Travel Goof

Middle: smog test in Stuttgart Germany just after buying it. Left and right: down the street from where I lived in Prague, and hopefully the last winter for both of us!

Howdy, I moved myself and my business into a truck which I converted into a caravan so that I could travel freely around the world with no agenda or particular schedule. I'd love if you can join me during my travels. Below you will find some basic info how I arrived at this wonderful situation.

You might wonder how someone could move out of a gorgeous Prague flat into a sardine can, but trust me, I love it. Maybe I got Gypsy blood in me, who knows, but I'd love to see the world.

At the age of 3.5 the communists invaded the Czech Republic and my parents decided to split pronto. Eventually made it to Canada, my parents divorced, and my mom bounced around from one end of Ottawa to the other. So at a very early age I was already uprooted and constantly forced to make new friends.
Eventually moved to Vancouver B.C., where I bounced around a few highschools, spent six summers planting trees, bounced around the country some more, and after university decided to move back to Prague. This was shortly after the fall of communism.
At that time Prague was compared to Paris after WWII. It was an interesting place, frequented by a lot of interesting people, but whose stay was short-lived. So again I was constantly making new friends, and although I stayed in Prague for fifteen years, it kind of felt like I was traveling, because of all the new faces passing through town and the rapid changes which took place there following the fall of communism.

Besides my four years at university in Canada, Prague was by far the longest I ever stayed in one place. And after some ten years (the maximum time I originally planned to stay there), my yearnings to travel and uproot myself yet again reached unbearable levels. Either it is in my genes and nature, or it has been bred into me due to the constant upheavals in my life, but I now consider myself a traveling Gypsy - a nomad at heart.

I came to Prague with the intention of making a million bucks and retiring (in ten years). Unfortunately, this did not happen, but my translation agency was successful enough that it kept me pegged there. One of the reasons why I moved back to Prague was because it was in Central Europe and I hoped to use it as a launching pad to travel throughout Europe. But every time I would go on a little vacation, I often lost customers, who demanded constant attention and looked for alternate providers when I was not available.

With the eventual advent of the internet, I started to devise a plan whereby I could take my work wherever I go.
I tested this out a few times, once during my vacation to Bulgaria, and once on a trip through Europe. I had a roaming plan with ATT whereby I could dialup to a local modem and hook up to the internet that way, but this depended on someone allowing me to use their phone and it was generally rather problematic.
I then received a massive translation job of 5 million words into 11 languages for Dupont, and my dreams of departure were accelerating.

After recovering from this project I decided I would take a vacation to North America. Visit my mother in Vancouver Canada for Christmas after 11 years in Prague, then buy a van and drive down to the southern tip of Baja Mexico to spend my first winter ever in warmth. It was truly a treat. But half of the coast did not have a mobile signal, and because my trip was so short (3 months), my best bet for an internet connection was to rent a satellite Iridium phone. About a buck fifty a minute and a ridiculously slow connection. I'd have to pull over by the side of the road once a day, find a clearing where I could catch at least 3 satellites, and check my mail that way. Otherwise I would hunt down the occasional internet cafe, or possibly use my ATT roaming through someone's phone line. But again, it was limiting, and again I lost some important customers.

While in the US I purchased a lot of hardware which I planned for my upcoming "world tour" (these pages). The Mexico trip was more of a serious pilot test, an opportunity to treat my mother for Christmas, and a chance to buy a lot of hardware not available in Europe, or much cheaper there than in Europe.

I stepped off the plane back in Prague with a gorgeous tan and was ready to hit the road again with a vengeance. But I was stuck in Prague for three more years, during which time I always thought it would take me three months to depart, until it became a regular joke and no one believed I would ever leave. It turns out that the preparations for my world tour were much more colossal than I had ever dreamed. Busy with translation projects I hired a part time secretary to help me get sorted.
With some Dupont project cash still lingering, I finally found my dream caravan truck, the discovery of which was a story in itself. Much to learn, and a lot of time spent putting together the beast.
Then came another massive translation project, this time for Monster.com, translating its 225,000 word website into each of five languages, whereby I now finally had the funds to hit the road. Three years after leaving Mexico.

It was a bumpy start, especially since I ran cold out of work and was eating bread crumbs for a year while - but at least no more expensive Prague rent! One of the key points making my trip possible was to set up a system where I could hand the management of my translation agency to others - I was going global. It required setting up a server and getting my programmers to develop many fancy scripts for me - a very difficult task indeed and which contributed to my delayed departure.

But after a year on the road, tweaking the beast further with what little funds I could scrounge together, I learned much about living such a nomadic lifestyle, and about hooking up solar panels, wiring the beast, different ways to connect to the internet while traveling, and where to take my regular morning dump - all explained and constantly updated in the caravan survival tips pages.

One major ingredient I found lacking during my Mexico trip was a female travel companion. I spent my last year in Prague actively seeking such a partner, but this proved more difficult than I expected. If you read the caravan survival tips pages above, I think you will understand why. But I shall persevere.

Otherwise, I would advertise on Lonelyplanet.com, couchsurfing.com and in other ways to find company to travel with, and occasionally I would be successful. This is one of the reasons why I developed these travel pages. Originally because my friends wanted to hear about my experiences, but quickly as a means to find co-travelers, and even to help generate web traffic for my translation agency (in a desperate plea for work).

I also tried finding travel companions by creating a cheap travel Europe tour guide site, but that too is overly strange for most people.
Eventually I got tired of European winters. After all, one of my primary goals was to escape to the beach and perfect weather. But it's not practical to drive over certain boarders, so I decided to leave the truck behind, cut yet another umbilical cord and live solely out of a backpack! Off to Asia I am! With a small netbook, mobile signal booster, wifi booster antenna, portable external harddrives and as much of my business in the clouds as possible, I was ready to float around the world like a leaf. Keep up to the latest news (mostly pictures) of my latest travels here. I found a great and cheap way to travel was to help others, such as through Help Exchange, or just Couch Surf. 

Feel free to email me, or contact me through my email form.

After traveling for some time I developed two favourite sayings. The first one drawn from "The world is my oyster" and describing how I feel after I settle for a few days in some city and learn where all the shops, washrooms and showers etc. are.

The world is my town.

Been there, done that, time to move on.
 

In Yalikavak, Turkey