Multi Athlete

Good ol’ California song:

Eight Months Ago I left California searching for something different…..possibly a new place to live….I road tripped all around the country.

The Road trip looked Like this…..Yes some places we visited twice and double backed to.

What I realized when going a trip like this:

• You never quite no what you have until you leave it
• Check out one place for as long as necessary, do everything you want to, once you you get 200 miles down the road you don’t want to have to turn back because you think you missed out on something.
• Accept that you will miss a place after leaving it, enough that you may have to return and revisit it.  This happened to me after I left Durango CO, I got all the way down to Florida and after a couple months realized realized that I really want to go back and think about living there.
• I really miss CA…..I missed it about the whole time I was gone.

After been gone from CA for eight months and visiting (almost) everywhere that I have ever wanted to or thought of living….I now can return to the west coast feeling satisfied with my decision to live there.

So My New Road Trip Plan is the one that gets me to Southern CA the fastest.  Luckily I made all my pits stops around the country last year…..so the new road trip plan looks more like:

Over the last eight months of driving I have picked up some tips to planning a good road trip:

• Plan ahead (knowing where you going and where you going to stop makes things easier, booking hotels in advance online always gets a better rate)
• Don’t get upset when you have to throw your whole plan out the window cause you only made it 200 miles the first day and planned on 400.  Rerouting and reconfiguring your trip is part of the spontaneity of road tripping.
• Do some research, how are you suppose to know where the biggest ball of string is if you don’t look it up before you go.  With out research you are just aimlessly driving (which can be fun too)
• Hotel Coupon books at gas station really do save you money….usually around ten dollars a night.
• Fast food gets old quick.  Load up and grocery snacks before you leave.  Even eating at a gas station is more interesting then fast food after a 1000 miles.
• Plan the trip with someone you can laugh with.
• Comedy CDs will help you get through states like Kansas or Nebraska.

Okay so my previous post was about the down side of living on a boat, now to tell ya how it is not all bad.

Living on a boat has been one of the most interesting experience of my life.  I am learning so much everyday, about boats, boat communities and myself.  I would put this all on the plus side of living on a boat.  With boat life your learning so many things about yourself and some of them very personal; you find out how you handle stressful situations, what makes you run, what scares you, some of it will toughen you up, while other things break you down.  It is all a very interesting process.

What type of boat you are living on and what shape it is in, will highly affect your experiences.  So each persons boat journey will be very different, from one another.

For me personal, my boat is a work in progress, we have had to do with out many modern conveniences; no hot water, no bathroom (there is bathroom and hot water where it is docked just not on the boat), no food allowed on the boat (my own rule, due to bugs), no clothes allowed on the boat (own rule again due to mildew).  So you could say I have been roughing it.  We originally came here with the attentions of fixing up the boat, but after we bought it we realized exactly how impossibly hard it would be to do, while trying to live on it.

They make it look so easy on the movie Captain Ron!

Nothing like coming onto the boat, with all the floor boards ripped up.  So we pretty much decided to just live on it as is and to resell it. Looking at as a cheap place to stay, while we have fun in the Florida sun.

With all the bad there still are definite perks to living on a boat though:

• Freedom-When you live on a boat, you have this feeling of freedom, even if it doesn’t run, you don’t feel bogged down like you do when your in an apartment, there seems to be adventure right out your door.
• Never boring-Living on a boat is never boring.  I get bored and restless super quickly, it is something I’m working on, but I haven’t been bored here once.  I could be jogging on the beach, or watching Mike chase cockroaches on the boat, there is always something to do.
• Simplicity-Boat life is simple, you end up feeling lighter and you realize all the things you can live without.
• Cheap living-If you do buy a boat and you get a cheap one like us, you may only have a few thousand dollars invested and then you have to rent a dock space for it which is usually around 600 a month.  If you ask me that is super cheap!  I have never rented an apartment for that cheap.
• Getting outside more-Living on a boat gets you outside EVERYDAY rain or shine!  My daily day is wake up, stretch, get out on top of the boat, drink a juice, go for a jog, come back do a little work, check the wind for kiteboarding and usually end up finishing the day with trail riding.
• Breaking Old Habits- Living on a boat helps you break old habits: I can easily waste a day laying around, playing ps3, but not anymore I get up and get going, i like this!
• Boat community-the boats that are docked by you are considered your neighbors, you see the people everyday and they feel like actual neighbors, you say hi and have conversations.  I have no idea who my neighbors were in Chicago, I wouldn’t even say hi if I passed them in the hall.  I guess living on a boat gives you something to talk about.
• Ocean Breeze-It just smells so good….most the time

So i just realized the acronym for boat is Break Out Another Thousand.  Boats cost lot of money;  Does not matter if you have brand new shiny one or a older cruddy one.

It just keeps piling on, one thing or another will break or you will see a way to make things better and before you know it you just dropped a bunch more cash.  I assume it is probably what happens when you end up buying a house.  Anytime I talk to someone in Florida about living on a boat they laugh and say it is way more work then you thought, isn’t it!  A rhetorical question of course, anyone who has boating experience knows what a challenge it can be.

Living on a Boat

Living on a boat is really quite a bit more difficult then i thought.  I sometimes wonder if this boat was a brand new yacht, if it would be a easier.  I think some aspects of it would, but you still have some of your basic problems, that come with any boat.  Yes I chose to live on a broken down, not even running boat, so I knew there would be some problems, but I had no idea about some of the stuff.

Basic Boat Problems that come with living aboard:

• Cockroaches: they love warm, wet, humid places.  Boat=Heaven!  Florida cockroaches are HUGE the size of your hand and bigger!  They love tooth paste and cheese I know for sure.
• Spiders: I had one crawling on me when I woke up.  It is a given they are going be on the boat, this morning was the first time I actually had one crawling on me though.
• Ants: Don’t dare leave food out. JUST DON’T DO IT!
• Never any food on the boat:  With all the bug problems that come with boats, keeping food on the boat just seems like a ridiculous idea.  Get ready to bust out another thousand on eating out 2 or 3 times a day.  We don’t keep food on the boat or eat on the boat, drinks only, I think it is a good plan, but I’m sick of Wendys Dollar menu.
• Constant work:  Boats need constant work and maintenance, things break all the time.  Like air conditioning freezing over, electricity going out, no water for some reason.
• Not Comfortable:  I know this isn’t true with all boats, but ours isn’t comfortable.  Mike is 6′3″ so sleeping in cramped spaces sucks.  Couches on boats are not as comfy as apartment sofas.
• Boats that don’t run:  If you decide to buy a boat that doesn’t run, you will feel a pang of jealousy as boats next to you pull out for a ocean cruise.
• Mildew and salt water:  It eats your clothes, it eats your bike or anything aluminum, constant moisture everywhere, never completely dry.  I have already had to throw out one pair of pants, after that I moved all my clothes back to the car, which is now my personal closet.
• Lighting:  Don’t bother with hair or makeup on the boat, the lighting will make you go out looking like a clown.  The lights are not bright at all or come close to showing you what you actually look like.  I have had to just give up on the thought of doing anything with my appearance.
• Smells: Boats just get stinky.

So these are some of the draw backs of living on boat.  Now it isn’t all bad and in a couple days I’ll write and article about some good stuff.  The main question I keep thinking on is if the bad out ways the good. The answer to this question changes daily.

Where we sleep, not much room.

Living space:  This is a previous owner picture, so imagine it with out the big TV (they took it with them) and absolutely no junk or personal stuff in it, we keep it down to the bare minimum.  See the “comfy” Sofa!

You ever make one of those; things I want to do in this life lists?  Mine is a mental one I don’t write the stuff down very often or actively pursue it.  Just make a little mental note, when I think of something I want to do.  Some never really have a chance of getting accomplished; get on Chef Ramsey’s Hells Kitchen (I can’t even cook a grilled cheese without burning it), other things seem like a possibility, but not likely unless I muster up a lot of motivation; Climb Mount Everest, Free Climb El Cap and then some things just unexpectedly happen like live on a boat.

I don’t know when I put live on a boat on my to do list, but I know it was on there somewhere, buried between find my secret beach like Leonardo Dicaprio in that movie and do 100 consecutive pull-ups.  So after I packed up my car and left Chicago, I knew that I better make some decisions quickly, otherwise I would be spending my winter like my past summer, living out of the back of my truck.

I knew one thing for sure, I wanted to kiteboard this winter.  One thing comes to mind…. Florida.  In the winter time, the wind hits south Florida up and down the Atlantic coast all the way to key west.  Unlike the windless summer time, you can get out at least 4-5 days a week and be kiting.

I didn’t want to rent an apartment in Florida, not only is that a big responsibility, with all the decorating, cleaning and paying rent on time, but also I would be officially be living in south Florida.  When I found an old broken down live aboard boat for sale off of Fort Lauderdale, I thought……wellll maybeeeee.  Then the owner said if I bought it he would throw in a second little boat that actually ran!  I took a look at the smaller vessel; it was big enough, for my boyfriend, me and two kiteboards……SOLD.

Baby Kiteboard Boat

So now I live in a boat, I never really would of thought it, so who knows maybe I’ll be jogging up Mount Everest next year.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
Buddha

Winter is a good time of year to contemplate things.  For the the last month I feel like I have been doing a lot of that……Laying around contemplating.  A lot of athletes are lucky because they plan out their whole race season in the winter months and this gives them a good idea of what their year is going to look like.  This is nice but when you do an array of sports like me and not very many competitive ones, this method doesn’t work.  So I really had to think about what I wanted to do with my time this year.  Did I just want to lay in my warm cozy bed and contemplate…….well yes a little bit….but in the long run no!

I need something new; a project, a life, a sport, a hobby….was it one of these things or all of them.  I wasn’t so sure yet.  The only thing I know for sure is I’m ready to get out there and do something.

After this month of contemplating I’m saying see ya later to my favorite city Chicago and with the parting words of….”It’s not you, it’s me.”  Things just do feel right this time around in the city, it doesn’t mean they never will again, but I’m not engaged in the city, I haven’t been feeling very alive.  Warm and cozy….yes, adventurous and motivated…..no.

A few reasons why it is cool to try new things:

May meet interesting people
May learn new things
May challenge yourself in new ways
May wake you up
May make you feel alive
May have a ton of fun

Soooo what does this mean……it means I’m going a new journey…..as soon as the last piece of furniture sells in my house TODAY!

I once read a quote that said something along the lines of, “Your goals should be just out of reach, that way you always keep striving.”  I thought about that for a long time and have come to the conclusion; that is a crazy and frustrating way to live.  Setting goals that are just out of reach may seem like a good concept, but what about all the agony that comes with never reaching your goal.  If you set a goal and reach it, then you can increase the goal ever so slightly and reach it again.  How much more satisfying would this be.

I like to think of goal setting as an endurance sport.  If you haven’t been running in a year, your not going go out and run a marathon today.  You would just be setting yourself up for failure and disappointment and what fun is that.  Now if you go out and say your going run 1/2 a mile, that may be a reachable goal.  Every week you can keep increasing that goal and hitting it.  That is what goal setting is about; set yourself up for something that is attainable and then once you get there increase the goal and make it a little bit harder.

I recently set a goal of following the raw diet for 21 days, but I failed at the goal, because I set the bar to high. I would have succeeded if I set it at 7 days and then increased afterwards.  You do want to be challenged when setting goals, but you need to figure out what is a challenge for you, yet achievable.  I should of known eating raw food only for 21 days over Thanksgiving, was not going happen, I set myself up for an unachievable goal.  So after thinking about it how long can a carnivore, like me go on raw food for, about 7 days, is what my mind said.

So I learned a valuable lesson; goal setting needs to slowly progress and grow over time.  After I accomplish 7 days raw, maybe I can do 12 days, than 15, than 21.  How will it feel to accomplish it ever time.  Goal setting skills is a lot like building muscles, it takes time and hard work, but over time and with small increases in the weight load you will see progress.

This does not mean I won’t should dream big, it is the big hope that drive me.  I Just have to keep in perspective where I am are in compared to where you want to be.  Try climbing several hills before a huge mountain.  To make a big dream come true, figure out what I have to do to get there, set my goals and before I know it the goal will be just a step away.  With a solid foundation I should reach it smoothly and easily.

This is just my thinking though.  Have you set a goal that was just to hard to achieve, if so what was it?