Thoughts – Riveted

Interior Living Space, Compared

Laura Domela — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 18:20:51 +0000

We’ve logged almost 700 nights in our Airstream since we purchased it in 2010 (a 2010 27’FB International), and almost 600 nights aboard Airship (2013 Nordic Tug 34) since it joined our family in 2014. We’ve returned to the Airstream for a week of camping on the Oregon Coast (OMG is it ever going to stop RAINING??), and we can’t help discussing the things we find different/better/worse between the interior living space of the two “vehicles”. We aren’t taking into account things like self-propulsion…this is just about the living space design and interior.

Airstream 27FB Plan

Airstream 27FB Plus Points

Airstream publishes a much better graphic of its interior layout than Nordic Tugs does
There is a LOT of storage.
Bigger fridge and freezer
Bigger, separate shower
Quite a bit more closet space
The Airstream’s Amana stove/oven kicks the butt of the Force 10 we have on Airship. Sure, it’s not as shiny, but we’ve got three full burners (rather than one fullish burner and one “sorta kinda keep warm” burner), and…a vent-a-hood!
The heater in the Airstream heats the interior in no time
Bigger bedroom/master stateroom, in all dimensions

Nordic Tug 34/Airship Plan

Nordic Tug/Airship Plus Points

Far better craftsmanship…lots of real wood (because weight is not much of an issue)
More windows
Built-in generator
Better fresh water system, variable speed pump and much higher capacity tank (100 gallons vs. 39 gallons)
Privacy of master stateroom from guest sleeping area is better and more separate

Overall though, the Airstream wins in the category of interior living space. If we moved up to a Nordic Tug 40 (with hydronic heat, a better oven/stove, and bigger fridge/freezer by default, we’d be even with the Airstream in terms of interior living space…well, probably we’d be ahead, since we’d gain a separate stateroom for guests.

Other Observations Not Related to Interior Living Space

Campgrounds are like marinas. You’re almost always too close to your neighbor with the yippy dogs. With a boat you have the option of anchoring out.

Airship anchored at Teakerne Arm, British Columbia

With an RV (and a lot of planning and local knowledge) you can boondock “away from it all” on public land, but it takes a lot more work to find a scenic, off-the-grid place to hang out. But, as with boating, if you camp in the off season, you can go to normally crowded places like this and not see another RV:

Airstreaming the Badlands, South Dakota

The boat has to bring its own outside space with it (upper deck, back cockpit, bow) but the Airstream gets to use the campground and surrounding area as its outdoor space.

Airstream at Athabasca Glacier, Alberta, Canada

However, if you’re camped somewhere and it’s just raining and raining and raining (like the past few days here at the Oregon Coast), then your outdoor space is a bit more limited.

Freedom from roads is a plus with a boat.

Airship in Melanie Cove, Desolation Sound, British Columbia

An Apology to Kayley

Laura Domela — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 14:00:00 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska

We didn’t always get along with Kayley. Our friendship was the kind of friendship that started out too glowing and too perfect too early, and then slowly its faults and personality quirks were realized as they moved quickly into annoyances. But let me back up and tell you the whole story.

We first met Kayley (well, kind of) using the Active Captain plug-in app on our iPhones and iPads to scope out new anchorages and coves. The app gives you general information about the marinas and obstructions and fuel docks and water and nearby grocery stores and such, and then people write and post reviews of places they’ve been, and those reviews show up along with the other information about a place. It’s very helpful to hear what real people think about a spot…how good or bad the holding is in an anchorage, whether there’s wildlife or great scenery, tricky navigational challenges, etc.

We started to notice certain reviews in Active Captain that stood out from the rest. Most reviews are standard, to the point, factual mainly with a little bit of opinion thrown in but not much. Kayley’s reviews were different. They were flowery, but well written. Kayley told us about some pretty cool places with great, detailed descriptions of what we’d find there. We were pals. “Do you wanna go to such and such cove?” “I dunno, what does Kayley think of it?”

I’m not sure exactly when it began to happen. I’d be reading the reviews of a place out loud to Kevin (and Tiffani and Deke, when they were traveling with us) as we tried to decide where to go next, and then I’d stop mid-sentence. “Oh. It’s Kayley.” I got so I could recognize her reviews from the first few words. The more places we read about, the more we got to know Kayley. It started to seem like Kayley had been everywhere, and loved everything. We were suspicious.

“Bears are present on almost a daily basis during the summer. Snow capped mountains loom above you in all directions. Bald eagles seem to perform an ‘air traffic control’ mission above you, the shorelines beg for exploration…” (December 2012)

In the span of a week or so, almost every place we read about, according to Kayley, was just the most amazing place on earth, with howling wolves at night, bald eagles gently flying overhead, goats covering the cliffs above you, sea otters and dolphins playing around your boat, a plethora of brown bears on shore, humpbacks whispering in your ear, tranquility you can only find in heaven, blah blah blah blah BLAH.

We began to distrust Kayley. We’d go to that little cove, and sure it was scenic (because, Alaska, duh), but there were no wolves, no goats, no orcas jumping over swimming unicorns next to your boat. (Of course there were always bald eagles because they’re everywhere up here, so do they really need special mention?) We started to give Kayley a personality that she probably didn’t have in real life. We made up our own Kayley to talk back to, because it was funny.

Once, when we were at a little cove that Kayley said was “just okay” (but not in those words, of course), we saw two brown bears fighting on shore, and we could HEAR them growling from our boat. It was incredible! Tiffani and Deke had already flown home, and I texted Tiffani: “Brown bears fighting on the beach! Kayley can suck it!”

We had a good laugh at that one.

But something is different now. As we spend more and more time exploring this incredible area, and the more times we’ve consulted Active Captain to see what was waiting for us through the next narrow passage or inside that next cove, the more respect we’ve developed for Kayley. Kayley really HAS been everywhere…tiny, difficult, rock-guarded inlets that require a ton of skill to navigate — random “who knows why you’d even go in there” places — Kayley has been in all of them, and she’s taken the time and effort to write a rich, thoughtful review of each place, complete with navigation advice, comparisons to nearby alternatives, and yes, flowery, metaphor-laden Chamber of Commerce descriptions about the wildlife and quality of scenery.

But you know what? It FEELS like that after you’re up here for a while. Each day you get to add some new incredible experience to your tiny little life, and it becomes a bit overwhelming, in a really REALLY good way. It is amazing and gorgeous and fabulous and fantastic and rainbows and breaching humpbacks all freaking day.

The extent to which Kayley has explored SO many nooks and crannies of this beautiful and remarkable area is mind boggling. Plus, most of her reviews are dated 2012. How did she cover so much ground in one season?

Kayley is actually a total rockstar.

We realize now that we may have gotten off on the wrong foot with Kayley, and we jumped to some unfair conclusions about her and her prose. We feel badly about how we misjudged her.

Kayley, if you’re listening, we want to say thank you — we think you and your adjectives are the best!

It’s Not About Luck

Laura Domela — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 13:51:14 +0000

"Wow, you guys are SO! LUCKY!"

This is one of the more frequent things we hear in response to the lifestyle we live and share on this blog. Although we understand where this sentiment comes from, the fact of the matter is that it's not luck at all. We didn't win the lottery. Neither of us has a trust fund. No rich relatives died and left us gazillions of dollars or anything. Here's what we did: we committed to a goal, and then we worked really hard toward that goal, and we didn't allow ourselves to be distracted by things that were not supportive of this goal. That's it, and you can do it too!

We feel very fortunate to be able to live and travel the way we do but "luck" has very little to do with it. "Luck" paints a picture of ease…velvet sofas and mint juleps on the veranda after sleeping until noon, while golden opportunities fall gently into your robed lap. But when it comes to luck, I'm sure we have just as much bad luck as we have good luck.

The lifestyle we've crafted for ourselves is very deliberate. We have worked hard and sacrificed a lot to make it happen. We have gone through difficult and challenging times, and have persevered because we really wanted to have a life like the one we live today. Years ago, we visualized it, we planned it, we worked hard to achieve it, and we adapted as we went along. Plans didn't always go as expected and there were many obstacles we had to overcome along the way. We kept our dream in focus. If you have a dream, and you make choices that support that dream (instead of listening to people who tell you that your dream is too…"dreamy"), your dream really can become your reality.

We've wanted to address this for a long time, and we think it's important, because if you attribute our lifestyle to "luck" — it might give you an excuse not to pursue the life that you want for yourself. You can't control your luck, but you can control the choices you make as you craft your life. Here's some background on how we got where we are today:

Controlling Your Life (or at least making a big effort to steer)

Back in 2001 and 2002 we were happily going along working at our fairly normal jobs and living our fairly normal lives. We camped and backpacked on the weekends or when we had vacation time. I was working as an artist. I had gallery representation, but the life of a painter is not exactly a booming money-making endeavor. Kevin was working for a large electronics design company where he'd been successful for 15 years. In 2003, Kevin got laid off from his job. There we were with a little bit of savings, two teenage daughters about to start college, and no health insurance. The internet bubble had just burst, and our investments had tanked. We had enough money and credit card slack to live for a few months before…well…you get the picture.

The high-tech job market in Portland was terrible. Most of the local tech companies were laying off rather than hiring. Kevin's expertise was fairly specialized, and finding a new job in his industry would have most likely required us to move to a different state. Things looked pretty grim.

However, we had always wanted to start our own business. We visualized a company that didn't have an office, where everyone worked from home, and where people set their own schedules and worked happily together toward common goals. In this vision, we sat outside our tent day after day watching happy little bunnies frolic in the grass while faraway internet servers worked day and night – earning us enough to pay campground fees. (Definitely in the "dream" stage, I'd say.)

We bought two laptops and a couple of domain names, signed up for some $10/month internet hosting, and filled out the paperwork to start a sub-S corporation. The company we started was an online publication geared toward electronics engineers. I started learning web design so I could create and maintain our website, and Kevin started writing articles about electronics technology. We began by sending out an email newsletter every week to our growing list of subscribers. We soon had a publication and an audience, but no income. Kevin hopped on a plane and flew to Silicon Valley to meet with marketers from various companies he had worked with in the past – in hopes of finding someone to buy advertising on our new website. That turned out to be a very slow process.

Each month our savings would decline, and we cringed as watched ourselves careening toward financial failure. Finally, we got a breakthrough – our first advertiser – for a whopping $1,500. That wasn't enough to save our sinking ship, but it gave us hope. Gradually, we sold more and more. We brought a sales person on board part time – working for commissions – and doubled our efforts to grow the publication. We cautiously started to discuss what we'd do "If we could somehow manage to get this business to cover our living expenses."

We were now in business for ourselves, which meant basically no more paid vacation time, and most weekends were filled with work alongside whatever else we wanted to do for fun. Some of you, I'm sure, know what it takes to own and run your own business, and it's no piece of cake. We could still travel and camp and backpack, but it took a lot more planning and sacrifice. It also took energy, and during those first stressful months, we had very little left.

Ever-so-slowly the income increased until we had stopped burning savings and weren't running up credit card balances anymore. We were encouraged, and were able to reduce our stress levels a bit – unfortunately without reducing our work hours. Now, we needed to do something to keep our sanity.

We decided to take a one-month road trip in our car with our camping and backpacking gear. We figured we could publish articles and run our business from the road, and we did this two different ways: (1) from our tent using a Treo smartphone tethered to a laptop for internet (by candle lantern at night sometimes), and when we couldn't get any internet service that way (2) we'd hit a coffee shop or check into a motel/hotel with Wi-Fi so we could publish our weekly article and send newsletters. Romantic, huh? (It kinda was, actually.)

During that road trip we went through San Francisco, and during a side trip to SF MOMA (the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), we saw the Christopher Deam 16' Airstream Bambi as part of an exhibition. We thought "Hm. We could work from THAT!" and our Airstreaming dream began.

We researched and researched (for about a year) and eventually decided on and purchased a 2005 22' International Airstream trailer. We loved it. It had a double bed, a dinette, a wet bath, a great kitchen, and a little desk in the back (perfect for work, we thought). We had the little bit of solar that came with it, plus some that we added afterwards, but it was nowhere near the ship of technology that our Airstream (and now our Nordic Tug) is today.

We used the Airstream on weekends and for shorter trips, and during the five years we had this 22' Airstream (June 2005 to April 2010) we spent 156 nights in it. That's about 30 nights per year. We wanted more. Fortunately, our business was growing.

In 2010 we took the 22' trailer in for a few repairs, and while we were waiting, we went across the street to "just look at the new ones" (hint: Don't do this!) We never got our old trailer back. We traded it in for a 2010 27'FB International. Five more feet!!! They pulled the new Airstream up alongside the old Airstream cop-style, we unloaded everything from the 22' into the 27', and off we went.

At that point, it sounds like things could go on cruise control, right? We had a growing business, a cool trailer, and a solid plan…but no. Toward the beginning of this decade we went through several major crises all at once. We realized that there was a real chance that the whole thing we'd worked so hard for might crumble. Things looked very bleak. We had several very stressful months of sleepless nights. Finally, when we couldn't take the stress anymore, we did what we do…we took a road trip. On that road trip, we made our contingency plan. If the business tanked and we had no more money, we would just sell everything but the Airstream and the truck and go full time on the road, living a frugal, nomadic life while exploring the country. We know a lot of VERY happy people who were already doing this by choice. It wouldn't be bad at all.

Once we'd come to grips with our "worst case" and knew we would make it fun, we redoubled our efforts. We worked twice as hard at keeping our company alive and our small team happy and healthy. We came up with new ideas for making our company succeed, and improved on the old ones. With everybody pitching in and with the new plans in place, one win at a time, the business came back, stronger than it had ever been.

Where We Are Today

Our company now has ten people. Everyone works from home (or wherever they are) and has the flexibility and freedom to set their own work hours, manage their own responsibilities, and share in the rewards. (It turns out it's hard to find people with the self-discipline to work this way.)

We are constantly refining and redefining how we want to live. It takes much trial and error, and constant attention, compromise, and sacrifice to successfully run our company and travel the way we want to. We've been building our business for 11 years now, and each year we're able to travel more. As of this week we've spent over 700 nights on the road in our 2010 Airstream and 100 nights on the water in our new Nordic Tug. This lifestyle is not for everyone, but we love it and it works well for us. We feel lucky. But we know that it's not about luck at all. It's about setting your sights on what you want, defining a plan to move ever closer to your dream, and then doing it (not just talking about it or wishing for it or waiting for retirement for it).

That's it. It's not easy, but it's definitely doable, and you can do it too.

One More Thing

Recently, a colleague of Kevin's was giving him a hard time about our lifestyle. He implied that by being out "gallivanting around the country all the time," we weren't being serious or mature about our lives and our careers.

"Y'know…" Kevin said, "…my father died when he was three years older than I am right now. It's really important to me to live a healthy, low stress life, and maybe that will help me live longer than my dad did, but whether it does or not I refuse to spend my life waiting around and planning for some future fulfillment that might or might not happen." (Go Kevin!)

We want to explore and experience the world NOW. We want to continue growing an ethical business that empowers and enables other people to follow their dreams as well.

We want to do things, not just think about doing them. And we hope to inspire you to do the same.

Friluftsliv is My New Favorite Word

Laura Domela — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 18:01:00 +0000

Friluftsliv — pronounced free-loofts-liv translates directly from Norwegian as "free air life."

It's a concept we don't really have a word for in English, and doesn't translate easily, but it's a word used in Norway to describe a life spent exploring and appreciating nature.

YES!

(I know, I used that water photo in a previous post. So what. It's pretty.)

Read more about friluftsliv here

My second-favorite new word is the Danish word "hygge" but it has more to do with winter, so it moved to number two, because it's March and things are blooming, but it's fabulous, and you can read about its meaning here.

Filet-O-Fish® and Portrait Photography

Laura Domela — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 03:17:38 +0000

Yesterday on our way to pick up some groceries in Port Townsend, we walked past a McDonald’s. In the window was a large poster advertising the Filet-O-Fish® sandwich, two bucks on Fridays. Admittedly, I’m not the target demographic for McDonald's (at all), but I was mesmerized by this photograph.

I said to Kevin “Could that food look ANY more processed!? The plastic bun, the machine-cut square of fish, the crayon-orange cheese, the marshmallow tartar sauce with perfectly placed pickle bits….”

“You know It took a photographer, a huge team of food stylists and art directors (and likely an enormous budget) to make that Filet-O-Fish® photo happen.”

As an advertisement, this felt like a total fail. I couldn’t imagine a Filet-O-Fish® looking any less appetizing than it did on this poster in the window of its maker. I assumed that the photography/money/art/food styling team would have instead aimed for creating an image depicting…well, something more appealing, organic, delicious, and less processed, plastic, precise.

On the other hand, as an editorial photo (or art!), this photograph of the Filet-O-Fish® sandwich was PERFECT. The factory-fabricated Filet-O-Fish® in this photo looks exactly like what it is. The photographer had somehow managed to even amplify the synthetic reality of the Filet-O-Fish®. You can almost picture the factory workers in white bunny suits extruding perfectly square fish filets from gleaming stainless steel industrial machinery.

It’s like when I take a portrait of a cool character with an interesting vibe and I’m able to show a heap of his personality in my zillionth of a second shutter click and subsequent print. This Filet-O-Fish® photograph oozes its processed personality perfectly.

I decided if I were the photographer, I’d be super proud of getting it “just right.”

As a professional portrait photographer, my philosophy centers on connecting with my subjects by creating a comfortable, casual environment where they feel open and at ease. I want to listen to their stories and study their mannerisms. I’d rather focus in on capturing a person’s unique characteristics than take a “pretty” or “flattering” photo that has no personality.

A few years ago I was hired to create a portrait of the (now defrocked) pastor/leader of the Mars Hill Church for the cover of a magazine. We were invited by his PR guy to attend (and photograph) his hour-long sermon before photographing him in the “green room” of his Bellevue, Washington megachurch. The original plan had been to set up in the green room during his first sermon, and then meet for his portrait quickly between his two sermons (my preference, since I was not so keen on the whole megachurch thing), so this was a bit of a departure.

His sermon began (picture spotlights and giant TV screens and a rock band opening act) and we found him to be a very engaging and charismatic speaker, but he preached values that I find highly offensive (misogyny, bigotry, and intolerance), and hearing him encourage this way of thinking so eloquently and persuasively to a stadium full of mostly young people was very disturbing.

After the sermon we set up in his green room and I felt pretty nervous as we waited for him to arrive. I find it so important to connect with the subjects I photograph, but I felt less than enthusiastic about trying to connect with this one. Turns out he was not a “connect with you” kind of guy anyway, at least not for the 15 minutes I spent with him. He was detached, dismissive, and not engaged at all (perhaps because I was a woman). There were about 20 people in the smallish room (including his whole family) and it was far too crowded and lively for me to do much but try to get the best “surface” shot of him as fast as I could (and by "surface" I mean "good photograph of this guy, but without having the normal photographer/subject rapport that I usually can cultivate during a shoot").

Back in the studio as I was editing down the work, there was one photo that stood out to me. It might not have been the most flattering portrait of him, but it felt by far the most honest. It accurately represented how he “felt” to me in person. He had a bit of a smirk. He was making was eye contact, but there didn’t seem to be any real connection with the viewer. His expression felt kinda like a shrug. This shot was definitely my favorite and felt the most genuine to me, so I submitted it to the magazine’s art director along with the other shots I thought were probably more flattering.

Guess which photo the magazine put on the cover? The Filet-O-Fish®!

Quicksand and Tidal Waves

Laura Domela — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 17:11:33 +0000

At some point in my childhood, I became aware that I had two catastrophe fears — quicksand and tidal waves — and that I had no clue where those fears originated.

Could it have been that time the neighborhood kids all helped fill sandbags near our apartment in Seal Beach, California as a storm was threatening to flood the old town area? Is that what caused me to imagine the many scenarios where a giant wave had crashed over the town and I was floating down Main Street on my bunk bed boat?

Certainly the silly, unrealistic scenes on Gilligan's Island where someone was sinking into a quicksand puddle weren't scary enough to cause my worry and fear of quicksand, were they?

I was born in Alaska and we lived in Anchorange until I was 5 years old. Once, a few years back while I was working on this portrait project with my brother in Girdwood, Alaska, as we were driving the stretch of road along the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet between Anchorage and Girdwood, someone in the car told a crazy story about a woman who had gone out onto the mudflats at low tide and gotten stuck, and as she was being rescued by helicopter, it pulled her too hard from the quicksand (or she was just fatally stuck) and her body was actually torn in half! This story sounded strangely familiar to me (but also as horrifying as if I'd just heard it for the first time).

**I looked it up just now to see if it really happened and found this interesting article about the dangers of the bore tide, that included this bit:

Many have heard the story of the duck hunter who was stuck in the mud on either Knik or Turnagain arm, in the 1960s or 1970s, depending on who tells it, and was pulled in half by a helicopter, leaving the lower half of his body in the mud. Some locals remember the incident vividly. There is no evidence it ever happened, but the story has become an Alaska legend.

I'm sure as a kid I'd heard these stories told many times by the adults around me…the stories about real people who got stuck in the mud and glacial silt in the Turnagain Arm at low tide, and then were either rescued successfully, or who remained stuck and hypothermic and drowned as the tide came in over them. I realized at that point when and where my fear of quicksand had been programmed. It was in Alaska, before I was 5.

I'd also probably overheard many stories about the Great Alaskan Earthquake. This 9.2 earthquake — you know, the most powerful recorded earthquake in North American history…the one that caused TSUNAMIS and SOIL LIQUIFICATION??!! – happened only three years before I was born. I soon also knew when and where my childhood fear of tidal waves had been instilled — in Alaska, before I was 5.

This is a photo taken downtown Anchorage after the 1964 earthquake:

Now check out this map of Anchorage:

The star in the lower left is where our house was, and the star in the upper right is where that photo was taken. The stars are 3 miles apart. Also, notice how close our house is to what is now Earthquake Park:

Anchorage was not hit by tsunamis, but downtown Anchorage was heavily damaged, and parts of the city built on sandy bluffs overlying "Bootlegger Cove clay" near Cook Inlet, most notably the Turnagain neighborhood, suffered landslide damage. The neighborhood lost 75 houses in the landslide, and the destroyed area has since been turned into Earthquake Park. (Wikipedia)

It's interesting to me how much the topics of quicksand and tidal waves were part of my thoughts and imagination as a kid in California from age 5 on, when the experiences that programmed those thoughts predated most of my conscious memory.

All of this back story gets me to why I started this post in the first place. (At least after telling you this whole lengthy back story, I still remember the front story, which is often not the case when I'm telling stories in person.)

This morning I came across a photo portfolio by Getty Images photographer Streeter Lecka who recently spent six days out on Turnagain Arm photographing the folks who venture out onto the mudflats to ride the waves of the tidal bore. The waves can be as high as 10 feet tall (though only around a full moon, normally they're small).

Yep, people SURF (and kayak) the tidal bore. Here's a video:

And now, about this photo portfolio. It's called Surfing Alaska's Bore Tide:

This is a beautiful series and I think you should check it out. Click here for the full photo essay.

I hope none of them get stuck and drown.

A Sorta Funny Story about an Unhappy Employee

Laura Domela — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 14:23:35 +0000

Yesterday we stopped at Fred Meyer in Florence to pick up a few ingredients for last night’s crab enchiladas: avocados, tortillas, sour cream and cilantro and half and half for the white sauce, and a bottle of A to Z pinot gris.

We brought our items up to the front and headed for the closest checkstand with a light on. There was no checker there, but there was a woman standing out past the National Enquirer stands just hanging out, like she was waiting for customers.

I said “Are you here?” and motioned to her checkstand. We made funny conversation about how she may or may not really be there. She was fairly good-humored, but it was extremely clear that she did not want to be there and was counting the minutes until she could leave.

She rang up our items and as she put the bottle of wine in a plastic bag, the bag split down the middle. She grumbled about the bag’s thinness and sat the bottle of wine behind her as she reached for another plastic bag.

As she reached for the new bag, she tipped the bottle of wine off the edge of the back counter. It was one of those slow motion things…I saw her knock the bottle, then turn around, then I watched the bottle as it fell to the floor. It landed squarely and perfectly on the cushy standing mat in her station, about 6 inches from her feet. I thought “Whew! Nice that it had a cushy spot to land and didn’t break.” She stood there for what seemed like 10 seconds (but was probably more like 3…but certainly there was a delay) and then she yelled out in pain as if the bottle had landed on her foot (which it did not). She immediately (like, within milliseconds!) picked up the phone and called someone to tell them she dropped a bottle of wine on her foot and they needed to come relieve her. She was hopping up and down on one foot as our new checker came up, calmly told her to go ahead and go to the bathroom, look at her foot or do whatever she needed to do…as if this kind of thing happened frequently. Which I’m sure it does.

As Kevin and I walked back out to the Airstream with our groceries, we compared notes. He saw the same exact thing I did. So funny. So obvious.

Do What You Love

Laura Domela — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:35:58 +0000

We're at home now for a few days before heading back out for more Airstreaming. I'm standing here at my desk (actually, I'm standing on the trampoline in front of my standing desk), and hanging on the wall to my right is a thing that I love and wanted to share with you. It's a framed print of the Holstee Manifesto.

I love the message and you should too:

Holstee is a cool company with a lot of great products. Check 'em out here.

Wand’rly Magazine

Laura Domela — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:43:19 +0000

If you guys don't know Wand'rly Magazine, you should. Their current issue is about Airstreams, and the feature article "Living in an Airstream" features us and several of our friends: Tiffani & Deke (Weaselmouth), Kyle Bolstad (Where Is Kyle Now?), Leigh & Brian (Aluminarium) (as well as a link to another full article about the Mali Mish clan).

It's a great article (thanks, Nathan!) and gives a lot of insight into how and why we all do this whole Airstream thing.

There's also an interesting article about Renovating an Airstream…check it out here.

We're heading down to George Sutton in a few minutes to pick up our Airstream. Will give you the rundown of the tweaks and fixes we had done later today or tomorrow.

117 Nights and 25 States

Laura Domela — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:18:39 +0000

After four months, 117 nights, 25 states (!!!), 13,000 road miles, 1 auto accident, 2 F150 trucks, 7 business trips, and an unmeasurable amount of fun and adventure (plus a ton of work, as usual), we are back home in Portland. In a house. A house with rooms, where it takes more than 5 steps to get from bed to the espresso maker.

In the few days that we've been home, we've been spending most of our time frantically getting rid of stuff, filling box after box to take to Goodwill. It's always like this when we get home. Living in a small space with exactly what you need (and a place to put those things you need) is so….well, it's peaceful. I'm never stressing about the mess in the (insert room here) and how long it will take to clean that up before dinner guests arrive. I completely cleaned out my closet and dresser and hardly kept anything that I haven't worn in the last year. This means now I have clothes that I actually wear IN my dresser, instead of on top, while the drawers serve as storage. It's amazing!

I went through the main kitchen cupboard and threw out everything that (a) was old, and (b) that I don't use, and now my cupboard is usable, with things I USE!!

We've got family coming to stay with us for the holidays and we're looking forward to enjoying the house for a bit. We plan to keep getting rid of things so hopefully, someday soon, our house can be as simple and elegant as our Airstream.

Oh yeah, and here are the states we visited, in order (duplicates in parentheses): Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado (where we'd originally planned to turn around and go home!), Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tenessee, Kenducky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, (Kansas), Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, (Idaho), Washington, (Oregon)

(Posted by Laura)