Occupation of Independence

It's a little hard to place this blog in the correct genre, since it's a hybrid -- or "bastard" if you prefer. RV, travel, camping, doggie outdoor lifestyle, walking/hiking and bicycling are all accurate phrases, but it doesn't fit cleanly into any of these pure categories. All in all, this pleases me. I can't imagine a better way to camp than with a smaller and less expensive RV, a dog, and a mountain bike. While readying my rig to start traveling again, it was profoundly satisfying to arrange the contents of my cargo van, yesterday. It was probably the same primal satisfaction that any animal gets when they rearrange their den or nest. So why didn't I ever experience that satisfaction when I owned a regular stick-and-brick house?

How can I do things better than before? That is the main question as I tool up for traveling again. Essentially, my answer is to push harder in the camping direction, as opposed to stereotypical RV travel or windshield tourism. Of course an RVer need not adopt a "camping" orientation at all, and most of them don't. But let's not talk about that. There are some bicycle touring blogs who interrupt their routine descriptions of ride statistics or camping details with perspectives about the real benefits of what they are doing: what satisfactions are they getting that couldn't be gotten by a more conventional lifestyle. They enjoy consciously dwelling on the things that a person with a conventional lifestyle takes for granted. And they like being inventive.