I’m not cut out for these series. I write a couple posts and then start wanting to write about other stuff, but I’m already locked in. Anyway, this is post three of the Living in a Small RV series, coming live from my RV on the side of the road in Austin, TX.

Plumbing

There are three tanks on an RV. Fresh, grey, and black. The freshwater is your water source to be used for showering, washing, and even drinking if you don’t mind your water being a bit plasticky.

Grey is usually for the shower and sinks, and black is for the toilet. In my RV, for no good reason that I can deduce, the shower drains into the black tank.

On a SMALL RV like mine these tanks will last about a week between fills. Judicious use of public bathrooms and sponge-bathing rather than showering can get you a lot longer than that.

To drain and refill your tanks you just go to any RV park OR some rest stops OR most truck stops OR free public dump sites. Prices range from free to $15, with most places being $5 or less.

The actual process is oddly enjoyable. You hook one hose up and first dump the black water through it. Then you release the grey water valve which also acts as a cleaner for the valve and hose. Unhook the hose and give it a quick rinse and you’re good to go. No mess to deal with.

A normal hose hooks up to the water tank and fills it up easily. On the inside are gauges that tell you the status of your tanks, but toilet paper routinely sticks to the sensors of the black tank and screws up the readings.

RVs have either a propane or electric water heater. Mine has electric, which is terrible. Right now it’s hot enough that I don’t need a water heater, but I may have to run the generator to shower in the winter. I’ve also heard of people heating water on the stove and sponge-bathing with it.

Parking

Parking seems really difficult until you actually look for it, and then it’s easy to find everywhere. Getting an RV that’s around 22 feet makes it possible to parallel park or park in any normal spot. Any longer and that and you’re running the risk of getting keyed because you’ve screwed up the parking situation for other people.

You’d be surprised how many places you can park for free, usually for 72 hours or so. Basically anywhere that doesn’t say you can’t. This even includes prime downtown spots during the weekend. Sometimes I wish I still went downtown just because I could park directly in front of the clubs.

The best areas are the ones that are residential but near downtown, or better is mixed commercial and residential. In those areas the residents probably aren’t so paranoid about who is parking on the street.

Again, good to have a nice looking small RV so that you aren’t an eyesore.

I park about a mile and a half from the center of downtown, one street off of the main eclectic restauraunt / coffeeshop street. On that street are a couple condo buildings, a restaurant, a small office building, a private elementary school, and a theater.

You can basically ignore the 72 hour rule as long as your neighbors like you. Police probably won’t enforce it. When I was programming a lot I holed myself up in the RV and parked for a week at a time. Even if you do have to move, just a few feet is usually okay.

When you’re traveling you can park in Wal Marts or rest stops.

The one thing to know about parking is that you have to be relatively level if you want the fridge to work. You can buy levels or blocks to level if you want to get fancy, or you can use a tip that an RV park manager gave me. Just find a level spot.

Because the road contours to the outside I usually have my back tire against the curb and my front tire a foot and a half away from the curb. That’s enough for the fridge.

Cooking

I’ll admit that I do almost no cooking in the RV. I’ve done a bit, though, so I’ll share what I know.

Fridges can be powered in two or three ways, depending on the model: battery, AC power, or propane.

Battery is terribly inefficient and can’t get very cool. I’m not sure when the prudent time to use it would be. Maybe if you didn’t use all of the electricity you generate and were driving around with the AC on.

AC power is great, but it’s obviously impractical to run the generator 24/7.

Propane is a miracle. I have a very tenuous grasp on how a small flame chills the fridge down to 37 degrees, but it does, and it does it using very little propane. Maybe $5 a week at most in the summer.

RVs come with microwaves, which I hate and never use. They can only run on AC power.

They also have propane stoves, which are great. Mine has a two burner which you light manually. Just like a normal stove you can adjust the flame and all that.

Some bigger RVs have ovens, but neither of mine have. I used to have a Panasonic Light Oven in my old one, and would just run the generator for a few minutes while I toasted my veggie burger or heated up soup in a makeshift tin foil bowl (don’t need to wash anything!)

Technology

Internet is a must! Not much to say here, except that you get a wireless connection card from any of the major providers. It will run you $60/month for essentially unlimited bandwidth.

It’s more expensive than your cable and also slower, but hey… it’s as fast as decent DSL and it’s your only bill that will increase over living like a normal person.

To charge things, you buy either the car charger or the USB chargers and get car -> USB adapter. I got one with two sockets so I can charge two things at once.

I don’t watch TV, but these things are pretty well equipped. Mine has a huge crank-up antenna that would probably work for HD reception, although I’m not totally sure. Then again, every show you want to watch is also available online, and that’s a lot better.

Staying Warm

Not everyone lives in this sauna that we call Texas. In fact, rumor has it that some people even live north of Kentucky. For those people, heat might be equally or more important that air conditioning.

RVs come equipped with a forced air furnace. The battery blows air through a heating element that’s heated by propane. The bad news is that this thing drains the battery like crazy, making it useless for long stretches.

Fortunately, there’s a miracle product called the Olympian Wave. it uses NO battery, barely uses any propane, and the smallest one can keep a small RV 20 degrees warmer than outside. I’ll be getting the next biggest one which has double the BTUs.

The installation is super easy and no permanent modifications have to be made to the RV. Just tap into a propane line and let her go.

Best method, I hear, is to set the forced air thermostat for 50 degrees so that if things get too chilly it will keep you at 50, but the Olympian can do most of the work.

Pictures

I know you guys want pictures of all this stuff. Maybe I’ll make a little video of my RV so that you can see all the stuff I’m talking about. Rialtas have retractable bathrooms, which are really neat as well.

I think this is all I have to say about living in an RV for now, but if you have any questions, I’ll answer them all in the comments.

This is a continuation of the Living in a Small RV series. It will be a bit boring for anyone who isn’t interested in solar power, but I wanted to write it like this because I had a tough time finding all of this information tied together.

There are two classes of devices in an RV that need electricity, AC and DC. The DC ones run off the battery and these include things like lights, the water pump, the vent fan(s), and anything you can plug into a 12v socket.

The AC ones are primarily the air conditioner and the microwave. They get their power from either plugging the RV in to a campsite or 120v socket at a house or by running the generator.

The generator uses gas (somewhere between half and a full gallon per hour) from the main tank. Because the generator is too loud and costly to run all the time, I almost never use mine. As a result I never use the air conditioner, favoring a vent fan that pulls air through the windows and uses very little electricity.

A quick primer on electricity which will be focused more on practical application that scientific accuracy:

Think of Watt-hours as a bucket of electricity, and Watts as a hole in the bucket.

For example, my batteries store roughly 2400 watt-hours. That means that I can run a 24 watt light bulb for 100 hours. Or I could run a 200 watt TV for 12 hours.

Amps are just Watts divided by volts. So on a 12v system like all RV DC systems (as opposed to the 120v AC system), 1 amp is equal to 12w.

The best way to work with these numbers is to just multiply amps by volts and work in watts.

You can only store DC power in the battery, not AC power, so if you want to power on of your AC appliances, you need to get an inverter, which just converts DC to AC.

The problem, though, is that devices designed for AC power tend to use a lot of watts since AC power is usually so plentiful. For example, I could only run my air conditioner for about an hour and a half on a full charge IF I had a really expensive high wattage inverter.

Here’s a rough breakdown of wattage:

• Laptop when charging an empty battery - 60w
• Laptop when not charging battery - 20w
• Light bulb - 20w
• Water Pump (for showers, sink, toilet) - 50w (only when actively being used)
• Vent fan - 12 - 35w (depending on speed)

So, just for fun (and because we’ll need it in the next section), let’s see how much electricity I use in a day.

I usually have one light on usually from 10pm to 3am. That’s five hours times 20w. 100 watt-hours.

I have my laptop on for that same amount of time, which is another 100Wh.

The fan is on for 11 hours a day on low and 13 on medium. 130+285 = 415Wh.

Half an hour for the water pump. 25Wh.

The laptop is plugged in for about 6 hours, so that’s another 120Wh.

If we add that all up, I use about 760Wh per day.

How do I get that power? Hmm….

Solar Power

I could run my generator for a short period of time every day. Or if I drove a lot the batteries would just charge from the inverter on the car (the same system that powers your headlights).

But… I prefer to not have to use gas and to have my electricity just magically regenerate itself.

And that’s where the miracle of solar comes in. In an average day in Texas we get an average of 5 hours of full sunlight. That means maybe we get 1 full hour, two half hours, four quarter hours, etc, since the sun is only directly above us for a short period of time. If you live much farther north, you can count on 3.5-4 hours of sunlight.

You can get all sorts of solar panels, ranging from 1 watt to about 225 watts, which is the amount of watt-hours they generate in one hour. Anything more than that and you start having to get two panels and chain them together (which is very easy to do if you need that much power).

So in a five hour day a 1 watt panel can make 5 watt-hours of electricity, which is totally useless. A 225 watt panel can make 1125 watt-hours of electricity.

I need 760 watt-hours of electricity per day, so I need at least a 156 watt panel.

But… 156 watts isn’t going to cut it. It’s important to have excess capacity so that you can save electricity for cloudy days or for days where you use more than expected. There are also a bunch of sensors and stuff that run from the battery and some inefficiency in charging the battery which increase the actual daily requirement.

I went with a 200 watt panel. Maybe a 180 watt panel would have been enough, but I’d rather overdo it than find myself running out of power.

You can’t just hook a solar panel directly up to a battery, though. A 12v panel can actually put out up to 17v in sunlight, which is way too much for a battery.  Instead you buy a charge controller which regulates the charge.

There are a few different kinds of solar controllers, but the best ones to buy are the ones that have MPPT technology. The regular kind are fairly inefficient, especially during the winter, so you get up to 30% more power for using MPPT. For a more detailed and technical explanation, read about MPPT here

Of course, unless you’re only going to use power while it’s sunny out, then you’ll need a battery (or two) to store the charge. You generally want to buy a battery that has twice the capacity of your daily solar output. This is for two reasons.

1. Frequently discharging a battery below 50% will decrease it’s usable life.
2. You want to be able to store extra power as a reserve.

Batteries are rated in amp-hours, which are basically just watt-hours divided by 12. In my case I generate 1000 watt-hours per day, so I need approximately 2000 watt-hours of capacity. Divided by twelve to make amp-hours, that’s 166Ah. Luckily my RV came with two batteries that total 180Ah, so I was all set. Since I also use my RV as my car, I can actually use that extra capacity because the batteries charge as I drive.

When I first bought an RV to live in last year a lot of people thought that it was a phase I would quickly snap out of. Part of me thought the same thing. Would a move from a 2000 square foot condo to a 100 square foot RV be bearable?

As it turned out, it was more than bearable. I loved it. When I left the country to travel, I sold everything including the RV I loved so much. Seven months later, back in Austin and faced with the proposition of finding somewhere to live, the decision was simple.

I wanted another RV, and it had to be even smaller.

This series is going to be about why I decided to live in an RV, what it’s really like on a day to day basis, and some tips and ideas for other people who might want to try it themselves.

Most RV owners don’t actually live in their RVs, and those who do usually stay in an RV park. I park on the side of the road, totally disconnected from any sort of outside support. This article is for people who are interested in this particular arrangement.

Which RV?

I have a 1996 Winnebago Rialta. I researched virtually every brand and model and decided that this was by far the best RV available.

It’s very small. A regulation parking space is 19′, and this baby is only 20′8″. That means that unless a spot is very tight, I can probably park in it. The RV doubles as my car, and I can park it almost anywhere, including parallel parking it downtown. In 1997 the RV grew by nine inches.

Having a small RV also makes it a lot easier to park overnight wherever you want without making a scene.

It’s very fuel efficient. On the highway it gets around 20mpg.

It has the perfect layout, including a full time bed with a real mattress and a table big enough for my laptop and dinner.

Winnebago, the manufacturer, is one of the best RV makers, so the whole thing is very high quality.

It is one of the smallest RVs that has a full usable shower, toilet, stove, generator, and fridge. In fact, if I were to sum up all of the reasons this is the best RV (for me anyway), it would be that it is the smallest RV that fits my basic needs for comfortable living.

Do not buy a bigger RV than you absolutely need.

Why live in an RV?

I can think of about a billion great reasons to live in an RV, but I’ll just cover some of the biggest ones and then move on.

Maybe most important, it forces you to live a simple life and focus on what’s really important. You can’t waste your time looking for a great armoire because you have nowhere to put that armoire.

Who needs armoires anyway? They’re a symbol of what’s wrong in the world, if you ask me.

When I bought my first house it never occurred to me that I would need to furnish it. A good portion of my time and money was spent furnishing that house. Lamps, rugs, tables, chairs, couches, beds, art, plants.

More time was spent maintaining it. Mowing the lawn, cleaning the gutters, shampooing the carpet, cleaning out the fridge.

Think about that for a minute. I bought this house to live in, and then spent a good part of my life working on the house. A lot of this was fun, of course, but at the end of the day it was a self perpetuating cycle.

An RV can’t hold your junk. It doesn’t have the room. You don’t remodel it. If you want to move then you put it in drive. You have no bills to pay. No rent.

Even though you have less stuff, you always have it all with you. Your files are with you, your clothes, your computer, your bed, and your bathroom. You never stop home on your way somewhere, because you’re always home.

It takes about 5-10 minutes to exhaustively clean up your whole RV.

You’re ready for any activity. You can take a quick shower if you need one. You can have a snack.

When you go on vacation, your bedroom comes with you.

it’s also fun. It feels like an adventure. Remember the feeling of camping in the woods as a kid? It sort of feels like that when you sleep with a breeze coming through the screen window at night.

It’s also way cheaper, of course, than living anywhere else. Once you buy the RV you know that you have a place to live no matter what. That means that you can take financial risks and not jeopardize your lifestyle

You can live wherever you want and can move for free whenever you want. I park on the street across from my favorite restaurant, right in one of the expensive areas of Austin. If I still went to clubs downtown, I’d park in the middle of downtown for the weekend and walk a block or two to go home at the end of the night.

But What About….?

Air Conditioning - Don’t need it. It’s 100 degrees during the day here in Austin. By about 11am it’s too hot to stay in, so I go out and enjoy life. After dinner it’s cool enough to go back in. If I park in the shade (and forgo solar power) and turn the fan on I can work through the day if I need to.

At night it’s 75 or 80, which is perfect for sleeping in my underwear with just a sheet. I leave the window next to my bed open and turn on my fan and get a pleasant constant breeze.

Also, let’s consider what percentage of the world’s population doesn’t have air conditioning. It’s only necessary because we’re so used to it.

Getting Claustrophobic - Maybe this would be an issue for some people, but these RVs feel very big on the inside. Think about how much of the space in your house is actually useful. Do you USE all the space between your bed and the wall? Does having that space REALLY contribute to your happiness?

Storing my Stuff - If you can’t fit it, then get rid of it. I lived like a king traveling the world with 28L of stuff. Now I’ve taken it out of the backpack, bought a few more things like a third and fourth pair of underwear, and I want for nothing. Well over half of the storage is empty.

Even if you don’t want to go super minimalist, you’ll find that these RVs are designed for people with a lot of stuff and will generally accommodate you well.

Electricity - I’ll cover this more in a future post, but electricity can be totally covered by a single solar panel and a battery or two. I’ve been in my RV writing, listening to music, and running the fan for five or six hours now in the dark and still have power to spare.

What Other People Will Think - Pretty much everyone I’ve met thinks that it’s outrageously cool, including attractive girls. Everyone’s so busy trying to impress girls with their BMWs that they don’t realize that the most attractive thing you can do is follow your own desires.

But, more importantly, who cares? How much do you want to have someone in your life who is going to think less of you for living in an RV?

Crime - I don’t know where you want to park your RV. Maybe it’s in the middle of a riot zone or a crackhouse neighborhood, in which case crime may be a problem.

Generally people greatly overestimate danger and crime. I’ve parked in a bunch of different socioeconomically classed areas and have never had a problem.

Wrapping it All Up

Living in an RV isn’t for everyone, but I think a lot more people would give it a try if they knew how genuinely awesome it is. I don’t know that I’ve necessarily conveyed the bliss I feel for living in my RV, but maybe it will surface a bit more as I get into the particulars…

Over the past year or so I’ve become a lot more interested in the environment. Maybe it’s my exposure to the wilderness around the world this year, maybe it’s the few documentaries about it that I’ve seen, or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s become a hot button issue and I’ve been forced to take notice.

That’s not to say that I’m some tree hugging environmentalist who knows all the issues and is going to devote his life to saving the earth. My opinion on this isn’t an expert opinion, it’s just what I’ve cobbled together from the information I’ve been exposed to as well as my personal experience.

And I’m nowhere near being 100% green, whatever that means. Although I am completely solar dependent, use very little gas, eat vegan food that’s mostly local and organic, I also spend a lot of time on planes and boats that are not particularly good for the environment.

Like most things, I put myself first. If I can do something that’s good for the environment, that’s great. If it’s going to prevent me from seeing the world, I’m not going to do it.

One big issue, though, is that no one knows what actually constitutes being green. Should you buy a 5 year old car that gets 20mpg or a Prius that gets double that?

The older car requires no new materials, but the Prius will use half the fuel. Then again, the Prius has a massive battery bank that’s full of toxic chemicals.

How about local produce that used pesticides that have leeched into the ground versus organic produce that was trucked across the country?

I don’t know. These, and other similar quandaries, are complicated questions without clear answers.

The one solution I see that can always help is to reduce consumption. One of the most shocking things I experienced when returning to the US after seven months of traveling is the bizarre obsession we have with buying stuff.

The commercials were crazy. To paraphrase most of them, “You aren’t happy? Neither is anyone else… EXCEPT for people who buy our useless contraption. Buy it and be happy.”

It was insane. Many of the countries I visited probably advertise like that too, but I couldn’t understand it because my grasp of their language isn’t strong enough.

Buying pretty much anything is terrible for the environment. It was made in a factory, probably aided by weird chemicals that were then pumped into the air or water, and was then transported across the globe to you. You threw away all of the packaging and junk that came with it, which then went into a landfill.

Later you got bored of it or sold it to someone who then got bored of it, and it became part of a landfill. Then you bought a new better one and the cycle continued.

This is something I think about all the time now. Anything I buy will eventually end up in a landfill.

I’m not totally sure that the US is the most consumer driven country in the world, but I’d bet a lot of money on it. We’re #39 on the list of greenest nations, which is halfway respectable, except that Mexico, China, and other countries whose economies basically exist to feed our appetite are WAY down on the list.

It’s not just material products, either. Our use of gas is a little bit crazy, and our use of electricity is totally insane. Air conditioning, in particular, is habitually overused. In Panama you have a little window unit in every room and you throw it on when you’re there. In America we have giant houses with whole house systems that are on 24/7.

I live in my RV with lights, a high power fan, a laptop with internet, etc., and I use about 20-30kWh per month of electricity, all generated by a 200w solar panel. By comparison, my parents use 2000kWh of electricity per month, and they have a reasonably small energy efficient house with new appliances and AC. I probably used more like 4000kWh in my old house.

Yes, we’re getting more efficient. And thankfully being eco-friendly is slowly becoming cooler and more accepted, mainly because of gas prices. But these gradual changes will take a long time to actually make a real dent in the problem.

What we really need is radical change.

We need to change our mentalities to value preservation of the earth. We need to be happier with less consumption.

We probably also need legislation to get there. I’m pretty libertarian across the board, but I saw something in Japan that made me realize that there are occasions where government regulations are the only way to solve problems.

Todd and I went to go take our host’s trash out. In his complex’s trash area were at least 6 different bins you have to sort your trash into. Burnable, non burnable, metal, paper, different plastics. There were penalties for not doing trash properly, so everyone does it right. Compare that to our participation in recycling programs.

At the same time, I never really become an alarmist about these things because I have great faith in our scientists. When something is ACTUALLY a problem that affects people’s lives, we take care of it. That’s the free market. I’d like to see things taken care of now, but I believe that before the earth becomes a barren wasteland, the scientists will fix it.

This is what happened with with gas. It got so expensive that people started whining about it, and then all of a sudden we come up with fuel efficient cars.

Anyway, two things I do that maybe you can do as well:

1. Go out and enjoy nature. If we appreciate it we’ll naturally take better care of it.

2. Buy less stuff.

For a couple days last week I didn’t work. I woke up, walked to Casa, ate my lunch, sat with my friends until lunch hours ended, and then sat in the empty restaurant, staring out the window.

What do I want to do with my life? Not the whole thing, but right now.

Conversion Doubler isn’t going to get off the ground. It turns out that too many people have bizarre unique requirements that reduce it’s usefulness. The book is going okay, but at the end of the day I hate marketing and don’t want to spend my time doing it.

I love this site. I love writing articles, working on the design, and reading peoples comments. My friend Annie asked me what the best compliments I get are, and among other things I said, “getting e-mails from people saying I changed their lives”.

In other words, the one constant productive thing I’ve enjoyed doing for the past few years is this site. It’s rewarding on a lot of levels.

And here’s the good news: for the first time ever I checked my all time subscriber stats for the site. And they’re going up. Not just a random pattern, but a smooth line upwards.

So some day I will probably make enough money from this site that I don’t have to do anything else. That will be awesome.

Maybe it will take six months, maybe five years.

But until then, I need to make serious money. More money, more plane tickets.

An old friend from the pro gambling days sent me an IM. We chatted for a few minutes and he asked what I was doing.

“Trying to figure out what to do next.”

“Always poker.”

Within a few minutes I decided to become a professional poker player.

Poker is beautiful. It weaves together psychology, math, logic, and discipline all into one. It’s honest. You sit down with your own money and you back everything you do up with real cash. You’re there to take your opponents money, and they’re there to take yours. No pretenses, no marketing hype, no finding customers. Just your brains and your wallets on the table.

People think it’s about luck, but it’s not. A small enough slice of a game can be luck, but a career isn’t. The better you are, the less luck can come into play. Amateurs have good or bad luck, but pros don’t.

Unfortunately, I’m not very good at No Limit Hold ‘Em, the game of choice. I’m good enough to place in most home tournaments, and bad enough to get eaten alive at a real table.

I’m pretty good at Limit, but it’s not fun. It’s a grind and to make money you have to play 6-12 tables AT ONCE online. It’s frantic and robotic. I had a world class teacher when I was in LA and I gave up because I couldn’t get into it.

Some of the hardest parts of being a poker player are things that I have in my blood now. I have no emotional attachment to gambling. All of the math is familiar and some of it is automatic. I can handle swings.

At the same time, I have TONS to learn. I’ve been watching videos and reading the bible of No Limit, and I now realize that I knew nothing about poker. I know five percent of what I’ll need.

The good part, though, is that all of the information is out there. If I understand everything in that book, I’ll be making six figures working ten hours a week. With my new-for-this-year turbo discipline, that’s probably just 2-3 months of intense all day playing and studying. There’s a clear path to mastery (or at least winning player level proficiency). Maybe I’ll lose money along the way, but it’s the price of education. Think of how much normal people pay to learn skills that make half what a poker player makes.

For those who want to follow along at home, here’s my current plan:

1. Read the Sklansky book at least a couple times a week.
2. Watch videos from www.deucescracked.com every day
3. Play at Full Tilt (sign up using the ad on my site to support the guy who bought it) at a .25/.50 table for at least 5 hours every day.
4. Use a rakeback to get 27% of the casino’s profit back.
5. Track my progress with Poker Tracker.
6. Make sure that I’m USING the techniques I learn, rather than reverting back to old habits.

That’s the plan. I’ll keep you updated.

I always want to write about a “typical” day here in Austin, but it seems like no day is actually normal enough for me to write about, so it ends up not happening. So, since I have a few minutes in my RV before it’s time to head to late night dinner, I’ll just write about today. I always wonder what people do with their days, so maybe my regular day will be interesting to you.

((Note: I’m aware that this is a bit like those rambly livejournal entries that no one actually ever wants to read. ))

I woke up at around 10am, which is pretty early for me. The sun comes in through the RV window at just the right angle to hit me in the face at 9:45. This happens every morning. Sometimes I wake up then and sometimes I roll over and sleep until 11am when it finally gets too hot to keep sleeping.

The shower doesn’t work in my RV since the guy I bought it from kind of screwed me, so I went down the street to my friends house (Todd, Ben, and Anderson) to use their shower.

It was the first time I used it and the thing is rocket powered. It would have peeled a layer of skin off if I left it on high.

Newly clean, I went to Casa de Luz for lunch / breakfast. For those who don’t know, it’s a macrobiotic restaurant that I love like a child and eat at every single day.

The staff eats half an hour before the dining room opens at 11, so I sat with Anderson, who works there, and we talked about the Westfalia camper van he’s going to buy and live in.

Maybe you can guess why we became fast friends.

At 11 he went to work the front desk and Jinji walked in. She’s basically the first lady of Casa de Luz and is really into Japan, even though she’s never visited. Our conversations usually revolve around me trying to convince her to go to Japan. Today was pretty exciting because she talked about her future plans, including a trip to Japan soon! That paragraph doesn’t really convey how cool she is - I really like talking with her.

She had to leave quickly to pick up her son, but by then our table had filled up with other casa regulars. I ate and chatted with them for an hour as I ate until they left, one by one.

Then I wrote two long overdue newsletters for the people on my Make Her Chase You mailing list from my usual perch in the back table of casa, right near the power outlet.

Near the end of the two and a half hour period of time that Casa serves lunch a new group of Casa regulars sat with me, including Alexa who works there.

The day before Alexa had asked for my birthday for an astrology thing she’s into, but I didn’t give it to her because I don’t tell anyone my birthday. Despite the birthday thing I really liked her because she had spent six weeks in Japan and had some interesting stories about it. I feel an instant bond with anyone who has been to that magical country of yore.

I told her that I was extremely skeptical, so I would give her six birthdays, one of which was mine and five of which were fake. She could then write down the six “profiles” of the people without the birthday attached and I would read them and tell her which one was most like me.

We spent a lot of time orchestrating this experiment and to my surprise the profile that I picked as being the most accurate was indeed the one attached to my birthday. Weird and interesting. Hopefully she’ll double down and we can repeat this experiment with my friend Todd.

I chatted with her for an hour or two until she had to start working the second shift. Our personalities are pretty similar, which she attributes to the fact that we have the exact same set of astrology numbers (out of 1000 I think?), so I enjoyed getting to know her. Also I have to say nice things about her because she reads my site now.

After that I would normally work, but I just didn’t feel like it. Instead I compromised with myself and decide to go to the post office. I had to shipsomething for my mom and my packet of forms to get insurance to get frozen when I die.

Of course, it had now been hours since I had eaten, so I got a smoothie to drink while I drove to the Post Office. To get it cut through the parking lot of an office building next to casa, through the parking lot of a restaurant called Shady Grove, through the restaurant, and across a street. It’s a nice five minute walk.

The place is called Daily Juice, and it is the best smoothie / juice bar in the whole world (really). I’m friends with all the people there, so I joked around with Ivy, Nick, and another guy whose name I ALWAYS forget for a few minutes while they made my smoothie.

Todd invented an amazing smoothie there that I always get. Here’s what’s in it:

• Watermelon Juice
• Peanut Butter
• Hemp Seeds
• Hemp Oil
• Hemp Protein (it’s based off a smoothie called The Chronic)
• Banana
• Coconut Oil

It is pure heaven, plain and simple. I get one of these almost every day.

After drinking my smoothie and going to the post office it wasn’t quite time for dinner. Ben was painting his room in his new apartment and had asked if I wanted to help. I didn’t, really, but I figured I’d drop by because I knew he and another friend would be there.

I ended up getting suckered into helping paint some trim, and it wasn’t all that bad. Ben’s the kind of guy who would always help you if you needed it, anyway. My friend Hoku and Ben’s friend Jacob were there helping and being a lot more useful than I was. Jacob’s girlfriend met us there and we went back to Casa for taco night.

Four tacos, beans, rice, greens, and soup later, we headed out to an Austin tradition called “First Thursday”. The cool and weird of Austin mingle on South Congress street where stores stay open really late for that one night, bands play outside, and crafty people sell their wares in bazaars set up in parking lots. It’s not really my scene, but it was still fun.

My sister was working at a boutique grocery store there so I stopped by to say hi. She makes AMAZING MaxDiet cookies and we discussed when she was going to make a new batch. I still have one in a zip lock bag that I’m saving for the owner of Mother’s Cafe, which is one of three other restaurants I go to frequently. She loves cookies and I have a hunch she may want to sell these at her restaurant.

We watched Capoeira dancers on the street, which was horribly annoying. There is probably nothing on this earth that I think is stupider than Capoeira dancing. It’s that Brazilian thing where they play fight and dance at the same time. There’s something very pompous about it that really annoys me.

Finally pulling away from that train wreck we went to a little Mexican place where I had a second smoothie for the day. Fresh squeezed orange juice, fresh strawberries, and banana. It was way better than I expected and was only $3 for a big glass.

Our whole group of friends and some new friends they’d met up with along the way were going to a bar on South Congress, but I pretty much hate bars. Luckily we ran into Anderson, who agreed to give me a ride back on the back of his new 50cc moped. It was a pretty hilarious experience that reminded me of being in Thailand. The seat was so small, though, that I had to sit on the little luggage rack.

Now I’m relaxing in the RV writing this post and waiting to digest a bit so that Todd and I can go to Magnolia Cafe for late night dinner. Todd stopped by the RV to catch up on his way back from Houston about half an hour ago. The food at Magnolia is good, but we mainly go to hang out and say hi to our waitress friends Cindy and Kara who work the only shift we ever show up for:10pm - 6am.

Anyway, that’s about on par for how I spend my days in Austin. Not necessarily the most exciting day in the world, but definitely one full of great people and great food.

The police lined us up in the pitch black tunnel. Their headlamps flicked around as they gave their orders in French. We were getting searched.

They went up the line searching my friends. First they were patted down, and then their bags were sifted through. Nothing to worry about, as they had nothing to hide.

I was next. I did have something to worry about. Inside my bag, right near the top, were human bones.

An hour earlier, six hours into our exploration of the closed off section of the Paris catacombs, we were lost. Not lost in the sense that we couldn’t find our way out, but rather we couldn’t find the main attraction of the catacombs.

Our guide, a twenty something urban explorer that we’d found on the internet, had forgotten his map of the catacombs. Luckily for us his sense of direction was the polar opposite of mine. He guided us through giant cellars, a German bunker, knee high water, and the site of an infamous underground party in the sixties.

It was all incredible, but we wanted to see the bones. Underneath the cemeteries of Paris there are piles and piles of human bones.

“This is the good way!” he called out.

Finally he had found it. We had given up once and were right near the exit, but a sudden stroke of inspiration had reminded him where the bones might be.

Sure enough, he was right. Near the entrance I took care to make sure not to step on the bones. A few feet later that was impossible.

With every step I cracked some poor Frenchman’s femur or tibia. It was an incredible site - piles and piles of mud-covered human bones, forgotten under the streets of Paris.

I remembered a movie I had seen a while back where the supervillain had cuff links made from human bone. It seemed so sinister.

With so many bones just piled in mounds, would it be so bad if I took one for myself?

Now totally over the grossness of touching bones, I started digging through the piles trying to find a small one. I wanted a finger, but our guide told us that those had already been taken, along with the skulls.

I finally settled on what looked like the tip of a rib. Then I thought of how my friends might want one and I picked out a vertebrae, another rib chunk, and the ball half of a small ball and socket joint.

I put them in a zip lock bag and shoved the bag on top of my jacket in my backpack.

No one else wanted human bones. Was I weird? It seemed like something that everyone would want to have as a novelty.

We left, but our plans were thwarted.

“The workers have put bricks on the manhole. If I open it they might fall on us. We have to go out the same way we came.”

Near the end of our several-kilometer scramble back to the entrance a fellow explorer passed us as we waded through ten inch deep water.

“Bonjour,” I said, trying to practice a bit of French.

“That’s the police,” said our guide, “I’ve never been caught before.”

We were getting arrested and the officer was passing us to make sure we didn’t dart back into the tunnels. These were the special catacomb police.

One officer in back and one in front, they escorted us to the surface.

I had my chance to ditch the bones. The officers were focused on searching other people, and I could have easily tossed them amongst the gravel that we were sitting on.

But when would I ever have a chance to get human bones again? So far it’s taken me 27 years to get the opportunity.

Maybe I can hide them, I thought.

I was already fairly sure that if they saw the bones I would go to jail. But what if they caught me trying to conceal the bones? That could be very bad.

Hey, at least it will make a good story.

When my turn came, I was scared. Really scared. My hands shook as I unzipped my bag. My friends looked over at me as if to ask if I still had the bones.

I had no plan.

My hat lay over most of the bag of bones, with just a corner sticking out. I’d better start removing stuff before he does.

With my left hand I stuffed the 12″x’12″ bag under the hat, and simultaneously lifted it out.

“Just a hat,” I said, concealing the zip lock bag.

I quickly moved to the next item.

“My jacket. A water bottle. My camera.”

I held the bag open and showed him the inside while still clutching the hat and bag of bones. He groped around for contraband.

“Okay?” I asked

“Okay.”

Thank god. I tried to start breathing normally.

Normally when the catacomb police catch you, you get a ticket. But we were Americans, with no incentive to pay the ticket.

“They want to take you to the station. They don’t catch a lot of Americans.”

The station? Fooling one officer is one thing, but a real search at the station would reveal my treasure.

They started marching us down the train tracks to the police van. One cop was in front of us and a few were in the rear. Todd was speaking in French to the one in the back, trying to build up some rapport.

I needed to move these bones.

I slowed down to distance myself from the front officer and casually unzipped my jacket pocket and took my jacket off, holding on to the open pocket.

I moved my backpack to the front of my body and unzipped it. I put my hat on, revealing the bag of bones. I reached into the bag and grabbed them, stuffed them in the jacket pocket, and then stuffed the jacket into the backpack. At least they weren’t glaringly obvious now.

I thought about stuffing them down my pants, but realized that I wasn’t comfortable enough yet with my filthy human vertebra for that kind of a move.

They had taken Todd’s video camera, so I popped my memory card out of my camera just in case. I slid my hand into my pocket and stuffed the card into my wallet.

When we reached the street they sat us down on the sidewalk.

They took their time discussing what to do and writing tickets for the French people. Behind us was a stone wall separating us from a ravine. I could throw the bones down there and get away scot free.

But it just didn’t seem right. I had come so far and doing that would ruin my story, not to mention leave me boneless. So instead I waited.

Finally they gave us a lecture, which was lost to me since it was in French, and told us we could go. No station? I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that relieved in my life.

We stayed around for a moment to thank them, which was just enough time for the police paddy wagon to arrive. An officer jumped out and barked something in French.

“He says not to go anywhere,” our French guide said.

So close. We are going to French jail. They are going to find my bones.

The new officers huddled with the old ones, discussing our fate.

“What timing,” we whispered.

“Okay, you can go.”

Maybe Todd’s being friendly with one of the cops saved us. Maybe they just didn’t want to deal with us. We walked off quickly, not feeling safe until we were in the car and moving.

And that’s how I smuggled human bones past a police search.

Someone recently commented that he was surprised I don’t use a Macintosh computer. Macs are the cool things to get these days and i can understand why he would assume I’d want to use one.

At the same time, I take immense pleasure in researching and buying the best things in the world, so I’ll explain why the Mac didn’t make the cut.

I need a laptop. Considering my perpetual state of traveling, this is an obvious one. If I had a desktop there’s an excellent chance I would have a Mac.

The OS

The strongest asset that the Mac has is it’s operating system, OS/X. This operating system is light years ahead of the competition. Vista is a total piece of junk. I like Windows XP just fine, but I’m well aware of it’s many shortcomings relative to Mac OS.

In fact, if I could run OS/X on my laptop, I’d do it in a second. I tried this unsupported transplant once but it didn’t quite work. From what I understand it all works now except for suspend and hibernate, which I can’t live without.

So none of this a criticism of the operating system. There are a few Windows programs that I’d hate to give up, but the software for the Mac is generally very high quality and quite often superior to its PC counterpart.

But let me make one thing clear - Windows XP is totally fine. I have software that does everything I could possibly want to do. I have modified my themes and such to make it look as minimal and neat as I could possibly want.

People like to whine about it because it’s old, but it works. It does almost nothing that I don’t like or couldn’t fix.

Yes, Mac OS is better. It’s more fun. I like linux. But not having MacOS is not impacting me in any negative way.

In my opinion, Macs have ZERO other benefits. You can talk about all the little things like the built in cameras and good bundled software or design, but at the end of the day, none of those things matter to me at all.

There are two major things preventing me from getting a Mac. There are little things I don’t like too, like the general form over function attitude (yeah yeah, argue all you want), but these two things are showstoppers.

#1 Terrible Screen Resolution

I need high resolution. I like to see a lot of detail when I’m working in Photoshop or Lightroom. I keep all of my fonts and UI elements insanely small. This looks terrible and unusable on a lower resolution screen.

My 12″ laptop screen does 1400×1050. I would like it to be higher, but that’s pretty good. A 15″ Macbook (which is WAY too big for me) only does 1280×768 TK

Could I get used to a lower resolution? Kind of. I had a backup laptop that I used when I had my main one repaired. It was usable but very annoying. Screen resolution is a real productivity increaser in the real world, and I’m not ready to give it up.

#2 Terrible Pointing Device

I hate trackpads. Not just the Mac ones (from what I understand, they are the best trackpads you can have), but all trackpads.

The trackpad is a terrible way to interact with your computer. The eraserpoint that ThinkPads have is perfect in every way. It is the ideal pointing device. I like it much better than even a standalone mouse.

Here’s the main reason: I barely have to move my hands to use it. My wrist pivots and my thumb and forefinger use the eraserpoint while the rest of my fingers stay an the keys.

With a trackpad I have to move my whole hand down and back. This sounds like no big deal until you master the eraserpoint and experience the sheer joy of effortlessly moving between keyboard and mouse without moving your hands.

This is another gamestopper. I will not use a laptop with a trackpad. I’ve had them before, used them for months, and still hated them.

And I don’t need this fancy multitouch crap. This is another example of flash over function. It doesn’t make things faster, it makes things cooler. One matters, one doesn’t.

So that’s why I don’t use a Mac, and probably never will. I believe that they will eventually increase the screen resolution, but I don’t think that they will ever get rid of that ridiculous trackpad.

The problem is that the trackpads are much easier to use for new users. Laptops with them sell better because the laptop is immediately more usable. Then these people get hooked on them, not knowing that if they spent a month or so with the eraserpoint, they would like it a lot more. Not everyone, mind you, but most people.

This phenomenon has caused trackpads to become the dominant pointing device, and I doubt that will change.

Maybe they will eventually allow OS/X on PCs and I can have the best of both worlds.