Starting on January 1st I’m going to attempt to live what Bellum calls “extreme digital nomad” life doing trans-America cycling while working remotely along the way. I have no idea if it is even going to work out and am living that same life locally (working and camping daily in my own backyard) while working it out.
Here’s the thing: this stuff is addicting to a guy like me.
There’s something really unique about honing in on the minimalist life all by itself, but when you throw in an opportunity to travel the entire world for no extra expense to discover something that has a strong appeal for a certain type of person, one who is willing to make extreme sacrifices and deeply commit to a specific lifestyle in order to make it work. It certainly isn’t for everyone. But for people with explorer in their DNA it’s to attractive to not attempt.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll laugh at myself later about all this insanity, but maybe not. I just gotta know if it can be done. If it does work, you can be damn sure I’ll write the definitive guide book about how to do it for those unsure how to begin. I’m bringing years of outdoor training from scouting, competitive endurance sports, working in bike shops, tour guiding on bikes and white-water rafts, and directing logistics of entire Russian cruises on the Volga river. Every day, I’ve been reminded a little more how much of that experience has been inside me, dormant all this time, waiting to be reactivated.
Release the Kraken.
I have neither the computer, time, or energy to do any tech content while living and working remotely from my bike crossing America in the Winter. However, I will be able to field questions and have conversations while doing outdoor IRL streams.
I’ll be first headed to Raleigh from Mooresville. Then I’ll connect with the Atlantic Coast bike route in New Bern and head South to Florida along the coast. I absolutely cannot wait to see the coast this way. I’ll see how much time I have when I get to Florida. If I’m making good time then I’ll go all the way to the end of Florida, turn around and come back up and then head west on the Southern Tier bike route through some of the most iconic southern towns in America. I might even stay with het_tanis while in Phoenix. I’ll turn up toward Utah on the Grand Canyon Connector route and then from Cedar City, Utah, will head north through Delta (where I spent many a Summer as a kid with my cousins) then Nephi, Mona, Rocky Ridge, Santaquin, Payson, Spanish Fork, Springville, Provo, Orem (where Footloose was filmed) and then ultimately West Valley City (my home city and where most of my family still live).
I’m so completely psyched to get going. I’ve been really focusing on getting my life in order and taking care of any loose-ends like my teeth repairs and stuff so that I can be completely free from all of that.
I’ll be flying back home (from wherever I make it to) the week before May 20th.
As if the first trip wasn’t enough. I have another planned during the same year, but in Summer. This is the one that set the all-road bikepacking obsession in motion. The Assault on Mt. Mitchell on May 20th. I realized that I can easily bike to the starting line in Spartanburg. Then I thought, “Why not just head up the Blue Ridge Parkway and keep going?” After all, I am working the entire time, putting in eight hours of work and six hours of riding. I’ll link up with the oldest bike-across-America route, the TransAmerica Trail in Damascus, Virginia.
So far I can cover the most distance splitting my daily bike riding into two 3-hour sessions per day, one first thing when I wake up after coffee and packing up only stopping for a carb-heavy brunch someplace that has mobile phone access and a power outlet where I can charge my batteries, electronics, and physical energy stores. From that spot, I work hard for about six hours (usually 9-3) snacking to keep glycogen topped up. Then I get on the bike again for 3-hours, ride less hard, and find a place to sleep in the tent. The goal of the second ride is finding a good place for the night. Three hours should be plenty to find one and ride to it. The only requirements for a tent spot are that it is legal, safe, and in mobile phone range. Since I’m only there one night there are a lot of possibilities—especially once I get on one of the Adventure Cycling supported routes. After pitching the tent and making a night-time beverage (broth, ramen, hot-chocolate, tea, etc.) I do another casual 2 hours of work, mostly stuff that doesn’t demand really high brain power (which I do in the morning after a brisk morning ride when my brain is fresh). Finally, I sleep a good solid 7.5 hours (which my body exactly wants for some reason). Then I do it all again, unless it is Monday, which is my day off when I stay in a motel/hotel/lodge with bath, laundry, and preferably a complimentary breakfast and cookies at night. At first I’ll plan on one rest/cleaning day per week, but eventually I hope to minimize them to two per month.
Living on the road traveling by bike is no more expensive than for a well-trained athlete living at home. This was a huge conclusion for me. I’m actually not incurring greater financial burden on my family (once I acquire have all the gear that is). For the most part finances just shift instead of increase if I plan it right.
The average cost of a single-room hotel in America is 150/night. Obviously, that’s more than 1000 dollars per month, but not if you only stay in one 2-4 times a month, which is my plan.
I figure another 100 dollars per month for legal tent sites when nothing for free is available, so about 700 per month at first. That number is way less than what most people pay even for a single room apartment to rent. When I move to two luxury nights per month it will drop to 400/month. Still that’s 400/month that I’m not spending now, or am I?
We are emptying our storage unit into my empty bedroom/office/studio. So that’s about 100 dollars. I’m dropping two of the 100 dollar plans for IRL live streaming, so that’s another 200. Plus I’ll be live streaming about two hours a day every day and the content should be good enough for those who like outdoor content to get back up the subs to at least 100 per month. I cancelled my Zwift account, 15 dollars/month. Cancelling Netflix, 25/month. In total, 440 dollars saved.
So the cost of rent/hotel is almost a wash so long as I eventually stick to only two posh nights per month. Another option is four nights in shitty hotels and laundromats instead, but only in a pinch. I’d actually rather skip a week and get the posh hotel instead than stay in a bad motel.
The main expense is obviously getting all the gear (and making all the expensive gear mistakes along the way). For this reason, I do plan on eventually writing a book entitled “Extreme Digital Nomad Life by Bike” to help others avoid the same mistakes I have made.
However, once the gear expense is covered and everything is dialed in this expense starts to amortise and get lower for every day you use it—especially given the crazy prices for home mortgages and apartment rental right now. The cheapest studio apartment rent in the US right now is Arkansas at 557 dollars. Most of the places where people with good jobs and appreciation for the arts would prefer to live are 1000 dollars or more.
My monthly spending on gear will substantial decrease once I have everything dialed in. In fact, my personal expenses for bike stuff and clothing will dramatically decrease. I’m a little embarrassed to say I’ve been spending a couple thousand dollars a month on this stuff the last few months. Those expenses will now shift into bike maintenance and the occasional cost to rent a car, buy a train ticket, or fly me and my bike someplace that I cannot pedal to get to.
Keep in mind that none of this applies to “van life” because you have the ongoing very high price of vehicle payments, gasoline, legal hookups and parking. By bike you eat the “gasoline” that you would have to buy anyway, you just get more of it and enjoy “refueling” more. In fact, the entire idea of “van life” makes me cringe really hard now. I cannot believe I entertained those possibilities as long as I did. I was always a bikepacker at heart.
I think we pay something like 200 per month for the Subaru Outback. We bought Doris’ with cash. But here’s a very interesting thought: what if after a year of extreme digital nomad living by bike I don’t even use the Subaru? We could sell Doris’ and let her pick up the payments for it (she does love it more than her’s). That would effectively eliminate that extra 200 per month. In fact, it could mean that my bike and all my gear has effectively been paid for by the 10 grand or so we could get for that car. I know that math isn’t good or direct, but the general idea is that even after spending 4000 for my bike and all my top-of-the-line gear combined I’m still way under the expense of owning a car. Full-coverage insurance is 1600 dollars and minimum liability is 500 per year. This is why I got rid of my car in college. I could pay for all my gear just in insurance cost savings in eight years. Add in the cost of an entry-level, high-maintenance car and the cost is recovered in 1-2 years instead.
Biking six hours a day at mostly a zone 2 pace is going to burn about 3200 calories per day. Even though most of that will be high-quality complex carbs, there’s more expensive protein in there as well. And then there is the issue of where to get the food.
Luckily, I’ve covered the most expensive bases already. I tend to drink my protein in the evening and eat rice and beans where ever I can find it prepared. (Taco Bell is the cheapest.) In other words, I’m not incurring any additional expense for food that I would not already be paying. My family gets pizza or KFC or Pho (or something like that) about once every three weeks. So as long as I don’t exceed that myself I won’t be changing our financial burden for my food any more than it already is.
The danger lies in areas that don’t have cheap, good food and the problem I have preparing good food away from a restaurant. It’s not like I can buy a coffee at Panera bread and break out my cutting board to make salsa while there. I could, however, do that at a local park. Or, I could just buy salsa and chips and not have to prepare anything.
All in all, the expense for food is no more than I would already incur so long as I don’t buy overpriced “energy” sports foods (which are mostly horrible for you, by the way). I am just going to be consuming a lot more food than normal because of the additional fuel.
Let’s compare the cost of fuel for the body and fuel for the car. Let’s use cheap, healthy fast food just for a comparison. A “Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito (Fresco with tomatoes instead of the sauces)” costs one dollar. That’s 310 high-quality calories. You’d have to eat a little over 10 of them to replace the energy spent for the day just on the bike riding. That’s roughly 10 dollars per 100 kilometers (62.13 miles) or 16 cents per mile. My Subaru Outback gets about 25 miles per gallon (without the rack and stuff on it. With gasoline fluctuating between 2.5 and 4 dollars a gallon all over the US we can roughly say 3 dollars per gallon or 12 cents per mile. But then there is the cost of vehicle insurance and maintenance compared to a bicycle would would easily push that number up to about 16 cents per mile (if not higher). So it’s safe to say the fuel for a cyclist as the motor costs as much or less than the fuel for a car engine. But the cyclist gets to enjoy that fuel (instead of vomit from its fumes). Eating fancier food just equates to putting “premium” gasoline into that horrible car. But seriously, this is one of the main advantages of doing the digital nomad thing by bike, the fuel is not that expensive and glorious to the point of being culinary art. And we haven’t even talked about beer as fuel yet.
So the cost of living on a bike is the same as would be for being a well-trained athlete, living at home or in the gym or not.
The benefit of staying in a relatively posh hotel a few times a month (instead of a tent) is that you feel really pampered and energized while there, unlike you ever would in a cramped studio apartment. You also appreciate it more, like food and water after a hard workout. I can do my laundry, soak all the grim off my body in the tub, go for a swim or sauna, spread out in a huge bed, and eat all I want at the breakfast bar the next morning. In fact, I can work the entire day from the “business center” both the night I arrive and the next day. I just have to checkout by 11, but I don’t have to leave. Because I stayed there they will let me use the premises until I’m ready to depart on the bike to seek my next tent site. While at the hotel I can take advantage of the wifi to live stream it all, to report, to upload all my 4k videos to YouTube, and potentially to make up any lost hours of work where I might not have hit my goals because some failed planning on my part caused a lack of mobile access during some part of the week. Planning, however, will also be the top priority of the rest day, to identify potential legal tent sites for the next 1-2 weeks. This will take the stress out of the weeks to come by knowing generally what is available and when I need to be there.