After a week of trying to live a digital nomadic life by finding someplace different and interesting to work every day—even though I have totally nailed the remote office with the Starlink Mini—I am slowly realizing that it just isn’t worth it. In fact, an entire group of “digital nomadic” life YouTubers are completely abandoned it after two years at most, including the biggest “live out of your Subaru” nomads. One ended up dead for some reason no one wants to say publicly.
All the logistics of picking a place that is fun to work every day just isn’t fun. Most work just isn’t suppose to be fun. It’s work. I am on-call this week, for example, and even though I enjoy waking up and working from my bed or home office or kitchen table, I actually don’t like to work. Like most, I do it to make (insanely good) money. Most remote jobs are the same (yes even the coding jobs, in fact—especially the coding jobs).
Taking work on the road just kills the vibe of being on the road entirely. Even the content creators lugging their drones and laptops or IRL live streaming rigs around can’t possibly be enjoying it as much as they would without all the gizmos they require. Every time I watch a YouTube video like that I can’t help but think about all the time and mental energy required to get all those shots that create the illusion that we are there with them, when, in fact, they have had to go back and get their camera every time.
The most successful work-by-riding-my-bike people are also photographers and writers. Their (extremely low paying) job is traveling on their bicycle all over the world and writing about it. I get that a lot of these people really enjoy the process of creating content and sharing it. I do enjoy it as well. If there is one job to take on the road, that is it. Sure it removes you from the moment, but not in a way that is paralyzingly unsustainable as it would if you had to find power for batteries to work for six hours a day on conference calls and the like.
This last week, after figuring out the bike and the Starlink Mini and even the Chrome messenger laptop bag, I’ve been just too annoyed with the need to commute in the rain with traffic and find a place and plan the logistics and pay extra money for overpriced food only to realize you cannot huddle with anyone because it is too noisy. In fact, I find myself missing (not much) the daily commute to the same reliable workplace by bike every day. I think that is because when I’m commuting I’m focused on the bike ride. Then, at work, I’m focused on work.
The “mindfulness” and “flow state” people would have a lot to say about this. This state of focus, this “mindfulness” is really the key. All those “Zen and the Art of …” books are about becoming so focused you merge with the activity. That singular focus (the mindfulness people would tell you) is the source of all true joy. This is why everything from video games to picking that perfect mogul line to riffing on the guitar are exercises in mindfulness. In fact, some go so far as to suggest that ecstasy of a sexual orgasm is because your mind singularly focused on nothing but being connected to your partner and the Universe in that instant. Many drugs invoke that same mental state artificially. It’s why yoga and meditation and repetitive endurance sports also bring about that euphoria. It only comes when one is hyper-focused and “present” and it is very scientific as well as “woke.” Suffice it to say, looking for a place to eat and work all day, every day, just makes this mindfulness and “flow state” almost impossible to achieve.
As a techy, getting into flow state immediately is always the goal. Noise cancelling headphones have allowed me to do this on the road from McDonald’s (where I caught Covid) as well as just at home in a noisy apartment. This is why I wore ear plugs before. Work gets done when I remove all the distractions. In fact, I get so focused that I forget to eat or drink and can end up starving myself if I’m not careful. I definitely have missed more than one alarm or meeting because I was just so focused on the tech-task at hand. It is one of the things I like about it. In many ways, it’s like writing as well. At one with the thoughts as they emerge. I know that sounds very hippy-ish but it is just true. But ya know what works better than headphones and ear plugs? A work space that is dedicated to work and walled off from everything else. (Cubicles have never conducive to this type of work.)
So I could spend a large amount of time packing and repacking my bike and finding potentially good places to work every day, some better than others, some horrible, or I could simply focus on work while at home when my brain is working at its best in a place where all the normal things are taken care up (water, food, Internet, naps) so that I am even more focused and efficient and use the balance of time remaining for other non-work focused activities, like writing, or livestreaming a bike adventure, or creating a card-game with my kids, or mountain biking an extremely technical trail, or writing code I want, or making Tik-Tok educational videos, or hacking, or even just playing Dota 2. The point is I am happier because of the focus and I have way more time to do everything better.
I’m not disappointed at all by this discovery. I have learned a lot about living out of my car and on my bike. I feel like I could do either for an extended amount of time and maintain my full-time job. This is a critical skill for a guy like me to have to be able to travel to meet family when needed (which is why I did it). After contracting Covid on the road, and the many close calls with other motorists, I have just experienced enough of that constant anxiety of not knowing if I’m going to be able to live through the day, let alone work productively, that I’m just more focused on making my home working environment the absolute best possible (as I glance over at my steaming cup of coffee that was instantly ground from fresh beans with the single press of a button and for maybe 50 cents and then take a sip looking out at my dog sunning on my patio looking over the beautiful lake through my open door).
This re-realization has laser-focused, of all things, my bike rig. Rather than having to be able to morph from a remote office into something else the bike can serve a singular purpose: livestream mostly urban adventure cycling bike trips, potentially over night.
In fact, all this recent writing has been prompted by one simple problem I could not figure out: where to put the computer on my bike? I’ve been biking around every day with the computer in a Chrome messenger bag and it has really sucked. I’ve realized I really don’t like anything on my back when I’m on the bike, not even the IRL streaming rig (which is now all attached to the bike in a way that I can then quickly put on when hiking or shopping or whatever). The main reason is because anything strapped onto my body throws off how my balance and how the clothing works. This is why whats-his-face got critical saddle-soars on the Tour Divide, a backpack that was too heavy. It is the reason I nearly went hypothermic in 40 degree weather because of all the sweat I built up because the IRL pack had defeated my layers completely. It’s the reason I’m sweaty and stinky when a nice breeze from the bike ride would have otherwise dried my sweat instead of soaking my cool T-shirt. It’s the reason I have totally messed up my skin where the pack sits. And it is probably the reason I will die from some sort of cancer from the radiation strapped one inch from my vital organs.
With my light-weight sleep kit in one light-weight pannier, my clothes in the other, and my Starlink mounted on the top of the pad on the rear-rack running off batteries in the half-frame bag there is just no place to put a heavy 16” Macbook Pro. I could go ultra-sized panniers, but then I have to dig the computer out when I get there anyway. Which reminds me …
No one should ever leave their fully rigged adventure bike unattended for a long period of time without it being locked in a hotel room. I have read so many accounts of very expensive adventure bike rigs being entirely stolen that I now think that it happens to everyone eventually. People just wander off with those quick-release panniers (which is why I prefer the smaller Ortlieb on the rear because they are so much stronger and hard to remove). It is simply impossible to secure everything on an adventure bike. The best you can do is the Garmin motion sound alarm that will text you, but then you have to be in text range. This means even a seemingly innocuous movie with friends will result in your heavy lock getting defeated in seconds (which is what happened to Martijn during his “Two Years on a bike”). You can never let your bike out of your sight for more than a few minutes.
Since you cannot leave your bike, your activities while taking the bike with you are seriously limited. This is yet another reason having to worry about a place to work becomes annoying. No place that requires leaving your bike is a possibility, and most places where you can see your bike from through the window (McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Starbucks) are too noisy to be regular work locations. The only real option—albeit temporary—is high-price lodging, which is an option for the occasional long-term, credit-card, well-planned vacation (and assuming carrying heavier panniers that can contain the laptop). Most of the time, however, biking when you have a bike, and working when you have laptop and an office, just makes both activities better. I have to constantly fight-back the temptation to do a long-term semi-vacation prematurely where I work and take an extra dozen pounds for my laptop and remote office gear versus waiting until I have enough vacation days to do the exact same long-term vacation without any work at all. Waiting and doing the vacation properly is always better use of time and money, for everyone.
Then there is the question of power. Because of power, I changed my cycling focus from remote bikepacking to urban adventure touring with a credit card because I couldn’t manage the power—even with the Starlink Mini to do six hours of work per day. But if I’m staying mindful and not doing Tour Divide or GDMBR while also working then the only reason to bring the Starlink Mini is to occasionally livestream the portions that can be. This means carrying far less weight and distributing that weight in ways that are very easy to manage on an adventure/gravel bike.
By removing the work element I now have a bike rigged and ready to ride every single day that can take me (and my livestream community) anywhere, including the Tour Divide if I really wanted. Weekends provide regular opportunities for three days and two-nights of work-free fun.
My bike is so light and balanced it is actually fun to ride (unlike when towing a trailer). This makes me much more likely to ride the thing, like, daily. In fact, I leave it all rigged out just to go to the local store and buy groceries. I take out my ultra-light backpack for the stuff that won’t fit in my front rack just like I would if I were buying stuff for staying over-night on a bike tour.
This rig includes eight hours of live streaming per day with only five batteries that are weight distributed perfectly on the bike (mostly in the frame bag). Unlike previous rigs, it includes both a backpack mode and a handlebar mode. When I am going to be off the bike for a while I just unstrap the backpack, wear it, and transfer the camera from the handlebars to the chest mount (not unlike I do for the car).
With all the logistics it is easy to get caught up in the challenge of the logistics themselves. I’m an engineer at heart and love solving problems. But I’m old enough to realize that solving the wrong problem is a thing we all do.
Figuring out how to work every day as a digital nomad by bike is the wrong problem. Focusing on how to eliminate work entirely is a better one. Every hour I gain by increasing work efficiency and potency can be added to a total hours I can spent in bulk where I do not have to work at all. This includes building alternative forms of income so that I can retire early and gain a full five-years of such time. By coming on full-time I gained several weeks of time off. By getting the highest rating possible for the year I could potentially get thousands of dollars allowing me to buy time back from my employer, or more four-day weekend credit-card tours. Blowing up YouTube and Tik-Tok with educational shorts buys me even more time.
The other main problem is how to keep peak fitness as I continue this sedentary career and age more every day. Ironically, even though this is the goal of DNB life, both times I have attempted to live a digital nomad life by bike—even just in training for it at home—I have had a catastrophic drop in fitness. The bad food options, combined with bad sleep, and constant stress of figuring out the next best rig or system destroys my health and fitness even though that is the very thing I’m seeking to improve. There’s a reason the most fit I have been since after closing SKILSTAK was while riding outside on the same Goblin loop over and over again, or in Zwift consistently every day without thought for anything but the ride and how to recover from it. This is why Lachlan Morton rides several hours a day on the indoor trainer even though he does all his major races outside.
The key to fitness is sleep. Without the best possible sleep fitness will simply never happen. The DNB living I was attempting destroyed my good sleep patterns. The result was more than 10 lbs gained in under a month, stressed, and ultimately contracting Covid from a weakened immune system. The loss of sleep is the one reason I will never sleep on the ground again for more than two nights at a time—especially when on relatively long bike tours. It is why credit-card touring and staying in 150-dollar-per-night hotels with luxurious beds makes me as giddy as I once was for Disneyland as a kid. Perhaps I could get the recovery in with shitty sleep in my 20s. No more. I need every bit of perfect REM state between cozy sheets that I can get in my upper 50s. And, besides, I have the money so why not. I have nothing to prove. Sleep fucking rocks. Only morons say shit like, “sleep is for the weak.” Is it time for a nap yet?