Podcast 598-Nomad Yoga Family

Untethered

Life is short. If there’s something you want to do, there’s no better time than the present. Most of us have all sorts of reasons why we don’t follow our passion. We have responsibilities and possessions that demand our attention. There are always ‘reasons’ why we can’t do what we really want to do. Find out the first steps in how to do it in Podcast 598-Nomad Yoga Family.

The Nomad Yoga family is Josh and Jenna and their two children. They’d always had a passion for Yoga and Travel. A family tragedy was the transformation clarifying the idea that life is finite. The couple sold their house, their car and most of their possessions to downsize into a used Earth Roamer with a plan to ‘overland‘. Living life untethered. They’ve been on the road now for over a year, heading down the west coast of Canada and the US, on their way to Central America and South America.

It’s a Trend

Living untethered or on the road permanently is a trend these days. There’s more to living this way than just deciding you want to travel. It’s cutting the cord completely. Think of selling your house, car and possessions and adjusting to life on the road, or on the seas, permanently. It’s one thing for an individual or retirees and another thing entirely for a young couple and their kids.

Josh and Jenna and their small children live in about 120 square feet of space in Earth Roamer #28. They travel, teach yoga and teach yogis how to build their studio businesses. How do you live day to day? What about getting the youngsters to school? Child Care? Personal time for each other and time alone? Do planning and checklists go out the window? Once you’re on the road, how do you change when you realize this isn’t a vacation or a long visit, this is actually life now?

Freedom and Technology

Josh answers many questions about living untethered in the conversation we have in Podcast 598-Nomad Yoga Family. We also talk about running a business on the road and the inevitable technology challenges. The desire to break free is a new trend in the United States. Not all services have caught up with it.

With Mobile Podcast Command I’ve done a fair amount of ‘untethered’ travel. I’ve certainly stayed out for long periods of time, whether covering the presidential primaries or some of the festivals around the country every summer. I have had the experience of heading ‘home’ to the Twin Cities and saying to myself, “I’m going home to pick up my mail and go to the bank. Why?”

Just do it

The overland experience is not for everyone. As Josh says in Podcast 598-Nomad Yoga Family, you really can’t plan for it. It’s something you just have to do. Once you’re out there, you pick up what you need along the way. The experience of discovering who you are and what you need is part of the trip.

Sponsored by Hydrus Performance.

 

 

Podcast 535

Sturgis 2016 & The Black Hills. A trip to Sturgis 2016 turns into a tour of the Black Hills. Lots of riders come up here for the motorcycle rally but they head out on day trips to the many historic and interesting places in the Black Hills. Deadwood, and of course Mount Rushmore to name two. Lots of history in the Black Hills, especially in Deadwood. In Sturgis 2016 & The Black Hills I stop in Deadwood and have a great conversation about the history of the town, the history of the West and what it meant then and today, with a local historian in character as ‘Colorado Charlie Utter’. Then it’s onto Mount Rushmore and Keystone, South Dakota. A listener to the Bob Davis Podcasts emailed recently to suggest that some of the political podcasts contained some ‘repetitive thoughts’, as she put it. It seems like, when you talk about politics these days in any form, you come to an impasse and it’s almost always about the voters, or the political parties, or the candidates or the media and the fact that almost everyone is disappointed in the choices they have. The great thing about coming to Sturgis, and by extension these other cool places in the Black Hills, is that you forget about politics. It took awhile to come up with a theme for Sturgis 2016 & The Black Hills, Podcast 535 but it finally came to me. With all the talk about the founding fathers and the US Constitution, maybe it’s time for a new myth, a new ‘theme’ from American History. The fact is, the story told by the dime western novels, Hollywood and later TV pales in contrast to the real history of the west. The Hollywood version of the west made it seem like it all happened in Zane Grey’s Arizona, or the Sierra Nevada’s or California. Part of Western History did take place in those places in the late 1800’s and even early 1900’s. Many characters and themes later portrayed in Hollywood Westerns and popular TV shows happened a lot sooner – in the 1870’s – in places like Deadwood. Independence, self reliance, working harder and smarter and the opportunity to reinvent yourself, and to jettison your past are all themes that echo throughout the region’s history and across the area from Deadwood and Rapid City, to Mount Rushmore. As Colorado Charlie suggests maybe that inclusive, opportunistic theme is what’s missing a lot of times in the rest of America. Sponsored by X Government Cars and Brush Studio in The West End.

Podcast 472

Texas. That’s all you need to say. Texas. We start on the Texas Gulf Coast at Galveston and work our way up to Beaumont, Houston, on through central Texas with an eye toward La Grange, Austin, Waco and finally to Dallas. If you woke up in one of these places, even any of the smaller towns along the way, you would know, you could only be in Texas. Along the way, lots of stories from this Road Trip so far, including the drive up the Gulf Coast through Mississippi and Alabama, and Louisiana, ending in New Orleans on Saturday night, where Mobile Podcast Command was forced to break the law, in service of a cup of chicory coffee and a pastry from Cafe Dumonde. Sadly, New Orleans seems like it is still struggling to overcome the effects of Katrina, which is probably why there are suddenly so many parking restrictions, and the parking authorities so vigilant. So out of character for this ‘anything goes’ town. In Mississippi, you pass the beautiful home of the president of the confederacy Jefferson Davis, and one can only wonder what it must have been like to leave this gorgeous home on the beach, move to a place like Richmond, to ‘run the confederacy’; a really bad decision in the long run. Did he ever make it back? Then the gulf coast, with its brand new ‘towns on stilts’…literally the houses, the stores, the cafes are all built on pylons, to withstand floods and perhaps the intense winds of hurricanes, which come every year. The Bolivar Peninsula, and Galveston where I finally found the deserted coast line I have been looking for. Finally central Texas including Houston and finally Dallas. Both of these cities are juggernauts on their own. When you combine Houston and Dallas with San Antonio, Austin and the western Texas cities, you begin to understand why this state is so important, and why it is unlike any other. Sponsored by Hydrus and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul