Going Full Nomad - Unsettling

Unsettling, going nomadic is trending like an idler pulley on a high single-pivot bike. Perhaps the attraction is that the alternative is to settle, which sounds like an uninspiring, underwhelming compromise. Everything happens in cycles. In the 1930s, motor bungalows and rolling homes were popularized as cheap portable living spaces for the poor and as vacation wagons for the more fortunate. A nice Schult trailer could be had for just $275 in 1934. Returning from war and through the Great Depression, many had trouble finding housing and jobs. By necessity, people were living on the move, trying to find a place with some work or just a place to disappear and get by with as little as possible.

With fallout from the financial crises of 2008, people again turned to the home on wheels as a more affordable way to live, escape, or means to move from place to place where intermittent employment might be found. The current surge in nomad life is further fueled by images of cozy wood-clad van interiors, draped patio lights, a steaming cup of coffee, and doors opened to panoramic views.

PROLOGUE - LIFE CHOICES

We bought a vacation wagon, and then it happened. There in the desert, thousands of kilometers from home, the sun’s last golden rays kissing the brush rustling in the autumn breeze. A feeling of contentment… Happiness! Leading up to this, we had settled; life had become a comfortably familiar humdrum of work, paycheques, property, and possessions, all masquerading as happiness but not delivering the elusive nectar. We were working more to have more and subsequently actually doing less. I had recently sold my home, and in a matter of days, I’d return to work to give my notice, retiring from what had been a career for a quarter-century. If you want your audience to think you're mature, you don't say you quit; you say you retired. Now with no home and no job, the plan was to do a lot more with far less. Going full nomad is a simple enough idea. Rid yourself of most of your material possessions, leave your cares and worries behind, go where you want to go, do what you want to do, cruise the open road to perfect weather and idyllic destinations... oh... and bikes!