Occupation of Independence

So, can you save a fortune by converting an enclosed cargo trailer into a travel trailer, rather than buying a travel trailer from the dealer? The answer may be 'yes' if you put minimal improvements into the cargo trailer, and use it merely as a hard-walled tent for camping a few weekends per year. The answer is vaguer if you add enough to the cargo trailer to make it practical for most (non-extremist) full time RVers.  If you browse around on the internet, you will encounter low-ball estimates for how much it costs to convert an enclosed cargo trailer into a full-functional, self-contained travel trailer. There are several reasons for this: Sloppy accounting. After all, it isn't fun to save all the receipts. The mind gloms onto a couple of the big-ticket items that are easy to remember; then it is easy to claim that that is the cost of converting a cargo trailer. Nonsense! In fact you are eaten alive by a thousand-and-one small expenses. Lifestyle che

It is odd that I mention "early retirement" in the subtitle of this blog, but seldom talk about what some readers would care about: "how the hell can you possibly do it?" One reason I shun the topic is that I get accused of being anti-woman. How generous of Fred Reed to offer up an essay "Against Marriage," which provides me with easy "cover." Although he doesn't mention early retirement per se in his essay, his arguments against marriage apply triply to somebody who wants to retire early.  But let's be clear: his essay is against getting sucked into a destructive legal/financial relationship (aka, marriage) with a woman. It is not anti-woman. People who reflexively trot out that old canard do so as a crutch: they don't want to look at the arguments against marriage honestly and intelligently; they would rather perform character assassination on the man making the argument. If you read the essay, you will probably find it pro

A couple birds carried-on a noisy aerial dogfight over my trailer. It's not unusual for a couple small birds to get after a large raptor, but here a single small bird held forth, valiantly. The fight went on for half an hour. My dog was annoyed the entire time. But isn't it amazing what inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras can do these days! Those two birds were up there, say, 300 feet. I took the optical zoom way out there, so far that it was hard to keep them in the frame. And yet the box turned green -- focus was achieved. And even after digital zoom was added, the photo is still pretty clear: I am now reading Jack London's "The Sea Wolf," so my mind takes to "wind sports". I wonder if London ever wrote a couple paragraphs on something like what is in this photo, and what meaning he read into it.