more normal than not

Hah!!

A couple of days of “theme” posts….water, land….trees….what else?

I don’t know.

Four days shouldn’t be that hard to review, though.

How about….living on a boat?

That’s something that I haven’t fantasized about…..

So….how about living on a boat?

Nobody talked about UV ray exposure and the Vikings….so maybe a little non-Viking Norwegian could get away with spending a lot of time out in the sun?

Maybe things are different now?

Maybe I’d need to cover my body in furs to survive it all?

Get one of those helmets with the horns on either side?

It sounds like overkill….kind of uncomfortable.

These guys don’t dress like that.

A boat, though, might be kind of cool.

I should probably stop “Walter Mitty….ing” and just keep building stuff here.

Another great film from faircompanies.com!

Thanks, Kirsten Dirksen!

Here’s the description from her site…..

When Canada’s top-ranked whitewater kayaker Ben Hayward (vanstarter.com) decided to pursue his Olympic dream, he began a life on the road racing in Europe. To afford this itinerant lifestyle, he crafted a 72-square-foot wooden home on the back of a flatbed truck, dubbing it the “Hobbit Van” for it’s big, round door and butterfly-style windows.

Hayward, and a friend from Wales, worked “7 straight days to source, insure, design, and construct every component for a homemade demountable camper”. His new home cost him 9,500 Canadian dollars (about $7,300 U.S.): $2000 for the truck, $1500 for the wood and $6000 dollars for the appliances, solar panels and wind turbine.

The insurance was an additional $3000. “After buying the truck the first thing I did was spend 3 days trying to insure the thing. It was incredibly difficult to insure a crazy, wacky vehicle for a non-resident of the UK, especially because this was my first car I’ve ever bought, I have no driving record whatsoever.”

With only a small nest egg, Hayward raised most of the funds through crowdfunding on his site vanstarter.com (he continues to solicit donations to cover living expenses).

The tiny space was an easy fit for Hayward. “I live out of a suitcase so much of the year so I’ve been kind of doing this for a long time. For many years prior to this I was really trying to figure out what are the bare essentials that I need while I’m over in Europe for a month or two months at a time. I was like well I’ve got my bare essentials suitcase, it was really an additive process rather than a subtractive process.” Now when Hayward is back home in Canada he says he misses his house on wheels

I need to figure out how to crowdsource, though…..

If I could figure out how to get people to support me in my wacky ideas, I could really have a good time….

Wait!! Isn’t that kind of what my parents did for a bunch of years?

I think it is.

I got called back to the Post Office today to take a late express package out for delivery.

It was one that came in late….so I didn’t find out about it until I got the call at 12:45.

Express packages have to be delivered by 3:00.

That’s a bugger.

I took it with me on the second half of the route….and by diverting a little on my line of travel, I was able to get it there in time.

It was kind of heavy…..packed in one of our flat rate boxes….insured for $90.00.

I don’t know how they came up with the $90.00 part.

It was only when I was talking to the recipient of the package (about how Netflix wasn’t a good company anymore) that I noticed the sticker on the side of the package that said that it contained cremated remains….ashes.

That’s weird.

I think that it was the first one of those that I’d delivered.

I wonder if I’ll get mailed somewhere….someday?

That’s a cheap way to travel across the country….but I think that I can wait awhile to enjoy that kind of trip.

It’s surprising how much a person can weigh….even if they’re only ashes.

This is what our life looks like.

No, really….our life looks like this….fashionable.

No, not really.

I was just kidding.

We have our own style.

We tried out the simple life because we wanted to “try tiny”.

Tiny is so fashionable.

Tiny is cute.

I think that when you take it as far in one direction as you can go….when you’re as rich as Midas….it’s fun to reverse direction and try “tiny”.

Awwwww, who am I kidding?

This is kind of cool.

I guess that it’s kind of cool.

This reminds me of the one time I went to Santa Barbara.

I ate at a Japanese restaurant with my friends and these hipsters came in with their child.

I think that the child was about two or so….and probably had a black beret and was dressed all in black.

He was color coördinated with his parents….who were dressed all in black, too.

They were cool.

They looked HIP.

Midway through their meal, he projectile vomited all over the tatami mats.

I remember thinking, “that’s not so cool”.

These people remind me of those people.

I guess that it takes all kinds of people in the world….to make the world go around.

This didn’t teach me anything about traveling with kids.