Ang and I spent the past 12 years in Seattle. It was pretty swell. But now as I prepare to leave, packing the last few boxes in an empty apartment, it kinda feels like the past 12 years didn’t happen. Like I was Han Solo permafrosted er something. And all the working and traveling and friendships were just a dream.
There is an old SNL skit with Chris Farley as Matt Foley, a motivational speaker. To help kids from making poor life choices he warns them of the consequences, primarily that they will end up LIVING IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!
Nowadays, living in a van down by the river is a more worthwhile life goal for many, myself included. But instead of taking the “Vanlife” approach (ie living in a bonerific van and presumably, spending your days taking photos of your barefeet inside a van, looking out at a mountain) we are just moving out of our place. Instead of living/sleeping/cooking in a van, we are going to do those things in houses.
That is basically it. We moved out. The basic premise is that Seattle is an expensive city, and we can live in most places for the same or less on a short-term basis. I believe Seattle is a world-class city and truly enjoy it and the surrounding areas. The nature you can experience within a few hours drive really is pretty great. But yeah, 12 years. It’s a good round number and I think if it had been 13 years I would have stayed forever.
I really hate to use the term “Digital Nomad” – but that gives a reference point for what we are doing. I’ve seen some news articles using this term, but seems most are about ski bums or mountain climbers who moved to Utah. I prefer walking and riding bikes.
I would say we are just “traveling” but that’s not quite right since we are going to continue to work (remotely). So maybe digital nomad is fine.
Let’s talk about crunchies. And by crunchies I mean some sort of millipede type thing. We started calling them crunchies because when you inadvertently crush the shit out of one, they are kinda crunchy. This is odd, because they look very soft and wet when they’re crawling around.
So we when we first go to our place in Puerto Vallarta these guys were everywhere – mainly outside our place but also inside. After all, we are in tropical climate and it was hot and moist. Each morning we’d find a few of them on the wall, or in the shower, or on the floor. Sometimes they’d be diligently snaking up the wall, or maybe just gettin’ vertical (ie sticking to the wall motionless in a vertical line). Sometimes they’d be in the crunchy equivalent of the fetal position, a nice little circle type formation. So first thing in the morning we’d do a quick scan, and just sweep any rogue crunchies into the dustpan and toss ’em outside, hopeful they can live a life without being crushed by human feet.
One of the first nights here I awoke in the middle of the night and noticed something on the bed next to me, a dark circular thing. I picked it up – “What is this? A button?” I said to myself. But it was no button. It was a curled up crunchy. On another occasion one seemed to drop from the heavens above, cold and wet onto my arm. On both occasions I hastily threw the crunchy towards the wall, searched the bed for other arthropods and felt ghosts crawling on my skin until my paranoia subsided.
Anyway, these things are kinda gross to me, but now a month in we don’t see them so much anymore. I’m not sure why – maybe it is weather related. It cooled down a bit and hasn’t been raining as much. I’m no arthropod or weather expert. But regardless, I kinda miss them. Is it weird to talk to the crunchies you find around the house? “Hey crunchy! Where you goin’ bud?”
What about writing a song about them to the tune of “Do ya think I’m sexy?” by Rod Stewart? Is that strange? Ask Ang about that one.
Alas, our days weren’t all focused on crunchies. There were lizards too! We talk to them as well.
Went on a meandering, very wet hike down a river to a waterfall and swimmin’ hole.
Puerto Vallarta is a tourist town to be sure. We staid in the Romantic Zone, which is busy area by Muertos Beach with nice restaurants and what not. Go in a few blocks away from the beach and it feels more like “Mexican”, but near the beach you are constantly peddled all sorts of things. If you stay for a week, it’s no big deal – maybe you actually want to do one of the four things that are offered to tourists in PV (ATV, canopy tour, boat to an island, or tequila). After a month it gets a bit tiresome even to say “no gracias” every 2 minutes while on a walk.
We’d routinely take a long mid-day walk down the Malecón (a pedestrian walkway full of restaurants and shops that follow the beach for a few miles). Not that I expect any locals to remember me, but each day there’d be a guy selling temporary tattoos on the Malecón. He had a book of them, and the page was always open to the Batman logo (I’m considering it). But like clockwork, as soon as we got near him you’d hear “weed…coke…”. Coming back the other way a voice always seems to come out nowhere, and amid the hustle and bustle of noise and Spanish speaking it cuts through: “I got weed man.”
What makes a good beach? not having to say “no gracias” every two minutes is a good start.
So we established a bit of a routine. I was wondering what it’d be like to work in such a warm, lovely place as PV, and not be on vacation. But it worked out just fine. Around noon I typically take a break and go sit by the pool for a bit, and soak up some vitamin D. There were a few others in our building staying for a few months, so we had some non-lizard/arthropod company. And even on a bad day, after work I’m five minutes away from a beer on the beach. That’s my perspective.
It was very hot when we got here, and it took a bit to acclimate. Now I feel in pretty good shape. I find it far easier to be active when the sun is out and the weather is warm. And we have to climb a lot of stairs. Just to get out of our apartment is a 90 stair climb. And a few days a week I walk up the Mirador, a very high look out a few miles and several hundred stairs. Even when traveling and living nomadically routine is still nice. Sweep up the crunchies, do some work, sit by the pool, do some more work, climb up the mirador, drink a margarita, eat some tacos.
Taking pictures of ourselves at Mismaloya.
We are spoiled with sunshine and beaches here. Muertos beach is nearest to us and your really can’t beat walking five minutes to be in the sand and the ocean. Awesome sunsets. But it doesn’t have the greatest water and it can be a bit crowded. Go a few miles south though and you have more options. Conchas Chinas has a great little cove of aquamarine for swimming, Mismaloya is a nice, small beach nearly devoid of vendors selling jewelry, blankets, and grilled shrimps on sticks. Punta Negra is our favorite so far. Wide open flat sand, and nice smooth waves.
Stairs up to the mirador. Go up the stairs. Do some push ups. Do some pull ups. Get a good sweat going. Feel less like a piece of shit.
People ask us a lot about the food here. After all, it is Mexico. There is good food here. There a lot of great restaurants very close to us and we go out to eat or get takeout basically every day. Initially, we thought we’d do more cooking, but we adapted our lifestyle a bit.
In Seattle we cooked regularly, but I realize now just how spoiled we were there. I absolutely miss how easily we could pick up a perfect green, squiggly, head of kale, or arugula, spinach, etc. But obviously what you have access to here is going to be different. For instance, I haven’t yet found any peanut butter without hydrogenated oils. And yeah yeah, I’m sure some of you roll your eyes at that, but isn’t it more odd to have hydrogenated oil in peanut butter that just…peanuts? I digress…
Another oddity – a lot of supers here sell unpackaged Costco stuff. For some reason, a Kirkland brand jar of mixed nuts costs nearly $40, and interestingly, half the amount in an unmarked container costs exactly half. Shrug.
Some things are awesome (tortillas, salsas, papaya!), so we keep it pretty simple in the house, buying things at local “supers” just when we need it, and not stocking up in a traditional “American” grocery sense. Ultimately it turned out not to be worth our time to take trips to the grocery store (nothing very close by, and we have no car).
Top of the mirador. Give thanks to the Jesus and telecommunications.
The other thing is our kitchen is not awesome. Just a microwave and a four burner gas stovetop (no oven). Also, the sink is at such a strange angle, you really have to wedge yourself in this little corner nook to be able to do dishes. I’m no architect, but it seems like a curious choice to me.
Long story short (too late), considering the lower cost of things here, the amount of time we save not cooking, and also the need to force ourselves to get out of the house, going out for food has been a highlight of our time here. The other day we went to a local brewery and had four draft beers (total) and a plate of fries for about $12 as an example. I’m sure once we get back to the states we’ll taper off our dining out, but for now I’m enjoying the cheap tacos and beer. Though totally missing good beer (again, very spoiled in Seattle).
View to the east from the mirador. Effin’ jungle n’ shit.
We did manage to get what I call the BIG D a few times. Now, throughout my travels I’ve gotten sick in a variety of foreign countries, including Czech Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Thailand, and India. Maybe I’ll write a separate post on that – anyone interested in few thousand words about diarrhea? I’m not joking. Anyway, what I got here was relatively mild. I’ve been to PV five times, and this is the first time I’ve gotten sick. And it wasn’t even from eating anything exciting. I’ve “rolled the dice” countless times, so to speak, and been fine, so this time around it was even lamer. My guess here is some produce we bought that we didn’t wash well enough, and some jalapenos at a restaurant.
On the bright side – a consistent regiment of stair climbing and the big D will help you get those six pack abs you’ve always dreamed about.
Northeast view from the mirador. PV has a variety of fancy new buildings and decrepit weird structures in strange places.
Dia de Los Muertos happened while we were here. I bought a tall can of Victoria at the OXXO and walked around and snapped some photos. Then I ate a corn dog from a street vendor.
Now, the thing with corndogs is that there is very little middle ground. They are either awesome or terrible. I knew the odds were 50/50 in this case. On the one hand, the corn dog was sitting, stick down in a holder, side by side with a few other corn dogs in the open air for an indeterminable amount of time. Could have been a few minutes, could have been a few days. But hey, its a goddamned corndog am I right?
This was a cooked corn dog, and being an experienced connoisseur of corn dogs, I knew that there was a chance this was just a display model. After all, there was a nearby pot of hot oil, in a full rolling boil. So maybe there was a slim chance there would be a freshly dipped and cooked corny in my future. This wasn’t the case of course, the corn dog on display was indeed the one I’d get. And honestly it looked good. This is why I wanted to eat it. A crunchy hand dipped corny with maybe a bit of catsup and mustard, that’s good eatin’s in my book.
To freshen it up, the vendor did another dip in the oil. Oh – good idea I thought, crisp it up a bit, why not. But then it was in the oil for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time. So it was hot, but not to be too anticlimactic here, although it looked incredibly crispy golden brown, it was somehow soft and mushy, and frankly, not very good.
Dia de los Muertos cowboys. and people holding up their black mirrors to absorb something or another. I don’t know how legit of cowboys these guys really were, but they genuinely seemed to be having fun, which made me smile.
Similarly, there is a bakery in the Romantic Zone that has AMAZING looking bakeries. We now call it the Fakery. You go in, grab a tray, some tongs, and select whatever weird looking and colorful pastry type things they have available. And for an average American, they cost virtually nothing, which makes them even more delicious looking.
Then we ate some of the things, and they were very underwhelming. I don’t mean this in a “I’ve been to France and I know what good bakery is” type of way. I’m a guy who loves corn dogs and Penguinos (Mexican equivalent of Hostess Cupcakes), so don’t think I’m being pretentious here. Again – these things looked awesome. So we just chalked it up to the fact that it was late in the evening, so maybe they just weren’t so fresh.
We tried again another day in the morning – surely they must be better. There were even more items and they looked – and smelled, great. But again, they did not taste good. And again, not to be hypercritical of the bakery, I just don’t understand how something could look so good and taste so bad. Truly mysterious. Fakery.
Walked around the Malecón and snapped photos of random things. When you put something insignificant in frame it seems interesting, even when the surrounding area is just a mess of people.
So far our decision to pack up and live nomadically been a good one. While only a month in, things have gone basically gone the way I thought they would.
Every day isn’t some magnificent adventure. After all, work is still work wherever you are. Warm weather and sunshine don’t make a desk job suddenly awesome. However, I haven’t worn pants in a month, and that is awesome.
I mean, how do you get these things home if you don’t sell them? Are you inflating/deflating them all? Do you have some sort of garage to keep them in?
This probably sounds dumb, but a few days after we arrived in Puerto Vallarta, after we had been around town, gone to the beach, had 2×1 margaritas etc., I had this worry about getting bored. Like two months of this – perfect weather and laid back beach living would be too much to handle. Because after all, if you have beach access Monday through Friday, what do your weekends look like?
Mexico City is a short, cheap flight from PV, so we decided to take a long weekend and “get out of town”, so to speak. Ang had never been there (I had been just once) so the prospect of getting back in to “travel mode” for a bit was appealing.
View from the Castillo de Chapultepec, I thought these were all big fist pillars, but I guess they aren’t quite that cool.
I would challenge you to find someone who has visited Mexico City and doesn’t think it is awesome. That said, my experience has been that people who visit Mexico City are also those that would tend to think it is awesome… Most Americans who have been to “Mexico” mean Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, and the idea of going to Mexico and NOT going to beach town simply doesn’t compute.
“Why do I have such a headache? is it the pollution?” you ask yourself when you arrive, but then you realize Mexico City is at ~7,300 feet elevation. I didn’t realize this the first time I went, and when you are there you really have no concept you are so high in the air, no mountain vistas, just the altitude headache.
Facing the other direction from the Castillo de Chapultepec. A little green park in the middle of extreme vastness of city.
If on a short trip to Mexico City, I really don’t think you can go wrong. Walk around, look at stuff, eat tacos, go to an art gallery. Everywhere you go there is something great, and the city simply never ends.
Random pic from the Zocalo.
As great as the city is, the highlight of our trip was the temazcal. This is a pre-Hispanic sweat lodge type of ceremony, and entering it serves as a sort of rebirth. As I was just about to have my 40th birthday this seemed appropriate.
We were driven to a small patch of green nestled in the city limits. Mexico City is a never ending expanse of cement and the little nature preserve we entered seemed miles away. Here were some gardens, greenhouses, things for beekeeping and what not. The main attraction here is the sweat lodge of course, which looks like a giant clay pizza oven half buried in the ground.
If getting a good sweat in a pitch black oven heated by hot volcanic stones while guided by a shaman sounds good to you, I would highly recommend it!
Regardless of your taste in movies, I think we all can agree that Total Recall is one of the best five or ten films ever made. Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 masterpiece elevated gratuitous violence into high art, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s portrayal of Quaid/Howser will surely stand the test of time.
A good amount of Total Recall was filmed in Mexico City, so I felt obligated to check out some of the locations. Maybe I’d even have the chance to reenact a chase scene through a crowded subway station where I use an innocent bystander as a human shield, and then throw his bullet-ridden corpse 15 feet down an escalator on top of my uzi-wielding pursuers.
One of the entrances to the Chabacano subway station. I’m pretty sure they shot some Total Recall exterior shots here. You just have to imagine it clean, unpainted, and empty. And 30 years younger.
This is actually the second Total Recall filming location I’ve visited, the other being Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada where they filmed some of the Mars scenes. (Link to some photos/videos of that trip to be inserted here sometime in the future :)).
Total Recall is set in the year 2084. Apparently director Paul Verhoeven had wanted to film the movie in Houston (which looks very futuristic and was the set of his other masterpiece of violence Robocop), but it was too expensive, so they went to Mexico City (insert Google search for Total Recall internet research).
One of the many stairwells/escalators in the subway station. The signs, though in Spanish still have the same font and style as you see in the movie.
When you watch the movie, it does look futuristic. Clean, smooth, cement seems and fresh silver subway cars have that effect. But this movie was filmed over thirty years ago. So while I could get a sense of it being the same place the movie was shot, it was just as interesting as an exploration of time and aging buildings. Here you get to see what cement structures having been used non-stop by millions of people for 30+ years looks like. The subway cars were the same too, but they are painted now, and also just really old and grimy.
A view from one of the subway tracks. I only wish I could have ran alongside a moving train, smash a window and jump inside like Quaid/Howser.
Ultimately, I wasn’t able to reenact any scenes to great effect. The main issue was just how crazy the subway stations were. This is one of the largest cities in the world and every station and every subway car was absolutely packed with people at all times. The stations themselves are massive, with tons of staircases, escalators, and winding walkways. There really isn’t a single place you can just stop walking and stand comfortably for a moment to compare historic photos from the movie.
My instinct to go straight into “travel mode”, as I like to call it–that instinct to simply go outside and walk and see things in a new place, was very strong when we got to New Orleans.
So I went outside and walked around and looked at things. I looked at the map, saw where “things” were, and walked over there. I did this a lot, walking in every direction from our place and covering a good amount of the city over the course of a month. I’m kinda like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, always looking for “more input”.
St. Louis Cemetery #1. Famous scene from Easy Rider. Go get a tour from Casey – he’s great. He’ll tell you all about Nick Cage’s sweet pyramid tomb too.
We stayed in the Uptown area of New Orleans, which is nice and hipstery; lots of restaurants and bars, coffee, shops, and stuff like that. You can head east-ish down Magazine street for miles of things until you hit the French Quarter, Frenchman Street, and then the Bywater. And there is cool stuff everywhere. But then, there is only so much you can eat and drink, and only so far you can walk before the miles start adding up and your old feet start getting sore. So then you take the bus to get to places further afield. But waiting for the bus gets old fast man, but you don’t want to spend $20 on an Uber every time you want to go four miles, so your travel mode walking starts to slow down to a whimper after a month of this.
Hey Ang, go stand in front of that building.
New Orleans is a great city, I would say universally loved. Lots of tourists, like us. I’m fairly certain you, or someone you know, has said the words “I love New Orleans” and can give you a recommendation for a specific bar, or restaurant, or place to see live music. I’m sure they are all good recommendations. There are few places better to “walk around and drink some more“. Get a sweet frozen drink in a plastic cup, walk around the French Quarter, look at the architecture, cross Bourbon street and see a lot of people drinking a lot.
Walking past Bourbon on the Friday before Christmas was pretty gnarly, almost a shock to the system to see such a loud street with so many people collected and drinking, generic blues music. For me, there are many more interesting (and quieter) streets to wander with a beer in tow.
According to some post on the internet this is the House of the Rising Sun.
Getting drinks to go really is a great thing. You can get drinks anywhere and walk around with them outside. I know this is obvious when you think of French Quarter, slushie drinks or whatever. But you can also just go to the bakery down the street, get a kick ass pastry, and a Bloody Mary to go in a plastic cup with a straw.
Looked at this and then went and had a beer.
At one point we walked past the French Market and there was a small band playing Hit the Road Jack outside. Nice rendition for sure, we didn’t stop, but enjoyable to hear some music out in the open air you-know-what-I-mean? Anyway, I noticed this guy filming basically the entire thing on his phone, which of course, you always see, all the time. Now, I was thinking, dood, put the phone down and just listen to the music maaaan, enjoy your day! But then I thought, if a random guy playing Hit the Road Jack at four in the afternoon on a Thursday is so mind-blowing that you are compelled to film the performance in its entirety, maybe you have to do it? I mean, maybe the guy showed the video to his friend, and his friend said “HOLY FUCKING SHIT! IS THAT HIT THE ROAD JACK???“
This is the third time I’ve been to New Orleans in my life, so I’ve seen a good cross-section of the tourist areas like French Quarter, Frenchman, been to the WWII museum (probably one of the world’s best military museums by the way), also – the site of the battle of New Orleans for you War of 1812 buffs out there. So this time around I just wanted check out the city more broadly, be outside, and get a sense of what it is like to live there. So yeah, a lot of walking and looking at things, parks, and stuff.
Observed the mighty Mississip’. I’m not sure most people realize how effin’ big this river is. It’s like a non-stop giant lake that goes on forever.
That boat is also massive.
I felt compelled to visit the Tabasco factory on Avery Island since we were in the area. I got hooked on the sauce in the “war”. My first real exposure to hot sauce, and southern food, was when I went to Fort Jackson South Carolina for basic training. It was a novel thing for me to see Crystal or Texas Pete on the tables in the chow halls. So you put a little on yer eggs, in yer grits, whatever. Then you eat a shitload of MREs and they all have little bottles of Tabasco in ’em. And the hamsteak tastes like shit so you put the sauce on. The boneless porkchop ain’t so bad but you put Tabasco on it anyway. Speaking of MREs I saw a lady in Nola walking around with a little purse made out of an old MRE bag. Hey that’s kinda neat I said to myself.
The Tabasco Estate has a nice swampy park that’d be great for gators to just hang out like the weird old dinosaurs they are.
Nowadays there are a million hot sauces, but I always find myself coming back to Tabasco as a staple. The key is the fermentation process, it gives it that sweet sweet funk. Try the Family Reserve – aged eight years and made with white wine vinegar, good stuff maynard.
Drove down from Seattle to Sebastopol in Sonoma County, California. Packed up the car with all our stuff (minus a storage room of other stuff) and headed south. This place is surrounded by vineyards and close to the ocean, so we drank wine and went to the ocean.
It was nice to get back on the bikes after a long lay off. Great bike trails here and only the occasional “super busy highway that is terrifying to try and cross” thrown in for good measure. Oh and tons of places to drink wine and beer of course.
Ang had a birthday while we were here so she had the idea to visit a new winery every day. But as it turns out, that is way too much wine. We managed to visit a few. We rode our bikes, sat outside and drank wine while overlooking the vineyards. Not much else to say, it’s pretty great.
Shout out to Rosalyn at Fog Crest winery. Very good wine and a most gracious host.
On the weekend we went out to Bodega Bay. Very high level of beauty in this area. Walked around and then ate some fish tacos and crab sandwiches. It’s swell.
Bodega Bay. Fun fact – hiking through sand dunes is exhausting.
Drank some beer here too. We were staying in the Russian River Valley. My main point of reference for the area was Russian River brewing. I was pleased to be finding Pliny the Elder in basically everywhere beer was sold. The brewpub is in Santa Rosa, so Ang and I took a nice bike ride there down the Joe Rodota trail.
If you’re my age and drink “craft” beer you no doubt have heard of Pliny the Elder. This is one of the most famous IPAs. This has been around since before there were twenty microbreweries in every city in the U.S. and thousands of IPAs. I remember when I first starting getting into IPA the most well-known ones (for me) were basically all from California – Lagunitas, Green Flash, Ballast Point Sculpin, and Michigan’s Bell’s Two Hearted. But Pliny was more mythical. I remember people talking about it a lot with reverence. And one time I was at Brouwer’s in Seattle and they got a keg of it. There was a line of doods around the bar waiting for it to be tapped. So that went pretty quickly. I wasn’t buying into the hype as much because, why would I wait for one beer when there are like 40 others ready on tap.
So I was thinking of this as we went to the brewery, having the chance to drink the beer on draft, from the source, abundant. I drank the beer with a great satisfaction.
The colors, man.
I mean look at ’em.
The wind blasted grasses hangin’ on for dear life to the sand, soft like a little baby harp seal.
Two weeks in Sonoma County felt like too little. It really is wonderful. From a traveling perspective, two weeks was probably enough. Our place was great, but small. This is where noise cancelling headphones come in handy when you have two people working at the same kitchen table (love you Ang!).
For a person from a non-lemon growing state, lemon trees are endlessly fascinating to me. I mean, you got lemons growing in your backyard.
Walking down the beach – awesome. Nice firm sand, warm sun, cool breeze. Then you turn left to a trail and it is loose sand dunes. Really more of a horse trail I guess. Man that’s tiring. Yeah, shoulda gone back on the beach.
