can’t travel. You’re not in a famine, in a desert, in a third world country, with five malnourished children to feed. You probably live in a first world country. You have a roof over your head, and food on your plate. You probably own luxuries like a cellphone and a computer. You can afford the $3.00 a night guest houses of India, the $0.10 fresh baked breakfasts of Morocco, because if you can afford to live in a first world country, you can certainly afford to travel in third world countries, you can probably even afford to travel in a first world country. So please say to me, “I want to travel, but other things are more important to me and I’m putting them first”, not, “I’m dying to travel, but I can’t”, because I have yet to have someone say they can’t, who truly can’t. You can, however, only live once, and for me, the enrichment of the soul that comes from seeing the world is worth more than a degree that could bring me in a bigger paycheck, or material wealth, or pleasing society. Of course, you must choose for yourself, follow your heart’s truest desires, but know that you can travel, you’re only making excuses for why you can’t. And if it makes any difference, I have never met anyone who has quit their job, left school, given up their life at home, to see the world, and regretted it. None. Only people who have grown old and regretted never traveling, who have regretted focusing too much on money and superficial success, who have realized too late that there is so much more to living than this."

Via Wunderkammer

This. Every single thing about this. It falls in line with our beliefs as travelers and wanderers. This is the life we want to give to our child. A life free from the trappings of things and the need to "fit in" with the norms of our American society. The most interesting people you'll ever meet are the ones who take that leap. Who trust in themselves and the wholeness and beauty of the world surrounding them. Who never, for one second doubt that there is more to living than what society tells us we should want for ourselves. Who experience the culture of others, who nurture a spirit of humanity and soak up every new opportunity given to them. That. That is what living is. We just can't wait to see the world and show it to our little one in this way.

sunday share!

This post is also known as "mistakes were made". This is a cautionary tale. Generally on the Sunday share I want to tell you about an awesome or helpful upgrade project we've done. This one? Yeah, great theory but mistakes were definitely made. 

Back story: I regularly clean the cabin sole (floor of the cabin) since we have a dog who sheds profusely. And I am not kidding when I say PROFUSELY. When I clean the floor, I start by vacuuming (we have a long runner rug and a few doormat rugs) then follow with hand-wiping with Simple Green and a rag then sometimes taking a pass at it with another rag and some Old English Lemon Oil. This makes the floor shine but also causes a certain slippery-ness. I also include the companionway stairs when I do this routine, so you can imagine that with bare feet or low-tread shoes, coming down those steps can be a little dangerous. Actually, even between cleanings when you come down them with damp feet they can be treacherous. In addition to having no texture besides varnished and sealed wood texture, they are also very steep. 

And then I had a brilliant idea. Treads! I've seen them on countless production boats so I assumed they'd fix our problem. They did, but we made a few errors in the process. Josh was able purchase a 6 pack of adhesive treads for just such a use. I cleaned the steps and set about applying them (peeling the backing and centering them on the steps. Josh thought maybe we should wrap them around the forward edge of each of the steps (see photo) because he was sure we stepped up them we used the surface closest to the edge more than the middle depth of each stair. Okay, so I did that. Everything seemed fine until we decided to actually come down them. Did I mention that these stairs are notoriously steep? And that the overhang from one down to the next is pretty narrow? It is. And this means that when you walk down them in shorts, you catch the back of your leg on the sandpaper-like surface and scrape your leg. Not only scrape it, we are talking break the skin abrasion. Like it leaves a mark and you bleed down the back of your calf. Or your thigh if you lean up against them when you're trying to reach a particularly unreachable cabinet space. Ta-da! So lesson is this. DO NOT WRAP THE TREAD AROUND THE FRONT SURFACE OF EACH STEP. If we hadn't done that, these treads would have been a no-brainer home run. As they are, we'll keep them and develop tough calf skin until they need replacing and never make the same mistake again.