Reflections on a cloudy day

I am a bit tired and a bit down today, and in a reflective mood, and my Internet connectivity is particularly slow this morning giving me lots of time to think as I wait for things to load.

When we decided years ago, before we considered travelling as we now are, to sell the farm, I had three goals in mind, or better said, three criteria for our next home. It was to be closer to our friends so that it would be easier to see more of them. It was to be closer to community activities such as continuing education courses, yoga classes, etc. so that Nicole could get out of the house and get some social contact more easily. And it absolutely needed to have at least two different kinds of broadband Internet access available so that I could have two providers and use when one the other was degraded or broken. With so much of what I do dependant on connectivity, poor quality service had been a source of tremendous frustration for years and I just wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.

And then we got the idea to travel. First it was going to be a year between the selling of our house and the purchase of the next one. Then it was a couple years, potentially becoming more depending how we like it.

There is a lot to like about it. Less than half a year in we have seen some amazing things. We have a tiny living space that is easy to maintain but large enough to do most of what we want to do. Our living costs are super low. For the past month our utility and residence expenses, equivalent to rent, mortgage, property tax, power and water bills, has been under $100. We are used to thinking of financial security as being about having money, but having low expenses is another way to do it, and will be a great help as I launch the next phase of my working life.

But how am I doing on my three part plan for a happier life?

Not so good really. My friends are now thousands of miles away instead of an inconvenient drive. Involvement with community is now much harder than ever. And did I mention that my Internet access is slow again today?

In the eastern part of the US we found many campgrounds that with a Passport America discount could be had for $10 to $15 per night. We more or less boondocked half time and stayed at such places the other half, doing any bandwidth intensive things like Youtube or iTunes updates only while on wifi and using cellular data when boondocking.

That was great, but it does not translate to the west coast. Camping fees are much higher here, and PA discounts are less often offered and usually only for a night or two, so we have been boondocking a lot more.

We try to keep the downloading to visits to coffee shops with wifi but the quality is highly variable and recently I have given up at more than one place and left with my download queue still bulging. And even so we are bumping up against the 5GB monthly limit on our Verizon mifi. It is important not to exceed that, because the rate for additional usage is literally five times higher than for the first 5 gigs.

I did a little surfing the other day to look into mobile satellite connectivity. The place I found charged $6500 for equipment and installation, with monthly fees being $89 and up after that. I don’t know yet if that is typical, but it is a lot more than I expected for the gear and install. I am seriously considering buying a carton of mifis and rotating through them as a solution to the 5 gig cap. Pain in the ass, but still a lot less expensive than the satellite solution.

That of course would not address coverage and data rate issues. There does not seem to be a perfect solution for nomads like us.