ATTENTION READ THIS VAGAMOND JOURNEY TRAVELOGUE MOVED

Two months ago I began publishing the Vagabond Journey Travelogue on a Wordpress installation. Everything is the same except the RSS feed and the email updates.

The travelogue is still at http://www.vagabondjourney.com/travelogue

but the feed is now at http://www.vagabondjourney.com/travelogue/feed

If you are use to receiving updates through email you need to go to the main travelogue page and sign up again.

If you have not heard from me in a while it is because your feed information is outdated. Go to the above address or the main page of the travelogue to sign up again. I am still publishing every day.

I feel as if I may have lost a lot of readers in this transition, and I just want to go back a little along the trail that I came from to scoop up any stragglers.

Thank you.

Walk Slow,

Wade

Attention Email Subscribers to Travelogue

If you subscribe to Travelogue updates by email, please visit http://www.vagabondjourney.com/travelogue and sign up again. The feed from this travelogue was changed when I migrated to Wordpress, so the old email notifications will no longer function.

Thank you.

Walk Slow,

Wade

New RSS Feed

The new RSS feed for this travelogue is http://www.vagabondjourney.com/travelogue/feed

Thank you,

Wade

Need a Car to Work in USA

Car Strategy for Saving Travel Funds --

Automobiles cost a lot of money. If I am saving money to go traveling, I do not want to spend a lot of money. But I also know that my employment options are severely limited in the USA without having my own transportation. If I want to make as much money as I possibly can here, I often need an automobile.

My reasoning is as such:

Outside of a few vibrant urban areas, such as New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, transportation in the USA is set up on the premise that each person who wants to go anywhere has the use of a personal vehicle.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine- July 8, 2009
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Public transportation in the USA is atrocious: trains are expensive, take an insanely long time to get to where they are going, are prone to breaking down or being canceled, and only run along a set track between major urban centers. Buses in the USA are not much better. Discount airlines are often a good value, but how the hell are you going to get anywhere once you land? I have found that even urban public transport is not very efficient.



It is my experience that if a traveler wants to land a job outside of a major city in the USA, they need a way to get there: they need their own vehicle.

For my first seven years of traveling, I would return to the USA each summer and work on archaeology projects around the country. Sometimes I would try to do this without my own vehicle, but found it severely difficult to do, as I often needed to work in locations not serviced by public transport. I also found that many employers were hesitant to hire me without a car: as it was well known that it would be difficult to get to where I needed to work without my own transportation.

Simple strategy for temporarily owing a motor vehicle:

I buy a cheap, used truck or a car as soon as I want to start looking for work in the USA, I use this vehicle to transport myself around for the three or four month work season, and then I sell it right before I leave the country for the same price I paid for it. It is more like I taking out a free lease on the vehicle rather than really buying it.

I have followed this strategy four times now, and it has worked in all instances: I am usually able to sell the car for what I paid for it (give or take a few hundred dollars).

Tips on temporarily owning a vehicle:

• Try to buy a Nissan, Subaru,Toyota, or another well made foreign car. Try to stay away from an American brand automobile, as they are made to break and you stand a better chance of finding yourself stuck in the middle of a work season with a pile of junk. The object behind this strategy is having the vehicle last three to four months without loosing a lot of resale value or needing major repairs -- foreign cars tend to retain their resale value longer and I have found them to to hold together better.
  
  
• Find someone who knows about automobiles to help you buy one. If you don't have such a person, then study a little online about what warning signs to look for when considering a purchase of a used car. You want to get a vehicle that stands the best chance of getting through the season intact and ready to resell.
  
  
• Buy the cheapest car you can that still runs decently. Conversely, you can by a $600 piece of crap that retains its inspection stickers for the length of time you want to use it, and then sell if for a penance or junk it when you're finished.
  
  
• Change the oil immediately.
  
  
• Put it back up for sale a month before you plan on leaving the country.
  

To date, I have purchased four vehicles, have used them for only a work season (three to four months) and then sold them for what I paid for them. In this way, I have been able to transport myself to work around the USA while at the same time not losing a lot of money through keeping and maintaining a vehicle for a long period of time.

I have found that to raise enough money to travel, I have to work, to work in most parts of the USA, I need an automobile.

I do not like buying, having, using, or even selling automobiles, and if there is any way I can get by without one, I do it. If I was in a place where I could consistently find work within a ten mile radius from where I habitate, then an automobile would not be necessary: as I just ride a bicycle. If I lived in a major city that provides good public transport, then having a car would not be to my advantage. But I have rarely found myself in such ideal circumstances when trying to work in the USA. For me, having a job in the USA has always meant traveling across the continent at a moments notice, commuting 30+ miles each day, or randomly jumping between cities in search of better employment options. These circumstances have decreed that I it is often to my advantage to purchase a used automobile, keep for the work season, and then resell it before leaving the country.

Editors note: the Subaru that I am using now was a wedding gift to Chaya and I from her grandfather and has not been factored into the above equation.

Project- How to make money to travel

Car Strategy for Saving Travel Funds

Farm Work for Travel Funds

Farm Work to Make Money for Traveling --

I am in Maine in the good ol USA. I am going to take these next six months, work, and write about how to make and save money to travel the world. While Chaya is incubating Number Three and priming over the wedding, I am going to stick my hands in the dirt and rub my face in the mud:

I have landed a job on a farm.



On Joyful Village Farm.

What odd sort of hippy sounding name is this? It sounds as if this place marks the direct location of the pimple point of hippydom being squeezed up to a head. I drove out to the farm, and was relieved to find that it was located on Joyful Village Road.

"Aha, a reason behind the name."

(what sort of hippy sounding road name is this? it sounds like . . .)
----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine - July 8, 2009
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----------------

So I placed a green Dysart's truck stop hat upon my head and walked to to the farm to meet with its owner. We talked a little shop, and he showed me the lay of the land: 4 acres of fields, three other workers, three pigs, a whole mess of chickens, a herd of sheep, all organic.



$10 an hour, 30 hours a week.

"Sounds good."

I agreed to work ten hour days each Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. My interest is on saving up as much money as I can to go traveling with my family, so I have no qualms about working long hours on the weekends. Three ten hour days also provides me with four days off to work on Vagabond Journey.com, time to live out in the cabin, as well as pick up any other available projects.



I have never really done farm work before. I grew up in farm country and I worked for a little while as a gardener on a farm in Ireland, but I have never called myself a farmer. Now, it seems as if I was finally taking initiative to claim this overall wearing title.

Vagabond Wade is now a farmer...



In the glory days of mohawks, studded leather, bad music, and sneers, my friends from the big city of Rochester would refer to me and my hometown friends the "Farmer Punks." Now, I must state that this one time misnomer has been vindicated: I am now a farmer.



Planting words into computer screens has not yet proved a very lucrative occupation, perhaps planting seeds into the earth will harvest a little more green for my pockets. I need to make my travel funds somehow.

"How to save money for traveling?"

"By any means necessary."




This travelogue entry is part of a project that shows how a person from a developed country can make enough money to travel the world for a year and a half from six months of saving. Follow the below link to read transmissions from the rest of the project.

Project - How to make money to travel the world

Farm Work for Travel Funds

Wasted Morning with Wordpress

For approximately a half hour this morning I had this travelogue on Wordpress.

Good going.

No problems.

Everything went smoothly. I simply published an index page with Wordpress to the same address as this travelogue with the attempt of leaving all of the Blogger generated pages right where they were -- without altering anything.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine USA - July 8, 2009
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----------------

This would work out fine, as I do most of the navigation for this travelogue manually with self generated index pages (directory, by world region, and year).

I stood in a position where I could take up the line with Wordpress that was laid down with Blogger.

Except . . .

I could not find a theme worth using. I could not find a theme that I liked even remotely as much as the one that I created through the Blogger publishing platform.

The page that you are reading now started out as a simple two column Minima template that I massacred, buggered, and mutated to be exactly what I want it to be.

I could not find a Wordpress theme that could match my preferences. Most of them just look plain stupid. I run the Arras theme for the homepage, travel help, and Feature stories parts of Vagabond Journey.com, and this is what I tried to use for the travelogue . . . but it just did not seem right.

The problems that I am having with Blogger are "known issues" and I will wait out a month for them to fix them. Until then, I will be searching for an appropriate theme.

I can now begin publishing with Wordpress at the touch of a button.

I really wish that I could just use the template that I currently use of this traveloge with Wordpress . . .

Looking for a path through the woods.

Repairing Cabin in Maine Woods

Repairing Cabin in Maine Woods --

#6 on the List of What Needs to Be Done 2009:

Remove collapsed roof from the screen porch and rebuild entirely

• Largest project of this summer, the roof of the back porch had collapsed and needs to be removed and potentially rebuilt. The floorboards to this porch also need to be gutted out and replaced.
• Unessential to the functioning of the main cabin area, and, after the broken roof is removed, may be put off until the following season.

----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine USA - July 7, 2009
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----------------

Chaya and I had previously cleaned and scrubbed the cabin to its bones, gotten rid of anything broken, crap-laden, or otherwise in the way, and were set to move right in.

It was now high time to fix the collapsed screen porch on the cabin.

This was to be one of the biggest tasks of the 2009 season of living in the Maine woods, so I took advantage of the fact that my father -- a naturally born handyman -- happened to be in Maine for my wedding.

And, as I am a not-so-naturally-born-handyman, I enticed my family to go out to cabin with the sinister hope of putting my father to work.

They took the bait.

The day after the wedding my family and a few friends all packed into two large vehicles and drove out to the north Maine woods.
---------

After a quick showing of the one room cabin to my family, I turned to my father and muttered a brief "come out here and take a look at this."

I showed him the collapsed room that sat in a disjointed pile adjacent to the main cabin structure. Half of the roof still hung precariously off of the side of the cabin while half of it had already crumbled to the earth. I thought that it would take a small team of men to deconstruct this porch. I thought wrong.

The deconstruction of the screen porch

The situation: a collapsed screen porch next to the cabin



My father inspects the situation



He wiggles it a little . . .



. . . and then tears it down with his bare hands



No situation, no more -- we can now use our backdoor



The once problematic screen porch is now only a broken down mass of tinder



I watched as the destructive carnage commenced. I tried hard to find space to help my father work, but found myself far more useful out of the way. My father tore the old roof limb from limb and then knocked it all down with a couple big tugs. Sometimes, I was able to sneak in - like a mongoose on a carcass - and remove a small chunk of wood or a useless scrap of screen or two . . .

But, for the most part, I watched as my father quickly grabbed each piece of wood and then ripped it apart with such rhythm and speed that I could not fathom how he was not cutting his hands to shreds on the hundreds of nails that suck out of all sides of the boards.

"How to you keep from cutting your hands on all the nails?" I finally asked.

"I watch where I put my hands," my father answered simply.

He then left me to ponder this as he tore off another chunk from the roof with careless seeming hast.

I suppose fathers should always amaze their sons. I am nearing 30 years old, I am married, I have traveled through more than 45 countries on 5 continents, I have biked clear across nations, I have walked for hundreds of miles, I have been arrested, jailed, beaten, lived in a monastery, climbed mountains in the Andes, hiked through the Himalaya, learned to speak Chinese, and hitchhiked across China, but I have never gotten over the amazement that I hold for my father.

As the little boy Freud who compares swords with his pops, I know that I will always come up a little short. But I know that this is how all men should feel about their fathers.

---------
This season in the Maine woods is for tearing down and cleaning up, next season should be for building back up.

Additional Repairs



Removing the collapsed roof from the side of the cabin left a small opening between the back door and its frame. To fix this, my father and I grabbed a two by four from the newly formed scrap pile and cut it down and nailed it to the door frame.

No opening, no more.



Cabin in the Maine Woods project

1. Cabin in the Maine Woods Introduction
2. Initial Inspection of Cabin — What needs to be done?
3. Cleaning Cabin

Repairing Cabin in Maine Woods

Blogger to Wordpress

I went through the process of migrating the Travel Guide blog to Wordpress from Blogger. It worked successfully save for a single incongruance that will prevent me from moving this travelogue over to Wordpress.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine USA - July 7, 2009
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----------------

To migrate a self-hosted Blogger blog over to Wordpress I basically followed the instructions on 12 Steps to Convert Your Blogger Blog to Wordpress

It worked, except for the simple fact that Blogger single page url address end with a .html file title, whereas Wordpress operates in .php. This .html suffix at the end of each page was lost in the migration.

This means that all of the preexisting links going to the individual pages on the Travel Guide site would be broken. So I switched everything back to how it was.

Can't do it. Oh well . . . it was a good try.

I may publish a new Wordpress instillation over the /travelogue index page while leaving all of the other entries intact. . . or I just may forget about this all together and just wait for Blogger to fix their problems.

Moving Blogger Blog to Wordpress

This Travelogue and a not so active travel guide are the only parts of Vagabond Journey.com that are still published using Blogger technology. I publish both of these blogs to my own server -- I don't use the blogspot.com server -- and this system has always been a little clunky.

I like Blogger, I like the way this travelogue looks and functions . . . but it just does not work.

For the past month I have been struggling with the problem of trying to update the template on older pages. There are 880 entries on this travelogue, and I can only make template changes on roughly 10% of them. Even new comments on older pages do not show up.

I put up with this problem for over a month. It is a Blogger problem, as the information that I publish is sent from my computer through Blogger and on to my server. My server is fine. My computer is fine. It is the Blogger middleman that is not functioning properly. I need to be able to update old pages in bulk. This was once done automatically by pushing a button titled, "republish entire blog."

This worked fine (or almost fine) for over a year. Now it has conked out. Perhaps this travelogue is too large to republish in full?

I don't know.

But I have been turning over some rocks in search of some answers . . . and have found none.

Now, it has come to my attention that new comments on recently published pages are not publishing.

This is a little too much. If a reader is going to take the time to comment, then these comments must be published. I know that I would be pissed if I put a good chunk of my time into writing a comment on someone else's blog just to have it mysteriously dissappear.

Blogger is designed to be run off of the Blogspot servers -- and it runs well if you publish to blogspot.com. It is my impression that the system only grudgingly allows for publishing on independent servers, and not a lot of resources are put into making this type of publishing run smoothly. In effect, Blogger has fallen way behind the times.

Wordpress and other blogging platforms are designed for publishing on independent servers -- which is essential to run a professional site -- and they are running fast into the future, ever advancing and engineering better blogging tools.

Blogger is behind the times. This is a shame, as Blogger is otherwise excellent.

Tonight -- July 7, 2009 -- the Vagabond Journey travelogue will attempt to completely migrate over to Wordpress. For any business to remain competative, they need to constantly morph themselves to mirror their times and context.

Turkey Holy Sites Photos

Turkey Holy Sites Photographs

Sanliurfa, Turkey

Holy Sites Sanliurfa, Turkey

The Great Mosque and Abraham's Cave in Sanliurfa, Turkey

Mardin/ Midyat/ Hasankeyf

Travels in Southeastern Turkey

Midyat, Hasankeyf and the Euphrates River

Turkey Travel Photos

Vagabond Wedding

THE WEDDING DAY --

“You have to be mysterious,” my mother instructed me on the the etiquette of a groom, “you have to keep your bride in suspense about whether you are going to show up or not.”

So I sat - mysteriously - in Bangor, wearing a t-shirt and ratty jeans as the rest of the souped up wedding procession and guests drove out to Trenton. Chaya and I were to be married on this day – June 28^th – at her grandfather's home on the coast of Maine.

It was the morning of my wedding day. The morning of the only day in a person's life that has the adjective “big” attached to it.

My Big Day.

My mother, full sized sister, little Chinese sister, my big headed brother in law, and nice and nephew hustled and bustled through the morning and drove out to the coast. Myself and my father sat in the Bangor apartment drinking coffee and talking about anything other than weddings. It was the perfect sort of morning. I had a big plate of eggs sitting in front of me, and I tried to force them into a gut that I pretended was not clenched shut in nervous anticipation.

No matter how hard I tried to be cool, I could not shake the apprehension. I suppose this comes with an impending marriage. I thought of what a good story it would be to run away, but knew that it would be a far better story to have Chaya as my wife.

I only had to make it through this one day.
----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, ME - July 2009
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The wedding guests began arriving a few days before. My family got in from Western New York in the middle of the previous week. Life has been a little crazy and very good every since. I did not dare try to jump on the computer during this time -- my mother would have sank her fangs into me if I even shot a glance in the direction of my great beast of solitary time pass. My Asus Eee PC sat lonely in the command center, enjoying its vacation.

Glow bowling in Maine

"I can't believe that all of these people have traveled all this way for us," I proclaimed to Chaya the night before the wedding at our bachelor/ baccalaureate party. We went to a bowling ally for Mini Glow Bowling. Mini Glow Bowling turned out to be exactly what it sounds like: bowling mini balls at mini pins in the dark, with glow sticks tied around your arms and legs.

It must be a Maine thing.

I spoke words of disbelief as I stared out over the crowd of people who traveled from all stretches of North America for our wedding. They had glow sticks tied all over their bodies and they kept taking pictures of me.

Chaya and I made all of these people travel. All of these people transported themselves thousands of miles as the result of a great whim of love and passion that bursted open on a mountain top in Jordan.

Even though I was drinking beer, I found this fact incredibly sobering.

I believe "wow" was the most articulate expression that I could mutter. The small little snowball that Chaya and I began rolling in Petra had grown into an abominable snowman that took on a life of its own. We were doing this, our wedding was for real -- a monster that we no longer had any control over.

It is funny how humans need to have facts, speculations, and memories confirmed by other humans to make them real. I do not know how many times I have witnessed a stupid statement mutated into truth just because some jerk agreed with it. People arriving in Maine for our wedding likewise turned the proposed marriage into reality.

We were really getting married.

Chaya and I stood back and watched our friends and family Glow Bowling. I suppose people still like me. Not a bad thing to know. But I must acknowledge the possibility that my continuous proximity to cheerful Chaya perhaps makes me appear a little more likable than I really am.
---------

My father and I eventually changed out of our well worn clothes and put on our wedding gear. My father was in a button up shirt, business man pants, and slick shoes. I dressed in my journalism suit, which would serve as the smokescreen for the antique tuxedo that I planned to strut out in for the actual wedding.

I read through the wedding plans that Chaya and I had constructed a few days before, and was taken by surprise: I had a ton of lines to recite, complete with a Hebrew prayer. For some odd reason I had not previously found value in rehearsing all of this.

I think that I am a wise man. Well, until I am on the road to my wedding with no knowledge of the lines and prayers I will soon have to recite in front of the family that I will soon be a part of. Coolness, clearly, can only go so far. Cucumber Wade was no longer as cool as a cucumber. He was panicking (coolly panicking, of course).

I inserted a cheat sheet of my nuptial lines in my pocket and studied hard on the ride out to the Bangor airport. I did not want to forget my own vows before I was to proclaim them.

We drove to the airport and picked up Erik the Pilot – my best man. We began driving out to my wedding. I tried hard to act cool about it all.

“Yeah, I'm getting married. Did you see the Stanley Cup finals . . .”

I was not cool about it.

Erik the Pilot -- the best man -- before the wedding

We drove by a hitchhiker holding a sign that said “Bar Harbor”:

“Hey, that hitchhiker is going to your wedding,” Erik the Pilot joked from the back seat.

I looked a little closer – that hitchhiker was going to my wedding.

“Stop, stop, stop!” I yelled in surprise. “I know that guy, he is going to the wedding!”

We picked up the hitchhiker. It was one of Chaya's traveling friends, on the long road to our wedding.

----------------
I heard the wedding guests chanting “Siman Tov, Mazel Tov,” (“Cinnamon Toast, Muffin Top” for the gentiles) on the cliff above. They were all standing up and stomping their feet in expectation of the groom and bride's entry upon the marriage stage. The stage was a seaside deck that looked over a cliff that was connected to the rear of Chaya's grandfather's home in Trenton, Maine.

I am the groom.

I am standing on the rocky shore of the Atlantic ocean below the cliff, out of sight of the wedding party. I am sitting on a rock with my mother and father. It is raining and my mother is trying hard to give me the impression that she is not fretting about the fact that her sharp, new wedding dress is getting spotted with rain drops.

The entry of the groom from the foot of the cliff was to be a great surprise.

I tried hard to light my pipe with a match in the strong sea breeze and sideways shooting rain. Somehow I managed.

It was now time to go on. I stood up from my place on the rock, hugged my parents for the last time as a single man, and began my accent of the steps that lead to the top of the cliff. My father lead the way, and my mother hung on to me, arm in arm.

I was wearing an antique tuxedo, a bow tie, a top hat, had a ram's horn stuffed immaculately into my belt, and a funny looking wig plopped over my otherwise bald head.

I figured that I needed some sort of special surprise to usurp the otherwise prim and prompt appearance of my dress. I could only hope that my bride would not take my humorous jest for treason, throw down her bouquet, and run in the opposite direction. I stood on the verge of a risk that could potentially burn down the wedding, but it was one I that found worth taking.

I had a deep suspicion that my bride would expect nothing less.

The wig looked remarkably like the hair that I sported as a 15 year old . . . well, before I accidentally lit it on fire trying to smoke marijuana out of a folded up Chi-Chi's place mat in Erik the Pilot's garage. The Pilot was right there to save me though -- I still remember the look on his face as he beat me on top of the head trying to stifle the flames -- but my long, beautiful head of hair was sizzled. The wig was the perfect reparation for the misdeeds of my adolescence. It is only a pity that this flash of nostalgia had to come out on my wedding day.

I bought the wig at the party store amongst a wave of laughs and giggles from my father and Chaya's brother, and an oath of secrecy was taken that we would not mention it to the more sensible sects of the wedding party.

It was a special surprise after all -- even baldos should have hair on their wedding days.

I was nervously puffing at the meerschaum pipe that Chaya bought for me in Turkey as we climbed the stairs to the top of the cliff. My father lead the way and my mother walked at my side.

In a moment, I was on -- standing proudly in front of a crowd of people whose job it was to look at me. I was the show. I tried to cast my gaze upon some familiar faces in my search for bearing. I tried hard to act cool. I rested my hands upon my hips and took a few last puffs on my pipe. I was nervous.

I then removed the ram horn shofar from my belt and turned towards the sea. Calling out my bride with this horn was her signal to join me on the wedding stage. I put the ram horn to my lips just as my best man, Erik the Pilot, whispered a well timed “oh no.”

In the days leading up to the wedding I had been practicing my shofar blowing techniques diligently, and had just mastered it in the empty moments of that morning.

With my best man's lack of faith in my shofar blowing ability, my confidence withered. At his "oh no," I choked. A windy farting sound emitted from the ram horn, and I hastily halted the disaster of this errant blow by passing the instrument over to Erik the Pilot. He proved to be a superior shofar blower.

He blew out a loud bellow from the horn and called out my bride for me. I suppose this is what best men are for.

At this signal, the crowd broke out their kazoos and took up the tune of “here comes the bride." The kazoo music was good enough to lure the bride from her lyre, and she stepped out onto the wedding stage from her hidden location in the adjoined house.

There she was -- My Bride.

She was beautiful.

She was wearing a fake mustache.

Chaya looked at me, I looked at her -- [a moment of suspense] -- then she cracked at smile at my hair. I laughed at her mustache. The crowd laughed at both of us.

We had clearly met each other's match: between her fake mustache and my wig we found our gags neutralized. I raised Chaya's veil and removed her mustache. Chaya took off my top hat and removed my wig.

And with my little Chinese sister crying loudly about being cold, and my dog Sage and little nephew bringing up the wedding rings, Chaya and I were married in the rain.

I stomped the glass and kissed my bride.

After a long journey that began in Nicaragua in '06, recharged last autumn in Brooklyn, and then took us through the Balkans, Turkey, and the Middle East only to arrive frantic and pregnant in Maine . . .

Chaya and I are now man and wife.

The Ketubah was signed, the marriage license was officially stamped, and our wedding consummated by running away together arm in arm.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com is now a married man.

Waiting for my bride

Chaya waiting to be lured from her lyre by the sweet sounds of a kazoo orchestra

Vagabond Journey artist, Just Catania, with his girlfriend, Helen playing a kazoo

My mustached bride walking down the aisle to kazoo music

The unveiling

Vagabond wedding

Kissing the bride?

Breaking the glass

Becoming man and wife

Photos by Marissa the Circassian and Josh Park

Vagabond Journey engagement
Vagabond Engagement at Petra

Vagabond Wedding in Maine

How to Save Money for Travel

How to Save Money for Traveling

"It is far easier to save $20 than it is to make $20." - Andy the Hobotraveler.com.

This is the mantra of the modern traveler. Anyone who wishes to travel the world should chant this line over and over again every single day.

As I wait in the USA for Chaya to finish cultivating Number Three, I am publishing a defacto guide of how an aspiring traveler could save enough money to comfortably travel the world.

How to Make Money to Travel the World Project

If you read the entries from this project throughout the summer and try to follow many of their recommendations, I guarantee that you will be able to save enough money to travel the world for at least 18 months from 6 months of preparation.
----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine- July 5, 2009
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----------------

I am keeping this path very general -- I am trying to sidestep any work that requires specialized knowledge or any prerequisites (such as education or prior work experience) to obtain. I am a professional archaeologist and an experienced copy editor, but I will try to stay way from these professions, as they often required a touch of education and/ or prior experience to easily get into.

I will try to only work jobs that almost any high school kid can do. But this is only my attempt, and not an iron clad rule. Most people do possess specific work skills that enable them to access specific realms of employment that greenhorns would not have access to, so I do not feel as if it would absolutely null and void the project if at some point in the summer I dip into the shallow resources my university education provides for me.

So far during this project I have worked as a gardener, a child care provider, a farmer, a webmaster, and a research assistant for a world renown geographer. It is my impression that most of this work (besides the research assistant job) does not require any special set of training. I want the mile markers on this road to be ones that almost anybody who can work freely in a developed country could follow. It is easy for a doctor to save up money to travel; it is much more difficult for a young kid fresh out of high school or college. To really do this project effectively -- to really lay out a path that other aspiring travelers can follow -- I need to scrub the bottom of the barrel of the employment bucket and wallow in the muck of the general laborer.

Then, I can show how almost anyone from a developed country could make enough money to travel the world.

I do not know if I can really save up the specified amount of money from doing this sort of work, but it is this precariousness itself that makes this project a PROJECT. If I do save up the specified $6,000 by October, I will call this project a success, and will only chuckle when I hear the excuse, "I don't have the money to travel."

Ultimately, I want to put together a running index of pages that an aspiring traveler could browse through to find tips and suggestions about how they can obtain the resources to travel long term off of a 6 month term of working hard and living frugally.

As of the beginning of July, I have so far saved $2,135.

Saving money for traveling is a two part endeavor:

1. You have to make the money.
2. Then you have to not spend it.
   

I am not sure which is more difficult. My observations have decreed that lots of people make lots of money. Almost ever person that I know in the USA makes more money than I do, but very few are able to not spend it. The flip side of this "how to make money to travel project" is about how to keep the funds that you earn for traveling.



Traveling -- and, consequently, preparing for travel -- is a lifestyle. It is not the only lifestyle in the world, to be sure, and it is probably not the best lifestyle for most people, but this is the lifestyle that this travelogue is focused around. Therefore, I generally only publish information about the traveling life. I do not want to feign pompousness by implying that traveling is the best way to live, for I know that it probably isn't.

Any lifestyle requires sacrifices:

To be a doctor you need to go through a decade of difficult study, be on call 24 hours a day, and be responsible for the very life of your patients.

To travel the world you have to find ways to not spend much money, sleep in uncomfortable beds, eat bad food, often forgo hanging out with friends when it requires spending money, being away from your family, and having a very short list of needs and wants.

I have not met many people willing to fill either of these criteria, and this is alright. As my father use to say, "different strokes for different folks." But I do know that if you want to travel, obtaining the means to do so must be the focus of your attention AT ALL TIMES. You cannot party on the weekends and expect to save money to travel; you cannot spend $5 on a pack of cigarettes ever day and expect to have the means to go traveling; you cannot go out to dinner every other night AND save up travel funds.

The traveling lifestyle is mutually exclusive to many other ways of life.

(well, unless you make a lot of money)

Traveling begins before you leave home

It is my impression that traveling and preparing for travel demands a change in lifestyle. Once you decide that you want to travel, you are a traveler, and cannot enjoy all of the fruits of the sedentary life. Being excessively frugal at home is training for the vagabond life -- learning how to save money at every turn begins long before you start your journey.

Saving money for traveling can be equated to running a marathon. A long distance runner is not going to sit down in the shade and have a nice long rest if he wants to win the race. Likewise, saving money for travel is one long marathon: you work your ass off for six months and devoid yourself of any costly enjoyments so that you can win up the funds to travel the world.

I bet it sucks to run a marathon.

I know it sucks trying to save money to travel.

If you live in a tent in your friend's backyard, stay away from bars, don't eat at restaurants, live on rice and beans and chicken and noodles, sell your car and commute with a bicycle, cancel your cabal TV subscription, internet, and cell phone, shop in thrift stores for clothes, and DON"T BUY ANYTHING THAT YOU WILL NOT CROAK WITHOUT then I say that you will make a mighty fine traveler.


Ride a bike to save money to travel

Remember this: $10 is a full day of travel in most countries.

Travel Tip: Measure expenses not in monetary digits but by days of travel. How many days of travel will it cost you to eat out tonight with your friends?

$12 = 1.2 days of traveling in a foreign country.

How many new places could you have experienced with the money you just passed over to that bartender? Is going to that concert really worth a week of wandering the world? Is having that cappuccino double mocha latte shit sludge with a coworker each day with lunch really worth a half day of traveling in India?

Maybe it is? I don't know. But if you want to travel, it is my impression that you have to say "no" to spending money.

This is what I do. Every day I measure each potential expense in terms of how many days of travel it will cost me. "Is this really worth X days of traveling," I ask myself. I usually answer this question in the negative, and, likewise, I usually have enough money to travel.

Perhaps life is a continual balancing act of decisions. If you buy a bag of cheesy poofs, a can of pop, and a pack of cigarettes each day as you drive home from work and then complain about not having enough money to travel, then it is my impression that you made your decision: you would rather have cheesy poofs, pop, and cigarettes rather than traveling the world. And this is alright.

----------------
I can remember back in the winter of '05 how my best friend, Erik the Pilot, was trying to save up money to go traveling in Costa Rica. We were browsing through a Barnes and Nobel and talking about how he thought he would not have enough money for the trip. I then followed him into the cafe section of the store and stood in line with him for a moment. He told me that he was hungry. I asked him what he was going to buy.

"A sandwich."

The sandwich carried a $7 price tag. Seven dollars is almost a full day of travel in Costa Rica. I chided Erik about this and lectured him about how saving money for traveling meant that he could not buy a $7 sandwich every time he was hungry.

"Seven dollars is not going to get me to Costa Rica," he responded while rolling his eyes.

"No, but seven dollars is almost a full day that you could otherwise have there on the beach," I replied."Do you really want to eat up a full day of Costa Rica travel in the five minutes that it will take to dispose of that sandwich?"

He looked at me guiltily.

"Why don't you just go home and eat a sandwich at your mom's house for free?" I continued.

This is what he did.

Erik the Pilot went to Costa Rica because he wanted to travel more than eating seven dollar sandwiches.
---------------

These tips on how to save money to travel are based on my experience. It is my experience that saving money is rarely fun, but it is necessary if you want to travel. It sucks staying at home when your friends are going out to a concert; it sucks to live for three months in a tent because you don't want to pay rent; working hard at crappy jobs always sucks; it sucks to say "I can't spend that much money" a dozen times a day.

There is a lee side to the traveling life, and it can be found on the slippery slope of saving money. But I know that each dollar that I save is a dollar that is going to get me one step closer to the farthest horizon.

With this knowledge, saving money for traveling becomes more than worth the sacrifice. A traveler will do anything to travel another day . . .

I have found that there is a certain mindset that goes along with the traveling lifestyle, and I know that if I want to continue traveling, I must stay in this mindset every stinking day:

"It is far easier to save $20 than it is to make $20."

"Is buying this thing worth X days of traveling?"

"Don't buy anything that you will not croak without."


Live in a tent to save money to travel

How to save money to travel project

• How to make Money to Travel
• Free Accommodation is the first step to saving travel funds

How to Save Money for Traveling

Harran Turkey Photos

The following photos were taken in the ancient city of Harran, Turkey in the spring of 2009.

Harran Turkey Ancient City

Harran Turkey Beehive Houses

Harran Turkey University Ruins

Harran Turkey Ruins and People

Harran and Sanliurfa Southeastern Turkey

Travelogue entries from Harran
Harran Ancient City

Photos from Harran Turkey

Buffer for Travelogue

At the end of my travels through the Middle East I found myself completely waterlogged with material to publish on the travelogue. I happenstancially began backdating my entries, and realized that I liked doing so.

For a long time I always tried to published events immediately after they occurred. This is difficult to do on the Road, but, through a good deal of diligence, I managed. But as my note taking procedure and information gathering techniques improved, I began amassing more information than what I could immediately process and publish.

I became waterlogged, and my boat began to sink.

Sometimes in travel -- sometimes in life -- there are periods of rapid stimulation and growth, and periods of reflection. I have realized that if I continue publishing events and observations as close as possible to the date of their occurrence, then there is the potential of missing much of the reflective aspects that they could otherwise have. If I were to allow a buffer of time to elapse between the experience and its publication, I found that I can write thicker.

The writers of travel books have one key advantage over travelogue writers: the advantage of time. They are able to experience events, people, places and then processes them slowly, find their context, and add an additional sheen of fiction that makes their stories worth reading.

This travelogue is written in a story format. This is a true story, though one that borrows without shame a little of Chatwin's "fictional processes."

I can remember asking an old traveler in the Peruvian Amazon in '01 if he wrote of his travels. He said something to the effect of:

"No, it is not very interesting to write 'I went here, did this, then went there, did that, then went to bed, then woke up, then when here, and then, and then, and then.'"

He is correct. This is not very interesting.

The closer to an actual event you write a final draft, the more it has the potential of sounding like an itinerary.

Humans have the ability to see the world in the form of a story. We have the ability to observe and compile masses of information, sleuth the important elements off of the top, and then repackage it into a tale. If a little time elapses between an event and the moment it is crystallized into a story, the better potential it has for being fatter.

There is a reason why the fish that got away continues to get bigger in direct proportion to how many times the tale is told.

The longer you stir the milk, the denser the cream will be at the top.



I take notes all day long wherever I am. I can be seen with a mini pencil stuck behind an ear and a pad of paper in my back pocket at all times. I write down events, experiences, thoughts, dialogue, mnemonic jottings. I often do not intend to do anything in particular with most of these notes -- and most of the time I don't -- but having them means that I have them for potential use.

A traveler's notes are like intersections on a path: you will not take every intersection that you come upon, but by stopping for a moment and looking to where it leads often provides a broader impression of where you are going.

Notes have the tendency of sticking themselves together like the pages of a porno mag. One set of notes combine with another, which is beefed up through memory before being combine with more notes. You can never know the context that a random jotting could eventually end up in.

If I am able to utilized the notes, memories, and photos of a larger block of time, then the raw materials for constructing a story greatly increases. It was by accident that I began adding a buffer time between the occurrence of events and their publication in the travelogue, but I really like the advantages of doing so.

Continuously publishing events as they occur is also a rigorous occupation. Sometimes the wave of living and traveling does not wait for the introspection necessary to construct a tale. To step off of this wave in order to write and publish is step out of rhythm with the tale that you not only intend to weave but to live.

The only problem with publishing the travelogue with a one week buffer comes when events have concrete dates. I got married on June 28th -- I want this day marked in the travelogue, but the steady stream of narrative means that I was publishing the events of June 21st at the time I was saying my vows. This is awkward.

Renigging on a one week buffer in order to mark the date of my marriage without publishing the events that lead up to it is to leave a jagged narrative. This is awkward. Now, everyone knows that I am a married man, but this marriage may have come as a surprise, as the events happened before I could publish anything about them.

This is a major drawback to having a buffer, though one that can be worked through by being transparent.

A note of transparency: the Vagabond Journey Travelogue is published with a buffer. The events written herein have actually occurred one to two weeks before they are published into stories.

I take defacto notes in the moment, but these are notes are then dumped into a pile on my desk to be processed . . . later.

Note to readers -- the date that is written in the author bio box is close to the actual date of the physical events that constitute the travelogue entry.

Just wanted to let you know.

Walk Slow,

Wade

Vagabond Journey to a Wedding

"Sign your name on the dotted line," spoke a plump sorta lady behind a window in the Bangor City Hall.

I signed my name down on the specified line. I was curious to find out if the lady behind the counter would really believe that my signature was just a squiggly line. I thought it a better move to just scrawl a knot of pen lines down 0n the page and act cool about it than to take the time to carefully construct the same style signature that I signed into my passport in 2000.

I could not sign my name as I did 10 years ago even if I had hours at my disposal.

The lady took both documents and did not seem to care that my signature of "Wade P. Shepard" completely contorted itself into "Wahjfodaueaon" in the intervening nine years. She also did not seem to care that I look absolutely nothing like the photo of the cleanly shaved little boy with a good Florida tan and a full head of hair which still represented the bearer of the passport.

The form read "License and Certificate of Marriage" across the top, and this was precisely what it was.

I am getting married this Sunday, June 28th.
----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine- June 24, 2009 <-- Note the date
Ask Travel Questions
----------------

Practice for the married life

"Wade, can you go out and clean the car before people get here for the wedding," spoke Chaya.

"No, I don't want to clean out the car," spoke Wade

The car in question is full of mud and shit (literally: shit) from Wade's previous 6 days of farm work. Wade shovels out pig pens and chicken coups, weeds muddy fields, and plants crops all day long. This dirt, shit, and mud has a way of attaching itself to Wade's big rubber boots, pants, and jacket, and subsequntly migrating all over the interior of his Subaru.

The car in question is full of mud and shit (literally: shit) and Chaya wants it cleaned before the wedding. But Wade wants to continue working on the computer and not clean out the shit (literally: shit) that is all over the car.

Wade knows that he is going to lose. Wade knows that he is going to clean the car, but he is putting up an adolesent wall of resistance to Chaya's good sense.

"Wade, I really want the car cleaned before the wedding, because we are going to have to drive people around and put food in it," Chaya continues.

"Why can't they just take another car?" Wade replied.

Chaya tried to impart basic logic through a stare, but Wade refused to acknowledge it. It seems to be common sense that no wedding guest would want to get shit all over their clothes, but, after working 10 hours doing farmwork, sense did not make much sense to Wade.

"Nobody is going to need our car," he continued, "and if they do, we can just put a tarp over the dirt. I don't want to clean out car just to get it shitty again the first day I go back to work."

"Ok, then I will go clean the car if you are not going to do it."

"You can't clean the car, you're seven months pregnant."

"THEN YOU GO DO IT!"

Wade and Chaya were clearly having a married person squabble.

I suppose they were just trying to get some practice in for life after the big day.

"I don't understand what cleaning the car has to do with the wedding," Wade scoffed as he torn the vacuum cleaner out of a closet and made for the parked car in the driveway.

"Sign your name on the dotted line . . ."

Wade vented and fumed as he torn the foot mats out of the driver's side of the Subaru. There were smeared shits all over it from an assortment of farm animals but Wade grabbed it with a bare hand undaunted: farm work provokes immunity to the standard mammalian aversion to feces. Wade smacked the mat down hard upon the paved driveway, and then roughly vacuumed up all of the mud, little poop chunks, misplaced pocket change, nose boogied tissue paper, crumbs, dirt, weird pieces of plastic wrappings, and all the other sorts of odd materials that have a tendency of taking over the interior flooring of an automobile.

Throughout all of this, Wade was pouting, stomping, and -- as some could be justified in saying -- throwing a hissy fit. He then smashed something with the butt end of the vacuum cleaner (but has since forgotten what it was that he smashed). Working 6o hours in the past 7 days just to come home and clean the car made Wade very grumpy.

Wade wanted to drink beer and publish travelogue entries before all of the wedding guest arrived, not clean poop.

He took it out on the vacuum cleaner.

As he did so, he thought of the Kelty backpack that still sat almost fully loaded on his bedroom floor . . . "I had the perfect life and then I . . ." he began muttering to himself before he happened to look up and see Chaya's father standing over him.

He was smiling. He asked Wade what he was doing.

"What are you doing Wade?" he asked with honest innocence.

Wade, not thinking that it would be wise to revel his angst ridden plan, said that he was cleaning the car. This sounded like a benign enough explanation of what was going on.

Chaya's father then laughed at the bumps that protruded out from all over Wade's bald head.

"The black flies were bad today on the farm," Wade explained, though he did go into explaining that he found it easier to just allow the flies to suck his blood than swatting at them all day long. Wade came out of the fiasco looking like some sort of mumpy circus geek.

Chaya's father then laughed a little, and mumpy headed Wade went back to pouting, plotting escapes, and cleaning the car.

"All I want to do is write words . . .[mumble, mumble] [mutter, mutter] . . and now I am shoveling shit all day long so that I will have enough money to be a frigging . . . [mumble, mumble] [mutter, mutter].

Weeks of wedding organizing and work has diverted his attention from his writing.

"You failed, you failed," a chorus of thought taunted him, "I told you that you could not make enough money writing . . . now you are shoveling shit. Ha! I told you! I told you! Get use to it, this is the road you are on from here on out."

"This is how it all begins," the inner voice continued, "you put off writing for one day because you are too tired from working 12 hours, then you put it off for another day because you have to clean the house, then you put it off for a third day to get married, then a forth day to take care of the baby, and then on the fifth day you are 60 years old with only a fallow stack of your old traveling notebooks, unfulfilled expectations, and the ruins of an outdated website to show for an unrequited life."

So this is how people grow old.

Wade then ripped out a bag of old clothes out of the car and smashed it down upon the driveway. It only smushed and bounced a little, and did not provide the catharsis of destruction he was hoping for. He then remembered a telephone conversation with a member of his extended family.

"Once you get married and have that baby, you are done, there will be no more going abroad for your ass, you are done, stuck right here, there will be no more traveling for you!"

Fear and apprehension mixed in with the usual bout of fatigue derived crankiness. The thought of the constantly provisioned traveling pack on his bedroom floor returned to his mind, and a freshly cut paycheck rubbed warm between his fingers.

"Sign your name on the dotted line . . ."

"Passport -- check; boots -- freshly cleaned; clothes -- just washed; money -- enough to get to South America. . ."

This travel prep was soon interrupted by Chaya's mother, who just returned from a day of work.

"Wow, what are you doing?" she asked cheerfully.

"Cleaning out the car," Wade respo0nded sheepishly. He hoped that the sprawled out vacuum cleaner in the driveway at his feet and the dirty rag in his hand would be enough smoke screen to float his alibi.

"When you get done here, I have another car for ya!" Chaya's mother spoke with a big laugh.

The smokescreen was apparently thick enough.

Wade then realized that he needed to go somewhere else to plot his underhanded maneuvers. The driveway of Chaya's family home was obviously too cheerful of a place for constructing the itinerary of a run away groom. Wade slunk into the house.

He opened the door to his apartment to find Chaya standing vacantly, leaning on a broom handle. Wade's noxious plots vanished instantly -- he forgot that he even had any intentions other than wrapping Chaya in a big embrace.

"I don't care if the car is clean," Chaya quickly spoke through held back tears, "I just want this to end more than anything, I don't want you to be mad."

"No, you were right, the car should have been cleaned, I am just tired and grumpy," Wade spoke as he stared into Chaya's eyes. He felt himself smile. Sometimes even a vagabond knows that you can not rightly shuttle wedding guest around in a car whose seats are smeared with shit.

"I am sorry for making you go out and clean it. I know that you are tired from working all week. I am just frustrated with all the things that have to get done before the wedding," Chaya explained.

A big kiss and two smiles lit the room. Wade picked up a broom rather than his traveling pack, and headed over to face a dirty living room floor rather than the lonely Road.

Sometimes love means standing still when your feet tell you to move.

Wade looked over at Number Three, bursting out of the midsection of the woman who would soon be his wife. He though that the baby belly looked like an octopus' bulbous head flaccidly protruding out from its legs, and laughed at the memory of the Petra camel who tried to bite it.

This is good, he thought to himself. This is real good.

He knew that the Road which lead him to Chaya was only the beginning. Never before had he trod such a sure footed trail.

"Sign your name on the dotted line . . ."





Vagabond Journey to a Wedding

Travelogue to resume regular publication

Weddings are busy times. Having family with me is fun. Working takes up a lot of time.

Travelogue will resume regular publication tomorrow.

Apologies for the delay.

----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine USA - July 1 , 2009
Ask Travel Questions
----------------

Runaway Travelogue

My friend Caitlin wrote the following on her travelogue:

"Now that I’m actually traveling, it’s a lot harder. I’m moving around from place to place, having fun, and it’s hard to convince myself and my traveling companions that it’s time for an internet break." - Travel Blogging More Difficult than I Expected

She is correct: to write a daily travelogue takes a constant concerted effort and a segmented day that allows for plenty of solitude with a computer, thoughts, and notebooks.

I love the work of publishing an online daily travelogue, but sometimes -- once a year or so -- it slips away from me.

I am now flapping my arms in a tidal wave and trying hard not to be dragged too far away from shore.
----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine USA -June 30, 2009
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----------------

Weddings, Work, and Family Usurp Travelogue

The past two weeks was the first time in two years that I found myself too occupied with my physical existence to keep up with publishing and doing the work for this site. I found that I only published one full travelogue entry in more than 14 days. This was my lowest rate of published for a very long time.

The reason: I started a new job on a farm on June 18th, and my family came to Maine on June 24th, and I got married on June 28th.

I have been busy.

I worked 6 out of seven days on the farm. A day of farm work means 10 to 12 hours of weeding, taking care of livestock, and shoveling shit. Upon returning home I have been beat. Add to this wedding planning and then the arrival of my family, and my usually well planned out computer time vanished.

Stale excuses

I offered a stale excuse to an old friend about why I never return her emails a couple of days ago:

"Sorry, but email is no longer a good way to communicate with me," I began my slippery fish little spiel, "because I get at least 30 emails a day for business related to the website. I always plan on writing you long letters, but as soon as I am finished plowing through all of the website related mail, I am beat."

I knew that my words sounded incredibly lame, but I must attest that the emails that I want to write the most are usually the ones that get stuff down to the bottom of the pile. I want to take time when I write letters to my friends, but the future is a mirage that always appears to possess more time than it actually does.

This website project has gotten away from me

I want to do more work in the internet world than what the ticking clock and sun and moon world allows. My various paths have spidered out into disjointed directions, where I am prone to find myself walking too far down one at the expense of the others.

Due to other circumstances, I was not able to take care of the website business for two weeks. I am now trying hard to squiggle out of the middle of a heaping pile of work:

I have a stack of notes to write into stories.

I have tons of photos to publish.

I have mounds of unanswered mail.

I have numerous requests from publishers for permission to use my photographs.

I have a mountain of travel questions to answer.

I have a treasure trove of comments to respond to.

I would not want things any other way.

Digging myself out, a little bit at a time.

Traveling into Marriage

Going to get married. Right now.


----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, ME - June 28, 2009
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----------------

Cheap Beer Pilgrimage in Maine

Upon landing in Maine from Egypt I quickly became accustom to hearing the name "Tim" used in relative proximity to the word "beer."

I questioned this combination, and found out that there is a store in Maine called Tim's Little Big Store that sells top shelf beer for a vagabond's penance. Chaya's family is one that has a good nose for bargains -- "Metsieh!" -- and beer rarely ever seems to be purchased outside of road trips to Tim's.

"Tim's Little Big Store is a little ways out there, so we usually all go together," Chaya explained about her family's habit of making these beer pilgrimages in groups, "We can't go to Tim's alone."
----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine - June 21, 2009
Ask Travel Questions
----------------

This became a Catch-22 sort of situation: I wanted beer, though I could not bear the thought of paying full price for what I could get for half, and we could not go to Tim's until the family stock of beer ran low. I also did not feel comfortable drinking all the beer in the Chaya's parent's house all by myself in order to single handedly expedite a pilgrimage -- that would not leave an idea impression for a soon-to-be son in law.

Beer is a funny substance for a traveler. In most countries, beer is a little too expensive to purchase regularly -- I rarely ever even think about buying beer -- but sometimes in some places you can get it for next to nothing. In Mongolia, beer sells cheaper than water -- the same goes for Panama, Ecuador, and the Czech Republic. When in such places, I delight in drinking down an occasional handful of beers while ticking these words off into oblivion.

Drinking beer is enjoyable, though not so enjoyable to warrant its usual expense.

With the prospect of Tim's Little Big Store I became excited about getting a load of good beer without hearing a great big sucking sound coming from out of my pocket. I like beer. I was excited about the idea of getting beer in America without poisoning myself with Natural Ice or Pabst's. I was also curious about this mysterious Little Big Store that was able to sell beer so cheaply while every other store had to charge so much. I am not the sort of fellow who is very skilled at putting off my curiosity.

Soon, the beer supply in the collective household's of Chaya's clan began to run low, and my ears perked up one evening over dinner when the magic words, "no," "beer," and "Tim's" were spoken all together in the same verbal clause. I figured that this was my chance to act, so I volunteered Chaya and I to do the dirty work, and make the pilgrimage to the Little Big Store on our own.



We then took the family orders for beer, and the next day drove out to Old Town, Maine -- a half hour from Bangor. I was now getting down to the bottom of this mystery -- and getting some beer.

We soon arrived at the fabled "Tim's." It appeared at first to be a regular convenient store, complete will chubby little Little Leaguers selling candy bars out front. Though when we walked through the door, we befell a wide open arena of beer, wine, tobacco, coffee -- all the legal vices of America under one roof, being sold for bottom of the barrel prices.



A table was set up with single bottles of good beer spread out all over it. A select-your -own six pack carries a standard charge of $3.25. Chaya and I leafed through the sea of local and national micro brewed beers that usually sell for over $8 a six pack, and selected 70 or 80 of the best choices. It was thought that we were not only buying beer to restock the general house supply, but also for our wedding . . .

I asked the guy behind the counter how he could sell this beer for so cheap, and he explained that Tim's is one of three stores in Maine permitted to sell reclaimed beer. So when a grocery store unstocks beer because it runs too close to its expiration date, it is sent to Tim's, and sold at half price.

"Every Tuesday and Friday we get a new shipment," the guy behind the counter proceeded to tell me.

I noted these dates, and penciled them in as the potential launch windows for any future cheap beer pilgrimages to Tim's Little Big Store.

(editor's note: an overzealous groom accidentally jumped the gun and drank most of this wedding beer -- go figure)

The address of Tim's Little Big Store

157 Main St
Old Town, ME 04468
(207) 827-2885



Map of where Tim's Little Big Store is located in Old Town, ME


Chaya picking out beer for the non-pregnant members of the wedding party



Cheap Beer Pilgrimage in Maine

Baby Bottle Riot in Bangor Maine

Baby Bottle Riot in Bangor Maine

"Would you like to go to the baby bottle riot with me?" pregnant Chaya asked, as she slapped on some body armor made from halved PVC piping, the guts of old car seat cusions, and lots of duct tape.

I watched in indecision as she threw on a black hooded sweatshirt over her well armored body and masked up her face with a black bandana. She then reached for her sling shot and a sack of ball bearings and was ready to riot.

"Don't forget your tear gas goggles," I called out to her.

"Are you coming or not?" She asked me with a touch of annoyance in her voice.
----------------
Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Bangor, Maine USA- June 17, 2009
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----------------

It had been a long time since I had been in a riot. In the days of my youth, I could riot with the best of them; now, as a grown man, I had doubts as to whether I could withstand the barrage of tear gas, stampeding police horses, and the wildly swinging batons of riot cops.

But not wanting my pregnant fiance to go into battle alone, I dug out my own dusty riot gear and re-clad myself in black. I looked at myself in the mirror before walking out the door, and thought for a second that I may still possess a hint of my youthful rage.

Standing up again to fight injustice

We arrived at the pre-designated location of the riot, and found our twenty foot blow up baby bottle towering into the sky -- a standing testament to the riotousness of our mission. The organizers for this confrontation had obviously chosen the location wisely, as it was a safe distance outside of the pedestrian areas of the city. We would not want any innocent bystanders getting hurt. We also did not want the general public seeing our violent rage first hand; for the people of Bangor to find out about this confrontation the next day in the newspaper was good enough for us.

Cars drove by without looking our way, and the ones who did probably just thought that we were doing some benign business promotion for a baby food company. These people obviously did not know what they were in for. They did not know that we were rioters. Our plan was to stick it to the makers of BPA containing plastic products and, while we were at it, The Man.

Well . . . as soon as the TV news stations and newspaper reporters showed up.

So we stood around in waiting, our direct actions becoming more and more refined by the moment. The plan: wait for the media, and then riot.

At the sight of the first news camera, we called a emergency consensus meeting and distributed our secret weapons around to everyone. Now armed with signs that said "Safe Products: good for families" we huddled together in front of the giant blow up baby bottle.

The news cameramen then film us in action. Some of us smiled for the cameras, others waved, and our leaders grappled with the great beasts of oppression head on, and offered up sound bytes to the salivating reporters.

A reporter from the Bangor Daily News in a long white dress suddenly infiltrated our ranks, and began extracting statements from my fellow rioters. We tried to lock arms, we tried to stand together in unity, but the power of the white clad news reporter was far too much for our black bloc formation. We buckled under the pressure, as the reporter cut through our ranks and began interrogating my comrades. I could only watch in fear as my brothers buckled under the heavy hand of the Bangor Daily, and spoke the secrets behind the Maine Baby Bottle Alliance.

We were quickly divided and conquered.

The TV news crew and the Bangor Daily hit squad then exited the riot zone without a scratch. We laid down our arms, our signs were collected in a small pile. Regrouping around the 20 foot baby bottle, we counted heads. Everyone made it out of the battle alive.

As we stood together in the media's wake, we knew that there was no reason to continue the riot: we got on the TV news, we would be in tomorrow's paper. We stripped off our riot gear, deflated the baby bottle, and went home. The entire confrontation was over within a half hour.

It was a job well done for all the brave freedom fighters of Bangor, and the Maine Baby Bottle Alliance goes on to riot another day.

Definition of a media hoax: "A media prank is a type of media event, perpetrated by staged speeches, activities, or press releases . . ."


Rioters preparing for confrontation in Bangor


Rioter being feasted upon by the media, he fended off the attack with sound bytes


Notice that the riot was facing the news cameras head on with its back to the public -- we took measures to not attract the attention of any innocent bystanders


Baby bottle riot in Bangor


Baby Bottle Riot in Bangor Daily News

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Baby Bottle Riot in Bangor Maine