Usually when I move I have been to the place that I’m planning on going or have at least driven through it before.  But this time I decided to try a place completely new and something that has been on my mind for awhile.

Park City Utah

I have been wanting to try out this spot since last year at this time.  The mountain bike trails are supposed to be sweet, 300 plus miles of them.  Plus the snow in the winter in Utah is “supposed” to be sweeter then Colorado, which would be great.

It is totally gorgeous here!  The weather has been a little bit of adjustment since, living in Fort Lauderdale and then San Diego.  You can say it is a tad bit chilly here even in June, but the outdoor aspects, trails and views make it an exciting place to live.

So here I am in Park City now, trying out something completely new and I find it very refreshing.

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We decided to take the southern-southern route 10 West all the way to the 8.  Just to avoid any potential cold weather, also this is a way we have never driven before.  When we drive across the country previous times we’re usually leaving from Chicago.

Good Deal/Bad Deal
First stop on the route was Biloxi Mississippi.  I have never been here and love saying Biloxi Mississippi in a southern accent.  Biloxi is a like a very mini Vegas; casinos and gambling.

You can get great deals staying at casinos, usually you can get a king size room for 50 bucks.  I’m talking about a really nice room here, flat screen tv large bathroom, possible jacuzzi.  Wow whatta deal!  Alas there is no free wifi in the room or good movies on the tv, what is a person to do but go downstairs to the huge casino awaiting them.

This is where your good deal turns into a bad deal, the house always wins.

Here is how the casino wins all your money:

1. your up a couple 100, you consider that free money and decide to gamble it and you loose it….damn it you’re thinking i just had a free couple hundred dollars,
2. well you take 50 dollars more and try and double it.
3. You loose the 50 dollars in 2 minutes, damn why did I spend that 50 dollars you ask yourself, I mean you could of just broke even, but now you down 50.
4. Might as well try and win the 50 back, 1 minute later you’re down another 50.
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 until your completely broke and your awesome 50 dollar room turns into a 500 dollar room.
6. Get up early the next morning, decide you should at least win something back, loose another 100.

The house is going win, even if you lucky to win a couple bucks in the beginning, it won’t stay in your pocket for long.  Of course there is a few rare exceptions to the case where you will hear of someone winning thousands of dollars.  This is where you decide maybe you will give gambling another shot, even though you swore never again last time.

This pic was my big 32 dollar win, my first five minutes in the casino, I thought it was amazing, I lost it all plus a couple hundred more about an hour later.  Mike thought we could win some back by putting 100 dollars on red……..it landed on black.

New Orleans
The next day it was back on the road with a lunch time break in New Orleans.  Neither of us have ever been to New Orleans, so it was cool to check it out.  There is still a lot of construction and road work being done as well; recovery from Katrina.  So lots of slow traffic, especially leaving New Orleans.  You can still feel the effects of Katrina and a city trying to recover in a lot of ways.

We stopped off in the French Quarters to Cafe Du Monde For some famous Beignets, which were absolutely amazing!

Afterward we strolled around the Quarters and Bourbon street, the area was just waking up, it was probably around noon.  Lot of people getting ready to party and drink, I really could not imagine Madre Gras here, it must be absolutely nuts!

A feel for Bourbon Street….many restaurants and bars, lots of different types of music blaring out from each place you walk by.

After leaving New Orleans it was a full day of driving, right into Texas.  It took all of our will power to skip going to South Padre Island (best place to kiteboard in the states) Okay well actually the weather down there was suppose to be rain for the next ten days, otherwise I’m pretty sure we would have pit stop there for a couple weeks.

Austin Texas
Instead we made our way to Austin Texas, a place I have driven by but never actually stopped and check it out.  This city is pretty sweet, lots and lots of bike and triathlon stores.  I mean more then any other city I have been to. You can find a bike store on almost every other corner there.

In fact we stopped at Lance Armstrong’s bike store Mellow Johnny’s to check it out.

The store was sweet, I can for sure drop a ton of money here.  They carry basically all the stuff that sponsors Lance ie-Trek.  It is cool spot, very large, nice cafe and a bunch of cool bike accessories and clothing that I haven’t really spotted at other bike stores.  Of course tons of bikes and even some really sweet fixed gear rides.

Another really cool thing we just happen to spot while driving around the city is this sweet BMX dirt park, it is basically right in the middle of downtown.

Oh and if you ever find yourself in Austin check out the whole foods downtown, it is absolutely amazing!  I could live in there.

San Diego California
After Austin, both of us were getting pretty sick of being on the road, and really just wanting to get to our destination: San Diego.  The worst part about taking a road trip is not having a home to go relax in, after it is all over and done with.  After living on the boat, we were both ready to get to Socal and get settled into an apartment.  It took another two days of driving, but we finally made it.

After 8 months of traveling, getting back to the West never felt so good.

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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.

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I find it to be a very happy and sad day at the same time.  I’m glad to move off the boat and find a bigger spot to live, I’m sad because this adventure, that I had such high hopes for, is over.

The biggest question is where to go and live now!  I basically have been traveling for the last eight months and only have been staying put in a place, for a couple months at a time.  I now now I want to stay somewhere for maybe a whole YEAR!

Although there are some great things about Fort Lauderdale I know I do not what to live in Florida for a year, especially in the summertime, I won’t deal will with the high humidity and heat.  I find leaving Fort Lauderdale harder than I expected.

I have been all over Florida East coast and West coast, even all the way down the keys.  But for some reason through my life I have always bypassed Fort Lauderdale for Miami.  Therefor missing out what turns out to be one of my favorite spots in Florida.

FORT LAUDERDALE-THE CITY
Fort Lauderdale has a lot of the Florida feel to it-strip malls and traffic, but it also has some unique spots as well, that makes living there fun.

First you have Las Olas Blvd, if you ever plan living or even vising Fort Lauderdale this is the place to be close to. This is where all the restaurants, night life and shopping is.  It is a very high end area and most the restaurants are unique minus the cheesecake factory, which basically you can’t leave your front door anywhere without running into one now.  This street runs through Downtown Fort Lauderdale and all the way to the beach, it is a nice walk, plenty to do and look at.

BOATING
Fort Lauderdale itself is the yachting capital of America, if you like huge boats and small ones too, you will find this place very interesting  I don’t think I have ever seen so many multi-million dollar boats in one area before.  Fort Lauderdale is also known as the Venice of America because it has so many little waterways you can boat down through the city.

SPORTS
As far as thing to do there you have a lot of water sports, minus surfing (which people claim is possible, but I have yet to see much of it) also keep in mind kiteboarding is a wintertime sport there, the wind there in the summer isn’t strong enough.  Also surprisingly I found great trail riding at Markham Park 15 minutes south east of the city.  You have great running right by the beach and best of all there is an amazing Olympic size swimming pool facility there too.  If you our a triathlete you might find Fort Lauderdale a great wintertime training spot.

Here is an ariel shot of the Olympic swimming facility there are a couple lap pools and one deep water diving pool.  It is only 4 dollars a day to swim there.  They have had many Olympians swim and train here.  The pools are outside and very sweet!  Access to these pools almost make me want to stay living here.

BEACH
Finally the most important thing in Florida, the beaches.  I found Fort Lauderdale to be one of the nicest, cleanest and overall good looking beaches that I have been to in Florida.  There are palm trees all over and nice clean sand, much nicer than Miami beach in my opinion.  Another thing that makes the beach unique here is it isn’t all covered in rental condos like rest of the florida beaches are.  If you ever drive down to Miami beach then you know what I am talking about.  You can’t see the beaches there unless you get out of your car and walk behind the hotels and condos, which cover the beach front property.  I guess you can look at this as good or bad thing because in Fort Lauderdale the beach is closer to road so you will have traffic driving by, but it never bothered me.

So overall I found Fort Lauderdale a enjoyable place to live and visit.  Plenty to do and even if your an athlete you will find more then just jet skiing as an activity.  But like I said I’m starting to think about long term more then just a few months, which means it is time for me to move on and find a place I want to stay for awhile.

So I can only think of a couple places I would want to stay for more than a few months and they are all mostly on the West Coast……this means one thing to me, I have one long cross country drive to get started!

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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

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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!

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