ON THE ROAD

Pop-Up Shop at Click! - 7.21.17

Pay for unlimited data. You will burn through it very quickly.

Organize your time for offline mode and online mode. If you are moving quickly to a new place almost every day, it is inevitable that you will lose service. Plan for writing or editing in offline mode at these times. You will become desperate for service so you can upload. If you do have service in a certain location, plan to stay for an extra day if you can schedule it so you can crush on some work. Also, plan for every guest wifi to have terrible upload speeds. This affects mostly large photos and videos. 

It helps to travel with a buddy if you are working the road. Perhaps someone who can do some driving for you while you work with a laptop in the passenger seat…as long as you don’t get carsick!

If you are blogging or doing photography...adjust to working in the past. You will have a slight delay in your content if you want to be curated and edited. We are always working a few days behind and playing catchup with our blog posts. You want to be able to enjoy what you are seeing and experiencing, but also gathering enough photos to jog your memory once you are ready to write about it.

Spend more time in less places. Don’t rush from one to the other unless you have to. We are hustling to get to different cities for craft shows, so we are forced to move quickly on this month long trip. It is exhausting and frustrating, so if you can slow down, DO IT.

Be as open as possible and ready for anything. Use your connections, even the smallest ones. People are surprisingly eager to help. We had no place to park after leaving SF and we reached out to the owner of a company we have been buying ink from for years. It was super last minute but they let us park in their big lot for a night. The next day we got a tour of the factory and enjoyed a special visit that was totally unexpected. 

Be ready with a plan B, plan C and plan D. Having a plan is great, but loose itineraries with backup plans are so important. For example, a wildfire completely blocks your road and campground plan for a night. Time to reroute and stay somewhere else. Our plan B for this event turned out to be one of the most gorgeous campgrounds we’ve ever been to.

Order of operations for finding a place to sleep for the night - SAFETY, then COMFORT, then BEAUTY. It doesn’t matter how amazing the view is…if you don’t feel safe, it’s a no-go for the night.

Don’t try to be everything to everybody. You will lose your mind. Only take on projects and events that you can handle. Travel is stressful enough, don’t spread yourself too thin with other people’s expectations.

If you are traveling for a living and trying to make social media your thing, make it your priority to travel and document. Our priority is to get to shows and keep our artwork safe. If we were only planning to make the trailer our “work” it would be a much easier trip.

Meet with friends along the way. It will keep your spirits high. You will start to feel lonely and isolated out on the road. Surrounded either by people or totally nothing for long stretches of time. Having a dog with you helps, but that presents it’s own set of issues.

Leave your pride at home. Life on the road is messy, dirty, stinky. Bring little creature comforts to help (candles, special hand soap, a certain pillowcase, etc), just so you’re able to get real work done. We find it difficult to get anything done when everything is stinky.

Working specifically in the Basecamp

Always plug in your electric to the tow vehicle, it will charge your trailer batteries while you are moving.

If off grid, the AC doesn’t work...so find campgrounds with electricity/wifi if you’re in a hot place. You (and your equipment) will be very grateful. Or just don’t go to the desert in July! 

The outlets in the trailer are very convenient and abundant, but they will not work or power a laptop unless you are plugged into an outside source of power. There are USB outlets that will charge phones, but nothing bigger. Maybe we are doing something wrong, but this is what we have found in our four weeks in this trailer.

A place for everything and everything in it’s place. Clean up often. There are lots of surfaces to work on but your food and dishes will start to consume you if you don’t upkeep. If you want to keep enough room for whatever work equipment you have, just remember to tidy up. Staying on top of it will help you feel less cramped. There is plenty of room in the Basecamp for all sorts of activities, just one at a time. Try not to spill your coffee on your laptop!

If you are moving quickly from place to place, keep the bed open instead of resetting it to the dinette every day. Work on the bed. While it is pretty easy to do, you will get very tired of setting it up. 

Washington Tree Farm Pt. 2- 7.20.17

We had some time to evaluate our print supply. We had a two case system going on for these shows. This is us replacing the prints we sold in San Francisco to get ready for the show in Seattle. Working from the road! 

Cinebar, Washington Tree Farm - 7.19.17 

We pulled into a tree farm after a terrible night at a state campground. We parked next to a family of 10, all yelling at each other and chopping wood into all hours of the night. This is what happens when you are moving quickly from place to place and you don’t know the area very well! We don’t travel for a living so we do not know the hidden spots and beautiful locations with views. Most nights we are pretty sure we’re going to sleep on the side of the road. That’s why the next place Jay had booked was so important and special. 

The sun was just starting it’s descent around 5 pm PT as we pulled into the tree farm. A silver headed woman named Barb greeted us on her 4-wheeler. She instructed us to follow her deeper into the farm. We followed her down the rocky path and turned into the trees. Panic set in because the hitch they gave us is extremely low to the ground and we scrape things everywhere we go. But we took it slow and didn’t dig up her ground. We had our choice of mowed camp spots and we chose the one deepest into the trees. She said she wasn’t expecting anyone else for the evening so be would be all alone. Perfect! 

She also brought up her interest in drones almost immediately and asked if she could get some footage of the truck and trailer after we got all set up. She said she would share the footage with us. Excited at the prospect of seeing us from a birds eye view as well as her beautiful farm, we agreed. So she zipped off and we set up camp. 

She came back later as the sun was going down and got the drone in the air. Maple was not a fan of the device, it’s a pretty intense buzzing sound thats pretty frightening to human ears too. She went up, down, around. Barb is a real enthusiast. She said she now owns six drones, she loves them so much. We went by the house the next day to pick up the footage and got the family story too. What a wonderful family, beautiful farm, and really great experience. 

We made a great dinner, drank some wine, actually sat down and enjoyed it. This is one of the few relaxing experiences we have had on this trip. 

Some Thoughts from July 19, 2017

At this point in the trip, we’re pretty exhausted. Travel is a real test of will. The next place we venture to is a recharger though. 

Back from the beach, it was time for dinner and drinks. Our particular site came equipped with the worlds worst campfire grate. All the rods in the middle had rusted out and broke off, leaving only a few on either side. Looking on the bright side, our chicken was going to be slow cooked with radiant heat. That just left more time for bourbon and chatting. The conversation quickly turned to where we were heading after Seattle and since we had no idea, the maps and lanterns came out. Adam talked about Rainier and the Northern Cascades and at the time we were in full agreement that we’d take 20 and do this big loop through the Cascades coming back to Portland from the east. Perfect. Done.

EMERALD FOREST & BEACH TRIP- 7.19.17

To be an awesome friend, Adam was checking out potential camp spots around Trinidad as were were getting closer. This being July in California, so many things are full or nearly full. With one secured, we were good to meet in Arcata for some food and a quick tour. We slammed some real pizza at this place called Paul’s Live from NY and it was actually great. Really hit the spot. Maple had plenty of Sicilian crust and gave barks of approval. From there we took of walk of the square around Arcata while Adam narrated. When you’re in a town for like an hour you’re hardly in a place to judge. The view is so narrow and the time is so brief that it really goes one way or the other. The experiences are quick that they’re probably not justified...but that’s how this trip has been for us. That said, the people in Arcata are uniquely Arcata and uniquely weird. It’s something we’ve found only in this area. We also followed the recommendation of a friend, Jon Fiero, and head to a natural market to buy some Humboldt Fog cheese. It was supposed to change our life, as far as cheeses go. 

Jacquard Factory Tour Pt. 3

Jacquard Factory Tour Pt. 2

Asher and Adam met us for the tour. Adam is a product developer for Jacquard. Lots of play and innovation happening over at this company. They make all kinds of inks and dyes, perfect for jobs big and small. They work for retail customers as well as large corporations (and even some movie studios!). We are fans of their screen printing ink. Not being sales-y here…but they really do make the best water-based product that we’ve ever tried in our studio. Was really cool to talk shop and see art making from the suppliers point of view.

Jacquard Factory Tour Pt. 1

The original plan (which ultimately failed like all original plans do) was to stay Sunday night in Oakland. There was a driveway to put the trailer in but my backing-up skills are not what they need to be to safely get it in. It needed to be perfect and nothing about backing up this trailer is perfect. Realizing this on Friday, we reached out Asher Katz. He's an internet friend, super talented artist, business colleague, and current President of Jacquard inks.  Their HQ is just north of SF in Healdsburg California. We have been buying inks from Jacquard for years and it’d be awesome to peek behind the curtain. It was a long shot reaching out to him, because A) we’ve never met in person and B) it was so last minute to ask for help. But we did and he said that we could park late night in the factory parking lot. We high fived in the dark and planned to meet up again in the morning to do a factory tour and hang out. It was so great to get much needed rest after a crazy city weekend. Also, Asher is really tall.

Brainstorm at Renegade Craft Fair San Francisco

Take it Slow Kinda Morning in Oakland

Setting up at Renegade Craft Fair SF

Driving to San Francisco

EVEN MORE YOSEMITE - 7.12.17

We walked with Maple on a bunch of paved bike trails, (dog friendly), that crossed the valley back and forth offering up all different views of Half Dome and El Cap. After about 6 hours of straight walking, we called it. There were no other places to go with Maple that were in valley and we had to drive about 3 hours back to Bridgeport. I wouldn’t recommend going to Yosemite for 6 hours but our quick trip was really about getting a glimpse of Yosemite. We just had to go because we were so close and who knows when we’ll have the opportunity again. This National Park really deserves its own multi day trip during a time of year that’s not July. As we left the ranger asked, “Paid this morning?” and we said nope and made sure to give her $30. We imagine it gets so hectic with people that they just wave them through. We couldn’t help but be honest. The whole point of visiting those parks is to help protect them, in an ironic kind of way. On the other side of the gate, even at 4pm, there was now a line of probably three dozen cars waiting to get in.