Homeless by Choice

Car-Camping Guide to Key West

2012-01-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

[Wow! I didn't make any posts at all to this blog in 2011! I didn't really intend to abandon it. I am still happily homeless and wandering the highways of America. In Sept. 2011, I finally lost my free-flight benefits with US Airways (3 years free flight after being laid off), so I can no longer pop over to Europe at will. Otherwise my life is pretty much the same.

For Christmas 2011, I rented a car in mainland Florida and drove down to Key West—a favorite vacation of mine. Below is my car-camping guide to the Florida Keys, originally posted on Google Plus, where is it impossible to find.]

THE FLORIDA KEYS - Best cheap winter vacation in America! It's easy: Fly to Miami or FLL (usually cheap), rent a car (cheap on weekends). Stay at the Everglades International Hostel in Florida City or sleep in car. (Since it is warm, the only bedding you need is an airline blanket.) Drive the Overseas Highway to Key West -- America's drive-to Caribbean Island. There's no cheap lodging on the Keys and overnight parking is hard to pull off on Key West itself, but you can get away with it easier on other Keys. (There's a state campground at Bahia Honda, but it's always heavily booked.) Once you figure out how to sleep, there's little cost. Fast food and groceries in Key West and several towns along the way. Perfect bath-water swimming year round. All the environmental ambiance of a Caribbean island at a fraction of the cost. Go now! [Nov. 2011]

My photos: http://Glenn-Campbell.com/album?keywest

UPDATE Christmas 2011: Just visited Key West again for Christmas. Arrived on Christmas Eve and left on Christmas Day. I swam at dawn on Christmas morning on Smather's Beach! On this brief trip, I discovered two new overnight camping spots...

In Key West, you can PARK OVERNIGHT IN THE TRUMAN ANNEX, just outside the entrance for Ft. Zackary Taylor State Park. Map:http://g.co/maps/knb4g - Follow the signs toward the park and you'll see what I mean. There were several RVs parked in this vicinity when I visited, and I spent the night in a rental car unmolested. (Unlike the rest of Key West where they are very rigorous about enforcing no-overnight-parking.) I'm not sure you can get away with tent camping here, but you might. Check out the overgrown area in the far corner, under a pedestrian bridge. Even if you don't spend the night at the Truman Annex, you can park here during the day for free and walk to Duval Street.

About halfway down the keys is another rare overnight parking/camping spot: An ABANDONED MANSION near Layton. Map:http://g.co/maps/ecgn2 - (See my Key West album for photo.) When I visited, the gate was open, with occasional tourists driving in. There are No Trespassing signs around the mansion itself (so faded as to be almost unreadable), but none on the grounds or the gate. Place has obviously been abandoned for years, if not decades. I would have no problem pitching a tent here. (You could sleep in the open, without a tent, except for the likelihood of rain during the night.) You could even sleep inside the building (if you're willing to ignore the almost unreadable No Trespassing signs. (Hard concrete, but you'd be protected from the rain and wouldn't need a tent.) Here is a panorama of the mansion and its grounds: http://photosynth.net/view/d82217c3-3b63-4997-a0a8-79fcc8a2d7cb

A great attraction I discovered on this trip was the dock at Robbie's Marina (Sometimes called Tarpon Landing), where you can feed pelicans and huge fish for a couple of dollars. Another is the Wild Bird Sanctuary in Key Largo (free but $5 donation suggested): Get up close and personal with the pelicans. See photo album: http://Glenn-Campbell.com/album?pelicans

Other Key West notes: The main tourist drag is Duval Street. Walk here at night for lots of entertainment. Stores in town include Publix, Kmart, all the fast food joints and -- most important -- a big Dollar Tree store. Caribbean Swimming at Smathers Beach (bring quarters for the parking meters) or Fort Zackary Taylor ($4.50+ entry fee).

The Perfect Campsite in Kansas

2010-09-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

Sept. 2 — The sun just went down in central Kansas, so it's time to pull off I-70 and find a safe harbor for the night.

Last night, in Wyoming, I stayed in the lap of luxury: Motel 6, Laramie. It was cold (40s) and very windy (sub-freezing chill factor), so it seemed worth the 40 bucks. In Kansas, though, the weather is a lot more mild, and every night I can spend outdoors is money saved (and more time I can spend in Europe, where hostels about $20/night). The car I am in is packed with luggage, so there is no space to achieve the critical element: bringing my legs to the same level as my head. (I can sleep sitting up, but it isn't comfortable.)

Tonight, I didn't have to look very far. Kansas has big, spacious rest areas where you can usually get away with camping under cover of night. (Camping on the ground wouldn't work at most rest areas in other states, where space is at a premium.) This rest area near Russell has a vast area of mowed grass behind the restrooms, big as a football field. There are about six 18-wheelers parked at this rest area for the night, but I'm the only car, so I've made myself at home. I have set up camp behind a big bush in the middle of the field, so it's impossible for anyone to detect me. (The car is obvious, but it's normal for it to be parked here.)

My "camp" consists of a sleeping bag, a camping mattress and a 6x8 tarp for a ground cover. The low temp tonight is expected to be in the 50s. Very little wind and a clear sky full of stars. Since it is only 9pm, I'll easily wake and break camp before down.

Here's my exact location if you care to join me.

Wal-Mart Motel: $20/night

2010-08-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

When you’re driving in the USA and can’t afford local motels, Wal-Mart offers a secret “motel” for $20/night. You just have to know about it.

In an earlier posting I discussed the Supercenter Camping Method. If you’re driving across America, finding a discreet place to camp is difficult, not because America lacks open spaces but because it is difficult to hide your car. My solution is to hide the car in the open, in a place where cars would normally be parked at night—like the parking lot of a 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter! At least in rural areas, open land or woods are common around Supercenters, since these monstrosities are usually located in newly appropriated land on the outskirts of town.

Last night, I successful practiced The Method yet again, this time in Pennsylvania. I was driving Interstate 80, couldn't find a cheap motel and didn't have any camping equipment with me. What to do? The trouble with Pennsylvania and other Northeastern states is the lack of cheap motels. Motel 6 is relatively rare and often high-priced when available, and other chains aren’t cheap. (Hostels, of course, exist only in a few major cities.) I was prepared to spend $35 for a night’s lodging but not $65, which was the lowest rate I could expect in these parts. The alternative? Check into the nearest Wally World.

A Supercenter is distinguished from a traditional Wal-Mart in that it has a full-size grocery section and is open 24 hours. Supercenters are located along the interstate highway system throughout America, usually adjacent to an exit with some undeveloped land beside it. In America, Wal-Marts are far more frequent than official highway rest areas, and they are a lot easier to find on mapping programs like Google Maps. When I am driving (which I do for a living), I typically check in at Wal-Marts a couple of times a day—to use the reliably clean restrooms, stock up on basic supplies and just soak in the ambiance. Every Wal-Mart is the same, and, yes, it gives me a feeling of home in being there.

So my challenge is to spend a comfortable, safe night within a short walk of my car while spending as little money as possible. If I was going to spend $35 on a motel, then I can comfortably spend $20 on camping supplies that I may throw away the next day.

The weather last night was clear with no rain in the forecast. This is the tail end of summer and it gets a little chilly at night—which is good! Coolness is going to suppress my most significant adversary: the mosquito. For one thing, I can hide deep in my sleeping bag and expose less of my skin, but mosquitoes are also less active when it’s cool. They aren’t much of a problem below 65 degrees F and they are no issue at all below 55.

At dusk, I checked my BlackBerry for the next Wal-Mart along the highway. It was in Clarion, Pennsylvania, and it turned out to be perfect! There was a field of tall grass and brush on one side of the parking lot, so 50 feet from the car I could be completely invisible.

…Invisible at night, that is! Thanks to the power of darkness, you can camp in some amazingly obvious places. The only catch is that you have to be sure to wake up and break camp before dawn, because the landscape completely changes during the day. It's like the Invisible Man losing his superpowers.

(For sunrise times, see TimeAndDate.com.)

Here's my exact camping spot...

View Larger Map

After selecting my camping spot in the last light of the day, I made first pass through Wal-Mart, picking up two essential items: A sleeping bag for $10, and a plastic tarp for $5. The sleeping bag is a summer model stocked year-round at all Wal-Marts. It is rated at 40-60 degrees (more realistic for 60 than 40) and currently sells for $9.88 (photo). In winter, I might buy TWO of these bags and stick them one inside the other, but for tonight one would do.

The tarp (6 x 8 feet) is found in the automotive section for $4.50, and I use it as a ground cloth. It is also big enough that I can fold it around me. In the lush East, the grass under the tarp serves as a mattress, providing (at least to me) enough padding for comfortable sleep. In the barren West, however, I would buy a camping air mattress instead (for about $13) or a swimming pool air mattress (about $6), since the desert ground is too hard to sleep on without it. (You need a pump to blow up the camping mattress: $10-15.)

In the humid East, you must be wary of rain, but there’s also another form of falling water that happens more often: dew. Dew is condensation that covers everything after dark—like having light rain every night. (photo) Dew rarely happen in the desert, but in the East (or near the ocean) where the relative humidity is close to 100%, it can be drenching. (In the winter, it manifests as frost.) When your sleeping bag is wet, it doesn’t keep you as warm, and once dew forms, it won’t evaporate until morning.

I address this problem by wrapping the tarp around me like a burrito. The tarp has grommet holes along the edges and I fasten these together with plastic cable ties ($1 from the hardware section). This "tortilla" can’t be too tight, however, because your body and breath are also generating moisture of their own, which forms dew on the INSIDE of the tarp. (That’s why sleeping bags have to be made of fabric, not plastic.) The aim of the tarp tortilla is to cut down most of the dew but not all of it. There have to be gaps to let your own moisture out.

The tarp can also protect you from light rain, but significant rain would preclude this kind of tentless camping, as would high temperatures that bring out the mosquitoes and force me to leave my sleeping bag. Low temperatures, however, are not a problem. In temperatures well below freezing, I can do just fine with two summer bags (one inside the other) wrapped in a tarp burrito--even in snow. (For added warmth, I might sleep in my winter clothes and jacket.)

Of course, I could also use a tent. I sometimes travel with one, but tents at Wal-Mart are expensive ($45+). (I buy tents on sale at sporting goods mega-stores for about $25.) For one or two nights in good weather, a tent is usually not worth the expense or even the bother to put up. I like the freedom of not having to carry anything with me, and I don't like how a tent cuts me off from my environment. With the burrito method, you check into Wal-Mart with $20 and walk out with everything you need.

What about a pillow? It’s free! The $10 sleeping bag comes in a zippered fabric pouch. Fill it full of clothing and—viola!—a pillow.

Safety? Not an issue. There aren’t people wandering around in places like this, on the outskirts of rural towns far from any residences. Your car is safe, because Wal-Mart usually has a night-time security patrol in the parking lot, but they aren’t concerned with the surrounding woods and grass. Their vehicle has a big flashing light on top, so you an easily evade them when coming and going.

Wild animals and insects? Apart from mosquitoes, there aren’t any to worry about. Civilization has killed off all the lions and tigers and bears. Snakes and rodents regard you as a danger and will give you a wide berth when they can (except maybe to steal you food). I have never had a creepy-crawly climb into my sleeping bag with me, and I wouldn’t regard it as a danger if they did. Your only potential threat is human, and these animals rarely leave their cars except to waddle into the Wal-Mart.

Weather? It happens, but at least you can look up the forecast and have a good idea of what is possible. Unlike living in a “home” or staying in motels, weather is the camper’s constant companion and you have to listen to it and understand it. If the forecast calls for a low of 40 degrees, experience should tell you what you need. Rain, of course, my require you to use a tent, and heavy rain may make even tenting impossible. You have to seek other accommodations, like a motel or sleeping in the car. (I can sleep sitting up in the driver’s seat. It’s easier than sleeping on a red-eye flight but rarely offers a sound night’s sleep.)

Is is legal? Of course not! Vacant land around a new Supercenter is probably owned by Wal-Mart itself, since they have a habit of buying up all the land where they know they are going to build one. (Clever, eh? They lease out the land to other stores and take advantage of their own halo effect.) Most rural Wal-Marts allows RVs to camp in their parking lots, but open-air camping is another thing and would probably attract an unsavory crowd if it were explicitly allowed. I camp there, however, under the principle that what Wal-Mart doesn't know won't hurt it. As in most things, discretion is the key. If I arrive after dark and leave before dawn, and no one ever knows I was there, I don't feel that I'm trampling on Wal-Mart's property rights. Besides, I'm a good customer!

Can’t sleep? Just pop into your neighborhood Wal-Mart for a snack. Remember, though, that your coach turns into a pumpkin in the morning. You must have some kind of alarm clock to wake you up before dawn, because as soon as the sun comes up, your cover may be blown.

Last night, however, I had no trouble sleeping, and because the location seemed secure, I chose to sleep until after dawn. I got a solid 7 hours of sleep, as good as any motel. There was no opportunity for a shower, but if I felt the need, I could pick that up at a truck stop. I kept the tarp and sleeping bag, but I could have thrown them away (or left them in the parking lot for other thrifty Wal-Mart patrons to snatch up). Either way, I was a winner, getting a good night's sleep while saving about $50.

Thanks again , Wal-Mart!

On Hiatus

2010-06-04T07:05:00.001-07:00

This blog is on hiatus for the summer. (I'm taking advantage of my free travel while I have it.)

You can still follow me on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and my Home Page.

Airport Camping: Ontario, California

2010-03-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

I am writing this from a sleeping bag in the middle of a field adjacent to the Ontario International Airport (on the eastern outskirts of the Los Angeles area). The time is 7:18 pm (Feb. 28, 2010). Less than two hours ago, I had no idea I would be sleeping here, but now I’m comfy as can be, planning to get a full night’s sleep in the open air.

An hour and a half ago, I was driving a rental car down I-15 from Las Vegas, planning to catch a flight from Ontario to a major airport where I spend the night 2 or 3 times a month. As I came down the Cajon Pass, however, I hit heavy traffic and I realized I wasn’t going to make my flight. It was my own fault; I had all day to make the 3 hour drive, but I dawdled along the way, and cut the travel time too close. Since I fly for free (as a furloughed airline employee) I can afford to be cavalier about missing flights, but this 7pm departure was the last one of the day. Missing it meant I would be trapped in Ontario overnight.

By 6pm, I realized there was no chance I would have time to both turn in my rental car and check in for the flight by 6:30 (given the 30-minute check-in cut-off). The car was also due at 6:30, but I knew I had a 29-minute grace period, so I could turn it in as late as 6:59 and still avoid additional charges (but miss my flight). It was beyond my budget to stay at any local hotel or rent another car to sleep in; each of those options would easily set me back $80 or more. I had to come up an alternate lodging plan and implement it quickly, before the rental car was due.

I had been to the Ontario airport only once before, when I flew in three days earlier. (I was heading to Vegas but chose Ontario for a cheaper rental car.) Ontario is a small airport where the secure area probably closes at night. If the baggage claim area remained open and I was allowed to stay there, I would be sleeping on relatively hard seats with fixed armrests, giving me no opportunity to lie down. Even if the floor was carpeted (which I can't recall), I knew from experience that it would be too hard to sleep on. I could “survive” in the baggage claim area if I had to, but I wouldn’t get a good night's sleep there.

As I drove down the Cajon Pass (from the dry high desert to the lower and more humid coastal desert), I took a mental inventory of the supplies in my possession. I had a single light sleeping bag, my standard $10 model from Acme™ that I had purchased three days before so I could sleep in the car. My plan was to jettison it with the rental car, but now I could use it to camp with. However, I knew it wouldn't be enough. This 3-pound bag was adequate for the enclosed car (where heat is retained), but it wouldn’t be sufficient to keep me warm outdoors.

I checked my blackberry for the weather report. No rain was in the forecast, which was good, but there is usually heavy dew in the L.A. area, equivalent to a little light rain every night. The nighttime low was forecast at 45 degrees F. That’s a little below my own comfort rating for this bag when out in the open, especially given the dew. I felt I would need a second bag both for warmth and for padding underneath me. Experience told me that two sleeping bags laid down on grass or soft dirt, would provide adequate padding.

I also checked Google Maps on my Blackberry for aerial images of the area. I had no real worry that I would find a place to camp. I knew that the airport was in a relatively sterile industrial area, away from any housing and probably without any homeless population. The aerial photos showed lots of open land and landscaping where I could easily hide. I could resolve exactly where after I dropped the car.

At the base of Cajon Pass, I stopped briefly at the Acme™ Store on Foothill Blvd. All I needed was another sleeping bag. My usual $10 model was out of stock, so I upgraded to a posh $15 model (4 pounds). This $15 would be my only additional expense for the overnight stay (and my mistake in missing the flight). I would simply discard both sleeping bags in the morning. (This always pains me, but it beats paying $80 for a hotel.)

I then raced to the airport, getting there after dark at about 6:45. As soon as I got close to the rental car center, I noticed a big empty field across the street. Voila! That would be my home for the night! I drove into a driveway of a communication shack (shown on the upper left on the image above), and under cover of darkness I offloaded my sleeping bags. Then I turned in the car in the nick of time and walked back to the field.

This field is the sort of place that is totally exposed during the day and yet completely secure at night. You can thank the magic of darkness for that! Unlike other parts of the airport, this field isn't well-lit. I can see adequately now that my eyes have adjusted, but no one in a car can see into the field. Since I’m going to sleep early, I’ll be awake well before dawn and will break camp before anyone knows I am here.

To the south of me is a main access road for the airport and to the north are active railroad tracks. I chose the middle of the field to be as far away as possible from both, as well as from any path a pedestrian might take (highly unlikely anyway). I feel completely secure here. It will be a little noisy from the trains, but there is no way anyone is going to detect me or stumble upon me accidentally before morning. There is no trash in the field, so humans rarely come here. The only threat might be gophers, who have riddled the field with holes and who might try to steal my food. I'll engage them in hand-to-hand combat if necessary.

I’m comfortable using the better-quality $15 sleeping bag to sleep in and the $10 one as a mattress. No complaints! I expect to sleep as well as in any hotel and certainly better than I did at the Denver flophouse. I control my environment and have no humans to contend with. What could be better?

MORNING UPDATE: I slept well and woke up at about 3:00 am (8pm-3am = 7 hours). The rail line must be a major one because many trains passed by during the night. Surprisingly, they didn't seem very loud to me; I was vaguely aware of them but they didn't significantly impact my sleep. I awoke to find a layer of water covering everything. If you are camping anywhere apart from an inland desert, dew is something you have to factor in. Fortunately, I anticipated it and sealed up all my bags. My sleeping bag was soaked on the outside, but the moisture didn't penetrate into the interior. No gophers attacked me. In all, a successful sleeping operation.

By 5am, I had broken camp. I folded the sleeping bags on the pavement near the communication shack, where some passer-by would surely see them and take them home. I walked to the rental car center, worked on my computer there for a few hours, then took the shuttle bus to the main terminal. As the bus left the rental center, I caught this daytime glimpse of the field I had been sleeping in...

You would never guess that someone could camp there and not be seen, but that's what darkness can do. It gives you a safe campsite almost anywhere!

(Also see my similar entry: airport camping in Reno.)

Denver Flophouse

2010-02-28T13:05:00.001-08:00

Not all hosteling experiences are warm and fuzzy. A few days ago, I stayed at a Denver "hostel" listed on HostelWorld.com that was little more than an urban flophouse.

Here are my annotated photos of the 11th Street Hotel in Denver, Colorado.

I didn't go into this blind. The reviews at HostelWorld gave me a good idea what to expect, but I didn't have many options. I was flying into Denver at 9pm and had to be in the suburbs at 7am the next day for a business engagement. All I needed was a place to sleep for about 7 hours. I had previously tried to sleep at the Denver airport, but this was less than optimal, since all seating there has armrests. (I would have to sleep on the carpeted floor, which just too hard for sustained sleep.) There was a legitimate youth hostel in Denver, but the front desk there closed at 10pm, and I preferred not to make special arrangements with them (and pay a fee) for my late arrival. Another option was to take the city bus to a Motel 6, but that would have taken me an hour more each way and eaten into my sleep time. Instead, with a sense of adventure, I tried this place.

The hotel itself could pass for a funky hostel in Europe, but instead of lodging with German and Australian tourists, I was staying in a room full of local men who were going nowhere. Since I see myself as the "up and coming" homeless, I'm not thrilled to be associated with the down-and-out homeless, who are the clientele of this place. The men staying here were working and paying rent, but "recently released from prison" could probably describe most of them.

I have never spent a night in prison, but sleeping in the windowless 12-bed basement dorm gave me a feeling for it. Men were coming and going all night, and even those who were sleeping were very loud, snoring and talking in their sleep. A man two beds away from me kept shouting out, "I wanna fucking KILL somebody!" Not a pleasant environment in which to sleep, and I didn't. I slept no more than three hours, than got up to work on my computer.

I didn't feel afraid for my safety so much as being a fish out of water. This hotel seemed relatively clean and well-run for a transient hotel, but it's not a place that I or any other literate traveler should be hanging out. It wasn't the hotel itself but the clientele who made the difference, and the clientele here was dysfunctional enough to put me on alert. You can't really relax in those circumstances.

Whenever you stay in a hostel in the USA, you have to make sure that they have a mechanism in place to keep out the local riffraff who would take advantage of the low rates. For example, some US hostels require you to have both a passport and an out-of-state ID. This keeps out the local druggies who couldn't even conceive of getting a passport.

The rent was $16 a night, and for once I got what I paid for! In retrospect, I probably should have stayed at the airport! See the photo album above for my comments and my final HostelWorld review.

Bargain Food Source: Buffet by the Pound

2010-02-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

Earlier, I talked about the buffet as an important food source for the unhomed, especially when you are driving across this great land. When you don't have a kitchen, a buffet gives you a rare opportunity for a balanced meal that you can't get from fast food or even an expensive sit-down restaurant. At a buffet, you can actually eat a lot better than most people with kitchens, because you don't have to prepare what you eat, just select from a wide variety of prepared items what you think makes the best diet. Sure, you can make bad decisions at buffets. From the girth of many of the patrons, I'd say that most people choose poorly, but the options are there for a healthy, nutritious diet if you choose to construct one.

The best nationwide buffet chain is Golden Corral, now found nearly everywhere along the Interstate highway system. Others are HomeTown/Old Country Buffet and Ryans (both owned by the same company). The price is reasonable: usually $8 or less for lunch and $12 or less for dinner (with nearly the same food at each).

I see only one problem with a buffet: I find it virtually impossible to not gorge myself! I consider myself a buffet professional from my Las Vegas years; I should be able to control my intake, but I still find it difficult. The cheapskate inside me is saying: "The food is all free now, so why not tank up?" It's hard to resist that one extra helping that pushes you into a stupor and eventually into obesity. This temptation is one reason I quit buffets for several years in Vegas. I saw my waistline slowly expanding!

Not only do find myself eating too much food at buffets, but I am not always eating the right foods, being drawn away by the richer stuff while healthier things like vegetables get neglected. Finally, I usually spend too much time in the buffet, often as much as an hour, when I could be doing other things.

But I have found a solution! There's a way to reap all the benefits of the buffet without falling prey to its temptations. Buffet by the pound!

For example, at Golden Corral, you can bypass the cashier line and get a take-away tray (as shown above). Load it up judiciously with whatever you think you should eat, then take it to the cashier to be weighed. The price is amazingly low at GC: always less than $5 a pound and often as low as $4.19 a pound....

To put this into perspective: Uncooked meat or fish that you buy at the supermarket easily costs $4 or more per pound. Here you are getting cooked and seasoned meat for only slightly more. (And you have to consider that it takes about 1-1/2 pounds of cooked meat to make 1 pound of cooked, making the deal even better.) You wonder why smart working parents don't stop by Golden Corral every evening. They could stock up on the entree, then cook the vegetable and starch at home.

What's more important to me, though, is portion control. When I fill up my tray at Golden Corral, I am making a conscious decision ahead of time about what I should be eating, rather than deciding on the fly as I gorge. Since I am paying by the pound, my internal cheapskate assures that won't buy too much, only what I think a proper meal should be. When I'm done, I essentially have a box lunch I can eat anytime. I can stop at the buffet in the morning when I am not hungry (and my choices are more rational) and then eat in the afternoon only when I am truly famished. When I am satiated, I can stop eating without feeling any pressure, knowing that I will still have the food for later. (I don't have refrigeration, but I don't see any storage safety issues in the few hours between purchase and consumption.)

Now, instead of gorging myself at one $8 buffet in early afternoon, I will go to Golden Corral when it opens around 11 am, fill up two trays with sensible food, pay about $6 for a pound and a half, and that food lasts me for the rest of the day. Pretty smart, actually!

I can even go into GC just for a snack. If I decide I want a salad, I fill my tray with just that. Since there is no minimum purchase, it ends up costing only about $2.50 for a salad I made myself, vs. twice as much at a fast food restaurant for something a lot more bland and lifeless. I can also visit the buffet on weekends and evenings, when the normal buffet price is over $10 and still pay only $4-5/pound.

When you think about it, this can be an incredible scam for the consumer. If you cherry-pick only the highest value items, you can come out with a lot more food value than you are paying for. Why spend $8 for two pounds of bacon at the supermarket, when (at the weekend breakfast buffet) you can pay $4.19 for one pound of crisp cooked bacon (equivalent to two pounds raw)? Same applies to a lot of other items: shrimp, nuts, fish, meat. I have even seen pine nuts occasionally at Golden Corral, which often retail for $20/pound.

It's not my intention to scam the restaurant, though, just get a balanced meal that's more than burritos and burgers. Since I am no cook, any buffet is going to give me far better nutrition than I could ever put together on my own, even if I had a full kitchen at my disposal.

Hometown/Old Country Buffet and Ryans also have buffet-by-the-pound options (although I haven't used them yet). If you're in a tony neighborhood, Whole Foods also has an excellent salad/hot food bar, with some more exotic (and putatively healthier) items than your common buffet (photos). The price, however, is almost double: $7.99/pound. Still, you can do a lot better there, both in value and nutrition, than at any restaurant. You can always use buffet-by-the-pound for high value items while using common supermarkets for heavier low-value items like bread.

When I tell people about my nomadic lifestyle, they say, "Oh, you poor thing! How do you eat without a kitchen?" My reply is: "Probably a lot better than you!" Furthermore, I don't have to waste time grocery shopping, preparing meals, cleaning up and maintaining all that complex kitchen infrastructure. I simply choose my food and eat it. What could be simpler, cheaper or easier?

What you don't need for sleep

2010-02-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

In an earlier entry, I talked about the minimum requirements for sleep. Sleep is one those critical elements of life that we know little about. When you talk about where "home" is, you are really talking about where you are going to sleep tonight. If you can work out where to be safely unconscious for 7 hours, then all the other functions of a home are negotiable.

In this entry, I’d like to explore sleep in more detail by discussing the things you may think you need but really don’t. Everyone has their own perceived sleep requirements. They insist, "I can't sleep without X." Turns out, most of those sleep requirements are imaginary, and you'll do fine without them if you only have the courage to try. Over the course of my travels, I’ve slept in many contorted positions and unusual circumstances. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences where I've hardly slept at all, and many surprising ones where I slept soundly in spite of rough-seeming conditions. You don’t need a Martha Stewart-style tuck-in bed with a special mattress in a heated room. However, you do need to both listen to your body and be willing to push it a little.

To understand the requirements of sleep let’s talk about the things you don’t need:

You Don't Need: A “made” bed. The traditional bed from the Middle Ages – with sheets and blankets tucked in under the mattress – is absolutely the worst for retaining heat! In a made bed, you are trying to heat the entire surface area under the sheets. Since you are essentially a lump under two flat panels, heat is always escaping out the sides. As soon as you turn over, you encounter a new expanse of cold sheets.

A sleeping bag retains heat much better! No heat escapes out the sides, and when you turn over, your bedding stays with you. If you buy cheap sleeping bags (like the $10 one at Acme™), then you don’t even need to wash them; just throw them away when they get rank. (Not to mention the time saver of never having to make your bed in the morning.)

You Don't Need: Active heating. At night, your body generates a lot less heat than during the day; consequently, you need more insulation. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean you need central heating – or any fuel-burning heat at all! Anything that can be accomplished by outside heat can also be accomplished by just adding more layers of insulation, as close as possible to your skin.

Start with wearing all the warm clothes you have, including sweaters and jackets. Then you sleep in a sleeping bag, not in drafty blankets. If you are still cold at night, you can insert the first sleeping bag into a second one, maybe with a third draped on top. Finally, it helps to be sleeping in a small enclosed space, like a car or small tent. The smaller this space is, the better your body heat will keep it warm (so a car or one-man tent work better than a van or cabin tent).

In my experience, there is no low temperature that can’t be addressed at night by simply adding more insulation, provided it is dry. You don’t need to use any fuel at all! (I have done zero degrees F but can't speak with authority about temperatures lower than that.)

The situation is different during the day, when you are moving around and can’t carry all that insulation with you. To type on a keyboard, for example, the ambient temperature has to be warm enough so your fingers will work. (At this moment, I am lying in a car with the heater turned on.) When you are out of your cocoon and need to get things done, you may indeed need an active heat source, but if your body is still bundled up well you probably don’t need as much heat as you think you do. Wearing more clothes is always cheaper than turning up the thermostat.

As for having a human sleep partner to warm you up... that heat source is overrated! To begin with, your partner is a localized heat source. He/she does not heat or insulate you on the other side. Furthermore, your sleep position is rarely in sync with theirs. If you insist on sleeping naked with this person, then you’ve lost as significant layer of insulation (warm clothing). It may get complicated emotionally, but strictly in terms of heat retention, it is far more efficient to sleep alone.

You Don't Need: Special Mattresses. You can’t sleep for long on a hard, flat surface. I’ve tried many times, and it doesn’t work. The problem is that your body is bumpy, not flat, so there will be narrow pinch points where it comes in contact with the hard surface. After a while resting on these pressure points, the blood circulation gets cut off, and it begins to hurt. To sleep well, you need some minimal padding, but you don’t need Memory Foam™, a water bed or a Serta™ Sleep Number™ Bed. You just need enough padding to distribute a point of pressure onto several square inches. Then you will turn over several times throughout the night so that this wider area doesn't become sore.

You may protest: “But I have a very delicate back, and I need this special mattress to protect it.” Rubbish! For millennia, humans have been sleeping without special mattresses and have gotten by. You have to ask yourself whether your back problems aren’t caused by your cushy mattress and posh existence (not to mention your rich diet!). Like any body part, your back is going to work best if it is exercised – put through a little stress – and maybe one way to do this is to sleep with minimal padding.

In my experience, a half-inch of hard foam is sufficient, but a full inch is better. An air mattress is luxury, indeed! Car seats are fine. Sometimes the grass under the floor of a tent is sufficient. In a pinch, you can use blankets or a sleeping bag as padding underneath you. You can look around you for available materials. After sleeping on cushy Memory Foam for years, it might take a while to get used to anything else, but it is something your body can adapt to, and eventually you’ll be sleeping just as well.

You Don't Need: Lots of Space. When sleeping in cars, I have often squeeze myself into some very confined areas. It's like living in a tight space capsule. I have curled up in the fetal position in the back seat of some tiny European cars and still slept well. You don’t need a queen-size bed to toss and turn on. In fact, the smaller space might actually be better. It is certainly better for heat retention, but I also find that I go to sleep faster in a confined space.

You do need to be able to lie level, with your head at about the same level as your feet. If any body part is significantly lower than the rest, blood will pool there and it will eventually become uncomfortable. (You can sleep sitting up on occasion, like in airplanes, but it is rarely optimal sleep and it may be damaging to your cardiovascular system over time.)

When sleeping on a big flat bed, there is a preferred sleep position your body usually reverts to. Some people usually sleep on their backs, others on their stomachs, etc. If you sleep in a confined space, you may be forced into a different position. This may take a few nights to get used to, but your body will adapt. (I traditionally sleep on my stomach, and I end up that way on a hotel bed, but I can sleep just as well on my side, which is how I usually do it in a car.)

One thing you do need is the opportunity to change position during the night. It is normal to “turn over,” or change sleep position, several times throughout the night. This prevents bed sores on the part of your body that is bearing your weight. This is one reason that sleeping in a coffin wouldn’t work: You have to have enough space to turn, or your body will protest and wake you up in the middle of the night.

You don’t need an infinite number of sleep positions, however; only two! You need your "primary position", and you need a "relief position" to give the pressure points of your primary position a rest. You sleep in your primary position until it becomes uncomfortable; then you shift to a secondary position. After a few minutes in the new position, the pressure points recover, and you can turn back to your original position. So, when choosing a confined space to sleep in, you don’t just need to be able to fit; you also need to be able to turn to a second position, resting on different parts of your body.

You Don't Need: Quiet and Darkness. Your brain needs protection from sensory input to sleep well. It is hard to sleep in a noisy or brightly lit area – or when CNN is blaring at you from a screen overhead. (It is also a significant danger to your hearing to sleep in a noisy place.) There is no reason, however, that you can’t create your own quiet and darkness locally when the environment would give them to you. Quiet is created locally through use of foam earplugs (available in the firearms section of Acme). These are rolled up and insert all the way inside the ear canal, so they are barely protruding from the ear. This cuts nearly all sounds down to murmur. To create artificial darkness, you can use a $3 sleep mask (from the suitcase/travel department at Acme). If you don’t have one, you can use a wool cap or a shirt pulled down over your eyes.

Earplugs are handy accessories even when you’re not trying to sleep. Cuts down the noise of everyday life! For example, if you find yourself in a waiting room with a TV blaring, just insert your earplugs and you’re in heaven again!

You Don't Need: A Full Night's Sleep Every Night. College students learn quickly that you can get by without much sleep if you need to. Most people can pull an "all-nighter" and still be reasonably functional in the morning. The one thing you can't do is repeat all nighters several nights in a row. Eventually, the sleep deficit is going to catch up with you.

Without sleep, the first thing you lose is your creativity. Sometimes, lack of sleep is intoxicating, but like other forms of intoxication, you can't expect your judgment to be there too. After more than 24 hours without sleep, you start to go seriously insane, with effects resembling schizophrenia. You really don't want to push it.

But if life or travel circumstances present you with a sleepless night, you don't need to panic. You'll catch up on it later. You want to avoid bad sleep if you can, but if your night gets washed out, you'll make do. Sometimes just a few catnaps is enough to keep you going. You might not be good for much while awake (no creativity), but you'll survive. Knowing this, can give you some flexibility when planning ahead. "I'll get good sleep on Monday and Wednesday, but Tuesday could be rough."

One of the useful functions of sleep is just to help you pass the time in a boring location, when your brain is functioning poorly so you can't get anything done. If you are trapped in a city overnight, and the subway doesn't open until morning, sometimes the best thing to do is give up. Just walk around for six hours and try to make some use of your time. The point is, you can probably catch up on sleep later.

In the course of my normal life at present, I pass back and forth across many time zones. Like airline pilots, I have learned to get used to it. As long as I get 7 hours of sleep in each 24 hour period, I'm fine, and whenever I have a chance to catch more sleep, I take advantage of it. Sleep, I find, is something like a bank account: You can make larger withdrawls on occasion, as long as you are prepared to bank more sleep later.

You Don't Need: Privacy. When looking for a place to sleep, it is reasonable to seek privacy. After all, when you are unconscious you can’t protect yourself from thieves, predators and others who would do you harm. Privacy is the best policy whenever you can get it. For most animals, sleeping and hiding go together.

But you can get a good night’s sleep in public places if you need to. Airports are places I often find myself sleeping, and if you can do it inside security, there is very little risk. With earplugs and eye covering, I can often sleep just as soundly at Gate A19 as in any hotel. For a catnap, you can also sleep on beaches and public parks during the day. You can also in airport outside security if necessary. The enormous value of sleep often outweighs the vulnerability of it.

To sleep comfortably in a public place, you have to pass some significant emotional hurdles. Sleep is a big, dark question mark to most of us. We don’t have a clue what is going o there, so it’s frightening to do it in public. Are you going to sleepwalk or blurt out something embarrassing in your dreams? Are you going to look stupid while you sleep, so people laugh at you? Closing yourself in a private room avoids any such risk, but unfortunately, this kind of privacy can be expensive, both in money and time.

There is no easy solution here. You just have to get to know your sleeping self and be comfortable with it. Once, I set up a video camera to record myself sleeping in a normal bed. I saw that I turned about every twenty minutes and always rotated in the same direction, wrapping myself in my sheets like a mummy. It was very interesting to see myself sleeping, and it contributed to my sleeping self-confidence.

As I have become more relaxed with my waking self (no easy feat in itself), I have come to terms with my sleeping self. My dreams as a child were bizarre and terrifying, and I walked and talked in my sleep. Sleep was frightening! In middle age, however, I have no fear. My dreams today are pretty much an extension of my waking state. I dream about the same things I am thinking about during the day, making sleep a fertile extension of my thinking time. I get lots of things done during sleep, and I don’t have any nightmare unless my life really is a nightmare when I’m awake. Thus, sleeping in a public place (as long as it it safe) isn't really a problem for me.

Males do have a special problem in that during REM sleep, they—um—“expand”. In other words, sleep is nature’s Viagra, and there is a chance this non-sexual boner may be evident to the general public. (For the record, the same thing happens to females at night, but it’s not visible.) You can address this risk by covering yourself with a light airline-style blanket, which you may need anyway to keep warm

I'll always seek our privacy when it is available, but if it isn't I'll make do. The important thing is to adapt to your environment and get some sleep whatever way you can.

And Finally, Some Philosophy....

When people have difficulty sleeping, it usually has more to do with life circumstances than sleeping circumstances. Obviously, if you are under a lot of stress during the day, your problems are going to join you at night. If you are repressing things during the day—that is, refusing to deal with problems directly—then it is likely they will emerge in your nightmares.

It also appears that sleep becomes more irregular as people age. So what's the big deal? You simply sleep when you can and get up and do things when you can't. The only thing that makes irregular sleep a burden is your insistence that it take place during certain hours. Sometimes, the best guarantee of insomnia is the mantra, "I must get some sleep!"

And if you need an alarm clock to wake up, you are cheating sleep. Sure, work and travel may demand an alarm occasionally, but if you can manage to sleep without it, according to your body's own rhythms, then you'll have your head screwed on straighter when you rise.

When you hit the sack and sleep doesn't come, it is easy to blame your bed. When Garrison Keillor mentions the Sleep Number™ bed, you may be duped into thinking some special product like this will solve your problems. There are no lack of marketers willing to sell you something to improve your sleep. Like any other placebo, these products may work if you think they will, but they don't address the underlying problems. They can't fix your head!

Once you get your head around something and decide you can do it, it is amazing how previous barriers get brushed aside. If you are on a mission to climb a mountain, you'll find a place to sleep, and you'll sleep well, because working toward a purpose is more effective than any sleep aid.

The Psychology of Keeping Warm

2010-02-04T16:34:00.000-08:00

In an earlier entry, I talked about How to Keep Warm. The basic strategy is simple: keep dry and keep adding layers of clothing (or sleeping bags) until you are comfortable. This certainly works, but it doesn't tell the whole story about handling cold. It turns out your state of mind has a lot to do with how cold or warm you feel.

As animals go, humans are pretty naked. We have no fur, so we rely mainly on clothing to keep us warm. That doesn't mean our body has no resources, though. Humans have been living in cold regions for millenia, most of that time without central heating and without much more than loose animal skins to throw over themselves. Think of Eskimos living in igloos or American Indians in teepees. Yes, humans had fire, but you can't stoke a fire all night and still sleep, and fire doesn't help you when you're moving about.

To have survived, our bodies must have numerous physiological adaptations to the cold, most of which we rarely call upon in the modern world. An obvious one is shivering. If your core body temperature falls below a certain level, the body automatically ramps up metabolic activity. Other adaptations are less obvious. One is the restriction of blood flow to the skin and extremities. Others are various chemical processes to produce and retain heat inside the body.

You don't really know what your body can do until you test it. Unfortunately, most of us never really do. When we get a little chilly, we cry, "I'm cold!" and rush back inside.

Yet, there are still people who push the limits. Alpinists climb mountains in harsh conditions, sleeping on the ice with only the equipment they can carry with them. In the Himalayas, monks make long winter treks in the same thin robes they wear in summer. And every winter in northern climates damn fools cut holes in the ice and insist on swimming, if only for a few minutes. Far from being pained by the cold, these people seem to revel in it! The cold certainly isn't killing them. On the contrary, it seems to make them healthier!

What makes these cold adventurers different than those who fear and hate the cold? It's probably not their bodies. It's more likely a matter of attitude.

When you are depressed, for example, you probably won't take the cold very well. You'll huddle under blankets and turn the heat way up. On the other hand, if you are well-motivated and directed toward a mission—like mountain climbers are—you'll brush the cold aside until it becomes a real obstacle.

Part of the difference may be physiological. There could be a mysterious mind-over-body thing where your body responds better when your brain thinks it can do something. But the main reason cold-haters are cold and cold-lovers are comfortable is that cold lovers take control of their situation while cold haters just let things happen.

When people are depressed, poorly directed or regard themselves as victims, they become very passive. "Woe is me!" they say, instead of taking positive actions to address their problems. It is amazing how many people will complain about the cold rather than doing something simple like putting on a damn sweater!

Seriously, when someone claims to be cold, look at what they are wearing. In most cases, you'll see that their clothing isn't suited to the weather at hand. And they would rather complain about their discomfort than actually remedy it!

If you're cold all the time, try wearing some long thermal underwear. It's not very expensive (at Acme™), and because it is close to your skin, it works wonders for raising your body temperature. If that doesn't work, try two layers of long underwear. It's not rocket science! Yet, passive, poorly directed people won't take pro-active steps like this until they have already gone through a lot of pain.

At the other end of the spectrum are strongly motivated people who take control of whatever problem they face. They realize, "I'm getting cold. What do I need to do to address this problem?" They look around their environment for solutions, and they actually implement them!

Passive people tend to fall back on conventional solutions and are reluctant to try anything hidden or unusual (like long underwear). Active people are more creative, independent and opportunistic, taking advantage of whatever tools they find in the environment, even for purposes those tools weren't originally intended for. Passive people often to try to buy their way out of their problems -- say by ordering some sort of expensive mountaineer's jacket from L.L. Bean. Active people tend to solve problems quicker, cheaper and more effectively using the materials at hand. Their ingenuity usually works better than money because they are actually listening to their own senses and figuring out what the real problem is.

Another difference between passive and active people concerns tolerance of mild discomfort. When you're depressed or don't respect yourself, every unpleasant sensation is magnified. Even a little chill seems intolerable and triggers panic. Well-directed people will brush the chill aside. They analyze it and say, "It's no big thing; my body can handle it." The important thing to the well-directed people is pursuing the mission at hand; they are not going to let the cold or any other irritating sensation get in the way of it. Only when the irritation becomes an actual obstacle will they stop and address it.

Of course, the same principle applies to managing heat. Some people insist that they can't live without air conditioning as soon as the thermometer drifts a little above room temperature. Turns out, your body has a lot of built-in adaptations to heat as well as the cold (like expanding the sweat glands), but you have to turn these systems on through actual use. Construction workers manage to get things done in all kinds of weather through a combination of pro-active adaptation and just not giving a damn about whatever irritation gets in their way.

In a wider sense, this can apply to anything. Passive people see obstacles, while active people find solutions. Often, it's just a matter of getting off your hiney and doing something!

You can't make cold or heat go away, and there are limits to what your body can safely tolerate, but no matter what circumstances you are facing, you probably have a lot more negotiating power than you think you do. You just have to get it into your head that the problem is yours, not someone else's, and that you alone are going to solve it!

Money

2010-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe it's time we sat down and talked about the birds and the bees. Just because I am suggesting you sleep for free doesn't mean I think you can get by without money. Unfortunately, money is essential in life, and you have to find a way to generate it. Otherwise, your life is going to be difficult and painful no matter how you cut corners.

I propose Free Sleeping merely as a tool in your arsenal to help you control your costs, so you can live comfortably and do the things you want to do within the income you have. You still need an income, though.

What I mean to say -- and you understand this is as hard for me as it is for you -- the thing is, what I want to say is....

You have to get a job!

This doesn't roll easily off my tongue: j-j-j-job. Nonetheless, I have to say it or some of you will get the wrong impression, that you can just live off the land, or off the discards from society, without any filthy lucre in your pocket. Sooner or later, you have to make a deal with the devil. You have to provide a service to someone else that they are willing to pay you for.

It isn't easy. One of the major challenges in life is finding work that will make you enough money to survive while at the same time allowing you to pursue your own goals and maintain your own morals. If you are willing to sacrifice your principles, there is plenty of work out there. It is just a matter of how low you are willing to sink.

For the things you most want to do -- like pursuing some creative art or directly helping people in need -- it unlikely that anyone will pay you for it. That's when you have to be willing to make sacrifices and compromises, and one of them might mean doing without formal lodging.

Generally speaking, the higher paying jobs require more commitment. Most "careers" require turning your life over to them. If you are an engineer or computer programmer, for example, you're going to have to devote your brain to other people's projects during most of your working day. If you feel that your brain time is more valuable than that, then you will have to take more of a "caretaking" job, like security guard, factory worker or airline ramp worker, where your body is working for your employer but your mind is still your own. Unfortunately, these jobs tend to pay far less than those that demand your full brain and full commitment.

The main idea of Free Sleeping is that it lowers your cost of living and thereby increases your options for finding the kind of work that works for you. It means you don't have to make a huge salary to survive.

Likewise, learning to sleep cheaply when traveling means that you'll be able do more of it. Most Americans, for example, never travel overseas, in part because the cost is so daunting. There's airfare, of course but also a hotel bill that often dwarfs it. In Hawaii, the cheapest hotels can set you back $200 a night -- or you can rent a car for $200 a week, sleep in it, and never pay a cent for lodging. In Paris, you can stay at the Sheraton for $200 a night, or you could stay in a youth hostel for a whole week for the same price. The only barrier is you getting your mind around the concept -- of sleeping in a way that may not meet your preconceptions.

And ultimately, you still need the $200, which has to come from somewhere.

If you are out of work now, I don't have any easy solution for you. I know times are tough, with the US unemployment rate over 10%, and most of the readily available jobs of a few years ago have evaporated. It used to be that every fast food restaurant was hiring; now, you may have to fight for even those jobs.

But there are still jobs out there. As I drive across the country (in my own temporary self-made job) I still see Help Wanted signs. They are usually in pockets of relative prosperity that have been little affected by the recession, like Nebraska, but they can be found in hard-hit areas as well. Last week on the Big Island of Hawaii, I saw that a McDonalds was hiring at $9/hour (photo). The only trouble, of course, is that you're not in Hawaii right now, and you probably couldn't afford to live there by any conventional means.

The burden for most people who have lost their jobs is not just the lack of opportunities but the huge infrastructure they built around themselves when times were good. Not only are they out of work, but they are trapped in a house that can't be sold with pets and possessions (and I dare say children) that can't be easily gotten rid of. A minimum-wage job may be heaven to someone with few expenses, but it's a humiliation to someone who has been making many times more and has built their life based on that assumption.

If there is anything worthwhile I can convey in this blog, it's the importance of keeping your life lean and simple regardless of your income. If your living expenses are only a fraction of your income and you are free to change course with minimal notice, then you are by any practical measure "wealthy", even if you are earning only minimum wage. Many who are making (or once made) $100,000/year are in far worst straits than you are, because their obligations and perceived "needs" crept upward with their income.

When you have the money, it's really hard to resist spending it. But spending beyond your basic needs almost always results in new obligations. If you buy a second car or second home, you've also bought a huge maintenance burden you don't really need. If the economic tide turns, all those obligations will come back to bite you. If your income drops from $100,000 down to $50,000, suddenly you could find yourself in dire straits, even if $50,000 once seemed like a lot of money.

What I am trying to do in this blog is explore some of the baseline conditions of life: the lowest point a which you can comfortably get by. If the weather is good, you might be able to buy a $10 sleeping bag at Acme™ and sleep just as comfortably in car as in a $100 hotel room.

Once, this lifestyle might have embarrassed me, but now I am more embarrassed by the people who are trapped in their huge, self-inflicted infrastructure who insist they can't sleep in a car because it would hurt their back. (Get a clue: Your back hurts because you've been sleeping in that cushy bed all your life!) I see no reason to be embarrassed by freedom.

Even at my advanced age, I would work at McDonalds. I'd rather be in the back flipping burgers than up front working the registers, but I could live comfortably on that income. To me, this is a reasonable sacrifice to protect my mind. You couldn't pay me anything to be an air traffic controller or any other job where they expect me to "think" for a living and constantly concentrate on a task that I don't thoroughly believe in.

That's how your life gets sucked away.

Health Club Deal: $300 for 2 Years!

2010-01-26T14:11:00.000-08:00

Here's pretty decent deal on a health club membership: $299.99 (aka $300) at Sam's Club for a 2 -year membership at 24-Hour Fitness. That's $12.50/month for unlimited showers and hot tub soaks at the vast majority of 24-Hour Fitness clubs in the USA (excluding only "Super Sport" clubs in certain wealthy neighborhoods). Even if you had to join Sams Club ($35) just to take advantage of this offer, you'd still be getting a fantastic deal.

A health club membership like this means you could sleep in rough circumstances (like camping or in your car) and still maintain your personal hygiene. If you slept in a car, stored your clothes in a storage unit and showered at a health club, your real quality of life (and your appearance to others) isn't going to be different than living in a fixed residence. As long as you aren't into entertaining and don't need television, this is a sustainable lifestyle.

24-Hour Fitness is a national chain, but it isn't located everywhere. It is strongest on the West Coast, especially Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix. (Here's their location map.) This chain is not helpful in the Northeast, although there is one Sport club (covered by the above plan) in the Bronx, New York City. There are even clubs in Hawaii, on both Oahu and Maui. (Rent a car, sleep in it and shower at the club, and you can avoid rip-off hotel bills.) In my favorite camping city, San Diego, there are clubs everywhere, some of them adjacent to the trolley line. Even during the rains last February, when my tent got swamped, I could still walk to the 24-Hour Fitness and soak in the hot tub.

24-Hour Fitness seems to be the best club for this purpose, at least in the Southwest. The "24-hour" feature can be extremely helpful at times. Another chain, LA Fitness, has a stronger presence in the Northeast (location map), but I'm not familiar with their pricing or policies. Golds Gym has more locations than both clubs combined, but each club is individually owned and they may not have a national plan.

If you know of any other useful health club deals, let me know.

On Hiatus

2010-01-13T15:53:00.001-08:00

New additions to this blog have been temporarily suspended while I focus on my main writing project, a novel.

The novel happens to feature a homeless guy. You can read the completed chapters here....

Passing Through

I expect to reactivate this blog eventually. When I do, here are some of the topics I hope to cover:

The Psychology of Keeping Warm
Medical Insurance

You can still read the past year of existing blog entries below.

How to Keep Warm

2009-12-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

Learning how to keep warm is an existential problem we all have to face on our own. It takes many years to figure out what works. Being comfortable depends on listening to your own senses and experimenting with the available materials around you. Learning to be warm in a cold environment is at lot like learning to be happy in an inherently hostile world. You have to understand yourself and the forces around you and learn how to manipulate both to your advantage.

In the beginning, our parents dressed us, but they could never get it quite right. Much of the time we were either too hot or too cold. They might insist, for example, that we wear warm clothing in circumstances where we were very active and generating a lot of heat on our own. As with other skills of self-maintenance, our parents might head us in the right direction, but they can't know exactly what is right for us because they aren't us! They don't have access to all the data we have. To be truly comfortable, you have to take control of your own fate and politely push away the advice of others.

Likewise, marketers think they know what will keep us warm -- expensive jackets, sleeping bags or hokey hand warmers -- but of course they have a profit motive in selling us things we don't need. Keeping warm doesn't necessarily involve a lot of money. It requires wisdom about your own needs, knowledge of your environment and the willingness to plan ahead.

Central heating is the lazy man's way to keep warm. If you live in a heated building (i.e. a "home") and you pump enough of active energy into the air, you can lounge around naked regardless of the temperature outside. This, however, is enormously wasteful, both in money and energy. The bigger the space you are living in, the more air and surface area you have to heat, and most of this energy usually comes from the burning of fossil fuels. In the winter in the north, you could end up spending almost as much on heating fuel as you do on rent or mortgage.

Humans survived in harsh environments for thousands of years without central heating. How did they do it? They protected themselves with small shelters and wrapped lots of insulation around themselves, close to their body. Even in extreme environments like the arctic, their body heat alone was enough to keep them alive.

How does this translate to the modern homeless lifestyle? You may need to find, build or rent a shelter when the climate requires it, but a very small one. The smaller you shelter is, the more easily your own body heat will keep it warm. Then, within the shelter, you wrap yourself in insulation -- warm clothes and sleeping bags instead of fur and leather. You add as many layers as needed until you are toasty. There is no outside temperature you can't comfortably survive by this passive method, with no active heat source apart from your own body.

Your needs for warmth are different during the day than they are at night. In the day, you are more physically active, generating more internal heat, and need only about half the insulation you require at night. The real challenge of keeping warm is doing it overnight, when you will be hibernating for seven hours. Everything has to be set up adequately before you begin or you won't get a good night's sleep.

Keeping warm during the day is relatively straightforward: You dress in layers. When you are cold, you add more layers (like another sweater), and when you get hot, you remove some of them. Your own senses will tell you when to add or remove; you just have to listen to them. It may take some people years to catch on -- You have to dress warm to stay warm! -- but eventually they do.

Keeping warm at night is much more of a challenge because ideally you want to be unconscious the whole time, which means you don't have the opportunity to add or remove layers. You want to have everything in place before you go to sleep, anticipating the conditions you will experience later at night. Since keeping warm while you sleep is a greater challenge than doing it in the daytime, the rest of this article will focus on that.

You don't always need a shelter! If the weather is dry and insect-free (like in the desert), you don't need any shelter even down to temperatures as low as freezing. You can just sleep on a mattress out in the open! Significantly below freezing, you might want a tent for added warmth and protection from wind.

In the rest of the world, thought, water is your main enemy. If snow or rain fall on your bedding, they could destroy its thermal value. Surrounding yourself in layers of insulation only works if it remains dry. Water is a heat sink! Many a miserable Boy Scout has learned the hard way that a wet sleeping bag is little better than no sleeping bag at all!

That's the main purpose of a shelter: to keep you dry! A secondary benefit is cutting the wind, which also sweeps away your heat (although not as much as water does). If you are enclosed in a small shelter like a tent or car, your body heat can start working and warm up the space to something greater than the outside air.

An airtight shelter is better than a porous one, which makes a car a superior choice to a tent. (See How to Sleep in a Car and How to Sleep in a Tent.) The smaller the car the better, because it means less space to heat. (In a big van, your body heat has very little effect on the ambient air.) You do need fresh air to breath, and you may need to crack a window a bit to get enough of it (with a corresponding loss in heat), but it is remarkable how small the crack can be. (Don't worry, your body will tell you when you need more air. A lack of oxygen isn't the same as carbon monoxide poisoning. You'll be gasping for air long before you are at any risk of death.)

BTW: Caves are overrated as shelters. First of all you have to find one at just the place you happen to need it. Secondly, they tend to be very damp and drafty. The most you can expect from a cave is protection from the rain. If you go deep inside a cave, you might find the temperature becoming constant regardless of the weather outside, but what's the point of going to all that trouble when a car or tent can do just as well?

If you can train your body to sleep scrunched up in the back seat of a car, you are in a very good position, heat-wise. The seat itself provides insulation on two sides. Add two or three sleeping bags, and you are ready for any weather, even temperatures far below freezing. (Prepare to scrape ice off the inside of the windshield when you wake up.)

Your first defense against nighttime cold is warm clothing. There is no reason you can't sleep in the same clothes you wear during the day, including whatever jackets and sweaters you have. Don't forget a hat! A major portion of your heat loss is through your head. A knit cap is best, one that you can pull down over your face and that will stay on all night. (I get them at the dollar store.)

Don't overlook the value of long thermal underwear for both daytime and nighttime use. Maybe even two layers of it. Nothing beats this kind of tight insulation close to your skin. (Even when I lived in a "home" in Boston, I wore two layers of thermal underwear all winter and was always toasty.)
Then you need a sleeping bag, which works much better than blankets. Probably the worst situation for keeping warm is the traditional, medieval-inspired, Martha Stewart-approved tucked-in bed (with sheets, blankets, bedspread, etc.). Under the covers, you have a relatively huge, ever-shifting space to heat! Your body heat is leaking out everywhere, and whenever you turn over, you come in contact with a new area of cold sheets. You don't have these problems with a zipped-up sleeping bag, which surrounds you on all sides and holds your heat in.

(Note: Even if you live in a "home", a cheap sleeping bag works much better than traditional bedding on a standard bed. If you use one, then you can probably turn down your thermostat at night and save money. Imagine: No bed to make in the morning, and when the sleeping bag gets rancid, just throw it away and buy another. All you need is a bottom sheet over the mattress.... But this whole idea is offensive to the Martha Stewart homemaking ideal, and I apologize for even mentioning it.)

Cheap sleeping bags work just as well as expensive ones, although you may have to use more of them. I am a fan of the 3-pound sleeping bag at Acme, currently selling for $9.88. On cold nights, I buy two of them, using them one inside the other. At this price, you can afford to throw them away when you change location or they start to stink.

Helpful tip: Use a safety pin to hold the zipper of the sleeping bag in place it doesn't unzip on you over the course of the night.
Some expensive sleeping bags have only two advantages that cheap ones: First, that can be lighter and more compact for the same insulation value. This is a a factor if you have to carry your sleeping bag on your back. Second, they are tapered at the foot of the bag rather than square. Tapered "mummy" bags give you only a small space for your feet to heat, while a cheaper bag with a square bottom has a big cavernous space down there that may lead to cold feet in the middle of the night. If you happen to have a mummy bag, you should use it as your inner sleeping bag with perhaps a cheap one outside that.

The temperature ratings of sleeping bags (e.g. "20°F") are a fantasy of the manufacturer and are pretty much meaningless. You'll have to experiment with a sleeping bag yourself, in your own unique sheltering circumstances, before you know what it can do. In my experience, in temperatures below freezing you are usually going to need two sleeping bags, one inside the other. In temps below 0°F, I might even want a third sleeping bag to throw over me.

With some planning, passive heating alone can get you through almost any weather scenario. I would resort to active heat sources only in special situations. For example, if I arrived in a new city without any bedding and no easy way to get it, I might rent a car, run the heater all night and sleep in the back. It works, often at a fraction of cost of a hotel! (Carbon monoxide isn't an issue, since the heater is forcing air into the car from the front.) In the past, I have used a propane-powered catalytic heater when sleeping in a van, but I don't recommend it, due to both cost and safety issues. Best just to add more bedding.

If I am working on my computer in a car (like I am now, in frigid South Dakota), I might turn on the car occasionally and run the heater. The main reason for this is that my fingers are exposed as I use the keyboard. (I can't very well type with gloves on!) A little bit of active heat once an hour is just what I need to keep going.

So in summary, you keep warm by sheltering yourself from falling water then surrounding yourself by as many layers of tight insulation as you need. Anyone can do it! However, there is another factor to consider: the psychological one. Have you noticed how some people are hyper-sensitive to the cold no matter how warmly they are dressed? It turns out ones attitude has a lot to do with keeping warm. I will discuss this at length in a separate entry.

Oh, and there's one other method for keeping warm as the seasons change: Go someplace warm! It sounds self-evident, but one of the perks of the homeless lifestyle is to be able to go where life is most comfortable for you. You can survive in the frigid north if you need to, but its costly and painful no matter how you slice it. Take a tip from the birds if you can and fly south with the sun!

How to Sleep in a Tent

2009-11-22T01:49:00.001-08:00

If you need to spend the night in an uncomfortable outdoor environment, a tent can often provide just enough shelter to get the job done. Tents protect you from insects and light rain and can help you conserve heat. They won't get you through the harshest weather, but they can help you deal with the moderate trials of Mother Nature.

I prefer not to use a tent if I can get away with it. In the desert, you don't need one unless it is especially cold. There are no mosquitoes in the desert and little chance of rain, so just an air mattress and sleeping bag will usually suffice. You also don't need a tent if you have the back seat of a car to sleep in. It takes some training to sleep in a space that is shorter than you are, but it's still usually easier than setting up a tent. A car is essentially a hard-shell tent that will protect you in even the most extreme conditions.

Most people think they need a tent for privacy--to be able to change clothes, etc.--but this isn't a big issue for me, since I rarely use campgrounds, and I will always camp in hidden locations that aren't visible anyway. The cost of privacy (everywhere in life) is less awareness of your environment. I prefer to sleep without a tent when possible because then I can keep track of what's going on around me. If a twig snaps, I can look up and see what it is. A tent only gives you the illusion of security. Real security lies in knowledge of your surroundings.

To me, the purpose of a tent is strictly to protect me from the physical elements during the 7 hours a night when I am unconscious. It is mainly bugs and the threat of rain that will drive me to use one. I will put the tent up when I want to sleep and take it down as soon as I wake up. Typically, I do both under cover of darkness. Under ideal circumstances, no one should ever have a clue I was there -- apart from some matted grass in the morning.

On rare occasions, I may use an actual authorized campground. These are usually located in state parks. (Also National Parks, of course, but those campgrounds tend to fill up fast.) In the US, the commercial "campgrounds" you see in tourist areas are mainly for RVs. They may allow tenting, but you'll feel strange doing it, surrounded by those massive land yachts . Since even a state campground will set you back $10-20/night, it usually seems easier to camp commando-style in any piece of vacant land that seems appropriate.

See The Supercenter Camping Method for one way to find a campsite when driving cross-country (park your car at a 24-hour Acme™ Supercenter and discreetly set up your tent on the adjoining land). If you are on foot or using public transportation, you can study the aerial photography in Google Earth/Google Maps for potential camping spots on the outskirts of a city's public transportation system. Without a car, your range is limited, but you also don't have to worry about a car giving you away, so you may have more siting options. Keep in mind that fences and no trespassing signs don't show up in aerial photos, so you'll need some active field study before you know for sure that a site is suitable. (I will avoid No Trespassing/No Camping signs if I can, but I will sometimes ignore them if there are no alternatives and the chance of detection is negligible.) It is preferable to be able to survey your campsite before the sun goes down, then come back after dark to set up your tent.

I choose a tent based mainly on price, carry weight and ease of set-up. If you stop at any of the big sporting goods chains, like Sports Authority and Big Five, you can usually find a 1- or 2-man tent on sale for $25-35. (Also check the Sunday newspaper circulars.) In a pinch, Acme™ also has tents, but they tend to be a little pricey--more like $35-45. The one-man tent at the top of this entry was bought for $25 on sale at Sports Authority. It is suitable for most situations, and at that price it is semi-disposable (i.e. I can abandon it if it isn't convenient to take it with me). The most important feature of this tent, however, is that it is very light to carry and fits in my carry-on airline baggage.

I have little use for big cabin tents that sleep four or more people and that usually cost $100+. They are awkward to haul around and difficult to set up, and they are certainly not discreet. You also lose the heat advantage of a smaller tent. In a small space, your own body heat can warm the tent by perhaps 10 degrees F while it has little effect in a large tent. If I were traveling in a large family unit (which I did in an earlier life), I would use several small tents rather than one big one. This has the added advantage of allowing some members of the party to sleep even while others insist on being active.

The ideal camping spot is a field of thick grass. The grass may provide enough padding that you don't need a mattress. Of course, if do you have a mattress you'll want to use it. Air mattresses are the best, but you'll also need a pump of some kind because lungs alone may not be enough. Over time, the body can get used to a variety of sleeping surfaces, but hard ground under your tent probably won't do for most of us. You'll need some kind of padding under you.

In the Northeastern USA, you need to be aware of the risk of Lyme disease, which is caused by deer ticks that may hang out in the same grassy areas you might want to camp in. (I became conscious of this risk while camping on an island in Maine.) Here is a Lyme disease risk map. If I were camping in a Lyme disease area, I might avoid grass in favor of hard ground and a mattress. If I had to walk through grass or underbrush, I would wear long pants and carefully check my clothing for ticks before I got into my tent. (The ticks are large enough to be visible and are blocked by the tent's screening.)

To keep warm while sleeping in a tent, you just keep adding clothing and bedding. As long as you are dry, there is no low temperature that can't be addressed by adding multiple layers of passive insulation. Your first defense is your clothing: As the temperature gets colder, you can put on whatever clothing you have and as many layers of it as possible. Don't forget a hat, since your head can lose a lot of heat at night. (If you don't have a hat, use a T-shirt turned upside down, with your head through the neck opening.) Start with one sleeping bag for moderate temperatures, then add more sleeping bags as the temperature gets colder. I have camped in temperatures at low as 0 degrees F using passive insulation alone, and mountaineers obviously endure even lower temperatures on places like Everest. They have expensive lightweight sleeping bags, but apart from the difficulty of transport, many layers of clothing and several $9 Acme sleeping bags should do just as well.

All bets are off, however, once your bedding starts getting wet. No matter how many layers you have, it's not going to keep you warm. You can be camping in temperatures well below freezing with a layer of snow on your tent and still be comfortable, but if you are wet, then you could be miserable even with temps in the 70s. That's when the water protection of your tent becomes critical.

In occasional light rain, or a mere risk of rain, almost any tent will do. Tenting becomes a science only when the precipitation gets heavy. That's when you have to understand how tents work if you hope to sleep.

The walls of a tent are made of porous fabric, not plastic. A tent protects you from rain only because the water flows down the outside of the fabric to the ground before it has a chance to seep inside. Water is inherently "sticky", and it will follow the path of least resistance to get to the ground. If the fabric is always sloping downward, that the water will follow the slope and has no motivation to come inside your tent. If any of the fabric dips, however, then water will pool on the surface and drip inside.

For example, look at the tent shown at the top of this entry. At the low end of the tent (left side), there is a dip in the fabric just before the small pole. This where water is likely to collect and drip inside.
Dome tents, like the one above, have the advantage of eliminating most of the major dip points in the fabric. This tent is probably going be less vulnerable to the rain than the one at the top of the entry. However, it's still not perfect. This dome tent isn't set up on level ground, which generates pooling places along the seams at the bottom. Wherever a seam turns upward, water is going to pool in the crack and seep into the tent. The floor of most tents is non-porous plastic, so once water leaks in, it forms lakes on the floor and will never leave on its own.

It is possible that a better-designed tent instead of the rock-bottom cheapest will do better for you in the rain. It depends on the tent, and you can't be sure until you actually use it. You can also benefit from careful siting of your tent on flat, well drained ground. However, it's a sad fact that no tent is going to protect you for long in torrential or perpetual rain (like I experienced in San Diego). In times like that, you may have no choice but to move inside--to a motel, rental car or nice cave if you can find one.

In dreary places like England or New England, with soggy weather day after day, the wet is going to accumulate in your tent and bedding and never leave. At some point, you'll need an opportunity to dry out. That doesn't mean you can't camp in these soggy places, but you need a backup plan for when the sog gets to be too much.

Likewise, in tropical paradises like Hawaii or the Caribbean, the tourist brochures don't tell you about the Biblical rains or the fact that the windward side of an island gets rain almost every single day. The attraction of paradise may be diminished if you are wet all the time.

As usual, you should move to the dry whenever you have the option. If you can't do that, then you have to study how water works and develop as many backup plans as you can. Tenting may be a painless lodging option 80% of the time. It's the other 20% that you have to prepare for.

Case Study: Campsite Selection in Reno

2009-11-15T01:05:00.000-08:00

This past May, I had a social event to attend in Reno. As usual, I could fly there for free, but I couldn't afford lodging. And even if I had the money, formal lodging wouldn't make a lot of sense, since I planned to sleep for only 4-5 hours before flying out in the morning. To maximize my sleep time, a free location I could walk to from the airport would beat a downtown hotel room at any price. The weather forecast was good, with no chance of rain, so all I really needed was a place to lay out my sleeping bag without fear of human contact.

The trouble with Reno is that it's desert. There are no mosquitoes, but there's also not much foliage to hide in. Large plants don't grow without irrigation. The area around the airport is densely occupied, without much vacant land. Where was I going to camp?

(The Reno airport is a small one where the secure areas close at night, so I wasn't comfortable sleeping at the airport.)

I turned to Google Earth to find some potential sites (actually, Google Maps, since I find it easier to use). I focused on the location above, just a short walk from the airport terminal. (Here is the Google Maps link.) It appeared to be landscaping in the unused median between roadways. If you compare this land to the size of the cars in the parking lot, you see that it's quite spacious. The surrounding neighborhood is industrial (no houses), so there's no reason for anyone to be passing through at night.

When I got there during the day, I found it was perfect! It was just as envisioned, with no telltale signs of other homeless people (i.e. no trash). I hid my sleeping bag in the bushes and then came back after midnight to set up camp (at the "X" in the photo). The greenery you see in the aerial photo was indeed irrigated trees and large bushes, and the only people I would expect to come here were grounds-keeping staff maintaining the irrigation. They would be visiting only during the day, so I felt secure there at night.

Landscaping can be a wonderful place to spend the night -- as long as you break camp before dawn. There's one concern, though: The sprinklers usually come on at night! I you choose a nice green lawn, you might find yourself irrigated sometime in the early morning hours. However, trees and bushes are usually irrigated by drip systems, and if you find the drip heads, you can avoid getting wet.

The only camping supplies I had were a tarp (for as a groundcover) and a mummy sleeping bag. I would have brought an air mattress had I wanted a sound night's sleep, but I only expected a few hours of "adequate" sleep before flying out in the morning. I had previously consulted the weather forecast and found that the nighttime temp would be in the 40s. In the absence of rain or high winds, this is fine sleeping weather! If you sleep in your clothes and a jacket, a mummy bag is adequate. (If the temp goes below freezing, you'd probably need two sleeping bags, and you'd want a tent if there was rain or snow in the forecast.)

It went without a hitch! I encountered no humans, got a few hours of adequate sleep (enough to maintain my sanity), then broke camp before dawn. No one knew I was there, which is the ideal circumstance. Yes, I was probably sleeping in a place I shouldn't (probably on airport land), but are police or airport security going to comb the bushes every night?

Compare my luxurious digs to the way the locals sleep in downtown Reno (taken on the same night)....
This campsite selection can only be regarded as stupid. Out in the open like that, you're a target for thieves and thugs. The thing that separates me from these people isn't money but brains. The worst place to be if you're homeless is Downtown Anywhere. Homeless life is always better in the suburbs or the edges of town, and the rent isn't any higher. Why, then, do the visible homeless always seem to gravitate downtown?

On possible theory: drugs. If you need access to booze or whatever your preferred drug may be, maybe downtown is the best place to find it. But drugs don't explain the phenomenon completely. I think homeless people, like humans everywhere, have a need for community and territory. They are attached to other people in their neighborhood -- and to their neighborhood itself -- and they're afraid of being alone or detaching themselves from familiar surroundings. How else do you explain homeless people remaining in a harsh environment like Manhattan or downtown Chicago?

If you're a homeless person with any capacity for logic, you're obviously going to migrate to where the weather and living conditions are best. The fact that someone hangs out downtown is a pretty good sign that their higher cognitive functions have broken down -- from drugs or mental illness -- and they have gone back to their animal instincts of sticking to the surroundings they know.

Since I'm suffering from neither drugs nor mental illness (to the best of my knowledge), I'm going to use all the resources at my disposal to find a safe and comfortable camping spot away from human contact. If others prefer to be miserable, that's their choice.

Walmart Supercenter Camping Method

2009-11-13T16:30:00.001-08:00

If you are driving across the country intending to tent along the side of the road, it's pretty easy to find gypsy camping spots in the Western states, at least away from the coastline and the main tourist drags. In states with lots of public land, like Nevada and Arizona, you can legally camp in almost any patch of empty desert. Finding a campsite can be a little more challenging in Western states dominated by private land, like Texas, but you can almost always find a workable solution somewhere.

Once you go east of the Mississippi, though, finding a discreet tenting site becomes much more difficult. It's not that there isn't enough campable land. The Eastern states are rich with woods and fields where a tent could easily be hidden. In even the most densely populated state, you pass endless forests along the highway; the only problem is getting to them. Your Achilles Heal is the vehicle you're driving. While it's easy to find secret tenting spots, it's not easy hiding your car. When your vehicle is parked on a remote road near some woods, it instantly attracts attention, be it from police, neighbors or the criminal element.

Of course, you could try finding a legitimate campground, but they cost money and are rarely available when you need them. Commercial campgrounds may be plentiful in tourist areas, but if you don't arrive in a massive RV, you'll pretty much be laughed off the property. This is America, where "camping" has evolved into a grotesque parody of roughing it, where people carry their whole house with them. State parks are usually the only places in the East to find "real" campsites--without full utility hookups--but locating one takes a lot of planning. A park campsite is probably going to set you back $15-20/night, with rarely even a hot shower to show for it.

If you're driving at sunset and you suddenly decide it's time to sleep (and for some reason you can't sleep in your vehicle), where are you going to go? Where can you easily pitch a tent in the dark without being noticed while also safely parking your car nearby? Personally, I struggled with this problem for years, until I turned to the same organization than solves so many other problems for me: the Acme Corporation!

Picture in your mind the average Acme Supercenter. (One is shown in the photo above.) Where are they located? Typically, these massive structures are found on the outskirts of town, on virgin land near the freeway. Usually their site has been etched out of the woods, and there is often large swathes of unoccupied land adjoining it. Viola, there's your tenting spot!

Most Supercenters are open 24 hours. The parking lot is usually patrolled by security and--at least in most rural areas--overnight parking is explicitly permitted. You know when it is allowed, because in one corner of the lot, a cluster of RVs is usually spending the night. If you are sleeping in your vehicle, an Acme parking lot is often a safe and convenient place to do it, but if you're tenting, this might also be the place to quietly pull it off.

Your first step is to case the area. You walk or drive the perimeter of the parking lot looking for woods, fields or bushes where you can hide a tent at night. Security would no doubt object to tenting if they knew, so your aim is pitch your tent where no one will detect your presence. Remember that many sites that seem exposed during the day are secure and invisible at night. (That's the magic of darkness!) You want to find a place where you can both comfortably camp and enter the campsite unnoticed. Often, this is in the back of the store. For example, the big overgrown field shown below (behind a Supercenter in Virginia) would make a perfect campsite at night, even if it is vulnerable at during the day...
You would avoid being exposed by daylight by setting your alarm to just before dawn and breaking camp before anyone knows you're there.

Once you have found the right spot along the periphery of the Acme parking lot, you can discreetly offload your camping gear from your car into the bushes. ("Camping gear" only needs to consist of a tent, sleeping bag and maybe a mattress, since your only goal is to sleep for seven hours then skedaddle. I find that I don't need a mattress if I am sleeping on grass.) Then you drive your car to a central part of the Acme lot where it will be safe for the night. You return to your campsite on foot, retrieve your camping gear from the bushes, then disappear into the darkness. If you do it gracefully, no one knows you are there, and your car won't give you away.

You can try similar techniques in non-Acme parking lots, but the Acme Supercenter offers a unique confluence of benefits: (1) Conveniently located on the outskirts nearly every major community. (2) Overnight parking is usually permitted. (3) The parking lot is usually patrolled by security, which protects your car from thieves or vandals. (4) Frequently surrounded by woods, fields or dense landscaping where a tent can be hidden. (5) Has clean restrooms open 24 hours. (6) Always Low Prices on whatever food or goods you happen need, including camping gear.

You may not even need a vehicle to use the Acme campground. On one occasion, I found myself in South Florida with little more than the clothes on my back. I hadn't planned to spend the night, but transportation glitches forced me to. As often is the case, an Acme in Florida City happened to be the transfer port for the local bus system. When I arrived there by chance, I checked out the parking lot on foot and noticed a big mowed field on one side. The field would have been totally exposed during the day, but it worked fine under cover of darkness. I went into the Acme, bought myself a $9 sleeping bags, put it down in the field, and slept comfortably. (I might have also bought a tent or tarp, but Acme's are a little pricey.)

In the humid East, you usually need a tent. In the summer you need it to protect you from insects and rain. In the winter, you need the wind protection and extra warmth. I was lucky in Florida City because I encountered no mosquitoes, but apart from the desert I would use a tent if I had one. One advantage of the Supercenter, though, is that you can afford to take chances. You can try sleeping without a tent and see how it goes. If you find you need more equipment, like a tent, tarp or insert repellent, you just go into the store and buy it. Even if you spend $30 to make yourself comfortable, that's still less than the cost of a motel.

There are no end to the uses you can find for your Acme Supercenter! When faced with any travel problem at all, that's the first place to go!

Also see: Walmart Motel for $20/Night

Style Note: "Evil Mega Mart" is now "Acme Corporation"

2009-11-13T09:47:00.000-08:00

In earlier posts on this blog, I have referred to the "Evil Mega Mart™" (or EMM™), a certain giant megalithic corporation from which most goods for the blissful homeless life are obtained (at least in North America). I realize now that the label may be inappropriate. It isn't necessarily "Evil". It just is.

Henceforth on this blog, this megalithic retail organization shall be known as the "Acme Corporation"--in homage to the outfit that supplied Wile E. Coyote with roadrunner-catching equipment. True, the equipment always failed, but Acme was unmatched on fast delivery, often arriving within seconds of the Coyote placing his order. Acme can't really be blamed if its products are used for nefarious purposes; that's the customer's choice. Likewise, it may not be fair to blame a single American corporation for all of society's ills. Acme/EMM simply gives the customer what he wants, and if his motives are impure, then the customer himself must bear the burden for the results.

Without a doubt, our Acme is an enormous boon to the traveler. Its standardized installations in every significant city and town mean that you never have to search for basic goods like sleeping bags, shoes or fresh underwear. At Acme, you know you'll find what you need at reasonable prices. The quality may not be superior, but it's consistently adequate from place to place, which is all you really need for survival.

There are lots of bad things you say about the social affects of Acme -- how it has cannibalized small businesses and downtowns across America, replaced high paying jobs with subsistence ones and encouraged sweatshop labor overseas -- be we all shop there anyway, and it isn't clear that you're helping the world by not doing so. Acme is simply an unavoidable public institution, like the U.S. Government or Christianity. You either learn to live with it or you don't.

I visit Acme without guilt. When I'm driving, I may stop there as many as three times a day, for the restrooms if nothing else. Most Acme Supercenters ("Supercentres" in Canada) are open 24 hours a day, so you can drop by anytime. Acme parking lots in rural areas explicitly allow overnight parking, even by mammoth RVs. You don't have to buy anything to take advantage of these services, so why not use them?

Apart from food, there are about a dozen standard supplies I buy at Acme, including $9 sleeping bags, $2.50 pillows, $12 shoes, $5 shirts and $10 jeans. (Just about the only item I don't buy there is tents, which I can usually get cheaper at a chain sports store.) I don't feel that Acme is making a huge profit off me, but I'm getting a fantastic deal from them. At those prices, I can afford to throw away my bulkier supplies when I need to, then reconstruct my inventory at my next landing spot.

Attached to every piece of merchandise is some pain. Acme can sell at such low prices because some sweatshop worker in China is earning only pennies a day making it. Just because I don't see the exploitation myself doesn't mean it isn't happening. But if I don't buy the cheap product, am I really helping those exploited workers or simply putting them out of work? It's a genuine conundrum, and I deal with it in my own mind but not buying frivolously. If I buy something, it is because I truly need it and will use it well, not because it serves my vanity. I don't know if I am helping or hurting world society, but at least I am treading lightly through it.

In the Road Runner cartoons, the Coyote always gets what's coming to him. Acme sells him devices that always backfire, but he never learns from his experiences. I, too, have purchased Acme products that have fallen apart on first use, but I think I have learned a thing or two. Usually they were products that I didn't truly need anyway. Once my motives became more pure, my bad experiences at Acme dissipated.

Once I stopped trying to kill Road Runners, Acme and I have learned to get along.

Truck Stop Showers

2009-10-22T06:08:00.000-07:00

When you are traveling cross-country in good weather, you can usually find places to camp or sleep in your vehicle. The main drawback to this kind of accommodation is the lack of shower facilities. Where do you find a shower without paying the full price of a hotel room. Truck stops!

Most long-haul truckers sleep in their vehicles. That's the function of the big box behind the cab: It's camper! There is rarely a shower in there however, so truckers check in at their friendly truck stop for a showers. Showers at truck stops are sometimes free for truckers who fuel up at that location, but ordinary motorists can usually use the showers, too, for a fee. The cost ranges from $5 to $15 (which is at least better than getting a motel room at $40+).

A typical shower is just a private restroom with a shower stall. Towels and soap are usually provided, and you can usually take as long as you want inside.

A lot of rural interstate truck stops have them -- nearly any place with a lot of trucks in it's parking lot. The showers may not be advertised, but if there is a trucker's lounge, there is a good chance there are showers.

The major truck stop chains specify on their websites whether showers are available at each location. Try Pilot Travel Centers, Flying J, Petro Truck Stops and TA Travel Centers.

Roadside Camping in Arizona and Texas

2009-10-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

No camping experience in the Southwest is complete until you are surrounded by Border Patrol agents, guns at the ready.

It happened to me a few nights ago. I was driving across Texas on Interstate 10 (which bisects Texas horizontally). I was driving someone else's car, and it was packed with stuff. I can't afford motels every night, and I prefer not to sleep sitting up in the driver's seat, so camping is the way to go. In the open desert where there's no threat of rain or insects, I just blow up a $12 air mattress, throw a $9 sleeping back on top of it, and I'm good to go! The photo above shows my set-up near Tombstone, Arizona, where I got a perfect night's sleep. (Also see my photos of Tombstone.)

How do I find a place to camp? In Nevada and Arizona, that's no problem. These states consist largely of public land, where there are few restrictions on camping. Just grab a patch of desert and it's yours! In Texas, I figured I'd do the same thing. West Texas is even more desolate than Nevada, so there ought to be plenty of land to go around.

However, there were two things in Texas I wasn't counting on. First, nearly all land in Texas is private, even the most desolate parts. It's heavily fenced in with "No Trespassing" signs on nearly every gate. Secondly, the Mexican border seems to cast more of a shadow in Texas than it does anywhere else, precisely because the land is so desolate. Because there is hardly any civilization between the border and I-10, I-10 effectively becomes the border, and it is heavily patrolled by the U.S. Border Patrol.

I found this out the hard way when I chose a camping spot near Van Horn, Texas, in the middle of nowhere but about 100 miles from the border. I was on a local highway about 10 miles south of Van Horn and I-10, and the sun had just gone down, so I thought I should choose a campsite while I still had some light. My intention was to sleep in the open like I did in Tombstone the night before.

I found what looked like a disused dirt road off the main highway. There was a gate, but it wasn't locked and had no "No Trespassing" sign on it, so I opened it and drove inside. (In Nevada, gates are common on public land and are only intended to keep cattle inside, and I claimed the same analogy here.) It was nearly dark and there were no house lights in view, so I assumed this gate was merely an access point to range land and no one would notice me for the night. I found a flat area near the gate and out of sight of the highway, and I set up my mattress and sleeping bag there. Then I sat in the car and worked on my computer for while.

About an hour later, when it was pitch black, I heard the gate open a few hundred yards away. Then I saw a line of flashlights heading my way.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Border Patrol," they said.

There were about five Border Patrol officers and the county sheriff himself. They were courteous and never drew their weapons, but I got the third degree. Who was I? What was I doing out here in this remote location? I was told that this was private land. I was trespassing and would have to move along. They said there was no problem with my spending the night in any of the official state rest areas along the highway (although I didn't ask I could set up my air mattress).

The landowner had called me in. Apparently, he had used the same gate shortly after I did, saw my car and called the sheriff. The sheriff then called the Border Patrol for backup. Anywhere else, the matter would have been handled by the landowner himself speaking to me, but apparently in this border region everyone is on edge.

"Don't you feel afraid out here?" asked the sheriff.

"Why should I?" I replied. I pointed out we were 100 miles from the border.

The sheriff said there were narco-traffickers and illegal immigrants who wouldn't hesitate to kill me if they came across me.

I brushed it off at the time, but after I left the area and started driving again, I began to think about it. Yes, this could be a risk anywhere in West Texas. If the Border Patrol is heavily patrolling the main corridors, the illegals are going to be choosing obscure and indirect routes, and if I happened to be parked on one of them, I'd be toast. It's not that anyone cared about me personally, but the car would make a nice getaway vehicle.

So where should I camp now?

It was about 10pm when I was interdicted, and I was wide awake afterward, so I had a couple of hours to resolve the problem. After the Border Patrol let me leave, I got back on I-10 going east. My first aim was to get out of this here county, so I wouldn't encounter that particular sheriff or his deputies again. After that, I was faced with a dilemma. In Nevada or Arizona, I would simply take the next freeway exit in the open desert and look for a place to camp just beyond the lights of the freeway. I felt protected by the hugeness of the desert. In Texas, however, there were all those fences and gates, and even when I found I place I would normally camp, the specter of the desperate Mexican narcotraficante entered my mind. There were plenty of desolate freeway exits in West Texas but none where I felt safe.

There were, however, plenty of official rest areas and picnic areas along the highway, spaced about every 40 miles. I actually feel comfortable sleeping at most rest areas. I felt reassured by the presence of long-haul truckers spending the night there in their cabs. Texas actually allows overnight parking at most of its rest areas, but I couldn't sleep well in the car and the picnic areas were marked like this....

"No Sleeping on Tables or Benches" it said. Notice, however, that there's no sign saying you can't sleep under the tables or beside benches, so that's what I did. I stopped at an unlit picnic area where a dozen trucks were parked for the night. I chose a covered picnic shelter like the one above, since there was a threat of rain.It was dark enough that no one would see me, and I doubted narco-traffickers would hold any picnics here. I blew up my air mattress on the concrete pad beside a picnic table and put my sleeping bag on it. Since it was dark and I was parked a good distance away from my valuable car, I felt that my odds of survival were about the same as staying at the Motel 6--which is all I really ask in life.

Just before dawn, my BlackBerry alarm woke me, then I packed up and left before anyone was the wiser. I got about 6 hours of quality sleep. Mission accomplished!

Texas is a LONG drive, about 1000 miles stem-to-stern. I spent a night with relatives in Austin, but I needed to camp again in East Texas. I chose this abandoned farmhouse...

It was certainly private property but there was little chance of detection, since I was protected by darkness and broke camp just after dawn. I was far enough from the border that crime wasn't a issue. (There farmhouse was surrounded by miles of empty fields.)

Still, this campsite was hard to find at night, and as I headed east there would be even more fences. East of the Mississippi, it's pretty hard to find abandoned farmhouses like the one above. Where could I reliably find a free campsite? (Stay tuned for the answer.)

Secret Airport Sleeping Nook

2009-09-28T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last night, after renting an SUV in Las Vegas for $23, I turned in the car and started heading to the East Coast. The red-eye flight I had hoped to take was overbooked, so I found myself stranded overnight at an airport somewhere in the American Southwest. I was safely inside security (having had a boarding pass for the overbooked flight), so it was logical for me to sleep there and take a better flight east in the morning. (See How to Sleep in an Airport.)

Unfortunately, all of the airport seating had fixed armrests as shown above. I can sleep on these seats if necessary (by wrapping myself around an armrest in the fetal position), but it's not my best sleep. I can also sleep on the floor if I need to, but in open areas it makes me feel too vulnerable and obvious.

I cased out the concourse and found no great sleeping sites until I stumbled upon the scene above. It's the same fix-armrest seating, but look again! What's that behind the seating?

It's an abandoned customer service desk! As airlines have cut back in the past year, you find a fair number of these unused facilities. I poked around and found that the door was locked, and there were no computers or other equipment in the desks.

What a perfect campsite!

I felt much better sleeping on this floor than out in the open. (Privacy is nice when you can get it!) No one was going to notice me unless they were as curious as I am, and the small amount of trash on the floor indicated that the cleaners don't come back here often. If security found me, the worst they would do is ask me to move—and there's virtually no security inside security anyway!

I had two blankets with me. One of them I folded up and used as a mattress. It turns out this was just enough padding to allow me to sleep soundly. And I did! I got a solid 7 hours of sleep! (I credit my rigorous physical conditioning.) I woke on my own schedule and boarded the eastbound flight I intended—flying First Class, no less.

Good things come to those who are adaptable!

Case Study: Mobile Lodging in Las Vegas for $23

2009-09-26T13:33:00.001-07:00

As an airline flyer who can only fly standby, my life is full of plotting and planning. What happens if I can't get on the flight I want? What will my alternative transportation be? Where will I sleep? Should I take an open flight from one city only to risk being trapped in another? Like playing chess, each decision I make now has ramifications later in the game, so I have to be thinking many moves ahead.

At this moment (3pm), I am sitting in the airport in Denver wondering how I will lodge myself in Las Vegas tonight if I happen to get there. I have to do some heavy lifting tomorrow in Las Vegas, so I have arranged to rent a minivan at 7am. Once I have the minivan, then I have my lodging. (See How to Sleep in a Car.) However, the lowest rates on the minivan start tomorrow, not today. I am hoping to catch a flight to Las Vegas tonight, but if I get there, I won't have lodging until tomorrow morning. I'd like to get a good night's sleep tonight, so what do I do?

Option #1: Hotel. You can often find good hotel rates in Las Vegas, but not tonight. This is a Saturday night, the peak visitor night in Las Vegas, so there is no way I can find a room within my budget. Even if I could, it hardly seems worthwhile to check into a hotel for only a few hours. It might take an hour (and some money) to get from the airport to the hotel tonight and an hour to get away in the morning. If I get to Las Vegas at 9pm and pick up the minivan at 7am, I wouldn't have much time to sleep.

Option #2: Sleep at the Airport. I know the Las Vegas airport concourses are open all night. If my flight arrives at 9pm, I can simply remain inside security (where no one ever bothers you) and sleep until morning. (See How to Sleep in an Airport.) This is option is free, and I have all the equipment I need: warm clothing, blanket, earplugs and eye mask. The only trouble with this option is that all the seating in the Las Vegas airport has fixed arm rests. There is no comfortable padded seating you can lie flat on. I can work around this by curling around the armrest in the fetal position. I can get some sleep this way, but it's not my best sleep. I'd like to avoid it if I can.

Option #3: Call on Friends. I could, in theory, call on friends in Las Vegas to put me up for the night, but I almost never do this. I may stay with friends on social occasions, but not when I just need a place to sleep. Since homelessness is my chosen lifestyle, it doesn't feel right to take advantage of respectable mortgage payers in this way. Plus, I would still have the problem of Option #1: It would take me an hour to get there and an hour to get away.

Option #4: Camp Away from the Airport. I could leave the airport and find a secret place to camp for the night. This gets logistically complicated, however. Under cover of darkness, it is fairly easy to find a place to sleep in any city without rain, but the ground is hard in Las Vegas, and I would need an air mattress. Getting one requires a pilgrimage to the Evil Mega-Mart™ by public transit. This is not a realistic option on such a short time frame. (Sleeping in the airport would work better.)

None of those options are great, so I have had to get creative. I mentioned that I am renting a minivan tomorrow at 7am. Minivans are usually frightfully expensive compared to regular sedans, but I managed to snag a good rate. If I changed the pickup date to tonight, I would lose that rate. So what's the solution?

Eureka! I'll just rent another car for the night, solely for the purposes of sleeping.

Thanks to rigorous physical conditioning, I can sleep comfortably in the back seat of the smallest rental car. (I do it in Europe where all the rental cars are small.) While room rates in Las Vegas get high on the weekends (due to the influx of Southern Californians), rental car rates get low. Since my rental includes a Saturday night, I can get an economy car for only $23, including all taxes and fees. (Insurance is covered by my credit card.)

So if I manage to get to Las Vegas tonight (which depends on the airline gods), I will proceed to the same rental car company I am getting the minivan from (Alamo). I'll rent the economy car, sleep in it, return it in the morning, then pick up the minivan. Brilliant! Since I won't go very far from the rental car center, the gas needle will still show "Full" on the economy car and I won't need to buy any fuel.

In addition to lodging, a rental car also provides—at no additional charge—transportation, so I could pick up bedding if I needed it. (I probably won't need it because Las Vegas is still warm in September.) In most cases, a $9 sleeping bag from EMM™ is sufficient.

Spending $23 for a good night's sleep is generally within my budget. It's about comparable to a youth hostel. I hate to spend more than that, but I can swing $23. Furthermore, I would be getting more quality sleeping time in a rental car than I would in even the finest Las Vegas hotel, since I'll get to my car quickly and drop it off quickly (faster than checking in at the Four Seasons).

BTW: I only rent from Alamo Rent-A-Car when they are available. I like the low rates, the opportunity to choose my own car from the lot, and the lack of additional "holds" on my credit card. Alamo makes fine sleeping cars, and I recommend them to all homeless people!

UPDATE—8PM

The travel gods have been kind to me. Beyond kind! Not only did they see me to Las Vegas, but they gave me a free rental car upgrade—to an SUV!

Yes, I paid $23 for the rental of a car that I assumed would be similar to the one shown at the top of this entry—a tiny Chevrolet Aveo or similar. However, when I got to the lot (where you usually choose your own vehicle), no Economy cars were available—and no mid-size or full-size cars either. So the attendant let me have an SUV, a Ford Escape (pictured below). Not only is this a spacious sleeping car, but it may mean I won't have to rent the minivan tomorrow! The SUV could handle all my "heavy lifting" needs.

This just shows you that if you're right with the Travel Gods, all sorts of good things will come your way!

My Own Private Island (Free Sleeping in Maine)

2009-09-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

This past Labor Day weekend, I spent four days living on my own private island in Maine. I hadn't intended so much luxury on my $15/day budget, but that's how things worked out.

I chose to head to Bar Harbor (Acadia National Park) for the long weekend mainly to get some work done. I had a book to read and writing I wanted to do. Normally, I would go to San Diego for this, but I was already on the East Coast and had an appointment in Boston after the holiday, so the long flight to San Diego didn't make sense. I needed another place I could work in peace for a few days. Mount Desert Island wouldn't seem like the first choice, since it was a pricey tourist haven with no university library, but the town of Bar Harbor had enough to make up for it: (1) a FREE local bus system, including service to the airport, (2) FREE Wifi in the town's two main parks, (3) FREE A/C power on almost every lamppost in those parks, and (4) plenty of wild woods for FREE camping. The weather forecast was also as nearly perfect as you can get in Maine: daytime highs in the 70s with no chance of rain.

I had visited Bar Harbor the year before (and several times as a kid), so I knew there were virtually unlimited areas to camp. Camping without permission was no doubt illegal virtually everywhere (given the high density of tourists), but in practice it's easy and harmless. With so much forested land, there are always places you can hide a small tent. Only a car would give you away, and I had none.

I prepared from my trip by purchasing my lodging at a Sports Authority™ store in Boston...I needed a new tent to replace one I had jettisoned elsewhere. I consider these $25 tents disposable. I'll use one until it breaks or is inconvenient to haul around. Then when I need another, I pick it up at one of the mega sporting goods stores, where there's almost always a $20-30 tent on sale. (Big Five Sporting Goods™ is another good source.) In this case, the only reason I needed a tent was for protection from the bugs, which Maine is notorious for.

I landed in Maine with just the basics: my computer and camera in my backpack and my new tent and a mummy sleeping bag in my satchel. I flew into the local airport in the evening and took the free bus to Bar Harbor downtown. When I got there, it was dusk, and I immediately started thinking about where I would bivouac for the night. My default plan was to simply walk out of town until I found woods to camp in, but I soon as looked out at the harbor I got a better idea.
There was a causeway to a forested island across the harbor. (The causeway was apparently the "Bar" in "Bar Harbor".) Great! I would blend in with the other tourists, cross the causeway and camp on the island, at least for the night.

As I was walking across, I figured that the causeway was tidal, since there was nothing growing on it. I knew it was probably covered with water at high tide. However, I didn't recognize at the time just how tidal it was.

Here was the first resident I met on the island....
There were no humans. The island was quite large (68 acres I later learned), and I figured I would avoid detection by going substantially off the main trail and camping there. My rudimentary tracking skills told me there were deer crisscrossing the island but that humans stayed primary on the main trail.
I pitched my $25 tent on the edge of a natural meadow and tucked myself in for the night. It was curious to be the only human on the island. I could hear several deer passing noisily a few yards from my tent. (Deer are not the silent creatures you might suppose. They sounded like they were loudly blowing their noses.) Nothing about being here spooked me until I thought a bit more about the deer.

Lyme disease! It's the scourge of New England. The disease is transmitted not by deer themselves but by the deer tick. If you get bitten by one, you could fall into a Sleeping Beauty lethargy that can be life-threatening. I got a little concerned until I googled it up on my BlackBerry. It turns out Lyme disease is not a major problem in Acadia National Park, although officials still warn visitors about it. The first night I slathered myself with bug repellent (which I find repellent myself), but after that I simply inspected my pants for ticks each time I walked through the grass to my tent. I found none, and in fact no bugs at all bit me whilst in Maine.

There was a tide chart posted at the start of the main trail, so I knew when the next low tide would be, and I guessed I would have three hours on either side of the low to enter and exit the island. In the morning, I took my time waking up. I thought my tent was secure from possible discovery, so I left it in place, then I wandered down to the causeway.

There wasn't any! I had missed my tidal window. It turns out I could only count on about 2 hours of dry land on either side of the tide. The tidal swings in Maine can be huge—in this case about 11 feet, which had thrown off my judgment the night before. I was now trapped on the island for another eight hours!

Fortunately, I had a book to read and enough food and drink to get by for the day. I wanted to read the book, but now nature was forcing me to. I lay in my tent all day reading. In the late afternoon, I started to hear human voices on the trail just about two hours before the low. I still had a few chapters left to read, however, so I did not depart from the island until just after the low. I had things I needed to do in Bar Harbor, including recharging my devices, buying some food and uploading some photos. By the time I got back to the causeway, it was well after dark and the causeway was already partially flooded.

I calculated that I had no option but to cross it anyway, since all of my camping gear was on the island and there was no way I could afford legitimate lodging in this town. I walked across the dry part of the causeway, and when I got to the water, I just kept walking. (I was prepared to sacrifice of another pair of $12 Wal-Mart sneakers.) I had to use dead reckoning and memory to try to stay on the causeway in the darkness until I got to the island. (Kind of exciting, actually!) When I reached dry land of the island, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I was alone here.

The island is called Bar Island and it is part of Acadia National Park. About a dozen tourists a day venture beyond the causeway and follow a short trail to the high point of the island, where they can view Bar Harbor. Camping is no doubt prohibited here, but there were no signs saying that. One sign called this a "fee area", and I hadn't purchased a regular park pass, but I wasn't worried about that either. The only way I would be caught was if there was a park ranger inspecting bags on the causeway or if a ranger thoroughly patrolled the island during the four-hour window. Both possibilities seemed highly unlikely. As in most national parks, rangers patrol where there are people, not where there aren't.

Having got into the rhythm of the island, I stayed two more nights there. In the morning, I crossed to the town, spent 12-14 hours using their free power and internet services, then crossed back in the evening. (A fourth night, I camped near the airport so I could take an early flight out.) I shopped at the small local grocery store every day, and my only other expense was $13 for a lawn chair, which I sat on at a park while I computed.

After four nights in the woods, I probably smelled like a moose, but I got a lot of work done. I could have visited Acadia National Park on the free bus system, but I had done it before. Instead, I read a whole book and even started writing one of my own. (I wrote this sample book chapter in a single day as I sat in a seafront park.)

Unlike San Diego, I don't think I could have stayed her indefinitely, partly because of the risk of discovery but mainly due to Maine's fickle weather. Still, I got my money's worth out of Bar Harbor and have nothing to complain about.

Here are my photos from Bar Harbor from both this visit and my earlier one.

Manhattan for $20/Night

2009-09-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

New York City is famously expensive to visit. It's tough finding a hotel room under $150, so what would you think about staying in Manhattan for only $20 a night? I did it last night! I not only survived but was quite comfortable. No, I didn't sleep on a bench in Central Park. I stayed at a youth hostel in Harlem.

I had an evening social engagement in Midtown. I probably could have stayed with friends in the outer boroughs, but since I knew I would be coming in late, I didn't want to be an imposition. Instead, I went to HostelWorld.com about a week ago to see what they had available. After scrutinizing the listings and the reviews, I chose Hostel 99 in Harlem. The lowest priced bed was $18.95 in a dorm of 14 beds, but I chose to go First Class and reserved a room with only 6 beds for $21.95.

When I was growing up, Harlem was thought of as a slum. This may have been true in the 1960s but not today. It's now a dense and diverse residential neighborhood indistinguishable from any other in Manhattan. I felt no great risk in walking there, even late at night, but I did feel a little apprehensive about the accommodations. What could I really expect for $20?

In fact, I expected very little. I only wanted a safe place to sleep. I needed a padded horizontal space to myself, hopefully larger than a coffin. If I could get some WiFi and an AC outlet for my computer, that would be icing on the cake. Being accustomed to hostels elsewhere, I was prepared to accept some quirks and the usual initial shock factor. ("I'm going to be staying HERE?!")

The location of the hostel on 129th Street in Upper Manhattan was beyond walking distance to any attractions in Lower Manhattan but an easy subway ride there. The hostel also turned out to be easy to reach by a city bus from Laguardia Airport (M60—always a sardine can), which stopped at 125th Street. (Warning: You need $2.25 to catch that bus at Laguardia, and it must be in quarters!) After a 5-minute walk from the bus stop, this is what I found at the given address....
The hostel is the 3-story brick building on the right. Here is the entrance....
Notice there is only "99" on the door with no indication of a hostel inside. It is a good bet most of the neighbors don't know it exists. This is what you would expect in a hostel in urban America. It wants to attract well-behaved foreign visitors and not local lowlifes, who would turn this sort of cheap accommodation into a drug-addled Skid Row. There have to be barriers, real or perceived. Some New York hostels explicitly exclude locals. (For example, you may need both a passport, to prove your worldliness, AND an out-of-state driver's license.) Hostel 99 doesn't have these restrictions, apparently relying on its anonymity to protect it from the surrounding neighborhood. Since most guests make their bookings through HostelWorld and similar websites, there is no need (or desire) for walk-in traffic.

Immediately inside the front door (which is unlocked), there is a registration desk, manned 24 hours a day...The registration desk occupies what was once the foyer of a 3-unit apartment building. There is one large apartment per floor. The upper two apartments and part of the ground floor one are used for dorms (with the 2nd floor reserved for women and the other floors mixed gender). The public kitchen and dining area is on the ground floor, and in the basement is a TV room/computer room.

The apparent assumption by the owners is that they can make more money by renting $20 beds to a lot of travelers than by renting the apartments as apartments. Naturally, they will want to warehouse as many bodies as they can every night while keeping all of their costs low. Their major cost has to be the labor required to keep this place running 24/7. It has to be a tough business model!

It was mid-afternoon when I checked in. My assigned bed turned out not to be in a 6-bed room as I reserved but a bunk in a 10-bed dorm occupying the living room of the third floor apartment (as pictured at the top of this entry). I wasn't informed of this change and didn't know about it until I reached the room, but I was also charged less than I expected and was happy to have a lower bunk, so I saw no reason to complain.

Or at least I thought it was a 10-bed dorm. After I got back from my social event, this is what I found....With three mattresses on the floor, it was actually a 13-bed dorm! (Probably the "14-bed" dorm offered on HostelWorld.) That was my shock factor for the visit. While I have no objection to cramming a lot of people into a small area, which is what all hostels do, mattresses on the floor seemed to have broken an unwritten rule. When you book a "bed" online, you should reasonably expect a mattress AND a bed frame not in the direct flow of foot traffic.

At the time I came here to sleep, the room was dark, and I sensed the mattresses and the bodies on them only by ESP. I used the light from my BlackBerry™ to navigate from the bathroom to my lower bunk. (Yet another use for that universal device!)

Another problem was inadequate showers and toilets. This single bathroom on my floor served 30+ people (although there were more toilets on other floors)...None of this fazed me for long, since these problems had already been well documented in the hostel's customer reviews at HostelWorld. I was not there as a building inspector, only to spend a safe night as cheaply as possible. For that, there must be compromise. There were no door locks or security to speak of, but my follow travelers were mostly foreign tourists, more than half of them woman, and I felt no safety issues. The hostel was also very clean and reasonably well maintained. In spite of the load conditions, it wasn't a slum or Hell's Kitchen tenement, more like dense military barracks.

Breakfast in the morning was free and consisted of oversize muffins and croissants from Costco, toast, coffee, milk and the usual unidentified orange-colored breakfast beverage (UOCBB) found at other hostels. It was served (or you served it to yourself) only between the hours of 9 and 10 AM, which seemed to be a
sort of capacity control to prevent too many people from eating it. I had a big muffin that would probably have cost me $3 on the street, so I didn't feel cheated. Here was the kitchen/dining area at breakfast...While space was at a premium in the upper floors, there was plenty of it in the basement...There was a big-screen TV but little furniture. There were also pay-per-use computer terminals, available for 10-cents a minute....Some travelers may grumble about having to pay for internet, but I have no objection to the hostel making some money on sundries like this. The WiFi was still free, and it was strong throughout the building. I found myself a luxurious little corner in the basement where I could work....That's all I really need: power, WiFi and a dim place to sit. Noise isn't an issue, like from the TV, because I always carry foam earplugs with me. (It's a marvelous noise-canceling technology even better than the electronic kind!)

My bed itself was bigger than some I have slept in, and the sleeping function was accomplished successfully (with no memories of it retained). By the 11am check-out time, I was gone from the hostel and heading out of Manhattan.

Was it $20 well spent? Certainly! In terms of my practical needs, a $200 hotel room couldn't have given me much more. (And they often make you pay for WiFi!) There was no mint on my pillow, but they're fattening anyway.

It wasn't pretty, but it did the job. When I come back to Manhattan, I wouldn't mind staying there again.

Free Luggage Storage at the Airport

2009-08-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

When you're traveling by air, luggage storage (or "Left Luggage" in Europe) can be difficult to find and very expensive when you do. Thanks in part to obsessive security concerns, coin-operated luggage lockers are a vanishing species, and manned offices often have to X-Ray your luggage before they'll accept it for storage. When you do find such storage, you can expect to pay a hefty price to store your bag for even a couple of hours.

I have already mentioned one form of free storage: caching. That's when you find some isolated bushes somewhere nearby and hide you luggage there. If you choose a good location, the chance is low of anyone discovering your hidden cache.

But there's another method of free luggage storage when you are flying into a major airport: Simply don't claim your luggage when it arrives at the carousel! You can leave it there for a few hours, even for a day, and come back for it only when you are ready.

Leaving your bags at the airport might give you an opportunity to explore a new city and get situated there without having to lug your heavy bags with you. Alternatively, it could give you a chance to sleep in the airport, inside security if the secure zone at this airport is open all night. For example, if you arrive at an airport at midnight, you can remain in the main concourse and sleep there until morning, then exit security in the morning and claim your bags. (You can ask the gate agent meeting the flight if in fact the concourse is open all night.)

It happens all the time: Luggage arrives without its passenger. It's the opposite condition of a passenger arriving without his luggage. Both conditions happen a lot when flights are overbooked or there are a lot of stand-by passengers. After your bags circulate for a while on the carousel, they are removed by an airline employee and placed in or near the airline's Baggage Service Office (BSO) somewhere along the periphery of Baggage Claim. When you decide you want your bags again, you simply show up at the office and claim your bag.

In theory, the airline could charge you a storage fee, but in practice, no questions are usually asked. As long as you have your baggage claim check, the airline is happy to see the luggage go away. If anyone asks, you simply say you "forgot your bags," but it's unlikely anyone will.

There are a lot of caveats attached to this free storage service, and I wouldn't attempt it everywhere. Some considerations....

Don't have anything in your checked luggage that you can't afford to lose. While the risk of theft is low, it probably increases when you abandon your bags like that. There's also a slim chance the staff might think the bag belongs somewhere else and forward it to another city.
You can NOT use this storage method when coming off an international flight, since your bags have to clear customs at the same time you do.
This storage method works best at airports where your airline has many flights. There, the BSO will be open longer hours, and your bag will be relatively insignificant. At smaller airports where your airline has only one or two flights a day, they are going to fret more about a lonely unclaimed bag.
The BSO has to be open at the time you want to claim the bag. If there are no incoming flights at the time you want to claim your bag, the BSO may be closed, and you could have difficulty finding someone to released the bag to you.
Don't leave your luggage unclaimed for more than a day. Your bag won't go away, but there's no telling where it might get locked up. After a day, most airlines start making serious attempts to reunite bags with owners, and you don't want to cause them too much hassle.
Make sure your luggage is well marked with your name and phone number.
If someone from the airline calls you about the bag (which is going to happen sooner or later) just tell them when you plan to come for it.

Typically, unclaimed bags go into a "pit", or a condoned-off area in front of the BSO. The bags will probably remain there until the BSO closes for the night, at which point the bags will be locked up somewhere.

Security isn't a concern for bags that come OFF of airline flights, since they have already been screened going on. In spite of all the sinister airport announcements about "unattended baggage," no one at the airline will think the bag contains a bomb. They just want to get rid of the bag.

Keep in mind that when you fail to claim your bag, it is somebody's job to reunite you with it. These are some of the most abused customer service agents in the industry. ("Where the hell is my bag!") Don't make their job any more difficult than you need to. Come back for your bag as soon as you reasonably can, and try to give clear instructions if a BSO agent calls you (like "I'll be there by 2pm."). The BSO agents don't usually need an explanation; they just want to clear out the pit!

Inventory Control

2009-08-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

If you are constantly on the move, a major concern is keeping track of your "stuff"—i.e., your most important equipment, supplies and documentation. When you travel, there’s always a chance your stuff will be stolen, but the far greater risk is simply leaving things behind through your own dimwitted lapses. It’s not the fault of a thief that you keep losing your car keys or you forget to pack a power adapter. Maintaining control of your stuff is mostly a matter of organization and discipline, not security.

Even if you travel light, there are always objects you can’t live without. Your passport is at the top of the list. If you lose it overseas or just before an overseas trip, you’re screwed. Only slightly lower on the scale is ones laptop computer. Even if you have everything backed up (a topic for later discussion), your laptop is not something you should idly leave behind.

In all, I find there are about a dozen essential “trip killers”—items whose loss would cripple me. Some of the surprising ones are relatively cheap in monetary terms: for example, my computer’s AC power adapter. There’s no use in carrying a laptop around if you can’t get any power into it. It’s cheap enough to buy such a part on eBay, but just try doing that from a youth hostel in Europe! If you can find the adapter at a retail store, you’ll end up paying almost as much for it as the laptop is worth!

To keep track of all your stuff, you need an “inventory control strategy.” That’s a set of procedures you always follow regardless of the circumstances. If your procedures are sound and you faithfully follow them, the chance of losing important stuff are greatly reduced.

Here are some elements of my own inventory control system....

Conceptually, I divide my stuff into essentials and non-essentials, which I treat differently and pack separately.
Essentials include “trip killers” like my passport, BlackBerry, credit cards, laptop, power adapter, camera, camera battery charger, etc. I try to carry all of these items on my person at all times. They are concentrated in my backpack, which I get properly anxious about whenever I am not directly touching. I would never put any essentials in my checked luggage. It is true that my backpack could be stolen, but strangers don't know there is anything valuable in it. If it came down to a choice, I am prepared to give up my wallet to save my backpack. (However, I am not prepared to give up my life to save it, and if I did lose it I would find a way to recover.)
Non-essentials include clothing, bedding, toiletries, food and various cheap tools. If I lose any of these, I can usually reproduce them quickly. The chief reason I hold onto them is economic: If I already have these things, it’s cheaper to carry them with me than to have to buy them new at my destination. These are the things I can put in checked luggage or cache in the bushes when I need to. If someone steals my socks and underwear, no sweat, I’ll buy more.
Whenever I leave my “supply base”—like my storage unit or my home when I had one—I have a checklist I go through to make sure I have packed everything I need. It’s just like a pilot’s pre-flight checklist. The checklist is stored in a text file on my laptop or BlackBerry, and I look at each item on the list and check it off mentally just before lift-off. Earplugs: check. USB cable: check. I have honed this list over the years, and I know that everything I need is on it, so when the checklist is done I know I’m ready to go. As an additional safety procedure, I may devote about 10 minutes to meditation, thinking about where I am going and what I may need. The checklist makes my departure a breeze. I don’t need hours to pack like most people do. Usually I can do it in a half-hour, and with more self-confidence. I never have to ask myself, “Did I leave the iron on?” because that would have been included on my checklist.
When I am checking out of someone else's property, like a hotel room, hostel, campsite or rental car, I don’t have to worry about the checklist. Why not? Because all the stuff I took out of my bags is right there in front of me. I do a “security scan” of the area before I leave to make sure nothing of mine is still in the room or the car, but I don’t have to inspect my bags to make sure I have everything. If it is not in the room, then it must be in my bag, my reasoning goes. I may double-check my “trip killers” to make sure they’re still viable, but checking out of a place that’s not mine is generally a breeze.
A major worry is leaving things behind on airplanes, which I have done on several occasions. Have you ever put anything in the overhead bin and then forgotten it? Yup, it’s all the rage these days. The first line of defense is to put only non-essentials in the overhead bin. Essentials should always go at your feet where you can’t forget them. (Always avoid a bulkhead seat with no under-seat storage.) And you should NEVER put any book or personal belonging in the seat pocket in front of you, since that’s a synonym for leaving it behind. After the plane lands, you shouldn't try to rush off the plane but take plenty of time to check under your seat and any crevices where your belongings might be lodged.
A major venue for losing possessions is when you mingle your own belongings with those of others, like on group trips. When you leave these events, you have to allow plenty of time to disentangle your stuff from your companions’. You almost need to go through a mental checklist at this point, assuring that you at least have your trip killers.
I may use a hidden breast pouch on rare occasions when I am traveling in dodgy areas. I might keep my passport, a credit card and some of my cash in travelers’ pouch around my neck, under my clothes. The risk, however, is that this security system in itself becomes the problem. Maybe the strap breaks or you lose track of the pouch when you change clothes. Since my nervous system is already connected to my backpack, I prefer to use that for most things.
The risk of deliberate theft is relatively low compared to the risk of your own stupidity, but one should always prepare for theft anyway. Thieves generally prefer cash and will go for your wallet when they can. Thus, you should avoid carrying a lot of cash there—just enough for your daily needs and to satiate the thief. If you have multiple credit cards, don’t keep them all in your wallet in case it is stolen. (BTW: My only recent experience with attempted theft was a pickpocket on the Paris Metro.)
In general, you avoid losing things by being very deliberate about how you put them down. I don’t set my wallet or BlackBerry down on a counter without making a deliberate note: “Why am I doing this, and how will I remember to pick it up?” People lose their keys and glasses because they don’t have a deliberate “detachment” policy. Whenever you detach yourself from your belongings, you should do it in a certain way according to tested procedures. You don’t simply put your keys down on the table but put them in the same special place every time. “There’s a place for everything, and everything has its place.” If the proper conditions aren’t met, then you don’t detach yourself.
Finally, the best way to avoid losing stuff is to have less stuff! The less stuff you haul around with you, the less taxed your nervous system will be in keeping track of it. Rely on disposables when you can, and don’t take something with you unless there’s a high probability you will actually use it. All those creams and lotions, the extra clothes—just leave ‘em behind. The best way to travel is only with the luggage you can comfortably carry. If you need a team of porters, you’ve packed too much.

Retaining control of your stuff is all in the rules: inventing good ones and then obeying them. It doesn't matter where you are: London, Paris or 20,000 leagues under the sea. If you do things the same way every time, you are less likely to trip yourself up.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, www.Glenn-Campbell.com.
Released from Missoula, Montana.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

Back at Camp Site Beta

2009-08-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

I just spent the past week at Camp Site Beta, my semi-secret campsite in the hills of San Diego County in California. It had been about three months since I had slept there last, and I was pleased to find that everything was pretty much as I left it.

As described previously, my campsite is on an overgrown hilltop and can be reached only by a strenuous 20-minute hike up a steep slope from the nearest road. The trail is challenging enough during the day but very difficult to follow at night unless you know it. I deliberately chose this hard-to-reach location because it gave me a healthy buffer between myself and the rest of humanity. I use the site for only a single function: sleeping. When one is asleep, one is by definition vulnerable, so if I couldn't protect myself with walls, I would do it with space and terrain instead.

I usually hike to the campsite at night, but when I first returned to San Diego a week ago, I chose to hike in the early evening while it was still light so I could check the site for any changes.

The green grass had turned brown (in preparation for California's fire season), but otherwise the area was as I left it. When I left 3 months before, I had cached a sleeping bag and some blankets in a semi-hidden location against a rock. The location wasn't visible unless you happened to walk within about 20 feet of it. When I came back, the sleeping bag was gone but the blankets were still there. I wasn't alarmed by the loss of the sleeping bag. It only meant that during the past three months someone had been prowling in the area during the day, seen the sleeping bag (in an easy-to-carry pouch) and snagged it. I probably would have done the same.

The idea of caching is that you leave behind only stuff you can afford to lose but that would helpful to have. The sleeping bag had cost me only $10 at the Evil Mega-Mart™, and I had already used it for a few weeks, so I could afford to lose it. The greater difficulty, though, was that I would have to go down the hill and back to the EMM to replace it—at least an hour-and-a-half journey. On that first night, I chose to work with what I had—the blankets. The visitor hadn't bothered to take those, since they were bulky and somewhat ratty queen-size blankets that would have been difficult to haul down the hill. With them, I made a bed with four blanket layers below me and two above. It wasn't the peak of comfort, but it got me through the night. I was close to the dirt, but it was nothing a shower at the health club couldn't take care of in the morning.

The temperature, of course, was close to ideal. The great benefit of the San Diego area is its mild weather: not too cold in the winter, not too hot in the summer. Right now, it's in the 60s at night and rarely higher than the 80s during the day. The brown grass indicated a lack of significant rain, which is great for camping.

With no source of standing water, there are no mosquitoes. On this stay, however, I encountered a new creature: ants. They were little tiny ones that crawled all over my bed at night. Ants might freak out most people, but I hardly noticed them. Unlike some you encounter near Las Vegas, these were not biting ants. They were just doing their antly thing of looking for sugar. On the first night, they found this in my bag in the form of trail mix, which they had swarmed by morning, but they didn't mess with me personally, since I am sugar-free. The only annoying aspect of their presence is that one of their party would occasionally crawl into my ear canal and do a dance on my eardrum. It's pretty hard to sleep through that! All I had to do, though, was wait for a couple of minutes, and the ant would find his way out.

Unacceptable sleeping conditions, you say? I simply see the ants a cost of business. I am at peace with the flora and fauna here, and I figure that five minutes of noisy rummaging in my ear was a small price to pay for the free lodging. In fact, it happened almost every night this past week: an ant would wander into my ear, rummage around in my head and walk out again. A crying baby would be worse, since I would have to do something about that, but with the ants all I had to do was wait. Yes, they wanted my sweets, so I stopped bringing any food to the campsite that wasn't in sealed packages. (And it was not my intention to use the site for eating anyway.)

On the second night at the campsite, I brought up a new sleeping bag, and on the third I brought an air mattress. At that point, I was living in the lap of luxury, getting a perfect night's sleep every night. Once I blew up the mattress (with a battery operated pump I carried with me), I left it in place during the day (as shown above, wrapped in blankets to protect it from the sun). The risk in doing so was low. The worst that would happen is that someone would come by and pop or steal the $12 mattress, leaving me with only the blankets again. It remained in place for 3 days without incident. When I left San Diego yesterday, I deflated the mattress and cached it along with the sleeping bags and blankets, in a more hidden location this time.

My homeless neighbors living closer to the road (but out of view from it) were still present....
Although I feel no need to introduce myself, I think it is good to have them there, since if the authorities were to clamp down on camping in the area, they would target them first. As long as there are daytime campers near the road, I know my own night-only position deeper in the bush is safe from any government action.

For me, the great advantage of Camp Site Beta is that I can get a lot of computer work done. I do this at the library of a public university in San Diego. It is an 1-1/2-hour commute from my campsite to the university in each direction, but my time is almost entirely productive. On public transit, I use my BlackBerry™ for Twittering™, Facebooking™, reading email and reading news sources. At the university (which is open to the public), I can work without interruption for 9-10 hours until it's time to head back to the campsite again. As an internet-based lifeform, this is Heaven for me, and I only wish I could be here more often.

And I am completely free! Unlike staying with friends or family members, no one is expecting anything of me here. I can use my time as I wish without interruption, and my costs are extremely low. Apart from fixed monthly costs like my BlackBerry, I can survive comfortably here on $15 day. (That's $5 for a daily transit pass and $10 for food and sundries.) What else do you need? (Um, well maybe a medical plan and a bit more of a financial cushion.)

I do engage in various forms of economic activity to make money, but whenever I have a choice between time and money, I will usually choose time. Right now, I feel that there is no better use for my time than to be able to work on my online projects for 9-10 hours a day.

To win this free time, I am willing to skirt the law, accept a little dirt and even let ants dance on my eardrums. It's still a comfortable life!

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from Massachusetts.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

SleepingInAirports dot Com

2009-08-16T12:27:00.001-07:00

Wow! Someone has created a whole website on sleeping in airports....

SleepingInAirports.com

(Compare to my own blog entry: How to Sleep at an Airport)

It's almost TOO MUCH information! It also seems to be a labor of love, since it's hard to see a site like this making any money. (Travelers who sleep in airports don't have much discretionary income so probably won't attract much advertising.)

I'm just a little concerned about airport sleeping getting out of hand. Any form of Free Sleeping only works if you keep a low profile. If the phenomenon starts going mainstream, then the airports may begin developing countermeasures. However, this website has been around for over ten years and hasn't seemed to have changed the landscape any.

I'm mainly surprised that such a website exists. Bravo!

Free Lodging in Las Vegas!

2009-08-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

Areas in red are good places to camp.

The Convention and Visitors Authority make not want you to know this, but you can sleep for free in Las Vegas! Well, not actually in Las Vegas, but about a half hour outside it. If you have a car, an air mattress and a sleeping bag, you can sleep in the open desert! It's free; mostly legal and it could be the best sleep you've ever had, especially in the summer.

In summer? Who'd a thunk it! Although the desert in summer is beastly during the day, the temperatures are comfortable at night (that is, if you get away from the concrete and pavement of the city, which hold the heat). It's like going to sleep in perfect bath water. You need the sleeping bag because it can get a little cool by morning.

If you find yourself in Vegas needing a place to stay, you could get a room for $50-100+, or you could drop by the Evil Mega-Mart™ for (1) A $10 sleeping bag, (2) a $10 air mattress, (3) a $3 pillow, (4) an air pump (optional, but the mattress takes a lot of breath to blow up), and (5) maybe a tarp to put under the mattress (optional). You can stay several nights with this set-up, for less than a single night's hotel stay.

You don't need a tent, because there's little chance of rain, no mosquitoes and no prying eyes. What about snakes, spiders and other creepy crawlies. They're a myth mostly, perpetuated by all those sensationalist nature shows on TV. The chances of you running into any of them are extremely thin, and when you do, they're going to try their best to get away from you. (In my 20 years in the desert, I've seen only three rattlesnakes and three tarantulas, all of whom were desperately fleeing me.)

Nature provides the alarm clock! In the summer at least, you won't be sleeping long after dawn, 'cuz you'll get baked if you do!

To find a campsite, head north or south on I-15 and look for the open desert. In the south you can exit at Sloan or Jean and in the north you can exit at Apex/US-93. (See areas in red on the map above.) As long as you arrive before dark, you can easily locate a place where you can camp discreetly without being disturbed. There's a vast ocean of empty land out there. If you want more privacy, just go further from the city.

You can camp comfortably with a single sleeping bag for maybe 6-8 months of the year (roughly April through October). In the winter, you might need two sleeping bags or sleep in the car. There are perhaps 5 days out of 100 when the weather (wind or thunderstorms) makes camping uncomfortable, so that's when you get a hotel room.

I did it for a couple of YEARS, so I should know! (During the protracted divorce phase.) Turns out, sleeping in the desert not a hardship in the slightest. It's a convenience! My commute was not much more than the average suburbanite. The only thing I needed was a shower, which I got at my health club, 24-Hour Fitness™. (You can probably get a day pass at most clubs, or you can check into a motel when you smell really rank.)

It legal to camp in the desert? It depends on how far from Vegas you are. On BLM land (most of the desert of the Southwest) it is generally legal to camp in one spot for up to 14 days. (See earlier entry.) Within the Las Vegas Valley, it isn't legal to camp on BLM land, but honestly, if you are discreet, there's nobody to enforce either rule.

(BUS OPTION. It's probably best to have a car, since it's hard to get to the desert via public transportation. The only way I can think of to reach reasonably safe desert is to take the CAT bus that goes from Downtown Las Vegas to Boulder City (Route 402). Get off at Nevada State College then hike to the desert. WARNING: Not field tested. The land behind the Railroad Pass Casino (north of US-93) may be private and casino security might chase you off if they see you. (But not if they don't see you.) Check out the area on Google Earth/Google Maps. It actually looks promising! My only concern about this area is that it's fairly intensively used by off-roading locals, but the mountains could provide some cover.)

Are you safe? It's a huge desert, and criminals got to find you, right? Someone's got to notice your presence, which is unlikely if you choose your camping spot well. There aren't many roving biker gangs these days, terrorizing campers. (There are only lawyers and accountants pretending to be roving biker gangs.) In general, anyone you encounter in the desert is there because they love the desert, not because they want to hurt anyone. In casino hotels, on the other hand, there are plenty of people who would steal you blind if they could.

Cost savings aside, I find sleeping in the desert far more comfortable than sleeping in a casino. The simplest reason is that you don't have to haul your bags in and out! You're also sleeping under the stars in the outside air, with nothing between you and the environment. It just feels more... real!

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from San Diego.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

Packratting

2009-08-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

In the previous entry, I talked about how ones possessions tend to expand to fill whatever storage space is available (Campbell’s Law of Storage). In fact, this is part of a broader human phenomenon I call packratting, or the obsessive collection of physical objects of little or no practical value. I believe the irrational collection of “stuff” is programmed by our genes, just like our lust for sugar, fat and salt. It is a behavior that served our species well in our prehistoric past, but it’s mostly dysfunctional in the modern world.

The most extreme human cases are those in which a person's mental processes have deteriorated. People with Alzheimer's are notorious pack rats. When your brain is slipping away, you tend to hold on ever more jealously to your stuff: old newspapers, used containers, old trinkets and remnants of anything that might, by some stretch of the imagination, be useful someday.

Our brethren, the mentally ill “Homeless Homeless”, also display this trait. Their greatest burden to local communities is the vast amount of trash they usually collect around them. When you stumble upon a homeless “nest” (like the one shown above), you find that it usually consists not just of sleeping bags and blankets but also a messy inventory of broken equipment, rotting clothing, odd bits of hardware and other semi-useless things the homeless person has collected in his travels. To us, it is just junk, but to him it is a precious resource and an extension of his psyche. If he happens to be present when you pass through, he will guard this stuff just as zealously as any suburban homeowner would defend his domain.

It seems that if you take away someone's higher thinking processes, they will still have the urge to to horde things. It's a deeply programmed behavior because there's an obvious survival benefit in it. Why not? If you are living on the edge of survival, it is natural to want to collect things that might be valuable later. If you find a free bit of clothing, why not take it back to the nest? Even if the probability of use is low, it makes sense to stockpile it anyway.

Many animals have a motivation to horde food. If you have an excess of it right now, it's a good idea to cache it in case you need it later. Humans go one step further in that they also horde tools. Once mankind started working with tools (knives, spears, grinding stones, etc.) a natural behavior must have developed simultaneously: the desire to stockpile those tools, treat them as possessions and regard them as an extension of oneself. Once you have invested in making a knife, you don't want to lose it. This is "my" knife and you can't have it because at some point my survival might depend on it.

The concept of "possessions", which we now treat as a natural law, probably didn't exist prior to our invention of tools. Many animals have territories and harems, but the presumed ownership of objects is mainly a human trait. In human prehistory, if a person made or purloined a tool, it was to his advantage to treat it as part of his body, protecting it and fending off threats to it like it were a limb. The more tools and supplies you could horde and protect, the more likely you would have the thing you needed when your survival was at risk.

Just like a spider spins a web and guards it, humans create a web of possessions around them. If you touch the web, you alert the spider, and if try to take some of it away, she'll go into attack mode. "Don't mess with my stuff!" she snaps, showing her fangs (gender selection deliberate).

If you think this behavior is limited to the mentally ill, think again! A soon as an average human has a few extra resources at his disposal, what does he do with them? He starts collecting stuff! The more resources (and storage space) he has, the larger his horde grows. Usually, each new acquisition is accompanied by a rationalization: Somehow this object is supposed to be "useful" in the future—but you and I know how hollow this is. When people have excess resources, only a tiny percentage of the objects they acquire are truly useful. The rest are "vanity objects" added to the web only because the acquisition itself feels good.

Whether it's teenagers in a shopping mall, a millionaire collecting boats or a homeless guy rummaging through trash cans, the impulse is the same. Call it the thrill of acquisition. We are programmed to do it: to stockpile resources whenever we have access to them. What evolution doesn't prepare us for is what to do with the stockpile when it grows out of control, because historically this was never a problem. To Early Man, you could never have enough stuff, just like you could never have enough fat and sugar.

In the modern world, people still follow this impulse. Typically they collect stuff until their lives are crippled by it and they can collect no more. It's so difficult to get rid of stuff because each new object gets knitted into ones emotional web. How many objects do you now own that you know darn well are useless for anything? You keep them only because they hold emotional value for you. That won't be gotten rid of unless you are forced to do it.

When does the collecting behavior end? Usually at death! Then someone else has to deal with the accumulated inventory (typically with a few garage sales and several dumpsters hauled away). It's a shame, really, since the people who do the after-death cleanup rarely have much care for the objects and are bound to divest them awkwardly.

Is this any way to live and die—only to serve your stuff? If you can learn the art of de-acquisition, and learn it early, your freedom will be greatly enhanced. It is far easier to move with the times if you have only a suitcase full of stuff rather than a trailer truck full.

Better yet, if you learned the art of non-acquisition—not adding to the web to begin with—you'd never have to go through the emotional pain of de-acquisition. If you have a small storage space, and it is already full, then you have to make a rational decision every time a potential acquisition presents itself.

Usually, "Just Say No!" is the best answer.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from San Diego.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

Campbell's Law of Storage

2009-08-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

Campbell's Law of Storage states:

Ones possessions will expand to fill whatever storage space is available.

In other words, if you have a 5x10 foot storage unit, you will fill it, but if you have a 20x20 foot unit, you will also fill it. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that your life is better with the larger unit. In fact, it is usually worse, since all that extra stuff has to be managed and cared for.

The reason possessions expand to the space is simple: It's tough to throw things away. If there's a possibility something might be useful in the future, we want to hold onto it, but our attachment to out stuff is usually more emotional than that. We have made an emotional investment in almost everything we own, and it is hard to break that bond. What other people might see as just a blanket you might see as a blanket with memories attached to it, and you would no sooner throw it away than you would throw out the memories.

As a rule, people get rid of stuff only when they are forced to by some kind of hard constraint, like money or storage space. When you happen to have the extra space, it's easier to just put the problem off by throwing the item in storage and forgetting about it.

Campbell's Law of Storage applies to just about any kind of storage space:

ladies' purses — the bigger they are, the more stuff you find in 'em!
children's rooms — the more space they have for toys, the more toys they'll have.
closets, dresser drawers, garages, basements, refrigerators
houses

Given enough time, any kind of storage is likely to become full.

The analogy also applies to hard disk drives and data storage. Whatever megabytes or gigabytes or terrabytes you have attached to your computer, you'll soon fill them up, but this kind of storage is a special case. Data storage gets cheaper and cheaper every year, so we start doing different things with it, like working with photos and videos. We don't necessarily become less efficient.

The same can't be said of physical storage. The more we have, the more we'll use, and the less efficient our lives become. It's a straight-line graph: The more stuff you have, the more complicated your life becomes. Therefore, merely the presence of storage space invites complication.

If you have very little storage, then you'll use it wisely. When you run into your hard boundaries early, you have to make those hard decisions early. Yes, this blanket has emotional meaning, but if its physical value has ended you've got to get rid of it sooner or later, so you might as well do it sooner. (Either that or your heirs will do it for you.) If you have limited storage, then you are forced to do it now, because you have no choice.

Every possession you retain has to "pay its way". That is, its practical function to you in the present and near-future must justify the object's ongoing room and board. It's a hard calculation to make because each object has those emotional attachments, but it's a lot easier to do when you've run out of space and something has to go.

The situation is much clearer when you have to choose between keeping Object "A" or Object "B". If one object has a practical use while the other is purely emotional, the practical object is usually going to win.

Since it's so hard NOT to fill storage when you have it, perhaps the best form of discipline is to not have the storage to begin with. If you have the opportunity to increase your storage space by whatever means (bigger apartment, bigger suitcase, whatever), you need to think hard about doing it. The long-term costs may be much higher than you think.

You could argue that every person needs at least SOME storage. You have to have some space for a change of clothes, some paper records, a few tools you use all the time and maybe a few precious keepsakes. It's hard to say where that point is: 10 square feet? 100 square feet? There's got to be a point where the costs and benefits of storage are in balance. I contend only that the necessary storage is much less than most people think it is.

Precisely because data storage is now so cheap, perhaps half of our past physical storage is now obsolete. You don't need to keep paper bills and bank statements if you know they'll always be available online. There's no need for photo albums and scrapbooks if the same sentimental stuff is stored on Myface or Spacebook.

Also, many of the objects we used to pick up and take home -- like rocks and shells or ticket stubs from places we have been -- can just as easily be photographed and remembered that way. Turns out, we don't really need the physical object as much as we need the link to the past memory.

For the supplies of living, you can often lower your own space requirements by the judicious use of "storage shifting"—that is, by getting others to store things for you.

An example is buying food from the supermarket. They sell things in both small quantity packages and large quantity packages. Technically, you usually get a much better deal if you buy the bigger package, but then you are forced to store any unused product. Over time, this excess from many different products can require substantial space. Of course, no one wants to throw out, say, a half-bag of unused rice, because it feels like you're throwing out money, but it might take years to use it all up and the various costs of storage can add up. Sometimes, you're LOSING money by holding onto something like that, not to mention the clutter and complication it adds to your life.

Sometimes, the smaller quantity is the smarter move. You're essentially paying the supermarket to warehouse the food for you. When you actually need it, you'll go to the store and make a withdrawal, but until then managing the inventory is their problem.

You probably also have friends and relatives who are collectors of stuff, and if you are crafty, you can simply give them many of your possessions. They'll think their getting a gift, but you know it's just a way to get rid of something without throwing it away. Maybe that emotion-laden blanket can be sent to this "halfway house" where you can still visit if you feel you need to.

You can be sure that no matter how efficient you become, there will still be plenty of people around you collecting useless possessions. You don't need to change them. Just give them your stuff and let them deal with it.

Also See: Packratting (next entry)
Also See: Supply Storage (2/8/09)

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from Los Lunas, New Mexico.
Photo credit: a still from Citizen Kane.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

The Prison of Home Ownership

2009-08-04T06:46:00.000-07:00

What could be worse than homelessness? What could be harder on the soul than living hand-to-mouth, owning nothing and sleeping each night wherever you can make do? Well, I’ll tell you.

Home ownership!

That’s the opposite of homelessness, right? It can also be an even worse hell if the home you are committed to starts to exceed your resources.

In the current economy, lots of people are discovering that hell. They are losing their jobs, and although they may still have some money coming in, it isn’t enough to support the huge, unwieldy infrastructure they have committed themselves to. Now they must face the trauma of forced downsizing. The simple struggle of living hand-to-mouth can’t compare to the extreme pain of living in a collapsing system.

The American Dream is supposedly home ownership. It’s our cultural standard. As soon as you have the means to do so, you’re supposed be committed to real estate. But people don’t realize when they enter the dream how quickly it can turn to a nightmare.

To begin with, people don’t just buy a home with the resources they have. They buy it based on the speculation of future resources. That sets people up for disaster, because one future possibility, even in the best of times, that you don’t always have the same resources you have now.

If a worker gets a raise—say, to $80,000 a year—he inevitably starts planning his future based on that continued income. He commits himself to a hefty mortgage and the lifestyle of a new community. $80,000 might have seemed like a lot of money once upon a time, but instead of simply pocketing the cash, the average Joe just uses it to raise the bar—that is, to expand his lifestyle and his commitments so all the extra resources are used up. Now, if his income happens to drop, say, to $50,000, he can find himself in dire straits. He may not be “poor” in technical terms, but his income no longer meets his commitments, and his system descends into chaos.

At times like that, living under a bridge can look really good! The key asset in life, you may discover too late, is not money but freedom. How easily can you shift gears to respond to new opportunities and life’s unexpected turns? How much do you really control your own fate? Just because you’re rich in money doesn’t mean you’re rich in time, and it’s the time that will run out first.

Whenever people have more resources than they need to survive, their commitments and expectations tend to expand to absorb them. I call this phenomenon “taste inflation”. (See Kilroy Café #36.) As your resources increase, so do your perceived tastes and needs, so your extra resources are absorbed and you don’t feel so rich anymore.

This would be relatively benign if your tastes expanded only in the moment, but when you contractually commit yourself to these new tastes (say, by buying a bigger house), then you place yourself in great peril. You have no choice now but to maintain this resource level regardless of the circumstances.

What space do you really need to live in? The optimum of economy is an 8 by 8-foot box, like an officer’s cabin in a Navy ship, with enough space to lie down, sit up and store a few basic essentials. I say 64 square feet is all you really need in life. It gives you room to sleep, to work in private, to communicate in private with others (nudge, nudge, wink, wink!) and to safely store some key belongings. All other business can be conducted in non-private facilities elsewhere. If that’s all the space you have, you’ll use it well, and you won’t be collecting things you don’t need. When you exceed this standard, your life starts to spin out of control as your possessions start possessing you.

Part of the hell of home ownership is not just the burden of paying for it, but also all the CRAP that collects in that extra space. This is stuff you don’t need, that serves no substantial purpose in your life but that you nonetheless find yourself committed to protecting and maintaining. The CRAP includes not just physical possessions but also activities attached to those possessions. If you have space for a garden, you’ll plant a garden, but then the garden has to be maintained on a daily basis. Every extra room you have has to be kept clean. Soon the needs of the home expand to the point where it owns you and most of your limited time on Earth consists of serving its demands.

This is fine if all you expect to accomplish in life is to maintain a home: You buy a nice house, feed and maintain it for the rest of your life, then you die. However, if you happen to have other goals, the home can only be a burden. In the best of times, it slows your personal development, and in the worst of times it can utterly cripple you.

Call me a radical, but I think what matters in life is what you accomplish, not the physical plant you live in or moss you collect around it. If the mere processes of living take you over—e.g., the nice furniture, the pretty sheets, the potpourri on the bed table—then the actually content of your life—what you do and achieve—is bound to suffer.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.
Photo: My photo taken in Gary, Indiana

NY Times: A Homeless Community with Rules

2009-08-03T12:40:00.001-07:00

This homeless community has rules to live by...

Living in Tents, and by the Rules, Under a Bridge New York Times, 7/30/09

Comments: My own preference, however, is not to be involved in any community. When you need a place to sleep, the best circumstance is to be away from all human contact in a place where no one can detect your presence. No "law" can give you better security than that!

In the US, people cluster together in homeless "camps" only because they have an emotional need for the community. The higher-functioning homeless just need a place to sleep, and this is best done in secrecy.

The Scourge of Humidity

2009-07-07T06:14:00.001-07:00

Sleeping in the open in the desert is usually pleasant. Even in the peak of summer, nighttime temperatures are comfortable. You need an air mattress but not a tent, because there are few mosquitoes or other pests. Most importantly, there is very little rain, and when there is, you dry out quickly.

The same cannot be said for other parts of the world, which are polluted with humidity. Humidity creates lush greenery to hide in, but the penalties are severe. In places like Britain and New England, it can become difficult to camp out for extended periods because the insidious moisture permeates everything. Not only is there condensate falling from the sky, sometimes for weeks on end, but once you get wet you might never get dry again without artificial help. High humidity breeds all sorts of insects, molds, odors, discomforts and inconveniences, and it can often lead to a dull, lethargic feeling that doesn't go away.

My simple advice, whether you are homeless or not, is to move to the desert if you can, at least as your base location. Life is easier there no matter what your resources are.

Humidity is worse than cold. At least you can bundle up against the cold. With a tent and several sleeping bags, you can be comfortable in temperatures well below freezing. Add humidity in the form of rain, snow or saturated air, and sleeping outdoors becomes much more problematic. If your clothing or bedding gets wet, its thermal value collapses and will never recover unless you actively dry out.

Humidity can also make heat unbearable. In a dry environment, when you drink plenty of fluids and your body learns how to sweat, even 110°F can feel comfortable. Jack up the humidity to 98% and temperatures as low as 80° can seem unbearable. It's not just the heat but the stickiness that's hard to take. When it's humid outside, you feel like you are never clean -- like there's a perpetual layer of slime on your skin. You don't have this feeling in the dry desert no matter how hot it gets.

In the desert, dogs don't have fleas and houses don't have termites. There is no rot or mold and rarely a mosquito, because there's no place for them to breed. Unpleasant odors are minimal. Dry food stays dry and doesn't go stale. Paper goods and clothing remain crisp, and any wet clothing dries almost instantly. You don't even need a towel when you take a shower, because you dry in minutes anyway.

I just don't see why people willingly live in humid areas. London or Boston are interesting to visit during the 2 days out of 10 when the weather is benign, but after a couple of days of the usual shit, you just want out. Even Hawaii and the Caribbean, which seem like Paradise from afar, may be so cursed with wet (especially on the windward side of islands) that they're suitable only for vacations, not for real life.

You can travel and camp in humid areas--I do it all the time.--but you always have to have a backup plan. If you get rained out, bugged up or sogged in, what are you going to do? Even if you camp successfully for a few days, you will probably need some time in conventional lodging like a motel to clean up and dry out.

Sleeping in a car is probably the best way to "camp" in humid areas. At least you're protected from the worst of the rain, and you can crank the heater while driving to dry out your rig. Your only vulnerability is when you open a window for ventilation at night. Then the rain and mosquitoes can intrude, and you have to try mosquito netting or plastic sheeting to keep them out.

One the whole, though, humidity isn't wholesome and should be avoided. The Mediterranean climate that is the "cradle of civilization" (Rome, Greece, Hollywood, etc.) is dry enough. Near the Mediterranean itself, most people still live without heat or air conditioning, open to the outside air. There's hardly any distinction between "inside" and "outside" because there doesn't need to be. Humidity only became an issue when civilization started inexplicably moving north, to dreary places like England and Germany. That's when protection from the elements became a must.

If you are smart, you'll do the reverse migration: back to warm and dry climates where every day isn't a struggle. If you like shoveling snow and scraping off mold, by all means do it. If you would rather live easily, simply and cheaply, then head for the dry!

Also see: Things You Don't Need: Snow

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from suburban Boston (in the rain).
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

A Typical Hostel: Lisbon, Portugal

2009-07-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

It's about 11pm, and I am writing from the very noisy common room of a youth hostel in Lisbon, Portugal. This is a very good hostel - the ideal example of what a hostel should be - so I thought I would give you a tour of the place. This is essentially a repeat of my earlier article, How to Sleep in a Hostel, with illustrations.

Americans are generally creeped out by sharing bunkroom accommodations with strangers, and this hostel goes even further: All of the dorms, restrooms and showers are co-ed! Get a load of this sign on one of the restrooms....It's a joke, of course, but even I was disoriented by it when I first arrived. I needed to use the toilet, and two college-age girls were primping at the sinks that are just out of view on the right. They were standing between me and the toilet stalls in the background. Where's the men's room? I toured the floor and found this was it!

In the American worldview, a mixing of the genders like this would be a recipe for some kind of porno and/or slasher film, but everyone here seems comfortable, even the 20% of guests who are American. There are still healthy boundaries between individuals, and people get along.

You can't beat the price: between €14 and €22 per night ($20-30) in the central tourist district of Lisbon. Tonight (midweek), I am paying €14, and tomorrow night €18. For this low price, I get a bunk with fresh linen and a blanket, a locker and key, free Wifi, free continental breakfast, free use of kitchen facilities, free communal laundry and all the community I want.

Here's another sign to amuse you, found on the wall of the common room....
That's right: The hostel sells alcohol to its guests - but only to people 16 years of age or older. (Those "7"s, BTW, are really European "1"s, so that means the hostel is selling beer to its guests for about $1.40 a bottle.) Here are some guests taking advantage of these resources in a photo taken moments ago...
In my home country, this could only lead to disaster: men, women and cheap alcohol. You would think chaos would result, but it doesn't. Although there's a lot of boisterousness here, nothing will get trashed and no one will get unruly. When the party winds down, everyone will go back to their mixed-sex dorm rooms and go to sleep.

The name of this hostel is simply "Home". It used to be called "Easy Hostel Lisbon," but for some reason the owner felt the need to change it. I found it through HostelWorld.com. (Here is its entry there) This is one of the highest rated hostels in a great hosteling city, but I chose it mainly for its low price and free WiFi (both in the common areas and in the rooms). As I see it, I am paying for 24 hours of WiFi and getting free lodging thrown in!

Here is what the hostel looks like from the outside....
It is located in a commercial building in the prime downtown tourist district of Lisbon. Like most other European hostels, however, it is not on the ground floor, and it can be nearly impossible to find without specific instructions. This hostel occupies the 2nd and 4th floors of this building (the middle floor with the windows open and the one two floors above - the 3rd and 5th floors to Americans). Here is the only indication on the outside of the building that the hostel exists....
On the ground floor is a clothing store and a cosmetic store, and on the 3rd floor is a public health doctor's office. If you climb two floors up the winding staircase, you find the hostel entrance....
This hostel, like most these days, is privately owned. It makes a profit by occupying relatively cheap real estate (like the upper floors of this old building), and packing a lot of people into a small area. Instead of putting 2 people in a room like a hotel would, they stack 4 or 6.

Here is the front desk and the free computer terminals for guests...
On the wall behind the desk are all the awards this hostel has won from HostelWorld for its higher user rankings. In addition to being the primary reservation site, HostelWorld is also the de facto hostel policing agency. People who have reserved through HostelWorld are later asked to leave comments and ratings on the hostel. (Here is this hostel's ratings.) These comments are read by future travelers and can make or break a hostel.

The common room is also on this floor...
It's essentially a big living room with couches, tables, beanbag chairs and a big-screen TV.

There is also a public kitchen on this floor....
Markers are provides so guests can add their own graffiti! Not all hostels have kitchens or ones as well-equipped as this. In this one, there are dishes, pots and pans, a stove top, an oven, refrigerators and lots of free food like rice and pasta left behind by other travelers. If you are tight for funds (as I often am), you can usually survive on the free food in the hostel.
This hostel, like many, provides a free continental breakfast. Here is what this morning's breakfast bar looked like...
That's typical: Toast and/or rolls, jam, cereal, milk and an unidentified orange-colored liquid. It's simple, but if you need to you can take in half your calories for the day. Here's my own personal breakfast this morning....
That dark liquid is half-mixed chocolate milk I made myself. The roll is actually excellent, the kind of fresh, hearty bread you can't get in the States at any price.

Here is an extra service provided by this hostel that I've never seen before...
It's a free laundry service! You deposit your dirty cloths in the bins before midnight (with everyone else's), and they turn up clean the next morning in the basket. It's a brilliant idea - and one that couldn't possibly work in America, where you just don't have this level of co-mingling among strangers.

My bunkroom is similar to the one show at the top of this article. There are six beds to a room, and a locker for each. When you check in, you get an electronic key-card for the room and an key for your locker. Here is the view from my window....
There is no heating or air conditioning in the rooms, and this being Portugal, none is really needed. The room does have a ceiling fan, though...
Whether by design or accident, most of the bunkrooms in this hostel are two floors above the floor with the common room, so the sleepers are not disturbed by the partyers. This is not the case in every hostel. In fact, there can a huge variation between hostels. Each one has its quirks and takes some getting used to. Even for an experienced hosteler like myself, there is usually an initial shock factor: "I'm going to be staying HERE?!" But you get acclimated in a few minutes.

Sleeping in a mixed gender room and using mixed gender restrooms also seems normal after a while. For the record, I have never seen anyone, of any gender, naked in a hostel. Where do people changes clothes? In a mixed gender environment like this, the only places you have any reliable privacy are the toilet stalls and shower stalls, so it has to be there. (Most hostels do provide the option of at least female-only rooms. You'll see it when you make your reservations on HostelWorld.)

As the compromise for the low price, you have to expect a loss of privacy. You are virtually forced to be part of a community, which I think is good. You don't meet many locals here but you do meet travelers from all over the world. Tourist guidebooks seem superfluous, since you can simply ask your fellow travelers where they have been and how to get there. If not for hostels, my visits to Europe would be very sterile and isolated. I think I would prefer hostels even if I could afford standard hotels. (If I could afford a rental car, though, I might prefer to see the countryside and sleep in the car.)

No matter what country you are visiting, the standard language between hostelers is English. When you meet, the first question is, "Where are you from?" The conversation usually flows naturally from there. At a hostel, you have a chance to experience the best of people, because before anyone has a chance to get on anyone else's nerves, people move on to the next city.

My roommates last night were 3 friendly Brazilian girls, a fellow from Norway and an Asian woman who speaks to no one. (I don't know if she is standoffish or her English is poor.) The night before there was a group of three from England (two men and a woman), an Australian chap and the same silent Asian woman. This is a common mix. You can bond instantly with your roommates or have virtually no contact with them.

The term "youth hostel" is roughly accurate in the European sense, where they consider people "youths" up to the age of 26. Most people are in the 20s. At age 49, I am often the oldest person in the hostels I visit (apart from the staff), but I try not to let on. Except for a few non-profit hostels, there is rarely any age discrimination, and I have sometimes seen retired people use them. Even if I could afford to stay in the Hilton, I would probably still prefer a hostel when available.

It's now almost 2am in the common room, and the party has dispersed. The nine people who are still awake have all settled down to watch the Sex in the City movie. (It's better, at least, than the violent American flick that was playing earlier.) Time for me to go to bed.

BTW: The total cost of my 3-night visit to Lisbon, including lodging, food, sightseeing and ground transportation: €60 ($85).

Also see my other photos from Lisbon and How to Sleep in a Hostel.

UPDATE: 7 July

Before I left the hostel, I had a chance to chat with the proprietor, Jorge. This is the only hostel he owns. He says he is a former backpacker himself, and he designed the hostel based on his own experiences. He started on only one floor several years ago (I think he said 2004.) and later expanded to two.

This appears to be an example of a hostel that couldn't exist without HostelWorld.com. The website allowed him to start a new hostel and get it noticed by travelers with very little marketing cost. (Compare this with the struggle of starting a small hotel.)

Jorge says the free laundry service was his own idea and that no other hostel is doing it. (He recalled that when backpacking he began to stink after a while because he had no place to wash his clothes.)

I think the fact that this is an individual owner rather than a corporate one is reflected in the quality of the hostel and the enthusiasm of the staff. This is someone who obviously cares about his business and isn't just a hired hand. He seemed to indicate that he was making money, which is good. It's nice to give people value for their money while still doing okay for yourself.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from Lisbon, Portugal.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

Disposable Clothing

2009-06-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

One of the main things people use a "home" for is storage and maintenance of clothing. Most people have an inventory of clothes for various purposes: for warm weather, cold weather, sports, formal affairs, beach, etc. They also have a hamper of used clothes waiting to be washed and often their own washer and dryer to run them through. The whole thing gets very complicated and expensive.

If you don't have a stable residence, you've got to cut that process down drastically. You can't haul around the huge inventory of clean and soiled clothes, only a modest amount of each.

One solution: disposable clothing! Imagine if you could afford to buy clothes, use them once or twice, then throw them away. There would be no storage problems at either end. It sounds wasteful, but if you add up the costs of storing and washing a fixed wardrobe, it might not be unreasonable.

Thanks to Chinese slave labor, prices for basic clothes in the U.S. are low enough that single-use is an option. At the Evil Mega Mart™, I can get socks for 75 cents a pair (in packs of 10) and underwear for a little more than a dollar each in bulk. Colored T-shirts can be found at Walgreens™ for 5 for $10. Shirts and pants at EMM™ are as little as $10—and far less if you shop thrift stores and garage sales. Voilá — a disposable wardrobe!

I have conducted scientific longevity studies on my clothing by wearing it until it turns rank. Socks have the shortest lifespan, lasting only a day before needing a wash. I can get two days out of underwear and perhaps three from a shirt. Pants can be usually be worn for several weeks before becoming visibly or aromatically distressed. At the prices given above, that's less than $5 a day for disposable clothing.

I could rent a storage unit in every city I commonly visit just to keep my clothes in but it would end up costing far more than just buying clothes as I need them. (EMM is my storage unit!)

In practice, when I have laundry facilities at my disposal, I will use them, but knowing that I can throw away my clothes is very useful. It allows me to travel very light. I can arrive in a new city with nothing, and as long as an EMM (or similar European hypermarket) is present, I can reconstruct a wardrobe very quickly. I can also ditch my inventory at a moment's notice, since my investment in it is minimal.

For footwear, I have been buying the same product for years: Silver Series™ athletic shoes from EMM. They are your basic sneaker with Velcro™ straps instead of laces. The price used to be $9 a pair but has recently rocketed to $11. I buy a new pair whenever I want to look respectable and usually wear them for a month. Of course, you can also buy shoes for $50 to $100 a pair, but you aren't getting 5 or 10 times the use out of them, since expensive shoes get soiled just as fast as cheap ones.

In my Silver Series, I not afraid to wade through swamps or sand, because it was probably time to get new ones anyway. If I had $100 shoes, I wouldn't dare soil them, which can be a crimp on all sorts of adventures.

If you think that $11 shoes can't do the job of $100 ones, I can report that I climbed Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states, requiring a marathon 22 hour death march, in my standard-issue Silver Series. The hike was no piece of cake, but my feet were fine. It was the guys in the expensive hiking boots who got the blisters, because they were hiking in shoes their feet weren't used to.

(This says something important about the investments people make in their possessions. When people spend $100 on hiking boots, they feel compelled to wear them, even if their feet don't like it. Everyone says you should wear hiking boots to climb mountains (not the least, the manufacturers and vendors of hiking boots and all the hiking "experts" who need to demonstrate their expertise), but your feet may have different ideas. Just spending a lot of money on something doesn't necessarily make it the best, and the huge investment is inevitably going to change your behavior. You are now "owned" by those $100 hiking boots, instead of you owning them.)

Since I don't have multiple sets of clothing for different purposes, I make do with what I have. When my $10 jeans reach their expiration date, I take a pair of scissors to them, and they become shorts! This also serves as my bathing suit. (I imagine, on the female side, that a bathing suit top can also serve as a bra, but not the other way around.) If a shirt gets a little rank, I might wash it in the sink with whatever soap I have available, thus extending its life by a couple of days. I am always coming up with new tricks.

Outerwear, like jackets and sweaters, tends to be more expensive and less disposable. It's also very bulky to haul around. Whenever possible, I try to avoid this inconvenience by STAYING AWAY FROM COLD PLACES. Slush and snow? Not my cup-o-tea!

When I have to go to chilly places, I tend to dress in layers. A couple of cheap sweatshirts or sweaters are easier to manage than a single heavy overcoat. I tend to get these items at thrift shops for disposable prices, so if I find I don't need them, I simply jettison them.

What about dress-up occasions where I have to make a good impression? Well, one of the reasons I got into this lifestyle is that I hate dealing with formal social circumstances. Any situation where appearance is critical is not one I care to be involved in. Interview on national TV? They'll have to take me as I am!

But to make a reasonably good impression in social circumstances, I might buy a brand new pair of $10 pants and $11 sneakers especially for the occasion. And I usually carry some kind of colorful Hawaiian shirt with me that I think looks nice. I you happen to die, don't expect me to show up at your funeral in anything fancier than that.

Since I shower at a health club or hostel almost every day, I think I can reasonably pass for a normal person. My clothes and their condition doesn't set me apart from anyone else, which is all I expect of them. I'm certainly no fashion plate and have no interest being one. I just want to pass through life easily, without my clothing or its maintenance getting in the way.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from Athens, Greece.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

On the Road: Phoenix to Richmond

2009-06-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

As a deliberately homeless dude, one of the things I do to make ends meet is drive other people's cars across the country. This is one thing I can do right now that most people can't. Since I am a laid off airline employee who can still fly for free, it costs me nothing to get to where the car is and to get away once the drive is done. This gives me the ability to undercut the major car transport companies.

I also keep the operation afloat by staying in motels only rarely — typically only at the beginning or end of each gig. I let my clients fill the car with whatever they want, so I do not always have the back seat to sleep in. Instead, I usually camp, and for this purpose, I bring a tent, sleeping bag, air mattress and air pump with me.

The desert in the summer is the best. No matter how hot it gets during the day, the night is always comfortable, and there are rarely any insects or rain to deal with. I just put down my air mattress (usually on a tarp for ground cover), pump it up and I'm home! In the desert, there is certainly plenty of open land to do it on, and if the land happens to be public, camping is 100% legal. (If the land isn't public and you are there only at night, nobody is likely to notice you or care anyway.)

Above is my campsite nears Lordsburg, New Mexico, three nights ago. It may not be pretty to look at, but in terms of a comfortable sleeping experience, it was a dream! In spite of the desert's reputation as a harsh place, there is really nothing out here to hurt you, and the weather rarely interferes.

Things change rapidly, however, when you come east. As soon as I passed from Texas into Arkansas, I moved from desert to tropical rainforest. That's the best description for the whole eastern half of the country from May through September. Here you usually have vicious mosquitoes and frequent rain. A tent is essential, and camping gets a whole lot more complicated.

Last night I camped off I-40 near Brinkley, Arkansas. As usual, I selected my campsite at dusk, while I could still see, and I thought I found a good one. It was a concrete pad from a demolished building at a remote rural exit. There was virtually no chance of anyone stumbling upon me. It took me a little longer than usual to set up the tent due to some faulty equipment, but soon I was safely installed inside, on my air mattress, protected from bugs.

The only trouble was, while I was erecting the tent I got about a dozen mosquito bites, and the itching drove me crazy! I took my magic pills - enteric-coated aspirin - but they helped only slightly, and it took me at least three hours to get to sleep. Then, not long after I began to sleep well, thunder and lightning woke me and told me a storm was imminent. My little tent really wasn't adequate for a heavy thunderstorm, and I didn't want to deal with wet equipment in the morning, so I broke camp and continued my drive at about 3am.

This camping experience was pretty much a lost cause. I pride myself in being able to sleep anywhere, and I ended up sleeping sitting upright in the drivers seat of the car. This sounds uncomfortable, but it actually worked out well, better than the tent. In practical terms, it was like sleeping on a transatlantic flight - but in a First Class seat, not coach. Wearing my sleep mask, I slept soundly for five hours, making up for my sleep deficit.

The only problem now is that I have lost about 3-4 hours of driving time (and another hour writing this entry). Today, I have to put on a lot of miles, with few stops, to try to meet my schedule.

This is all to say that the homeless life isn't entirely idyllic. especially on the humid East. You are often at the mercy of the elements and nature. Most people I know couldn't tolerate the rough time I had last night. They would be complaining, Big Time: "Why can't we go to a motel?"

To me, the $40+ just isn't worth it. You got to find an affordable motel first, then check in, unpack, etc. Once last night's tenting experience failed, there wasn't much that a motel could do for me except delay me even further. Most of the time, camping goes fine, and if you play the odds, it's still a good deal. There are occasional bad nights, but the good nights make up for them.

It's not just the expense of the motel that's the issue, but also being able to sleep wherever you are, while getting in and out of sleep mode quickly. Generally speaking, it is a lot easier to find a camping spot than to find a cheap motel, and once you fall asleep, your body can't really tell the difference.

It's just that a humid environment can be difficult: rain, mosquitoes, wet clothes that won't dry, sticky nights that don't get any cooler than day. I'll take the desert any day!

Camp Site Beta: COMPROMISED?

2009-05-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

Through some clever online detective work, a reader reports that he has found Camp Site Beta - the area of native land in San Diego County where I have been sleeping off and on for almost four months (when I'm not traveling elsewhere). Based on the clues in previous blog entries and photo albums, he found the location of my campsite in a couple of hours of online research. He sent me the lat./long. coordinates, and he is dead-on accurate!

He is worried, however, that if he could find it, others can to:

I do have some concerns, however, about those clues being misused by others reading your blog. It seemed way too easy for me to find your location and I'm sure others, with more experience in wayfinding, topographic maps and navigation, will find it as well. Those others may not be the kind of people you would want wandering around your bedroom under the stars. I have known homeless guys, especially former military, who were very smart and resourceful especially about things like camping and navigation. Some of them were also unstable and could be violent. Anyone searching Google for "homeless" and "San Diego" now will come across your blog and could potentially find your camp site with just a couple of hours of online searching.

Naw, no worries! I realized that I was giving away clues when I published those photos and that someone with enough time and smarts could probably figure it out, but that's a lot different than me directly saying where it is. To begin with, there's those two hours of research someone has to do: That's the first price of admission. Most people simply don't have the time or motivation. Sure, a Special Forces guy could follow the clues and kill me in my sleep, but, Christ!, a Special Forces guy could probably find me and kill me anywhere. The question is, Why would he want to? My known enemy list dropped to zero after my divorce was finalized.

Yes, some homeless people can be violent or untrustworthy. They've got issues. That's why I stay away from all of them. Fortunately, your average homeless guy, even the military vet, is not a big internet user. If he gets a chance to use a computer for a hour at the public library, he's going straight for the porn, not looking me up so he can hunt me down.

I also recognized from the beginning that camping on this land was probably illegal. In an urban area like this, it would have to be. But "legal" or "illegal" doesn't mean a lot in practical terms. We all do illegal things every day, like driving one MPH above the speed limit, but that doesn't necessarily mean we are going to be caught and prosecuted. To attract enforcement, an offense has to rise to the level of a visible public nuisance or public safety issue; otherwise, police have better things to do.

I direct the reader to my earlier entry, Free Sleeping and the Law. What is law anyway? It is a written rule to address some past social problem. There are "No Camping" regulations on the books because at some time in the past there were abuses. If you formally "let" someone camp on community property, they are likely to stay there indefinitely and make a mess of the place. When a problem becomes visible, the law is a tool police can use to address it. That doesn't mean, though, that law enforcement is going to actively search for illegal campers or enforce the law when there isn't a visible problem. It's like driving 1 MPH above the speed limit: No one really cares.

Law always comes down to two components: written law and actual enforcement. One isn't meaningful without the other. Legislators can put anything they want into a written law, but they rarely give law enforcement any addition funds to implement it. It sounds ironic, but no law can force police to enforce the law. They still follow their own selective agenda, and busting invisible campers isn't high on it.

Most people are good citizens, and if you tell them something is illegal or put up a sign to that effect, they will obey. To them, the law is a commandment issued by God, not by buffoons in the legislature. Only miscreants like myself and your average lawyer are going to look beyond the statement of law and ask, "But what does this really mean in practice?"

In practice, a "No camping" law really only mean, "Don't get caught camping." In other words, don't make a nuisance of yourself to the point where someone complains and the police have no choice but step in. Life is like that in a lot of areas. If you stand up and say, "Hey, look at me, I'm breaking the law!" you're going to attract attention, but if you quietly do what you want without making many ripples, you can get away with a lot.

And I don't mean "getting away with" in an irresponsible sense. I am a very responsible camper. I go to Camp Site Beta only after dark, sleep, then leave around dawn. I am light on the land and leave no visible signs of my presence. I carry out all of my trash.

The law is a blunt instrument that can't make accommodations for subtle cases like mine, so as long as enforcement gives me wiggle room, I will make my own choices about right and wrong.

In practical terms, I am also protected by all the thousands of visible mentally ill homeless people in San Diego County. These are the ones who make the huge messes wherever they camp. Before any authority is going to hunt me down in my secret camping spot, a stiff quarter-mile climb up a hillside, they first have to address the homeless in plain view camped on virtually every block of vacant land between here and downtown. But the law can't touch them! You can't fine someone who has no money, and you can't throw the homeless in jail unless you want your jails to become your prohibitively expensive homeless shelters. So the enforcement component of the law just leaves them alone. That means that as long as I watch my manners and remain invisible, they will leave me alone, too.

But what if this blog catches on and inspires thousands to abandon their homes and follow the glorious Free Sleeping lifestyle? And what if they all decide to live at Camp Site Beta? Won't that attract enforcement and spoil the site for me and everyone else?

That's the age-old argument used by mothers everywhere: "What if everyone decided to do what you're doing? Where would we be then?" The fact is, if you live life by your own rules, the chances of colliding with someone else doing the same thing are depressingly low, even with an audience of millions.

In past lives, I have had a lot of experience with publicity, and I find there's a huge attenuation effect between consuming a media product and actually taking action in the real world. For example, I recently appeared in a TV documentary about Area 51. Six million people saw the show, but only a few hundred hit my related website because of it. At most, I got only about 1000 fleeting hits on my website from those 6,000,000 dimwit viewers. Of those 1000, maybe 2 people actively contacted me as a direct result of the show.

So I have no great fear that this blog, which gets a relatively trivial number of hits each day, is ever going to take off to the point where it changes the actual homeless dynamic in this country, let alone at Camp Site Beta. Only Oprah could give me those kind of numbers, and Oprah isn't returning my calls.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from a secret undisclosed location.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

Speaking the Local Language: Not Required

2009-05-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

I hardly speak a word of German, but this in no way hindered my visit to Frankfurt. Since English has Germanic roots, I can decode some written German and most of the critical instructions on signs. In a pinch, I could probably produce a few simple words like "ja" und "nein", but I rarely attempt to use them. Why not? It creates too much confusion. The local speaker's English is almost always better than my German/French/Italian/Spanish, so I want to make it immediately clear what language I'm best at.

The key to language survival in Europe: Speak English! Just clear, slow, simple English. You should attempt the foreign language only if English doesn't work. Don't believe that bullshit from your French teacher that locals appreciate you trying to speak their language even if you do it poorly. What people appreciate most of all is lack of ambiguity.

It may be embarrassing to stumble along in a foreign language, but here's something that's even more embarrassing: You stumble along in a foreign language, wasting everyone's time, only to find that your listener speaks perfect English anyway.

In my new on-line language course (coming as soon as I can find funding), I will teach you how to order things in any foreign country and usually get what you want. For example, here is how to order a Big Mac™ in Paris: "Could I have a Big Mac please." Chances are, your order taker will speak enough English or universal sign language to guide you through the process.

Although I do speak a little French, I have often been tripped up by trying to order food or ask questions in that language. The order taker assumes I speak perfect French, rattles off options faster than I can process them, and the encounter quickly degenerates into chaos. That rarely happens when I try English first.

Not knowing the local language is rarely a burden when traveling on well-worn tourist trails. English is spoken by nearly everyone who deals with the traveling public, and nearly every citizen has had some English in school. Remember that all the worldwide pop stars sing in English, so some of it ought to have filtered through.

In polyglot Europe, most critical signage is in universal pictograph form: male and female figures for restrooms, etc. It also helps to have done your research and to know where you are going, so you don't need to ask for directions.

When you pass someone in the street, say "Hello," and when you have to squeeze by them on the train, say "Excuse me," even if you know the local phrases. It's just a way of making your identity clear.

If you encounter a situation where you are unable to make your wishes known using English, you can try some local words, but at least then it's clear that you're a novice, and your listener will probably slow down to your pace.

So how are you going to learn the language if you don't try to speak it. My theory is that you should start with the written language and listening to other people speak. When you can both read a newspaper and understand most of what is being said on TV, you are ready to start speaking. I know it's a pretty high threshold to cross, and you might never get there. The fact is, it is pretty hard to learn a foreign language when you're not exposed to it on a regular basis. If you live in Detroit and are struggling to speak Swedish, at a certain point you have to ask yourself, "Is this really worth the effort?" If, on the other hand, you live in a multicultural neighborhood where half the kids speak Spanish, you are probably going to pick it up fairly quickly.

I have no confidence in any class or software package to teach you a foreign language. The one thing these programs can't provide is motivation. If you're in Detroit trying to learn Swedish via Rosetta Stone™, you're probably still going to give it up eventually. No software package is going to help you when learning the language doesn't make much sense to begin with.

Personally, I am constantly studying foreign languages, but not to speak. I find that the greatest benefit of foreign language exposure is what it teaches me about my own. I feel that my own writing in English has been enhanced by my study of French and other languages. It makes me see that other sentence structures are possible, and it sometimes gives me access to English words and phrases that I might not otherwise use. My pride, however, still lies in English--in thoroughly understanding my own language not someone else's.

If you had a 1000 years to live, you might learn every language on the planet, but you don't, so you have to focus on your native talents and on what is important to learn in your limited time left.

If you are truly fluent in a language, by all means speak it, but if you aren't, don't try to fake it. Just be yourself!

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from Wilson, North Carolina.
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Free Sleeping in Frankfurt, Germany

2009-05-15T03:56:00.000-07:00

After I got kicked out of Bermuda, I flew back to my hub airport and picked a destination pretty much at random off the Big Board: Frankfurt, Germany. I had never been there before, and the taxes I would pay were relatively low ($58 round-trip). The overnight flight wasn't leaving for about 3 hours, so I had a little time to do some on-line research.

There were no hostel beds in Frankfurt at the time (and only two hostels listed on HostelWorld™), but Frankfurt had several critical amenities to make up for it: (1) the airport was surrounded by the Frankfurt City Forest (Wikipedia), a vast tract of primeval land where I knew I could camp undetected; (2) the weather forecast was good (with only a hint of rain), and (3) The train from the airport to the city was relatively cheap: €3.70 (about $5). I still had my tent and sleeping bag from my aborted Bermuda trip, so I was ready for anything. Furthermore, I knew that I could get into Germany with hardly a raised eyebrow. No one was going to interrogate me about about my sleeping plans or whether I expected to leave vast amounts of money behind in their country. Germany was a real country, not a wimpy little girlie-man country like certain others.

The 8-hour flight was uneventful. Although the plane was nearly full, I used my airplane sleeping superpowers to get about five hours of sleep. Euro-customs, as anticipated, was a breeze. My passport was scanned and stamped without a single question asked. Less than a half hour after I landed, just before noon local time, I was out on the street in front of the terminal

Outside the terminal, my first order of business was to find a place to cache my bag with my tent and sleeping bag. I couldn't do much sightseeing while hauling it around, so I had to hide it somewhere. Most European airports have lockers or left-luggage offices where you can leave your bags for a fee, but the cost can be high and I'm so cheap that I never use them. Instead, I will just walk away from the airport until I find some dense bushes and hide my bags there. I cache only things that I can afford to lose (All of my valuable electronics and documentation remain on my back.) but the chance of anyone stumbling upon my bags is extremely low, especially in the generally human-free zones around airports.

In Frankfurt, I intended to head for the forest, but I was cut off from it by a freeway--like the Great Wall of China--that I couldn't initially find a way through. Instead, I left my bag in some bushes beside the freeway. This little strip of overgrown land was itself secure enough that I could camp here at night if I needed to. I still intended to find a more comfortable campsite in the evening, but my bag was safe for now.

I went back to the airport to find the train into the city. Along the way, I discovered a full-service supermarket in the bowels of the airport (Tegut™), near the regional train station. Not only was there every kind of high-quality grocery you might need (milk, fruit, fresh baked bread), but the prices were much lower than I would ever expect in Europe, let alone at an airport. (E.g. a liter of milk for €0.99--cheaper than the U.S.!) This supermarket could be a key to my survival should I ever decide to stay for an extended period. Since I can camp for as long as I want in the forest (with discretion), the supermarket means I could eat cheaply. The only other essentials I would need are WiFi™ and eventually a shower.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Frankfurt city center taking pictures. Frankfurt was more interesting than I expected. There were plenty of sterile new skyscrapers but also some older neighborhoods with a bit of character. My anchor points were the railway station and the river Main, a tributary of the Rhine. From the Hauptbahnhof, I wandered along the banks of the Main until I got to the older touristy parts of the city, then I walked back to the train station through downtown.

I headed back to the airport at around 6pm, but thanks to the long summer daylight, I still had plenty of time to find a campsite. (In the latitudes above 45 degrees, the sun seems to never goes down in the summer. You go to sleep in daylight and wake up in daylight.) After studying some maps at the train station, I figured out how to get through the Great Wall freeway to the forest: Take the Sky Line airport tram to Terminal 2, then walk straight out from the terminal and under the freeway. As soon as you are past the freeway, there is plenty of wooded land. In fact, I had to go only a few hundred yards beyond the freeway to find the secure and private camping spot shown above.

BTW: My tent and sleeping bag both came out of this single average-size duffel bag...

Although I have sometimes managed without it, the tent is desirable for protection from insects, rain, heavy dew at night and wind. Although these northern regions are nearly devoid of life in the winter, in the summer they turn into jungles. I didn't technically camp in the forest but on what looked like some rehabilitated industrial land. Here I could pitch my tent on grass, which gave me some natural padding. Once I had the tent set up at about 8pm, I still had plenty of light to explore some of the actual forest further from the airport, then I came back and slept a solid 9 hours in the tent (going to sleep in daylight, waking up in daylight).

Since this was only a 24 hour visit, I didn't have time to do much the next morning. I awoke at my leisure (not feeling the necessity to break camp before dawn), broke camp, cached my bag, then took the local train to Wiesbaden for a half-hour visit. Then I went back to my campsite for my cached bag and checked in for my flight in the nick of time.

On the flight back, I met the same cabin crew I saw on the flight out. It always amazes them when I say I stayed for only one day (since all they usually see is the hotel), but I find that you get the most from a new place within the first few hours. After that, if you don't have a specific purpose, the touring can get draining and repetitive. 24 hours makes a nice little recon mission, so when I come back later I can do it much more efficiently.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Released from Hometown Buffet™, Woodbridge, Virginia.
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Free Sleeping in Bermuda -- ABORTED!

2009-05-12T16:45:00.000-07:00

I have just been kicked out of my first country ever: Bermuda. (I was previously banned from Canada between 1995 and 2005 but never knew it at the time and was never actually ejected, but that's another story.)

Heard of it? Bermuda is a little quasi-country (a British territory) in the Atlantic Ocean about 2 hours east of South Carolina. Population: 65,000. It's not really a Caribbean Island, being too far north, but it has all the character of one.

Or so I understand. I spent only about two hours there today and never left the airport. I must say, Bermuda has some of the friendliest customs agents anywhere, but we both realized that the relationship wouldn't work out, so I got back on the same plane I flew in on and came back to the U.S.

I don't need Bermuda, and Bermuda doesn't need me. It was an amicable parting.

Turns out, Bermuda doesn't let foreigners enter their country without a confirmed hotel reservation. Hotel rooms start at about $150 a night plus tax—and that's the hard-to-get budget alternative. Given that my flight cost me only $55 r/t (as a furloughed airline employee) and $150 is more than I normally spend in a week for food and lodging, I chose to decline the offer and leave their country.

I knew the rules but planned to evade them. I never intended to pay for lodging in Bermuda. I was going to Free Sleep, but I got caught.

I had it all worked out. I had done my Google™ Earthing and had identified some wooded areas where I could probably camp undetected. I had studied the local transportation system and knew I could go anywhere on the island on a transit pass for about $12 a day. I knew there were people—approaching 65,000 of them—who managed to live in Bermuda for less than $150/day, so I planned to quietly join them for two nights. In my checked luggage, I had a backpackers tent and a light sleeping bag —which proved my undoing.

I knew that Bermuda didn't allow camping by foreigners and that a hotel reservation was required for admission. This is standard for most Caribbean islands. They want only rich visitors who waste lots of money, not poor ones like me who will take only photos and leave only footprints. I intended to evade these rules by pretending to have a reservation. On my customs entry form, I listed my lodging in Bermuda as one of those overwrought resorts I couldn't afford to stay at (and would never want to even if I could).

All would have gone perfectly to plan had I not made one fatal error: On the same customs form, it asked, among other things, whether I had any food with me. I checked "yes" because I did—some crackers and dried meat—figuring I might as well be honest about everything else apart from the hotel. Big mistake! Having answered "yes" to any of the questions on the form automatically subjected me to a full customs search. The tent and sleeping bag were revealed in my luggage, and I was gently questioned about my plans and the hotel I was staying at.

I readily admitted not having a reservation and that the hotel I had put on the form was "speculative". The customs officers, as I said, were unfailingly polite, and they were willing to work with me to obtain a room "within my budget." Unfortunately, that was $180/night at best, and my ticket had me staying for two nights. The agents asked if I had any credit cards, and I said yes, but that didn't mean I was going to pay $360+ for lodging. I politely asked to be placed back on the same plane I came off of.

Note: If something like this were to happen to you, the airline has to take you back where you came if you are rejected by customs. This sort of thing happens all the time. Things would have got interesting if the flight had been full, but it wasn't. An airline employee escorted me from the customs office back to the plane, which had a two-hour layover.

I want to point out that I, too, was unfailingly polite. I didn't tell the customs officers where to shove their piddling little "country." Nor did I tell them I could get a get a far better deal at a "real" country in Europe. I didn't shout: "I paid fifty-five fricking dollars for this trip and now you expect me to pay more?!"

Instead, I meekly departed, took the two hour flight stateside and selected another destination: Frankfurt, Germany. I know nothing about Frankfurt, and don't speak the language. I pretty much picked it off the schedule board at random. I'm about to board that flight now. The price for me is about the same: $58 round trip. I'll have only 24 hours there (since I have to get back to the U.S. for a work assignment), but I find that's plenty of time to get introduced to a new place.

Like Bermuda, Frankfurt has no hostels (unusual for a European city), and lodging rates are astronomical, but I still have my tent and sleeping bag with me. My online research reveals plenty of potential camping spots near the airport. Quite illegal, I'm sure, but since I camp only invisibly at night, I know I'll get away with it. Since I'm there for only 24 hours, I'll be fine with just a few hours of sleep. (As soon as I get off the plane, I'll find a spot, hide my bag, then come back after dark.) There's apparently a little rain in the air but looks like nothing I can't handle.

And I know they'll let me in. No place to stay? The issue won't even come up at customs.

Take that, Bermuda!

How to Sleep on an Airplane

2009-05-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

For many travelers, the most dreaded part of traveling overseas is the overnight flight to get there. Sitting upright 8-20 hours crammed together with strangers is no one's idea of a good time. How do you sleep under conditions like this? For that matter, how do you sleep in a regular domestic overnight flight--the infamous red-eye? If you had the skills to sleep on any plane, any time, that would certainly make traveling easier

I've had a lot of experience doing it, and I have it down to the science. If I am determined to sleep on a flight, I can almost always do it. It just requires some preparation and practice.

Below is my advice for making the best of a bad situation. My advice comes in sections:

Seat Selection
Equipment
In-Flight Technique.

Seat Selection

You can greatly improve your red-eye experience by choosing a good sleeping seat. Although seating may not always be within your control, it is worth the effort to try.

The dumb and easy way to tackle an overnight flight is to fly First Class. The seats are bigger up there; they usually recline more, and they often have footrests. But how much more are you willing to pay for these modest amenities? $500? $3000? If you have the money and that's how you want to spend it, be my guest, but that's a lot to shell out for what might be only a marginal improvement in comfort. Furthermore, if the plane isn't full, a First Class seat might not be the most comfortable sleeping accommodations on the plane. I have been on many flights where First Class has been packed full while coach has been wide open, meaning that the suckers up front have paid heavily for the privilege of worse seats.

What are the best sleeping seats? Three seats to yourself in coach! That's Heaven if you can get it. With three seats, you can raise the arm rests, stretch out almost full length and sleep almost as soundly as a hotel bed. No one in First Class can do that!

If you can't get three seats, the next best thing is two seats to yourself or an empty middle seat between you and the next passenger. On wide-body aircraft (like the Boeing 767 or Airbus 330) there are two seats alone against the windows. If you are limber (as I am), you might be able to curl up in the fetal position on those two seats and sleep as soundly as on three seats.

Granted, two or three seats to yourself may be like seeing a unicorn: It's a mythical beast that might not exist on your overbooked aircraft. Still there are ways you can increase your chances of getting this privilege.

One way is to try to choose a half-empty plane when you make your reservation. Alas, this may be unrealistic, since you may not have many flights to choose from within your schedule and price range, but you always want to look at the on-line seat maps for your flight before your confirm the reservation. (Most airline websites let you select your own seat from a map of available, and you don't actually have to complete a reservation to see the map.) Although you will probably choose a flight based on price and schedule, you at least want to be aware of the seating configuration for your aircraft and how relatively full it is, since this may affect your behavior when you board your flight.

If you are traveling alone, your best seat for sleeping is usually a window, so always choose one when you can. A window seat gives you a wall to lean against and a semi-enclosed nook all to yourself, with no one stumbling over you to use the restroom. You might also try for a window seat in the back of the aircraft, since the seats in the back tend to be a little less full than those in the front.

You always want a seat that reclines. Nowadays, the recline in coach isn't much--maybe 6 inches or less, but this small angle can mean a big difference in comfort, keeping your head from falling forward when you sleep. The last row of seats in each section and the row immediately in front of an emergency exit may not recline, so you should avoid them.

If you can't get a window, an aisle seat is best, so at least you can get up whenever you want and you have some empty space beside you.

If you find yourself with a dreaded middle seat, you always want to confirm with the gate agent that no other seats are available. Middle seats are bad news, but you can survive them if you have to.

If you can, you should check the online seat maps the day before your flight. You can also ask the gate agent how full the flight is when you check in for the flight. If you are aware of the seating configuration of the plane, you can always try to negotiate for a better seat before you get on. If you are stuck with a non-window seat, you should check with the gate agent less than 60 minutes before boarding (or 30 minutes domestically) to see if any passengers failed to check in.

Whether the aircraft is full will affect how you board the aircraft. If it's full, there's no sense in fighting your seating assignment: Just board whenever your assigned boarding group is called. However, if the plane has lots of unsold seats (or if you don't know how full it is), you should always try to be the last passenger to board. If you know you're the last, you can look around for empty seats that are better than the one you have. If you see such a seat, just take it, and if no one complains, it's yours!

Equipment

Certain things you can bring with you will vastly improve your in-flight sleeping experience. They are given here from the most important to the least.

1) Warm clothing! This is by far the most important equipment, because if you are cold you won't be able to sleep. Regardless of the tropical destination you may be flying to, always travel in long pants, socks and a thick shirt with shoulders covered. You should also have a sweater or sweatshirt with you should you need it, and possibly a knit winter cap, since most heat is lost through your head (especially if one is hairless up there).

2) A light blanket. Some airlines now charge for blankets on domestic flights, but blankets are still provided free of change on long international flights. You may want to bring one with you to be sure. A thin airline-style blanket is usually sufficient, but without it you may be too cold to sleep.

3) Ear plugs. Foam ear plugs can be extremely useful to mute the safety announcements, engine noise and chatter of your fellow passengers. They work best when you stick them deep into your ear canal so they are barely visible. (It takes some practice.) I put them in at the beginning of the flight and don't take them out until the end (unless I am talking to someone).

4) Sleep mask. A sleep mask blocks out the ambient light and, more importantly, the annoying movies or TV shows playing around you. A sleep mask is available in the pharmacy section at the Evil Mega Mart™ for about $3, or you can pay $10 at the airport. If you don't have one, you try using something else, like a knit cap pulled down over your eyes. Although technically your eyelids should work, I find that an eye mask works a lot better to block out distractions to sleep.

5) A neck pillow. The standard square pillows provided by airlines are almost useless when sitting up, since they fall away when you sleep, but those "airline pillows" that wrap around your neck can sometimes be helpful. The aim is to prevent your head from falling over as you sleep. Not all wraparound pillows are created equal, however. Most of those sold in airports (probably including the one shown here) are simply too fat and bulky, especially behind your neck, where you don't want any padding. (You only need it between your head and shoulders. You probably want a relatively thin bean-bag or blow-up model, but you'll have to experiment to find out what works for you. One thing that sometime works for me: my own patented Knotted-Blanket-Pillow™: Hang an airline blanket around your neck like a scarf, then tie it in a big double knot against your neck. You use the knot as a pillow between your head and one of your shoulders. It looks funny, but it works!

6) Footrest. Whatever bag you put under the seat in front of you, it should be usable as a footrest. If you can raise your feet just a few inches, it can improve your comfort and reduce pooling of blood in your legs. (You want to make sure you don't have anything delicate in the bag that could be crushed.)

7) Aspirin. I always take two aspirin at the start of every long flight. Aspirin does two things: (1) It helps prevent muscular aches and pains due to the unusual sleep position--mainly in my back, and (2) it prevents clotting in the legs when blood pools there (at least in theory). The main role of aspirin here is not as a pain-killer but in preemptively reducing inflammation.

8) A wristwatch. If you are like me, your cellphone is your clock, which you can't use during the flight. If you bring a wristwatch with you, it can help you keep track of how much time is left in the flight.

In-Flight Technique

The main difficulty of sleeping in the sitting position is that blood tends to pool in your legs, which can be very uncomfortable after a couple of hours. There is some suggestion in the press that this increases the risk of a blood clots in the legs, but the aspirin should reduce this risk. It probably isn't healthy for your cardiovascular system to sleep sitting upright on a regular basis, but one night probably won't hurt you. The optimal sleep position is to raise your legs to almost the same level as your head, but if you can't do this you'll have to make do. At least recline your seat and raise your feet as far as possible.

Take your shoes off! It's much more comfortable, especially since your legs and feet tend to swell after a period of sitting up.

When the safety instructions tell you to fasten your seat belt "low and tight around your waist," you should instead make it as loose as possible, extending the belt as far as it will go. (Flight attendants will check that the belt is fastened, but they won't check how tight it is.)

To sleep better, you should avoid caffeine and alcohol on the flight, and remember to pee before you sleep so you don't have to get up again.

Use your ear plugs and eye mask to block out the world. Position your neck pillow so your head can go limp, then get down to the business of snoozing. If you're lucky, snooze will turn to real sleep, and the time will fly by. (Imagine going to sleep in New York and waking up in Europe. It sometimes happens!)

When most flights begin, the captain usually announces the flying time. Be sure to look at your watch and calculate what the time will be when you land. (Your own calculation will probably be more accurate than asking a flight attendant en route.)

If you happen to have three seats to yourself, lucky you! You should be able to just lie down and sleep all the way to your destination. You aren't supposed to lie down during takeoff and landing, but in practice you can do it as soon as the flight attendants take their seats. You may want to keep the middle-seat belt fastened around you and visible to the flight attendants so they don't have to wake you to verify it when the seat belt light is on. (Or you can arrange the seat belt so it appears to be fastened.)

Once you decide to sleep, you should ignore all entertainment and beverage services. A few hours sleep is usually worth far more than the free food, drink and movies.

The only other advice I can offer is that sleeping on a plane usually gets easier each time you do it. The first time may be hell, but the second is a little less so. It's just a matter of both your body and mind getting used to it. (Think of it as an Olympic sport that requires some conditioning.) After years of doing it, I can now sleep on virtually any flight, even in a middle seat hemmed in by two oversize passengers. It's not the perfect sleep, but its better than nothing.

Also see: How to Sleep in an Airport

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
This entry was begun in Boston and released from Las Vegas.
You can Retweet this article on Twitter™.
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

Where to Sleep in an Airport

2009-04-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

The very comfortable overnight accommodations at the Philadelphia airport.

In an earlier entry, I discussed How to Sleep in the Airport. In the entry below, I will review some actual airports as to their sleeping potential. Some of these airports I have slept at myself, while others I have only surveyed.

As I mentioned in the earlier article, the main factors that make an airport "sleepable" are (a) the secure concourses remain open all night, and (b) there is seating without armrests. If you are limber, you can sleep on seating with armrests by wrapping yourself around an armrest in the fetal position, but it's an acquired skill and seating without armrests is far more comfortable. At a nice sleepable airport, you can arrive on an evening flight and simply decline to leave security until morning.

The most critical pieces of equipment for airport (and airplane) sleeping are warm clothing, a light blanket, eye covering and earplugs.

NOTE: If you have check baggage and you fail to claim it right away, it will still wait for you. You might get a call from the airline baggage claim office, but you just tell them you'll pick up your bags in the morning. In other words, free baggage storage!

Here are some specific airports I have dealt with personally. I will revise this list as I gain more experience.

PHL (Philadelphia) - An excellent sleeping airport! (Shown above.) Spent many nights here. The older seating in the B and C gates is well padded and has no arm rests. (A gates have armrests.) Constant CNN and security announcements make earplugs a must! There's a wide variety of food available here at reasonable prices. Only once was I woken by an airport employee—to give me a pillow and foil blanket. Free WiFi™ on weekends only.

PHX (Phoenix) - Another great sleeping airport, with lots of well padded seating and no arm rests on any seating. Food is limited and very expensive so bring your own. Free WiFi™!

MSP (Minneapolis) - I haven't slept here but have surveyed the airport. Looks like a good one for sleeping. Open all night and offers a wide variety of seating and hidden nooks. No free WiFi™.

CLT (Charlotte) - The secure concourses close at night and they kick you out. However, I have successfully spent the night in the baggage claim area (on seating with armrests). A city bus will take you to a Super Evil Mega-Mart™ for supplies. Free WiFi™!

DEN (Denver) - Terminal open all night, but all of the seating has armrests. (Photo below.) As matter of fact, I spent the night here last night! (I'm writing this entry just a few feet away from the scene below.) I eventually found the carpeted floor more comfortable than the seating. (I must be getting out of shape.) Wide food choices both inside and outside security, but generally overpriced. (Big Mac™ is $4.15, but Panda Express™ two-item place is only $6.95.)

The less-than-comfortable seating at the Denver airport.

FLL (Fort Lauderdale) - Secure concourses close at night. An acquaintance says he once slept in in baggage claim, but it seemed too harsh and exposed for my liking. Instead I left the airport and slept on a hidden grassy area nearby. (Sometimes a good option when the weather is tropical and no rain is in the forecast.)

LAS (Las Vegas) - The secure concourses remain open all night, but all seating has armrests. Food is limited and atrociously priced. In the non-secure areas at night, there are usually a few busted-out gamblers asleep, waiting for their flights the next morning. Signs on the entry doors say you can't be in the non-secure areas between 2am and 5am, unless you have a ticket or boarding pass, which is almost an invitation to sleep there if you do. (Still, I would do it only if forced to. Consider the hostel options.)

You probably can't sleep in most small-city airports or in large ones that have separate terminal buildings for each airline, because the terminals close at night. I assume (but have not confirmed) that this is the case at MIA, BOS, LGA, JFK, PDX, SFO and any airport without an airline hub.

In general, a big-city airport with many interconnected concourses is likely to remain open all night, and if it is, you can probably linger within the secure areas without anyone questioning your presence. Of course, once you leave the secure area, you can't get back in without a valid boarding pass, but you don't need one to remain in the secure area once you are already there. (An unexpected side-effect of heightened airport security is that travelers inside security are questioned, since they have already been heavily screened.)

Outside the secure area, you are more likely to be questioned, since the "homeless homeless" have also taken to sleeping in airports. Here are some articles on the airport homeless...

Homeless nudged from airport lifestyle (USA Today)
Airport Homeless: A Long, Pleasant Layover (New York Times)
Clusters of Homeless Settle in Airport Terminals Across the Nation (AP)
'Heathrow is my home': Meet one of the 100 homeless people who live at the airport (Daily Mail)
Google: Airport Homeless

Again, you avoid being associated with them by remaining within the secure areas where the ticketless can't go. Big airports also won't usually evict you from non-secure areas if you have a ticket for a flight the next morning.

When I'm sleeping at airport, I usually have a cover story in mind (bumped from flight, taking another one in the morning, etc.), but no one has ever questioned me or asked me for ID or boarding pass.

At small-city airports, where I know I can't sleep, I will survey the neighborhood beforehand via Google Earth™ for potential camping spots. Small airports often have woods or fields around them. At BHB (Bar Harbor, Maine) I successfully used this method to confirm the terrain, then slept in a grassy hollow a few hundred yards from the terminal. The advantage of camping near the airport is that you don't have to haul your equipment very far, then you can hide it in the bushes until your departure. Wherever there are woods, you are probably going to need a tent to protect you from bugs, but a simple pup tent will do. As usual, you probably want to break camp before dawn to avoid discovery.

I don't know enough about overseas airports to say which ones are sleepable, but the same general rules probably apply. In every big European airport, you are likely to find travelers sleeping in the non-secure areas waiting to check in for flights the next morning. The situation is rarely comfortable, but it is usually safe and might get you by in a pinch. (I did this at the Dublin airport when I couldn't find a hostel.) As long as you have a ticket for a flight the next morning, you are unlikely to be evicted. I would worry a little more about theft however, since anyone can get into the non-secure areas.

A few European airports with big international hubs may have hostel-like "sleeping rooms" available within security, where you can spend the night for a relatively low price. I stayed in one of these at the Amsterdam airport many years ago.

I'll add more airport data here as I collect it.

Also see How to Sleep in an Airport and Free Airport Wifi™.

Where to Sleep in a Car

2009-04-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

In a previous entry, I discussed How to Sleep in a Car—that is, how to physically do it. Now I'll talk about where to sleep in a car—or where to position the car so you are safe during your unconsciousness and won't be disturbed.

The short answer is: You can sleep in a car almost anywhere you would normally feel comfortable parking a car overnight. The primary aim is to not attract attention—from thieves, neighbors, police and security guards.

One of my first experiences in sleeping in the back seat of a car was in Lisbon, Portugal, many years ago. I had rented a car in Madrid—a tiny one—and was touring Iberia, sleeping in hotels and hostels. When I got to Lisbon, I didn't have a place to stay and was totally exhausted from driving, so I parked where I was, on a busy residential street beside a big apartment house. I curled up in the back seat, almost in a fetal position (since it was a very small seat) and went to sleep. It worked! I slept well, and no one interrupted me. All night, people walked by my car, but since I parked in a place where residents commonly park overnight, I was invisible to them. To my knowledge, no one looked inside the car, because they had no reason to.

And what would have happened if someone had looked inside and seen me sleeping? Probably nothing! I wasn't intruding on anyone's space, and no one had any reason to call the police. And if the police had found me, what would they have done? They might have woken me up and asked for identification but probably would have let me stay. I'm a harmless tourist; I don't speak Portuguese, and it's obvious I'm just passing through. What threat am I to anyone?

After this one experience in Portugal, I realized, "Hey, why do I need a hotel at all?" If you have a rental car, you have a hotel!

Almost every city has some sort of ordinance against sleeping in cars on public streets, and most property owners wouldn't want you doing it on their land either—if they knew. The reason, of course, is that if it were allowed, some people would abuse the privilege. They would linger in one neighborhood, be obvious about it and make a nuisance of themselves. No one wants a visibly homeless person living in a car on their street (especially when the observer is slaving to pay for their own home). Our aim, however, is to be completely invisible, which is a whole different game.

Let's say you choose to disobey a local ordinance and sleep in a vehicle where you know it's not allowed. What's the worst that can happen? Will you be arrested, ticketed, fined? Probably not. What is likely to occur is that someone will knock on the window, wake you up, and ask you to move on. That's it!

You judiciously select a parking spot to avoid this inconvenience. If your car is parked in a place where cars are commonly parked for the night, it won't attract attention; no one will bother to look inside, and your sleep won't be interrupted.

Compared to sleeping in a tent or in the open, a car gives you an extra element of security, because no one is going to sneak up on you. If the window is open just a crack, no one can assault you or steal your stuff without making a lot of noise first (by smashing a window). You add another layer of security if you are parked in a busy location with people passing by all night. Any potential thieves will be deterred by the visibility.

I know sleeping in a car may seem to make you vulnerable, but think it through: What are the risks? As long is you park in a relatively busy location and your presence in the car is nearly invisible, there really aren't any.

The key rule to remember is, "Don't park in remote locations." This may seem counterintuitive, because when you want to sleep your tendency is to try to get away from it all. However, if you park on the side of remote road or in an empty parking lot, you are bound to attract attention. Car thieves are going to see this as a prime opportunity, and police and security guards are going to wonder what a car is doing parked way out here. Instead, you want to be in the thick of things, in a relatively busy location where a car parked overnight would be safe and unnoticed.

(The other possibility is to park in an extremely remote location where there is little or no chance of anyone else passing you at night. For example on public land.)

Twice, when sleeping in cars, I have been awoken by people testing the door handles, apparently intending to steal my car. They quickly left, however, when they found me inside it. I have also been awoken by police and security guards. However, in almost all these cases, I was parked in places where wisdom now says I shouldn't have been—where my car stood out like sore thumb. No that I've learned to be discreet, interruptions are rare.

What happens when the police find you sleeping in a car? They may ask for I.D., run it through their database and ask you a few questions. Then they make ask you to move on or they may let you stay. (When they've asked me to move, they've usually told me where I can move to.) What happens when you're woken by security guards? They simply ask you to move off their property. Private security guards don't have the power to demand I.D. Given my choice, I prefer security guards, because the encounter is much less intrusive. Also: Whenever you have contact with police, it creates a local contact record that could conceivably be used against you later. They may let you off with a warning the first time but give you a ticket the second.

If you are driving cross-country, where is the best place to park? Well, you could try the Evil Mega-Mart™. Many EMMs are open 24 hours, and there are usually restrooms just inside the front door. EMM is also a food source if you need it, and a source of cheap sleeping bags, pillows and other camping supplies. In rural areas, EMM is very tolerant of RV's parking overnight in their parking lots, almost encouraging it, so a car parking overnight should be no problem. In urban areas, however, the EMM lots are often posted with "No Overnight Parking" signs, and you are probably best to respect it, because there is usually an active security patrol (the little Parking Nazi in his pickup truck with the flashing light). If you are not sure whether to park there, the key criteria is the presence of overnight RVs, usually in a distant corner of the lot.

Other parking lots are okay if cars are parked there overnight. Truck stops are fine, and certain shopping center parking lots may work. As with urban camping, a site that is secure and comfortable at night may not be during the day (or vice versa), so you may need to clear out of some sites before dawn. (You need an alarm clock to assure this.)

But the most reliable places to park on a cross-country trip are highway rest areas. Here there are free restrooms. There's usually at lot of traffic, which deters random crime, and some Interstate rest areas have active security patrols at night (not usually concerned with busting sleepers). A few rest areas, like many in Texas and Iowa, have free WiFi™.

I've slept in a lot of rest areas, even those marked "No Camping" and "No Overnight Parking" or "Use Limited to 4 Hours." Look around you: You see those big 18-wheelers on one side of the rest area? They are parked for the night, with the driver sleeping in the box behind the cab. Truckers often sleep in rest areas or along the side of highway access ramps, regardless of the posted signs, so wherever you find them, you can usually feel comfortable doing the same. You figure that the authorities won't dislodge you unless they are prepared to wake all the sleeping truckers and ask them to move also.

For example, here's a sign in a rest area on I-95 in northern Florida...

But that doesn't prevent truckers from parking here for the night. (Photo below taken at dusk, and both they and the author remained here all night.)

This illustrates a phenomenon you see throughout society: The law as it is written and posted can be significantly different from what is actually enforced. Often signs and laws are just there for political reasons, to control the dumb mass of humanity or address some grievous abuse in the past. They are tools that law enforcement can use if someone becomes obnoxious, but they may not pay much attention unless someone is complaining. After all, police usually have better things to do than bust illegal sleepers!

Only once have I been woken by a police officer at a rest area. It was in a zone marked "Parking Limited To 4 Hours." The officer simply asked me if I was okay, and that's it. No request for I.D. or anything. I had been there well over four hours at the time, but that didn't seem to be an issue. (On an 8-hour shift, a state trooper doesn't have a lot of opportunity to determine whether you have exceeded the limit.)

Consider the sign shown at the top of this entry, from a Interstate 40 rest area in Iowa. Item #2 says "Overnight Camping" is prohibited. On first glance, that would seem to mean you can't sleep in a car. But now look at #3: You can't stay at the rest area for more than 24 hours. That implies that you CAN stay for 23 hours, which entails sleep. And look: You can stay for more than 24 hours if you have a legitimate need to, like "need for rest." All the sign is really saying is that they don't want you living in the rest area like you owned the place. What does "camping" mean? Let the lawyers argue over it. If you have a legitimate "need for rest," just do it! Isn't that what "rest areas" are for?

When I first started sleeping in cars, I used to hunt all over for the "perfect" place to park, only to have people waking me up and telling me to move. Turns out the perfect place was usually just under my nose: some busy and unromantic parking lot or street side where my car would not be noticed.

Two things that may complicate the parking equation are rain and mosquitoes. Both might require you to drape something over the breathing crack in your window (fabric or plastic). This, in turn, might attract attention to your vehicle. This is something you'll have to work out based on the circumstances and opportunities you encounter. (More than once, I have spend a rainy night under the awning of an abandoned gas station.)

Sure, sleeping in a car is kind of creepy and takes some getting used to, but if you have the skills to sleep anywhere, it can greatly streamline your travels, not to mention saving you a boatload of money.

The World's Coolest Hostel!

2009-04-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

Found while browsing HostelWorld.com: The world's only hostel in a 747 jumbo jet...

Jumbo Hostel (Stockholm Airport)

"Welcome onboard the worlds first Boeing 747-200 Jumbo Jet converted into an upmarket Hostel for the discerning traveller! Jumbo Hostel is only a ten minute walk away from the check-in counters at Arlanda airport, perfect for anyone catching an early flight and doesn´t want to get out of bed before dawn to make it to the airport in time. Now you can easily book a night at Jumbo Hostel prior to your departure for an extraordinary experience before beginning of your trip – as well as relaxation.

"Jumbo Hostel offers 25 comfortable rooms with either two bed, three bed or also 4 bed dormitory style. All together, the hostel offers 74 beds; the most luxurious is to be found on the plane´s upper deck which boasts an exclusive cockpit suite with private ensuite bathroom and toilet."

The price for a hostel bed is about US$43, which is high for a hostel, but dirt cheap for Sweden. (Hostel beds in Stockholm itself start at about $30, without breakfast or linen like this one provides.) It's a good deal regardless of the venue!

Also see their official website: JumboHostel.com

Austin Powers, eat your heart out!

BTW: Here's another interesting hostel in Stockholm, aboard a sailing ship: STF/IYHF at Chapman

For the record, I should note that it doesn't matter to me whether I sleep in a 747 or a sailing ship, seeing as I will be unconscious most of the time. While the idea is cool, I don't feel any pressing need to actually stay there. The premium I am willing to pay for the privilege is very low—maybe $10 at most.

Case Study: Free Sleeping in Spain

2009-04-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

In May 2008 (before I started this blog), I had a chance to practice my Free Sleeping skills in Europe. I was visiting Barcelona for several days. In the city itself, I was staying in a hostel for about $25/night, which served my needs fine, but I also took an overnight trip into the countryside, where there were no hostels. Being that the weather was fine, I decided to just wing it. I had a sleeping bag with me, so I figured I would work something out.

I don't speak Spanish, and I had never been to the region I was visited, Aragon, so there was an element of excitement to it. I had no internet access during the bus ride (Heaven forbid!) and had no paper maps or guidebooks, so I couldn't scan ahead to see where I might land. It was a little like traveling in unknown lands during the Middle Ages: I would have to work it out as I went along. Western Europe is pretty civilized these days, and I knew I wouldn't be set upon by bandits. The worst that could happen is that I wouldn't get a good night's sleep.

Here is my photo album of my bus trip to Aragon. As you can see, it is a relatively dry land, a lot like Southern California in climate. I was riding on a relatively cheap, government subsidized motor coach from Barcelona, and the bus route ended at Huesca, so I figured that was where I would spend the night. I knew nothing about Huesca, except that it had a population of about 50,000. Having no maps or tourist info, I would have to learn the layout of the place on the fly. (Actually, that can be a very pleasant way to travel! Sometimes, we drown ourselves in too much information.) As the bus approached the city, I took careful note of the landscape. I was looking for a patch of overgrown land within walking distance of the bus station in the city center.

European towns and cities are extremely dense in the center, which arises from their medieval roots. Without transportation other than foot, early residents would cluster together in a thick mass with only narrow streets between them. There is no wild greenery near the center of the average European city so there would be little chance of Free Sleeping in the town itself. However, in medium-size cities like this, the countryside can be very close, often within walking distance. Away from the major metropolises, there are fields and hills where it is usually easy to find a nook to sleep in.

As we approached Huesca, the bus crossed a bridge over the railroad tracks. On one side, looking up the tracks, was the dense city center, but in the other direction were open fields and farms. I knew, then, that I had a strategy: I would find the train station and follow the railroad tracks out of town, under the bridge I was crossing, until I found enough greenery to sleep in.

It was late afternoon when the bus let me off at the Huesca train station (which happened to be the terminus for the bus). I took my backpack and my small rolling suitcase and headed down a road running parallel to the railroad tracks. Sure enough, less than a mile from the train station and just after the bridge, I found what I was looking for: a piece of overgrown field, about 100 feet wide, between the road and a ploughed farm field. It wasn't much, but the grass was tall enough here to hide me from the road, at least at night. I left my suitcase here (containing mainly my sleeping bag) and I walked back to Huesca to tour the old part of the city.

When I came back after dark, my suitcase was just where I left it. I didn't have any ground cover, so I used some newspapers I filtched from the trash at the train station. The matted grass underneath me provided adequate padding. (See Requirements of Sleep.) For a pillow, I used some rolled up clothing.

My next problem, though, was the anticipated Attack of the Mosquitoes. The only camping gear I had with me was a lightweight mummy-style sleeping bag. This would get me through the relatively warm night (probably in the 60s). However, I had no defense against mosquitoes (ubiquitious the world over). I had no tent, no mosquito netting and no repellent. The ground was damp and there was an overgrown stream a few feet away, which seemed like a perfect breeding ground for the critters. Mosquitoes may be small, but they have the power to thoroughly disrupt your night. They are the main reason for using a tent in the summer. I expected the worst, but I had nothing to lose by trying. At least I might get a little sleep between attacks.

I can survive a night with little or no sleep. I've done it before, and as long it is bracketed by solid sleep the night before and the night after, it doesn't usually disrupt my travels. The big problem of not sleeping is just passing the time. It's an exquisite hell to not be able to sleep and not be able to go anywhere either because the sun hasn't come up. Your brain is so frazzled that you can't get anything done on the computer, so you don't have any choice but just watch the clock tick by. Just one or two mosquitoes buzzing around your head will do this to you.

Turns out, there wasn't a problem at all. I lucked out! Not a single mosquito visited me that night (I'm not sure why.), and I had a blissful night's sleep I remember nothing about. I awoke fully rested just after dawn. I packed my sleeping bag back into the suitcase, wheeled it back to the train station and continued my journey. Cost of my night in Huesca: €0 ($0).

What did I learn from the experience?

Always bring a small vial of mosquito repellent. This is available for about $3-4 at the Evil Mega-Mart™ in the States, but like most camping gear it is very difficult to find in Europe.
You can guess at conditions at your destination based on theoretical analysis, but you have to actually go there before can be sure what the conditions will be. (Re: My prediction that the mosquitoes would be bad.) Only reality counts!
Bring a small tarp when you can. It has multiple uses including as a ground cover and protection from light rain.

Other than than, I feel confident that I can land in any European city in the summer with just a sleeping bag and get by (as long as there's no rain in the forecast). It's an adventure. It gets you back to your medieval roots where people walked from town to town on foot and seemed to make do.

Hostels are still the way to go when wandering Europe, but I'll gladly camp again if the opportunity arises.

Things You Don't Need: Indoor Plumbing

2009-04-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

An entry today on our sister blog is also relevant to this one...

Things You Don't Need: Indoor Plumbing

Indoor plumbing and standardized community sanitation have certainly improved the health of mankind overall, but their necessity in your own life may be overrated. This blog article provides some work-arounds.

Return to Camp Site Beta

2009-04-15T16:13:00.001-07:00

This morning I made my bed. Aren't you proud of me? This is something I don't normally do, mainly because I don't really own a bed or a place to put one. Even when I did have a bed in a conventional home, I rarely made it, because there were too many more important things to do. Once I got out of bed in the morning, it remained that way until I went to bed at night.

I made my bed this morning for practical reasons. My secret campsite on a hilltop in San Diego is so secure and remote that I feel that I can leave my air mattress in place all day without it being disturbed by anyone. I see no reason to deflate the mattress in the morning only to reinflate it at night. (I use a battery-operated pump for this, but it still takes time.) Since the risk of discovery is remote, I simply leave my air mattress where it is, on the tarps I use for groundcover. I am concerned about sun damage, however. The mattress cost me only about $12 at the Evil Mega-Mart™ but I want to get the most use I can out of it, so I wrap it in blankets when I leave. Voilà—a made bed!

My bedroom is shown above. This photo is part of a full album of scenes from Camp Site Beta which I invite you to tour...

Camp Site Beta (20+ photos)

Rather idyllic, don't you think? As discussed previously on this blog, Camp Site Beta is my second gypsy camping location in San Diego. Unlike Camp Site Alpha, which lasted me only six nights, Camp Site Beta is remote and secure and I can stay there virtually indefinitely. That's right, I've found it: The perfect place to live for free for as long as I want!

Since my last dispatch from San Diego a month and half ago, I have returned to Camp Site Beta three times, for a total of about ten nights. I had expected to stay here longer, but "work" and other missions kept calling me elsewhere.

(Let's see: I drove twice across the country from Buffalo to Las Vegas, drove twice from Miami to North Carolina and once across the southern edge of the country from California to Florida. I passed through Key West and camped in a field near Wal-Mart in Florida City. I slept on a lawn near the Fort Lauderdale airport. I spent several nights in a storage unit in an undisclosed location. I spent several nights with relatives in Boston and Florida and a night with friends in New York City. Oh, and I popped over to Paris (France, not Las Vegas), spent one night on the plane and two nights in a Montmartre hostel and also scouted out some Free Sleeping locations, a la français, for possible future use. I spent two nights in the Phoenix airport plus the nights at Camp Site Beta. That should account for it most of it! This intense but painless travel is possible only due to my one-in-a-million Magic Airpass, but I couldn't have done it I was held down by a conventional home.)

"Camp Site Beta," as I define it, refers to both a vast area of undeveloped land and a specific camping location on that land. The general location is known locally as "East County"—the suburbs east of the city of San Diego. This area consists of approximately 50% developed land and 50% mountainous open space. I don't know yet who owns the undeveloped land, but I assume it is some government entity, like the BLM or the State of California (otherwise, it would already be developed). The land is so vast, going on for miles and miles, that if keep a low profile, I know I can stay forever.

Once I have identified the existence of this land, the next question is where to sleep on it. This decision is made based on operational requirements. The site has to be accessible to public transportation, with a reasonable commute time to the college library where I compute, yet it should also be remote enough that I can feel secure sleeping there night after night and caching my camping gear there when I leave town for weeks at a time.

When you're sleeping, you are, by definition, unconscious and vulnerable. I am not so cynical to think that anyone who stumbles upon me is a danger, but the best security is no chance of human contact at all. I need this campsite only for sleeping, nothing else. I go there, take care of my dreaming business, then leave. As you can see from the photos, Camp Site Beta could be seen as quite scenic, on a hillside strewn with huge boulders with a panoramic view of the valley below. It is the sort of view home buyers would pay top-dollar for, but that's not a factor in my selection of the site. All I care about is my health, safety and getting a good night's sleep.

To obtain this Nirvana, I have chosen a campsite deep inside this land, near the top of a hill that requires a strenuous 20 minute hike to reach. My nightly hike from the bus stop is about 1/2 mile and climbs about 300 feet. (It's about one-third of a Tikaboo if you speak that language.) There's a preexisting trail I follow, but it is very rough, and at a certain point I depart from the trail to a virgin location among the rocks where I have my gear. The trail is difficult enough to follow during the day, but I do it at night (with a flashlight). There is virtually no chance of anyone coming up here at night except me. The long, difficult hike not only separates me from human contact; it also gives me a rigorous daily aerobic workout, so I don't feel I have to work out at the gym. (I just go there to shower.)

One of the nicest amenities of my remote site is that I can sleep as long as I like in the morning. I don't feel that I have to break camp before dawn as I would at a more urban location. I can also leave my air mattress in place, which I would never do elsewhere. When I cache my equipment here, I know I can leave it for weeks and it won't be disturbed.

Aren't I afraid to be out there in the wilderness at night all alone. I often think about that as I am hiking up at around 10 pm. All around me are ghostly rock formations and shadowy bushes that anything could be lurking behind. I think to myself, "Wow, twenty years ago I might have been really nervous about this!" What has happened in the past twenty years is that I've spent a lot of time in the desert, so I know everything out here.

Aren't there ticks, spiders, scorpions, snakes and other sharp and poisonous things? Aren't there creatures that would have me for dinner? Not really. Surprisingly, there is not a lot of dangerous things in the desert. Anything that would hurt you, like rattlesnakes, would much rather get away from you if given the chance. In all my years in the desert, I have seen live rattlesnakes only twice. (Once was a little one near Area 51 and another was a big fat one near the HOLLYWOOD sign in Los Angeles.) Snakes want to get away from you, recognizing you as a big warm creature that could crush them. They don't crawl into your sleeping bag! My evasion strategy is to always see where I am putting my hands and feet before I do it.

There are coyotes passing through the area, no doubt feasting on the domestic cat population, but I'm bigger than them and they know it, so there's no issue there. (Coyotes can make a horrible racket though—with all their howling—and I sometimes have to tell them to tone down the party.) There are no mosquitoes here, since there is no standing water from them to breed in, and I haven't encountered any other biting or stinging insects. Nonetheless, I carefully inspect my camping equipment every night for invaders. The worst I have seen so far is snails.

SOMEBODY has been chewing on the edge of one of my tarps when they are rolled up and cached among the rocks. I don't know who it is or what kind of nutritional value they could be getting out of it, but I'm willing to let it go as long as it stops.

There is plenty of evidence of human visitation here, but it is relatively rare. As you can see in the photos, graffiti artists find the big rocks irresistible, but they seem to come here only during the day. The relative lack of trash (apart from paint cans) means they don't come here to party, just to make their mark. I am unlikely to cross paths with them because I'm here only at night and shortly after dawn. The worst they could do is mess with my camping equipment. However, it is worthless to them, and given the long hike back to the road, they are unlikely to steal it. If they did I could reconstruct it quickly.

Serial killers? I haven't encountered any so far. Frankly, this area would be slim pickings for them compared to, say, a good sorority house at Partyville College. I've never encountered ANY humans at Camp Site Beta (only seen the tents of some other Free Sleepers who live close to the road). Things might change in the summer, but for now, hundreds of acres of land are all mine.

I could die of a heart attack and no one would find my body for months, but that's true of a lot of places. I have left my GPS coordinates with a family member should corpse retrieval be required, but by all measures I'm healthy and not planning on sudden death.

The only real danger—a significant one—is falling and seriously hurting myself on the steep trail. I'm counting on my BlackBerry™ to get me out of that one: I'll dial 911 if I am truly disabled. If I'm knocked unconscious? Oh, well, I guess I'm a gonner, but you gotta die somehow. Once you have eliminated all reasonable risks, you can't live in fear of the rare and exotic ones.

Probably my greatest enemy at Camp Site Beta is the weather. Arguably, San Diego has the best weather in the country, but it does have it. There can be periods of rain and wind when camping is a challenge. Every day I look at the weather report and decide whether camping is feasible that night. If it looks uncomfortable, I might pursue an alternate plan. Lately, that plan has simply been to flee town for better weather elsewhere, since I have the ability, but if I didn't have that option I might rent a car or spend a night or two at a hostel.

I wouldn't say that I "live" at Camp Site Beta. I merely sleep there when my missions don't take me elsewhere. My stay there doesn't usually extend more than a half-hour on either side of the sleep function. As soon as I'm awake and mobilized, I'm heading down the hill to the bus stop. I buy my $5 daily transit pass on the bus, then I might go to the health club for a shower or go directly to the college library to start writing. Since I always have projects I'm working on, I have little time for anything else.

It's Heaven!

Bus and Rail Passes

2009-04-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

While researching the previous entry, I stumbled upon my old friend, the Greyhound Discovery Pass™. It's been at least 25 years since I last used him but the price has hardly changed: $299 for 15 days of unlimited travel anywhere in the United States and Canada. No better travel deal can be found anywhere on the planet!

The best way to see America is still by car. The trouble with buses and trains is that they often whiz by places you want to explore and you can't take spontaneous excursions off the main route, but if I were a student traveler who wanted to see a lot of the country in a short time, this bus pass is the way to go. It will navigate you between hostels and provide backup accommodations where there aren't any.

Back in my youth, I bought several Greyhound bus passes, usually spending nearly the whole 15 days on the bus. Not your idea of Paradise? Well, if the whole country is virgin territory to you, each new city is exciting, and the adrenalin keeps you going. I used to plan out my my trips with an engineer's precision so as to take Greyhound for everything it was worth. You'd think with the past 25 years of airfare wars and fuel spikes, the old 'Hound would have been bitten the dust by now, but it keeps chugging along—aided, no doubt, by its monopoly position in most of the country. It can't be making much money on these bus passes or on cross-country trips, but it is probably doing well on short hauls where air travel doesn't work and it holds all the cards.

On Greyhound, you whiz by all the roadside attractions, but at least you get a good overview of the country, and you aren't distracted by driving. The front seat is the primo one if you can get it.

An Amtrak Railpass is still available ($389 for 15 days), but it isn't truly "unlimited" (only 8 segments allowed on the 15 day pass) and the routes and schedules have dwindled to the point where it is just the skeleton of a rail system. An Amtrak journey might make a good vacation, but it won't give you anywhere near as many options as bus. You also see tend to see more from the bus (especially if you can get that front seat), because buses travel more varied routes.

A Pet Peeve (if I may digress): Have you noticed that on all those travel shows about train travel, they are always showing the train FROM THE OUTSIDE? Here's the train crossing a dramatic canyon. Here it is skirting the coast. Now we see the train FROM THE AIR as it threads through the mountains. It makes the journey seem so epic and grand, but if you actually take a train trip, here's a clue: YOU'RE TRAPPED ON THE TRAIN! You don't see all those sweeping vistas. You can either look out one side or the other, often through dirty glass. Short train trips can be fun, but for long hauls, it's just another form of transportation: It either gets you there at a reasonable price or it doesn't. If you want romance, buy the video.

In Europe, the old standby used to be the Eurail Pass. Twenty years ago, it was the way to go for North American students on a budget, but its luster has faded. It has gotten too expensive while the number of low-price alternatives has expanded. Today, the 15-day Eurail pass is roughly $449 for "youth" under 26 and $689 for adults. That's train robbery considering the availability of dirt-cheap air and bus services in Europe. Eurolines™ offers all-Europe bus passes for considerably less than the Eurail Pass, but you might be better to just go point-to-point, shopping the internet for cheap air and bus fares and buying them as needed. That gives you more flexibility, lets you change modes (road-rail-air) and allows you to dally in each city for as long as you like.

If I was traveling in Europe for two weeks or more, that's probably what I would do. I would reserve my first hostel at my entry city, stay there as long as it interested me, then do on-line research from there to decide what my next leg should be. (My first online stop would be RyanAir™ to see what ridiculously low airfares they are offering.) Since my own budget is microscopic and I have already seen the main tourist traps, my own journey is likely to be dictated by price. To get to the countryside from a gateway city, there are often some government-subsidized bus routes that are quite cheap, and I have only begun to explore those.

Britain is atrocious! The Eurail Pass doesn't work there, and rail prices are astronomical, enough to blow your budget in an instant. Even a single ride on the Tube will set you back a king's ransom. The only affordable options there are bus and air.

Or, hey, how about a bicycle! I'm serious! In nearly every tourist center, you can find reasonably priced bike rentals, and a bike can give you an angle on a city that you'd never get to on foot or public transit. It's almost better than a car because there is no traffic or parking problems. The $15-20/day might be well worth it!

I've rented bikes for day trips from the hostel, but someday I might try a multi-day trip. It would be a challenge. If you just get on a bike in some foreign city and start peddling, with minimal gear, where would you sleep? That would push Free Sleeping to the limit!

Yours truly in Madrid.

Hostels DO Fly in America!

2009-04-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

I'd like to retract an observation I made in the previous entry on hosteling: "The concept really doesn't fly in America." Turns out I was wrong. Americans might not choose to use them, but the hostels are there!

A scan of HostelWorld reveals there are far more hostels in the United States than I thought. For New York City alone, HostelWorld lists 47 of them! That's comparable to a European city. There tend to be more restrictions, however. Some require a passport and out-of-state ID, and I am miffed to find that a few won't accept people over 40. (What's the rationale for that? Are we too wild and crazy?)

The bottom line, though, is that you can hostel in New York as easily as in Paris or London, albeit at slightly higher prices (especially considering the 13% city tax). That's a blessing, because New York is otherwise difficult for budget travelers. (The hostel options in New York were very limited in the 1980s, when I stayed at a very creepy one in Mid-Town.)

How about the rest of the country? There are 4 in Chicago, 13 in San Francisco, 7 in Miami, 18 in Los Angeles, 7 in Washington, DC, 5 in Anchorage and 8 here in San Diego. And the list goes on.

Well, I guess that blows away my original thesis. Apparently hostels DO fly in America!

That certainly wasn't the case in the 1980s. Back then there were the AYH hostels and little else (American Youth Hostels, now Hosteling International-USA). I wonder if HostelWorld can take credit. A traveler with a bus pass can apparently do very well in America. There are some significant gaps, and there will probably be long stretches of Middle America where you'll be sleeping on the bus, but it looks like you'll find berths in most of the major cities.

You learn something new every day! I was going to rant about flaws in the American character that prevented hostels from taking hold here, but that's moot now. (I never miss a chance to dis' my country!)

Maybe flaws in the American character prevent Americans from using hostels here. I'll bet the bulk of the guests at American hostels are foreigners who are accustomed to hosteling elsewhere. You haven't heard about hosteling in America, have you? Apparently, that's because it does no advertising and the mainstream media rarely mentions it. Your average American just wouldn't think of it.

But now I've let the cat out of the bag! If you thought you couldn't visit New York City because you can't afford a Manhattan hotel, now you have an option. Now it's up to you whether you can adapt to the hosteling lifestyle.

Update April 12

Now that I know about all the new hostels in the U.S., will I use them myself? I might, but probably not often. Even at $30 a night, the cost adds up. That's over $900/month, about the same as an apartment of my own (which I can't afford). In the U.S., I can usually get a rental car for $30, which gives me both a place to sleep and transportation, so that's what I would probably choose when camping doesn't work.

In San Diego, for example, the weather is usually good, and you can't beat the $0/night I pay at my Camp Site Beta. When the weather turns bad, however, I might be forced into alternate accommodation. My first option is to flee town; the second is to rent a car, and the third would be to use a hostel.

In Europe, the environment is a little different. Rental cars are much more expensive and often less useful than public transportation. Hostels seem a little cheaper and provide free WiFi™, which I can get for free in the States but that you have pay money for in Europe.

Still I could use U.S. hostels for special fill-in situations when I can't camp or find a cheap rental car. (I used them a lot in my student days when I couldn't rent a car.)

How to Sleep in a Hostel

2009-04-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

A relatively spacious room with only four beds in the Square Caulaincourt Hostel in Montmartre (the heart of the Paris tourist district). My rent (3/09): €22.50/night (about $29).

When I am traveling in Europe (always on a microscopic budget), I sometimes camp in fields or sleep in rental cars, but mostly I stay in hostels. For the uninitiated, a hostel is shared bunkroom accommodations for a very low price, generally $20-35/night. The concept really doesn't fly in America, but it thrives overseas. For me, it often means the difference between traveling and not traveling, because there's no way I can afford a standard hotel room.

For the benefit of naïve Americans, I'd like to go through the basics of what a hostel is and how it works. (You can also check out my tour of a Typical Hostel in Lisbon.)

Generally speaking, Americans are creeped out by the idea of shared accommodations. 90% of the Americans I know seem uncomfortable with the concept and would probably freak out even worse at the reality. In most cases, you are spending the night in a room full of strangers, sometimes even of the opposite gender. How do you protect your stuff? Where do you change clothes? It seems so strange—and dangerous! There's a horror movie franchise about gruesome killings at a hostel and no doubt a porn movie or two, yet in practice it all works quite well once you are used to it.

Americans think they need a huge dedicated space all to themselves, with antiseptic sterility, a mint on their pillow, distant staff and minimal human interaction. Suit yourself! If you insist on traveling First Class everywhere (or even Second Class) you're not going to see much of the world.

Back when I first started hosteling in the 1980s, most hostels were non-profit, run by local hosteling associations. You would travel with your hosteling membership card and your hostel directory and would follow the book's instructions to the one hostel in each major city. Reservations were awkward and usually had to be made by mail. If you didn't have one, you just prayed they would have space for you.

The internet has changed all that. Now there are a number of hostels in every major city, most of them for-profit businesses. The price hasn't changed much, but the variety of options has expanded dramatically. Now you can make an on-line reservation as late as the day before and be assured a bed. Just to know you'll have an economical place to stay relieves an enormous worry of traveling to a new country.

The major catalyst for the change is a website called HostelWorld.com™. Check it out! This is the primary worldwide website for researching and reserving hostel beds. It is an example of the best things the internet can do! Not only can you look up hostels and reserve a bed, but you also get unbiased reviews from people who have recently stayed there. HostelWorld has also become the de facto policing agency for hostels, since travelers will avoid places with bad reviews from other travelers.

HostelWorld has actually created hostels where none previously existed, because it gives small hotels the means to market dorm accommodations. It has also encouraged entrepreneurs to turn just about any space into a hostel. Often hostels are located in the floors above shops or down hidden alleys. Hostels aren't particularly pretty to look at, but they're usually clean, safe and centrally located, and can be much friendlier than a hotel. They efficiently accomplish the job done of giving you a place to sleep, recuperate and plan your next move.

HostelWorld lists both the traditional non-profit hostels (under the umbrella of Hosteling International) and the newer for-profit ones, and no one who runs a hostel can afford not to be on it. From the individual hostel listings, you'll get far more information than you'll ever find about any traditional hotel. In my mind, this obviates the need to carry any kind of travel guidebook with you. (Why carry Lonely Planet™ or Let's Go™ when you can look up everything you need on the internet?) As long as you have a good hostel to stay in, you can decide where to go from there by asking other travelers or by using the hostel's wifi or computers to look things up.

Why don't hostels work in America? Maybe it has something to do with our relentless profit drive, our poor management of personal space or our destructive nature. If you opened a European-style hostel in an American city and didn't put restrictions on it (like limiting it to foreigners or college students), it would soon be overrun by druggies and lowlifes from the surrounding neighborhood and crime would overwhelm it. That's not the case in Europe, where people are used to living cheek-to-jowl and are relatively civilized about it (save for the Brits arriving for soccer matches).

STOP PRESS! After a survey of HostelWorld, I've revised my position in the next entry: Hostels DO Fly in America!

What does a hostel look like? That can vary widely. Typically, it's a small converted hotel. The management has turned all or some of the hotel rooms into dorm rooms by replacing the single bed with several bunk beds. (HostelWorld will tell you how many people per room.) From a business point of view, this can be quite crafty. Yes, the owner is only getting only $20-35 per bed, but if he can pack six people into a room, it could be more profitable than two people at the full rate.

Hostels can also occupy just about any other kind of space. In Stockholm, there's a hostel in a 747 jet, on a sailing ship and in a prison. You can stay in lighthouses in Northern California, New Brunswick or Ireland or in a "UFO" in Ireland. Most hostels, however, are not nearly so dramatic. A typical commercial hostel might be on the 2nd floor of a retail block in a city center (like the hostel in Toronto where I am writing this).

So, are you prepared to sleep on a bunk bed in a room with five strangers, possibly on the top bunk? Just getting into the top bunk might be a challenge (as you can see from the photo from Paris at the top). You might have to relearn the skill from your youth, but if you can do it, you might save enough money to travel longer than you normally would.

They don't call them "youth" hostels anymore, although the demographic is generally skewed toward travelers in their 20s. Retirees use them as well as mid-lifers comme moi. You have to have the "young" attitude of being really flexible, since you'll have to adapt to the people you room with and to the unique circumstances of each hostel. If you can pull it off, you'll probably find the experience much richer than the Hilton™ (Paris or otherwise).

Perhaps the most important thing you'll get in a hostel is networking and a social life, which is extremely difficult in a standard hotel. In a hostel, you will meet people; there's no choice. You may not meet many locals, but you'll connect with travelers like yourself from all over the world. To me, this is so much more meaningful than staying at the Sheraton, visiting the Eiffel Tower and Louvre on the Gray Line tour, then flying home.

So what exactly should you expect at a hostel the first time you stay at one?

First, you will review the offerings on HostelWorld and make your reservation there. (There are other hostel booking sites, but this is the biggest and, as far as I can tell, the only one worth visiting.) At peak travel times you want to make your reservation early; in the off-season you can wait and do it just before you leave. (There is a small non-refundable deposit, and if you fail to cancel in a timely manner, you could be charged a one-night fee as a no-show.)

In the hostel description, there will be instructions on how to get to the hostel from the airport or train station by public transportation and a little footwork. Although, the directions are usually brief and technically accurate, you have to expect that the hostel will be very difficult to find. You'll have to follow the directions exactly! It's probably not on a main street with a big neon sign but hidden down an alley with a very small sign. (A safe alley, however, since this is Europe!) Many times I have wished that I had printed out or written down the instructions, because finding a hostel in an old European city is often like running a rat maze.

When you first arrive at a new hostel, there is usually a shock factor to overcome. ("I'm going to be staying HERE!?") Many hostels are tiny shoebox operations in places you would never expect to find lodging (like a converted 2nd floor office or warehouse space). You'll get over it in a few minutes, but when you first arrive you have to be prepared for almost anything. Even the photos on HostelWorld and the unbiased reviews by previous visitors may not prepare you for the environment and humble appearance of the facility. You can be sure the amenities listed on HostelWorld will actually exist, but they could be found in a very rudimentary package. Unlike the hotel industry, there is usually no attempt to dress up the hostel product to make it visually appealing (even when the hostel has a slick website). It will probably make a college dorm look palatial!

Once you find the hostel, there will probably be a front desk similar to a small hotel. You can be assured that the staff there will speak English, at least well enough to check you in. Many hostels have a period during the day when the bunk rooms are closed for cleaning, so you may not be able to actually occupy your room until a certain time in the afternoon (usually specified on HostelWorld). However, you can usually check in as early in the day as you want and leave your bags.

The amenities of most hostels include a kitchen (if mentioned on HostelWorld) and a common room with a television. The kitchen will usually have all the basic supplies you need for cooking: pots, pans, dishes, etc. (but you should read the HostelWorld reviews for more clues). There will also probably be some standard condiments and dried pasta left behind by other travelers, so you can put together a meal there for very little. There will also be a semi-sanitary refrigerator where you can store any perishables you buy. The kitchen is an enormous advantage over a standard hotel: If you are staying for several days, you can cook your own meals and dramatically lower your food costs!

The common room is where there is usually a TV blaring and fellow travelers sitting around doing nothing productive. This is a good place to meet people. (I also happen to enjoy watching TV in a language I don't understand. It's essentially the same crap as in America, so I know what is being said almost by telepathy!)

The common room will often have computers for free internet use by guests. These computers are usually adequate for simple tasks but rarely work very well, and you may have to fight others for them at peak times. A more critical amenity for me is free WiFi™ for my own laptop, and I carefully analyze the HostelWorld listing to make sure it is available, reliable and truly free (and preferably available in the dorm rooms). In Europe, unlike the U.S., there is virtually no free WiFi in the air in public areas. You're faced with paying for it by credit card through commercial providers—at a price approaching that of a hostel bed—or staying at a hostel and getting it for free. I see it, you are essentially paying for a day of WiFi and getting free lodging thrown in!

At hostels, there may be lock-out times and curfews, which should be listed on HostelWorld. Typically, the bunk rooms are closed for cleaning between about 11am and 3pm, and there may be a time late at night when the front door is locked. (Normally, you wouldn't worry about these late lock-out times, except that American visitors to Europe are usually jetlagged upon arrival and could actually be out 'til 2 am!)

Linen (sheets and blankets) is usually provided free of charge, but you need to analyze HostelWorld to be sure. There may be a deposit required for linen or for the room key, returned to you when you check out.

Note: Most hostels do NOT accept credit cards, so you'll have to bring cash. Local currency is easily obtained by using your bank card and pin at any ATM (almost always available at the airport).

Free breakfast is a common amenity at many hostels. This is a simple "European" breakfast consisting of carbs and little else, but you might be able to tank up half your calories for the day. The self-serve breakfast usually consists of rolls, toast, jam, cereal, milk, coffee and an unidentified orange-colored liquid. (See my Lisbon Hostel tour to see a typical breakfast bar.)

Shower and bathroom facilities are usually shared. They may be in your room or you may have to go down the hall. (On HostelWorld, they will say "en suite" if the toilet and shower are attached to the room.) You should bring your own soap, because you probably won't find any in the shower!

On HostelWorld, you can choose your housing configuration—that is, the number of people in the room and their gender. Generally, the larger the number of people in the room, the lower the price. Sometimes, especially during the off-season, you may reserve a dense room and expect the worst but then be given a room essentially to yourself. On HostelWorld, you can often reserve a "private" room for two or more which is like any other hotel room but cheaper, or you can choose a room with up to 20 beds. (I've even seen 36 beds in one bunk room!) Personally, I always choose the lowest rate - period! - and if I end up with 19 other disparate travelers, that just makes life more interesting.

Gender? The available room genders are male, female and mixed. Which one are you? Yes, "mixed" means male and female strangers sleeping in the same room! In America, that would be the recipe for some kind of porn and/or slasher flick, but Europeans know their personal boundaries much better than we do. You'll have to figure out these boundaries on your own. At times, I have been in a mixed bunk room of 16 people and wondered, "Where do I change clothes?" This may require going down the hall to the bathroom—and even there your privacy might seem limited. (For the record, I have never seen anyone of any gender naked at a hostel.)

I think this stark functionality and relative lack of privacy is a good exercise for Americans. It makes you realize you don't have to live in an antiseptic plastic bubble like most of us do. You may return home with a better sense of economy and simplicity of living.

Security is something to always keep in mind, but I don't regard it as a major worry. I have absolutely no concern for my physical safely at a hostel, and I wouldn't even if I was a young female traveling alone. I'm a little more concerned about my valuables. I almost always carry those on my person—camera, computer, passport, etc.—and I leave in my room only things I can afford to lose. (In Europe in general, the risk of violence is miniscule compared to the U.S., but the risk of theft is about the same. Personally, my only experience with theft was a pickpocket in the Paris Metro, who I thwarted.)

Some hostels provide lockers for guests, but you usually have to bring your own lock (a small luggage lock because a standard-size Master™ lock might not fit). They may also have electronic door keys similar to standard hotels, so no one can walk into the room who doesn't belong there. I have always felt comfortable about the integrity of my roommates after I talked to them, but since the guests are a broad cross-section of humanity, you can never be sure.

Some other hostel notes:

—Always be courteous to the hostel staff, who can be grumpy at times. Although being in this city may seem romantic to you, to them it's just a job and they're usually paid a pittance.

—Power sockets are not as common in Europe as they are in the U.S. For recharging your electronic devices, you may or may not find a socket in your room, but you will certainly find one in the common room. If you check your device's power adapter, you'll probably see that it accepts BOTH 110 volts and 220 volts. In that case all you need is a plug adapter, not an actual voltage converter. It is much easier to find this adapter in the US than in Europe. (The Evil Mega Mart™ sells a universal one in their luggage section for $10.) Since I have multiple electronic devices to charge, I also bring a US branching cube.

—In keeping with European custom, any taxes are included in the price (just like the prices for products in stores), so the balance that is quoted on HostelWorld is exactly what you will pay (i.e. there is usually no "sales tax" or "room tax").

—You can find hostels almost anywhere in the world. Canada has them in most major cities (non-profit ones through Hosteling International-Canada). Also see my revised note on Hostels in the U.S. The only place hostels seem to be lacking is certain tightly controlled tropical islands where the economy depends on charging tourists $300/night.

—Before you reserve a hostel via HostelWorld, always try to Google for the same hostel by name to see if they have their own independent website. This might give you some additional info. (Be forewarned however, that these websites are usually far prettier than the property itself. For example, the hostel I'm staying in now: It's an adequate place, but there's total disjoint between website image and the concrete reality.)

—European hostels are usually located in the center city, which makes them easy to access by public transportation but not by car. (Parking will probably be a nightmare!) When sightseeing by car, there is an alternative: Hotel Formule 1™, a budget motel chain owned by the same French conglomerate that owns Motel 6™. Formule 1 makes Motel 6 look palatial, but it's got what you need: simple rooms that sleep up to 3 with toilets and showers down the hall. These motels are concentrated in France and neighboring countries, and they are usually located in the semi-rural outskirts of cities. Formule 1's are sometimes accessible by public transit, but they mostly cater to the driving crowd. Like hostels, Formule 1 locations can be very hard to find, so you have to pay close attention to their cryptic directions. The neighborhood is often industrial, and it's not as romantic as a charming pension in the country, but if you just need a place to sleep (which is usually the main issue), Formule 1 is a whole lot easier. (Here's a list of a few more European budget chains that I know nothing about.)

So... should you stay at a hostel? That's up to you. Frankly, it's probably not the cup o' tea for most of your standard-issue, raised-in-the-bubble Americans. They'll stay at the Hilton and leave American soil approximately once in their lifetime. For me, though, there's no issue. Just add it up: (1) a safe place to sleep, (2) protection from the elements, (3) a social venue, (4) free WiFi, (5) free breakfast, (6) a place to store your stuff, (7) a place to recharge your electronics, and (8) usually within walking distance of tourist sites. Pretty darn good deal for $20-35/night!

Have I covered everything? Telegraph me if I haven't and I'll try to address it here.

For a photo tour of one European hostel, see A Typical Hostel: Lisbon, Portugal.

Also see the next entry: Hostels DO Fly in America!

—G .C.

©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
This entry was released from San Diego, 4/11/09.
Revised in Toronto, 5/3/09.
You can Retweet this entry on Twitter™
You are welcome to comment on this entry below.

Free Sleeping and the Internet

2009-04-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

As a professional Free Sleeper, I can do without a lot of things. I don't need a bed or a roof over my head, and I can coast by on very little money for food and sundries, but there's one thing you can't take away from me: my CrackBerry™.

I've had mine for less than two months, but it has already become an indispensable part of my operation. As an internet-based lifeform, I'm willing to sacrifice almost anything to remain productive on-line, and the CrackBerry™—excuse me, BlackBerry™—has turned into the critical nexus for most of my computing activities. In the Dark Ages prior to two months ago, I did fine, but now that I can see what I was missing it would hard to turn back.

The BlackBerry™ performs three critical functions: (1) It's a telephone (which is so, like, totally 20th Century, but you still need to have one); (2) It's a mini-computer on its own, running several simple but critical applications; and (3) I can tether it to my laptop for a normal internet connection at roughly dial-up speed. Prior to the BlackBerry™, I was using my cellphone to send and receive simple email messages and hunting down free WiFi™ for my major computing. Now, I still use free WiFi™ when available but I don't have to have it.

Actually, I take that all back! I can get along just fine without my BlackBerry™. After all, I did it for decades, all the way back to my first typewriter in the late 1970s. The advantage of more primitive technology is that it forces you to be more disciplined, and all these newfangled gadgets encourage sloth. Still, technology can open doors by relieving you of the some of the more routine tasks of life. If you can spend only a half hour preparing your food or washing your clothes vs. four hours, you have a lot of extra time for more creative things.

This is illustrated by the many ways the internet makes budget travel and Free Sleeping easier. Here are some of the ways I have used the internet to get a good night's sleep—with or without my BlackBerry™:

1) On-Line Maps and Satellite Images can help me select a campsite. Applications like Google Earth™ and Google Maps™ allow me to survey a city before I even set foot there, identifying potential Free Sleeping locations that I can later check out in person. So far, I have used these products to find discreet campsites in Portland, OR; Key West, FL; Fort Lauderdale, FL and Paris, France. A free Google Maps™ application for the BlackBerry™ puts this technology in the palm of my hand, and it automatically hooks into the B'Berry™s on-board GPS to guide me exactly to the place I saw from above.

2) Hostel Reservations are now easy as pie, thanks to HostelWorld.com. (See How to Sleep in a Hostel.) Back when I first started hosteling in the 1980s, reservations were a complex process involving the mail, and I was often forced into high-priced hotels merely because I didn't know what was available. Now, you can instantly see the available hostels and their rates and make reservations in seconds. HostelWorld has even created hostels where none had previously existed, because it gives private hotels the means to offer dorm accommodations. (Back in the 1980s, European hostels—at least those used by Americans—were primarily non-profit; today they are primarily for-profit, which has dramatically increased the available options.) HostelWorld.com has been optimized for mobile devices.

3) Weather Reports are now easily accessible. When you're sleeping under the stars, it's critical to know what kind of weather is coming at you, and the internet gives you the latest. If tempests are closing in, I can alter my plans accordingly.

4) Public Transportation Routes and Schedules are almost always available on the web. This means I can coordinate them with campsites and places I need to go in ways I never could have imagined 20 years ago. For example, without the internet, I wouldn't have known that you can get from Key West to Miami by a series of public buses, which has saved my ass on at least one occasion. (See "Free Sleeping in South Florida".) A lot of the need for a car is alleviated by simply knowing what public transit is available.

5) Airline and Rental Car Reservations are now easier than ever, and you're always assured of getting the lowest price. It happens that I currently use only one rental company (that one with the fort in Texas), and one airline (the one I'm furloughed from), but the internet still makes it vastly easier to know what's available and to set things up.

6) Unrestricted Worldwide Communication changes the whole character of homelessness. It means I can write a blog entry or shoot off an email from a hilltop in San Diego just as easily as from an apartment in Manhattan. Why, then, do you need the apartment?

In a broader sense, the internet has abrogated the whole notion of the fixed home as an archive location. With all of your data gone "virtual", you don't need books, newspapers, photo albums, filing cabinets, notebooks, desks or office supplies—just a laptop and a BlackBerry™ (and eventually access to a power socket to recharge them).

I may have to mortgage my soul to support my new child. My current monthly communication bill is well over $100, but it's a relatively small price compared to the cost of a fixed residence.