Monday 29 September 2014

Pentangle ranch

Stayed with Bernard and Isobel for a week, helping them with their herd of buffalo and around the house. Didn't learn new skills but it was great to spend time with such lovely and interesting people. 


The hippie bus, sleeps up to 6 and has a kitchen and dining table!

A home with a view!
Off the grid with solar, wind and generator energy + wood boiler and propane heating systems
Bit of a buffalo theme going on
Spot the game of thrones cup



Friday 5 September 2014

Living in a van

Josh and I are nearing the end of a 4 month road trip through the USA and Canada now. Here are some things we learned about living in a van.

Type of car
We bought a GMC safari van. It's a good midway between space to live and fuel efficiency (it's a V6 engine). Anything larger than this (V8 engine) eats up your money as you drive, so unless you're taking a long time to do a short distance, this is a good way to go. 

In Canada you can drive cars until they break, so we had our van inspected before buying. It's from 1993 and has 330000kms on the body (and 140 000 on the engine) so an inspection was needed. 

Of course we did want a shortbus (old school busses are surprisingly cheap: 2000-3500$ only, but problems with range, crazy expensive on gas), a westfalia van (only 1980s and older for under 5000$, which means air cooled engines - good luck getting through the desert) or a delica (5000$ minimum), but those were just not viable.

We bought our van for 2500$ after it passed inspection with flying colors. We sold the back seat, got a free mantras to put in the back, made a bed frame and shelf out of wood and screws someone gave us, made seat covers and curtains out of a bed sheet and old pair of jeans and got a duvet and pillows for 5$ at a garage sale. We bought some bed sheets at ikea and we were ready to go. You can find anything you need on craigslist, often for free if you have some time to wait it out. 

The interior of the van
Curtains
We had tinted windows but curtains were still needed. It's really nice to know for sure that wherever you're parked, no one can see inside the van. Rather than installing a complicated railing system we attached them to the car with Velcro, which is easy to remove if anyone ever wants to use the van for other purposes. 

Keeping the mattress low
There's actually quite a lot of space in the back if you put the mattress close to the ground. A lot of people who convert their car raise the mattress and store their stuff underneath. The back can then only be used to sleep. We wanted to be able to sit and play music, read and hang out in the back as well, so we just moved our trek backpacks and guitars to the front seats every evening. It was about 10s of work and made it much easier to quickly get things out of our bags, since they weren't jammed under a wooden structure.

Seat bags 
These seat bags were very useful. There are a bunch of things you want to have within reach (shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrush, water bottle, headlamp, books etc), but there's no good place to put them where they won't move around or turn into a large pile of random stuff. These seat bags kept things (somewhat) organised.

A table
We didn't get around to building one, but we should have. A collapsible table is a very handy thing to have. The photo shows the back of our awesome German friend Chris' car, who was more organised than us and did make a table.

Tips and tricks
- Find free internet and electricity: at libraries, Starbucks, Mcdonalds, The old spaghetti factory, Jack in the box,... On airplane mode devices recharge about twice as fast.
- You can refil water bottles for free at most fast food places' fountain soda machines, just ask.
- If your car battery is dead and you can't find anyone with jumpsstart cables, call a taxi, they have cables.
- For showers we went to hot springs and swimming pools. These are generally much cheaper than campsites with showers or truck stop showers (the one we checked was 15$ per person), and they're much more fun too.
- Travel with another person or do ride shares (craigslist, carpooling.com, lyft,...) to split gas costs. For three-five people take a tent, keep one back seat in place + build an elevated fold away bed in the back. 
- Keep anything liquid in a plastic box in case of leaks.
- For tire and oil problems go to a Walmart with a car center. We had a leaking tire fixed + all our tires checked and pumped to ideal pressure in 30min and for 11$.
- Get your car battery checked and recharged for free before leaving at Canadian tire.
- Get battery powered lighting for the evenings to save the car battery. If you like to listen to the radio in the evenings get a battery powered one.
- Always have a few gallons of water in the car in case it breaks down (at least two per person when driving through the desert). 

Where to park
Park in places that no one is responsible for. Never park overnight in a mall or sports center parking lot or near schools, these places have security (you don't want to be woken up by a tow truck). Find places that allow free overnight parking (eg. Walmart, see below). Find nice, quiet residential areas and don't park right in front of a house (and try to find areas with no neighborhood watch program), next to a park or church or graveyard is better since no one really cares if you're there. Be very careful in large American cities, since good neighborhoods can be right next to dangerous ones. We went couchsurfing in large cities because we didn't want to risk it. In national parks either pay for camping, share a camping spot with others or park on private property (after agreeing with the owner obviously. This can be someone's parking spot or driveway. Because it's private property park staff can't stop you from doing that, even tough you "have to camp at a campsite").

The freedom of living in a van
It's great! You can leave on a trip without planning anything: you can choose the route as you go an hear about interesting places, there's no need to book anything ahead of time. You can go anywhere you want to go. You don't spend any time unpacking and packing. It's a very stress free way of traveling.

It really cuts your costs.
No accommodation costs. You can park overnight for free at many highway rest areas and Walmart parking lots. (See www.allstays.com for participating Walmarts). You can also park in most residential areas without a problem. The only place where we needed to pay to stay was inside national parks, where camping outside of campgrounds is forbidden (and checked rigorously). In large cities where we weren't sure if it was safe to sleep in the car we went couchsurfing (and in doing so met some great people). 
A typical Walmart parking lot in summertime.

It also cuts food costs since you can take a bunch of food with you so you don't rely on buying what's available. We had a shelf with food and supplies in the back of our van, and a cooler in the front. We did have to replace the ice in the cooler every two or so days, but since this is so common ice is available everywhere (any gas station or supermarket) and is cheap (about 2$ usually). 

Fuel in the USA is cheap (3.7$/gallon roughly, a gallon being almost 4L). It's a bit pricier in Oregon where drivers aren't trusted to pump their own fuel, so you're paying a bit extra for someone to do it for you (3.8-3.9$/gallon). The fuel in Canada is also relatively cheap compared to Europe but it's worth filling up before crossing the border.

Here are some more photos of our trip 


International banking

Here's a boring post for you.

When traveling and working your way around the world, you're likely to open a bunch of different bank accounts. When you leave a country, you want all your money on one account so you have a good overview, and to avoid accumulating banking fees.

International bank transfers are an absolute mess. Both banks need to be contacted, both banks charge a (steep!) fee (easily 20$ on either side regardless of the amount that is transferred, + sometimes a percentage on the total), and the procedure takes 10 or so business days. Old school.

The solution I've come up with (it's a workaround, there's probably an app out there that does this better) is this:
Create two paypal accounts (one for my Belgian bank, and one for the Canadian bank). Getting money on paypal or from paypal to a bank account costs nothing, transferring money between paypal accounts is cheap (5$ or so I think), the procedure takes a few business days.

Tadaa.

(Another money saving tip, if you officially earn less than about 10800$ per tax year in Canada you do not pay any taxes (I worked December - March, which split my income into two tax years). If you're a dollar over the limit you pay taxes on the full amount, so it can make a big difference).

Monday 1 September 2014

Burning man





I just got back from Black Rock City, a temporary experimental place built (and then destroyed) yearly by a large group of crazy, creative people. The city is in the Nevada desert, a rather inhospitable place plagued by extreme temperatures, mad dust storms and this year thunderstorms and hail. It is a flat, dead area - nothing lives there, no trees, no shrubs, not even mosquitoes or flies. The goal is to bring to life an ideal society for a while there, in the hope of having a lasting impact on those who took part in it.

Having seen many inspiring photos of the event online I had been looking forward to attending for years. 
I loved it.






















Total creative chaos
Black Rock City is a huge, chaotic place. There are just so many things going on everywhere, all the time. The event is growing each year, and so is the size of the city and the number of events, art cars, artworks, camps and so on. And everything is different by day and by night. It's overwhelming at first. I was a lot happier when I gave up on trying to see everything. The nice thing is that there is so much to do that you really can just wonder around and stop at different places as you go, there's no real need to plan anything. 

Participation
Everywhere you look there are chances to get involved, learn something, meet cool people, climb the art, express yourself. If you're standing in one spot for a little while odds are someone will come and talk to you, and maybe invite you to a workshop or a bar, or a walk around the place. Though most people come in groups, it's a very social festival and meeting new people is easy.

Makers
The thing that most impressed me was what amazing giant structures regular people manage to create for the event. Anyone can build something, and people spend years building the most amazing works of art, from burnable wooden structures to themed camps and art cars that transport people around the playa. I have no idea how people manage to transport some of this stuff to the desert. 
Even those who don't bring something for others to participate in often have amazing costumes and crazy decorated bikes, and many people give away food, drinks and homemade souvenirs too. 
The art changes each year (each year has a theme), so the festival is always different. 

Community
The atmosphere is great and people are generally wonderful to each other. There's a real feeling of community. Talking to strangers is the norm, and people don't seem to judge each other even though people tend to express themselves in extreme ways (mad costumes, mixed gender norms (eg. lots of guys in dresses), nudity, public displays of affection, etc. things that just wouldn't be acceptable in regular life, but that become normal after a day or two there). There's a feeling of openness and there aren't many taboos except for perhaps not expressing yourself extremely enough. There's also a taboo around being negative about burning man (people react to this as if it is blasphemy). I don't think that's healthy or helpful to the event. I think it's important to be able to constructively criticize anything to drive improvement. 

Order in chaos
The thing that ties the very random artworks and workshops together is the list of 10 burning man rules, which make up the core of the burning man culture. 
1. Radical inclusion (no one left behind)
2. Gifting (bring something to share)
3. Radical self expression (while respecting others)
4. Decommodification (no sponsors, it's about experiences, not stuff)
5. Radical self reliance (bring what you need to survive)
6. Communal effort (build and do things together)
7. Leave no trace (leave no rubbish, no stuff behind)
8. Civic responsibility (the law applies)
9. Participation (get involved)
10. Immediacy 

Taking a break
You're in the middle of the desert, there's nothing here for miles and miles. You're forced to take a break from buying things all the time (except for ice and coffee, your cash is now worthless), a break from Internet and phone reception and from comfort: it's usually too hot or too cold, sometimes to dusty to breathe and see well, there aren't really showers unless you built one, you need to deal with grey water since you're not allowed to just dump it on the ground, etc. I think taking a break from these kinds of things which are very much taken for granted is one of the big strengths of the event, and helps you to appreciate them more afterwards and see them differently.

The temple + spirituality
Besides the artwork of the man which is redesigned every year, a different temple is also constructed yearly. Burning man is not full of atheists: for many people coming here is a spiritual experience. There are lots of workshops on topics such as chakras, finding your spirit animal, yoga and other 'hippy-ish' new age spiritual subjects. I find most of those things too floaty, but I found the temple more interesting. It is a quiet retreat on the playa, with an atmosphere very much like a church minus the religion. People come here to work through their personal issues, and many do so by bringing items (I saw a guitar, a wedding dress, lots of photos of people who recently died, etc) to the temple and by writing things on the temple. The temple is then burned, and many people cry as it burns, while they symbolically let go of what they left inside.

Burning things
Something I didn't realize beforehand is that the burning of the man is just one of a few mayor burns. As I mentioned before, the temple is burned each year the day after the man burns. The man burn is a crazy energetic party (symbolizing freedom from the corporate world, more or less, people go nuts during this event. The man was stuffed with so much firework that at times it was impossible to see him for the light around him). The temple burn by contrast was almost completely quiet. Quite a few people in the party crowd leave black rock city after the man burns, so the event is also more intimate. As far as I know this year five other mayor artworks were also burned throughout the week, at different times of day and with very different atmospheres and meaning attached to each of them.

I wish...
Despite the many amazing things that happened, there were a few things that were disappointing to me and could be improved. 
- For more interest in ideas and learning VS partying and getting wasted/drugged out of your mind.
Lots of people come to the event to escape (for instance from the day job they don't like but Aldi dont want to quit). This one week a year means freedom, so when you go, you go all in. I thought more people would be there to learn new things and talk about interestvoet ideas, but many people deemoed to be there to enjoy, have fun and shut their minds off. That is a shame, since there's so much creativity there. It also makes the interaction between people generally more shallow. I did have some great conversations on the playa, but they were the exception. When talking to a particular burning man veteran (people who have been for many years in a row are refered to as veterans, in this case 14 years in total) about the lack of meaningful conversation, he suggested that it may be due to "the other two rules of burning man". He called these radical self absorption and radical self aggrandisement.
- For more diversity in people 
The audience was made up of mostly young white people from California, not an accurate representation of mankind. This also limits the scope of ideas to mostly one culture, which is not as interesting as having a greater mix.
- For less material gifts
The gifting ideal in its pure form is great: bring something to share, give without expecting anything back. Many people give food or drinks or useful or DIY crafting things, but lots of other people hand out gimmicky burning man branded souvenirs. That struck me as incredibly capitalist, where you will gather what you can because it is free, not because it is useful. I find it hard to imagine anyone wearing their many burning man necklaces, pins, tshirts, bandanas, etc. once they go back home, and try to be cautious about accumulating things that I want but dont need.

All in all burning man was great. 
The best way to experience it is to get involved early on with a project, and to volunteer during the event. That gives you much more ownership and pride in what has been made.
You can find whatever you want out there. The event really is what you make it. I think that's one of the reason so many people go back each year: to create the experience you want you need to understand the idea of burning man, and that probably gets easier in time.