Category: Feel Good Stuff

Life as a Digital Nomad: Part 4 (Panama)

By Mike Huber

Having just left my new home in Nicaragua and boarding a local bus on a 26-hour ride to Panama had me almost second guessing my decision.  The bus was full, and the bathroom already looked like a scene out of Poltergeist.  Now, all this I was able to tolerate, but what really got my goat was that they had TVs every few rows.  You’d think “OK, we’ll watch a few movies to pass the time.”  Not on this bus.  They had a Kirk Cameron movie (Fireproof) on repeat AND in Spanish.  I had never seen this movie and by the 2nd time it rolled on I was ready to just set up camp inside the destroyed bathroom just to get a reprieve from it.

I eventually fell asleep with the help of some Flor de Caña that I smuggled onto the bus. After what felt like forever the bus came to a stop, and I noticed everyone was getting off.  I was still half asleep when I was ushered off the bus.  Still bleary eyed I looked at my watch.  It was 4:00 a.m. We were at the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica and the border crossing didn’t open until 7:00 a.m.  I was beginning to understand why the bus ride would take 26 hours.  After sitting on the concrete for 3 hours the border finally opened, and we were welcomed into Costa Rica.

Once back on the bus my anxiety increased as we all wondered what type of obstacles we’d have to overcome to enter Panama. Entering through the Panama border was less time consuming but again the bus emptied and everyone was guided into a small room with their luggage, where we all had to open each item as dogs systematically sniffed through all the luggage, piece by piece.  Then, once back on the bus, we continued the journey to Panama City.  Fireproof was probably on its 8th showing.

The further south we traveled the landscape continued to change, as did the neighborhoods.  In Nicaragua the houses were in mostly poor condition but by the time we were in Panama they were more like those you’d find in the United States, modern and well maintained.  This was due to the Panama Canal which draws in an unreal amount of revenue for the country.

As we pulled into the terminal, I was exhausted and ready to exit the bus. Fireproof was still playing on the TVs overhead and I couldn’t leave fast enough.  It was a short taxi ride to the hotel I had picked in downtown Panama City. I quickly learned that in 2012, almost anywhere outside Panama City was difficult to find an affordable place to stay with solid wi-fi to perform my work duties.  This was frustrating as I hit wall after wall, all the while residing in a Marriott, which was not what I envisioned life in Panama would be.

After 3 days of continued failed attempts at finding a suitable home, it was time to decide to move on or return to Nicaragua.  I honestly think the thought of another 26-hour bus ride back to Nicaragua with Fireproof playing nonstop was the key factor in deciding to move onward.  But to where was the question. I was at the end of Central America so this meant I would have to fly to my next destination.  Looking at a map the logical choices were Columbia or Ecuador. I left it up to a coin toss to determine which it would be. The coin landed on heads, so Ecuador it was.  That day I booked a flight to leave in 3 days.

This decision left me with limited time to tour Panama City.  I am not huge on tourist spots but the one place I wanted to see was the Panama Canal.  It didn’t feel right to be there without seeing this engineering marvel, and I am glad I did.  The canal was extremely impressive, and they had grandstands you could sit in to watch the massive ships pass through the initial two steps of the Miraflores Locks.  These two locks manage to raise ships 54 feet higher as they let the water rush in.  The ships traveling through the locks must surrender their boats to a Panamanian captain (to include raising Panamanian Flag on their masts). Many boats were extremely large and had very little leeway on either side as they steered through the canal, so the captain piloting the boats must be certified and skilled in navigating the tight canal locks.

The remainder of the days spent in Panama consisted of getting in some short runs along the waterfront and starting the preparation for the next stop in Quito, Ecuador.  Research showed that the wi-fi in Quito was fast and reliable.  This put me at ease since the pace I was going for was a minimum of one month per country.  This pace would allow me enough time to settle and fully absorb the culture instead of just being in a vacation mode.  I wanted to be immersed in the culture and was determined to stay in Quito for that minimum length of time.  Upon landing in Quito, I instantly knew that a month there wouldn’t be enough and would require me to adjust my schedule yet again.

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Mike Huber Stops By

By Joe Berk

Good buddy Mike Huber rolled through So Cal a few days ago and spent the night at Casa Berkowitz.  It was a fun visit.

Mike Huber on the UberMoto. Mike’s current GS is his second one.

I first met Mike on one of the CSC Baja expeditions, and the circumstances of our meeting hit on shared interests (motorcycles and Baja) and a shared background (we are both alums of the Benning School for Boys).

An August 1972 jump school postcard purchased at the Benning School for Boys Post Exchange.

The CSC crew (me and maybe a dozen fellow RX3 riders) had stopped for gasolina on the 200+ mile stretch between Baja’s El Rosario and Guerrero Negro.  Cataviña is about 130 miles south of El Rosario, and for a long time it has been the only place to buy fuel on that section of Mexico’s Highway 1.  There were no gas stations then; enterprising Mexican capitalists sold it from bottles on the side of the road (capitalism rules, my friends).  Today there is a Pemex in Cataviña, but that’s a relatively recent development.

Refueling in Cataviña. That’s good buddy Tuan, an RX3 rider and one of my former students at Cal Poly Pomona.

You can imagine the scene…a dozen bikes crowded around a handful of people selling fuel out of jugs.  Or maybe you don’t have to imagine it; just take a look at the photo above.  It was a hot day, we’d been on the road a while, and we were two days into a seven-day trip.  I looked at the other bikes around me and on one of the motorcycle tailpacks I saw a decal that commands instant and profound respect from anyone who’s been there:  The winged parachute emblem showing that the bearer graduated from the US Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Mike’s jump wings on the back of his first GS. It was this emblem that first alerted to Mike and his background. Mike’s done 19 jumps (5 in jump school and another dozen when he served with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division).
When the jump wings fell off, Mike replaced them with an 82nd Airborne Division decal. The “AA” stands for “All American.”   I learned that when I asked one of my jump school instructors; he first told me that for us trainees, it stood for “Almost Airborne.”   Then he told me the real story.

That’s weird, I thought.  I had only known the guys on this ride for a few days, I’d seen all of their bikes, and if any had been adorned with jump wings I would have picked up on it immediately.  I was pondering how I had missed that when I looked at the guy standing next to the bike.  It was Mike Huber, whom I had not met yet.  My next befuddled thoughts were that I thought I had met everyone.  Where did this guy come from?  Then I looked at the motorcycle.  It wasn’t an RX3.  It was a BMW GS 1200.  The two machines looked enough alike that I had not noticed the difference when Mike worked his way into our herd of turtles at the gas stop in Cataviña.  I looked up at Mike again and he was grinning.  He knew I was confused and I think he was enjoying my being perplexed.

Mike’s current GS 1200. It’s a stunning motorcycle.

Mike and I hit it off immediately.   He stayed with us a couple of nights later in Mulegé (at good buddy Javier’s magnificent Las Casitas Hotel), and we’ve kept in touch ever since.   Mike did a guest blog or two for us here on ExNotes, and he became one of our regular writers last year.

When Mike told me he would pass through our neck of the Peoples Republik, I told him we wanted him to stay the night and enjoy a barbequed salmon dinner with us.

The port saddlebag on Mike’s GS.
And the starboard pannier. Mike gets around, as you know from his blogs here on ExNotes.

We had a great visit.  The Tecate cerveza (and later, the Spanish wine) flowed freely.  Sue crafted a desert we recently learned about on an olive plantation in Spain (see our most recent blog), and it was awesome.

The post-dinner treat: More vino, and chocolate gelato topped with orange-infused olive oil from the Basilippo plantation in Spain. Olive oil on ice cream sounds strange, but take my word on this: It’s wonderful.

As always, it was great to spend time with my good friend and fellow scribe Mike.  The next morning after a good breakfast Mike was in the wind again, headed north toward Ojai, the Bay area, and beyond.  You will be able to read about those travels right here, on your favorite motorcycle blog.

Good times and good friends, folks.  It’s what life is all about.  That, and clicking on the popup ads.

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Basilippo: A Spanish Olive Plantation

I like olive oil and I cook with it a lot, so when I heard we would be visiting the Basilippo olive oil plantation and factory in Spain it sounded like a great plan to me.  I knew that extra virgin olive good was the real McCoy (kind of like 100% agave Tequila is the good stuff), but that was the extent of my olive oil knowledge. I learned quite a bit more about olive oil on this visit.

The Basilippo company headquarters.

Did you know that there’s no such thing as extra extra virgin olive oil?  (extra virgin is as good as it gets.)  Did you know that by international agreement every bottle of true extra virgin olive oil has a  “use by” label on the back of the bottle?  (The “use by” date is two years after the olives were harvested.)  If you see a bottle of olive oil that claims to be extra virgin but there’s no date on the back, you might want to take a pass.  Did you know that darker bottles are better for preserving olive oil than are lighter bottles?  Did you know that for the best olive oil, the olives are pressed within 4 hours of being harvested?  All of this was new info to me, and all was delivered by our host, Isaac Martin.

Olive trees on the Basilippo plantation.

Meet Isaac Martin, oil mill master, olive expert extraordinaire, and our presenter at the Basilippo plantation.  Mr. Martin was an engaging, entertaining, and informative speaker.  Isaac told us that with “only” 14,000 trees, Basilippo was a “boutique” producer.   That sounds like a lot of trees to me, but hey, Isaac is the guy would know.

Isaac Martin, who provided us with a marvelous presentation.
Good buddy and fellow photography enthusiast Ibrahim photographing a flower. Ibrahim showed me a few of his other photos. He is one of the most talented photographers I’ve ever known.

We entered the factory and tasting area next.  Good things were in store for us.  The factory was about what I expected.  It was not running when we were there, as the harvest had already ended.  The tasting was an awesome experience.  Isaac told us we would be enjoying olive oil and ice cream.  Yep…you read that right.  Olive oil and ice cream.  I know…it sounds gross.  Boy oh boy, were we ever in for a surprise.

A monitor in the Basilippo oilve processing factory.

Let me type those words again.  Olive oil and ice cream?   Yep, I thought it was crazy, too, until I tried it.  At the end of our tour, Isaac took us to a room where two small glasses (with a bit of olive oil in each) were waiting for each of us.  That’s the photo at the top of this blog.  Isaac showed us how to us to rub the bottom of the glass, remove the paper covering it, and inhale the olive oil aroma.  It was wonderful…with just a hint of orange.  Then the staff brought in a small plate of chocolate ice cream for each of us, and Isaac asked us to pour the olive oil over the ice cream. I know…it sounds like a screwy combination…but wow…was it ever delicious!

Orange infused olive oil….gift shop offerings at Basilippo’s.  Who knew?

Predictably, the path out was through the Basilippo gift shop.  Sue bought three containers of the citrus-scented olive oil.  I was a bit nervous about that, but all three made it back to California without leaking.  Two of the containers were for gifts; the third was for us.  When we finish it, you can bet we’ll be ordering more and if you swing by our place for dinner, Basilippo orange-infused olive oil over chocolate ice cream will be on the dessert menu.

Basilippo also sells their olive oils online and they ship to the US.   Here’s the link:

Home | Basilippo EVOO | Online Store and Oleotourism

Here are links to our other blog posts on Spain and Portugal.

Coimbra
Spain and Portugal
Camino de Santiago:  Part 1
The Sportster of Seville
Évora
Lisbon
Gibraltar

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The Santa Fe Literary Festival

By Joe Gresh

Dun colored, in a city of dun colored buildings, The Santa Fe Community Convention Center sits off Grant Street a few blocks from the city’s central plaza. The building is U-shaped with a large, exposed to the elements, interior courtyard paved with red bricks. The courtyard is sunken and drops down several steps lower than the floor grade of the main building. Surrounding the bottom courtyard is a low retaining wall with a wide, red brick cap. This cap is almost two feet wide and situated at just the right height for sitting on a sunny day.

Strings of tiny, white Christmas lights crisscross between the courtyard trees and metal tables and chairs are set up under the trees. Two food trucks, one selling African food, one selling Indian food, are at the far right end where a large gate allows entry for vehicles. There is a wooden bandstand constructed on the side nearest the street. On the bandstand students are reading poetry.

The poetry is depressing. Rape, murder and loneliness are the themes explored and the young poets sometimes break down and cry while they are reading their work. There is a lot of sadness and misery in this world; I don’t know why we can’t do better. Between each reader a relentlessly upbeat emcee comes on stage and asks us to “Give it up” for the previous poet, by which she intends for us to applaud.  We applaud but the emcee is not the boss of us.

Entering the Convention Center from the street, the left side has a room where vendors sell Literary Fest swag and where the featured authors go to sign the books they are selling. CT bought me a T-shirt. From this vendor area a hallway leads up a few steps to several large rooms where the authors are interviewed but we can’t go in yet. We have to line up outside to get our ticket QR code scanned.

The line runs along the outer perimeter of the courtyard and out through a walkway, then the line turns left and goes on for another hundred feet. The festival is well attended and well staffed. The line moves along. As we near the door to the vendor area the line turns 180 degrees to enter the hallway for the lecture rooms. This is the spot where the Line Jumpers practice their craft.

It’s a confusing, swirling area because you can go into the vendor section without attending a lecture. Next to double glass doors there are people making the sharp 180 turn towards the lecture’s security bag-search area mixed in with people trying get to the vendor area. Amongst all this to-ing and fro-ing the Line Jumpers float in the margins just outside the main scrum. With alert eyes and coffee mugs in their hands, the Jumpers strike when the staff glances away a moment or stops to explain the traffic situation to an attendee.

When you are standing in a line for long periods of time you get to know your surrounding line mates. It’s easy to see who hasn’t paid their dues. A tiny old lady lingers near the door watching for an opening. She can’t weigh more than 90 pounds soaking wet. Sensing a weak link in the force she pounces as we approach the turn. She is carrying two large cups of coffee from the coffee kiosk on the street. At Starbucks the coffee would have had a Latin sounding name to describe their size. Something like Ponderosa or Grande. I move to the left to block her advance, too late.

The professional Line Jumper has nerves of steel and without looking me in the eye she says, “I’ve lost my people.” And shoves past me. I don’t know what I’ve lost my people means. Yeah right, I tell her. She waves the hot coffee cups like they are some kind of a get out of jail free card and pushes on. “ You’re cheating, butting in front of people who have waited their turn a long time” is the best comeback I can think of. She ignores me and brushes past a few more people. Security lets her in and just like that another brick in the thin veneer of American civilization tumbles to the squalid streets below.

My anger at the Jumper has cast a cloud over my mood. I’m trying to be a better person and do my best to let it go. I tell CT that I’m choosing to not let the Jumper sour me on humanity in general. Maybe she has a medical disability that didn’t manifest itself as she bulled her way through the crowd of rule-followers like she was the featured attraction in Pamplona, Spain. I’m letting it go…I’m letting it go…

Inside the big room are rows of chairs that have a hook and loop type of attachment on the seat base. This makes it easy to maintain the correct spacing when setting up rows of hundreds of chairs. I didn’t bring my tape measure to the lecture but if I had I would have given the layout a quick quality control inspection. On stage there are a couple old fashioned looking chairs, a table and glasses of water.

The convention center is a multi-use building, thus the floor is level, not sloped like a theater. Seating is first come, first served. I see the Line Jumper lady already has her seat selected. In case a tall guy or a woman with a salad bowl on her head sits in front of me I get an aisle seat so I can lean outboard to see the stage.

The featured authors are on stage for about an hour. Some of them read passages in their books. Above and behind the author and interviewer is a large screen. It’s funny but I’m not sure if it was a projector screen or a liquid crystal display. The screen image lags behind the live stage view a few milliseconds so if you miss something you have to be fast if you want to see it again. There is a different interviewer for each show keeping the thing fresh feeling. There are two large shows in the morning with everyone in the same room. These sessions are for the more popular authors. In the afternoon, several smaller sessions run in tandem so you have to pick one or the other.

The festival was a two-day affair and the second day was a repeat of the first except with different writers and interviewers. The Line Jumpers were out in force the second day but I have risen above the mundane concerns of everyday life and no longer cared if they butted in ahead of people that waited an hour.

Literary fests are great places to learn about new authors and old authors you never heard of. I gained some insight as to why my writing is so poor and have taken inspiration from my fellows. Mostly time is the determining factor in quality writing. It’s all well and good to write a best selling novel in three weeks, one long scroll submitted and the money rolls in. Here at ExhaustNotes we tend to crank out volume product. There’s no time for introspection or craft. Most of the writers at the festival described how hard it is and how long it takes to write a book. Seven to ten years was not unusual. We bought a couple books from Ed Yong. He writes science-y type stuff and was a great interviewee. I haven’t read his books yet but when I do I’ll post a review here.

As we were leaving the convention center the festival, organizers sent a text to CT with the news that all swag was 25% off. We were halfway to our motel but naturally we had to go back and load up on t-shirts and tote bags. We also bought a couple of neat, insulated thermos bottles that look like Michelob Ultra cans except they have literary fest logos on them. If you get a chance, go to a literary festival. They are nothing like Daytona or Sturgis although some of the forms are similar. I had a great time but one thing I didn’t learn from all the lectures I attended was how to end a story.

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Life as a Digital Nomad: Part 3 (Nicaragua)

By Mike Huber

My flight that had left Boston landed safely in Managua, Nicaragua and I was ready to begin my next adventure working remotely. To ensure a smooth transition to a new country I took a week of vacation so I could test out the Wi-Fi, adjust to the new environment, and take some time to relax after the whirlwind of tasks that had been completed prior to leaving the United States.  Getting off the wheel that many are trapped in isn’t the easiest or least stressful thing to accomplish.  As I would later learn, it is much easier to re-enter the wheel then it is to exit it.  To clarify when I say “wheel” I am referring to how most live their lives with an apartment, car, routines, etc.  There is nothing wrong with living a life inside the wheel, and I am not one to judge, but for me it just felt wrong living that way.  I am not sure if it was too cookie cutter or that I found it monotonous and unfulfilling.  Either way the wheel wouldn’t be something I had to think about for the foreseeable future.

Upon arriving in the tiny jungle village of El Rosario (a 2-hour mountainous drive from the humidity, crowds, and heat of Managua) I gazed upon my new home with glee.  It was a small 3-bedroom ranch on about 4 acres of land with every plant, vegetable, and fruit you could possibly imagine.  All this beauty was just steps away from my hammock on the front porch where I could relax and gaze out into the lush jungle.

Once my week of vacation was wrapped up, I began my usual work routine but a tad different from that in Boston.  The morning entailed going outside to retrieve eggs from the chickens, coconuts, pineapples, starfruit, dragon fruit, and of course, some hot chillis to add a kick to breakfast.  This area of Nicaragua was very secluded, so it wasn’t long before I realized how much time I was spending working and really beginning to get out of my funk I had been in a few weeks prior.

After my 2nd successful week in El Rosario, I felt this would be my home for the next few months and wanted to add some more character to it.  Running was a big pastime of mine.  This activity helped me meet the locals and build relationships within the community.  One of the neighbors had an amazing property to include a monkey named Paco.  Now Paco was not very friendly, and it seemed after you gave him a couple beers, he got even less friendly, nevertheless this was one of my favorite stops along my run (mainly since the owner would give me a beer or two to rehydrate).  After chatting with him I noticed he owned a couple beautiful Rottweilers and they had recently given birth to six cute little puppies.  That was it: I bought two of the little guys for $30 and brought them back to the ranch.

Now my life in Nicaragua felt complete. I now had two bad ass little puppies that would join me every morning when I went out to gather food for breakfast.  They would also make a great addition to the security of the property.  This was disappointing to the neighbors who had a hole in their fence.  It didn’t take long before they noticed their chickens began to go missing. It seems the chickens had a curiosity of what was on the other side of the fence.  Death.  Death was on the other side of that fence.  As soon as they meandered into the yard there would be a loud squawk followed by an explosion of feathers, and that is how my new pups were fed.  Of course, this only went on a couple weeks until the neighbor became highly motivated to repair the hole in his fence.

After two incredible months of living in Nicaragua working by day and spending the evenings in the hammock with my dogs lying next to me as I drank Flor de Caña rum, I started to think it may be time to move to my next location.  The biggest and possibly only issue I had with living there was the isolation.  I was miles from any town, I didn’t have a car, and I was living essentially on a 4-acre compound.  The property was surrounded by 8-foot walls with concertina wire on top.  Don’t get me wrong.  It was a safe area and I never felt in danger, but the risk of theft or a break-in was always there.  After a week debating whether to move or not, I decided to pack it up and take a 26-hour local bus ride to Panama. Once again, boarding a vehicle to a new destination, I felt stress just as intense as departing Boston. Would Panama work out as well as Nicaragua?

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Coimbra, Portugal

I photographed the Honda VFR you see in the big photo above in Coimbra, Portugal.   Bait and switch?  Perhaps.  We are a motorcycle site, sort of.   I’ll try to work in a little moto content when and where I can.  For us on this adventure, it was all walking, buses, and high-speed rail transport (and that was really cool).  But that’s coming up later.

Coimbra was another stop on our recent trip to the Iberian peninsula.  Coimbra is a college town on the Rio Mondego.  It was Portugal’s medieval capital before the Portuguese government relocated to Lisbon.  But this college town was particularly cool.   The UNESCO-recognized Universidade de Coimbra is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe.

On the Universidade square in the medical school area in Coimbra. It was a stunning day.

Like many areas in Portugal, Coimbra also has a rich wine producing heritage.  Many of the signs display this heritage.

The shape of signs in Coimbra. Wine was everywhere in Spain and Portugal. We had wine with virtually every meal except breakfast.

The  Biblioteca Joanina is one of the world’s great libraries.  One of the things that is particularly interesting is the way the librarians protect the ancient manuscripts from insects (insects are the books’ natural enemies, because they eat the pages).  Bats reside in the library.  They live behind the books.  The bats come out at night and eat the insects in the library.  I can’t make this stuff up, folks.  This really happens.

In the Joanina Library.
Books, books, and more books. The principal threat to these books is insects eating the pages. The University has an app for that.

I grabbed a macro shot or two as we wandered the campus.  This sidewalk guardpost was interesting.

Photo ops galore. Nothing fancy with equipment here…all these shots are with a basic Nikon consumer-grade D3300 DSLR and 18-55mm kit lens.

As we would find to be the case in virtually every Portuguese and Spanish town, Coimbra has a cathedral.  Actually, it has three.  We visited St. Michael’s at the University of Coimbra.  That’s where I grabbed the interior photos below.

Inside St. Michael’s with our fellow travelers.
The tile work, the organ, the roof colors…I had a great time on this trip.
A coat of arms, surrounded by scrollwork.
A statue in St. Michael’s.

After walking around the University, we walked into the city.    It was pleasant.  The weather was comfortable, the city was beautiful, and the photo ops continued.

One of many statues in downtown Coimbra.
This almost looks like a fancy ancient church or castle. Actually, it was a store catering to tourists with a unique product line: Canned sardines.
Another statue in the Coimbra town square.
A street menu for one of the many restaurants in downtown Coimbra. The food was excellent; the prices were reasonable.

I enjoyed Coimbra.   As a retired college professor, I thought visiting a campus was a cool thing to do.   We had a fabulous lunch, and then our journey continued.

Back on the motorcycle thing again…I’ve traveled by motorcycle in some pretty exotic locales.  I think bopping around Europe on a motorcycle would be a fun way to see the continent.  I wouldn’t want a big bike, and even on the freeways, the speeds are such that a 250 or a 400 would be just fine.  Maybe someday.   I know my friends in Chongqing read the ExNotes blog.  If you need somebody to ride around Europe on your motorcycles to spread the gospel, the ExhaustNotes staff is available.  We’re your boys (and one girl).  Call us.

Stay tuned.  I’ll work in more from Spain and Portugal as time and other blogs permit.

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More Spain and Portugal stories?  You bet!

Spain and Portugal
Camino de Santiago:  Part 1
The Sportster of Seville
Évora
Lisbon
Gibraltar

Life as a Digital Nomad: Part II (Exiting the Wheel)

By Mike Huber

It was May 2012, Boston was becoming extremely boring, and the thought it might be time to expand my horizons began to grow inside my head.  Still remaining as a “work from home” employee and having traveled throughout most of the United States with not so much as a hiccup in missing calls or people asking “Hey, where are you working from today?”  Most wouldn’t expect any type of a response outside “my living room” or “the kitchen table” since that is what everyone was doing and to think an employee was winding up roads in New England on an Italian sport bike or hanging out in Haight Ashbury in a coffee shop while leading a project team call was unthinkable. Now, many will read this and think I wasn’t working and just touring the country while attending a call here and there.  While that perspective isn’t totally wrong, it isn’t fully accurate, either. My organization was giving me awards every quarter, to include project manager of the year.  While this was all happening, our company was constantly laying people off to the point where morale was extremely low.

Even with my newfound freedom I felt myself being dragged into the depths of depression due to the constant threat of layoffs. It was time to take this working from home to the next level.  That being the “what if I don’t have a home” plan.  It wasn’t much of a plan, but more of an execution of an idea born over a few beers in a dark Boston bar two years earlier.

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As with everything in life the first step is the scariest, but also the most critical to set the wheels in motion.  After thinking this over for a bit the most effective way to ensure I followed through with my plan of setting myself free geographically was to rent out my Boston condo.  This was easier than I expected, and had it rented through a management company in under two weeks.  June 1st my new tenant would move in.  This was it.  I was going to not have a home for at least a year. A timeline was now drawn for me to sell everything I owned and find out where my new “home” would be.

Somehow, I knew that returning to Boston wasn’t going to be in the cards.  Having a massive fire sale seemed the best way to clear my life of material possessions that were now just clutter, and there was a lot of clutter to be cleared.  With time being short it was an emotionless task to sell, donate, and give away almost everything.  Paying for a storage unit for an unknown amount of time seemed pointless.

Once everything I owned was condensed into a small box of keepsakes and my travel backpack it was time to decide where to go.  As I looked around the condo (which echoed because it was empty), I was left with the question that I probably should have started with before taking all these drastic actions.  Where the Hell am I going to go?  This is one of those “I may have screwed up” moments.

Originally the semi sorta kinda plan was to just drive around the United States and spend a month or so in each state and see what became of it.  As I was looking at a map figuring out a few first stops on my new journey my phone rang.  It was a 617 Boston number and instantly thought it was a spam call.  Well, this is one call I am glad I didn’t push to voicemail.  It was one of my relatives whom I had gifted a Magic Jack plug a year or so ago.  He was calling to catch up and let me know he was had just moved to a house in the jungles of Nicaragua and had internet service that was just as fast as in the USA.  My jaw dropped and I threw the map of the United States into the trash can that was already overflowing with trinkets and other items that I felt would never be needed again.

Feeling so lost in the United States (on many levels), a new environment would not only be healthy mentally for me but might propel my work motivation (which was currently nonexistent).  Right about this time most of my friends and family were sure I had lost my mind.  Going to Nicaragua on a one-way flight for an undetermined amount of time seemed reckless and a sure way to lose my job (some even felt my life would be in jeopardy).

Having previously traveled much of Central America, I knew most of these concerns were unfounded or pulled from a news article where one person had a bad experience.  The news never really covers the thousands who traveled to this part of the world and had nothing but wonderful things to say about the people, the culture, and the sights that many will never know.  Having grown up in Maine (where for many fear to even venture to Boston) it was incomprehensible for them that I would move to Nicaragua.

As I arrived in Maine, I parked the Ducati in the garage, closed the door, and wondered when I would next see that beautiful machine.  Little did I know that it would be a year and a half before I would hear the magical dry clutch clacking again. Later that day I boarded a flight out of Logan Airport.  With reality setting in I stared out the window.  I was really doing this. Nicaragua was going to be my new home.

Life as a Digital Nomad: Part 1 (Testing the Waters)

By Mike Huber

In 2010 the company I worked for gave me my pink slip due to budgetary cuts.  I was feeling distraught and lost because I had been working there for 8 years. Fortunately, I had a great director who helped by transferring me from a management position into a project manager slot that would be fully remote.

Remote positions at the time were called working from home.  It didn’t take long for me to ask myself a question:  What if I didn’t have a home? This mostly was bar talk amongst friends and I didn’t expect the crazy scenarios we discussed to ever become a reality.  Well…it seems planting those seeds in my mind was all it took for them to nurture, and then to grow into 13 years of almost nonstop travel.

The first two years were mostly spent learning to excel in my new position as a project manager along with clumsily discovering how to adjust my work/life balance in creative ways.  This involved motorcycling throughout New England in between work responsibilities.

Something I learned early is that there are McDonald’s with wi-fi everywhere, and at the time it was one of the better places to stop to respond to emails or for a conference call (this was a life prior to riding a BMW, so I didn’t require Starbucks).  I timed my rides to reach these locations 10 minutes prior to conference calls.  This allowed me time to set up and prepare for them as needed.

The first day as a remote employee I decided to knock out a ride from Boston to Route 17 in northern Vermont.  Route 17 is also known as the “Little Tail of the Dragon.”  It was May and I was literally working off my Ducati Monster M1100 as I tore up Vermont. Since it took so long to reach Route 17 it made sense to ride it twice to ensure the long ride was worth it and regain the curve back in my tires.  It may have been one of the best days I have ever had working and figured this newfound freedom would provide many opportunities to fill in the gaps that I had been missing by going into a regular office day to day.

Riding all the way to Vermont from Boston on your first day in a new position probably was a bit of overkill.  I was missing calls and hadn’t noticed my phone was constantly ringing in my pocket (an easy oversight being so heavily focused on riding).  I was in flight formation and setting the pace for a flock of mallards that happened to be flying down the White River, which ran parallel to Route 100.  Unbeknownst to me the phone continued ringing as the Ducati’s Termignoni exhaust roared through the Green Mountains while I leaned into corners that followed the river.

Shortly after parting ways with the mallards and crossing back into New Hampshire, I saw some lights behind me.  It was a New Hampshire State Trooper.  Dammit! I am sure I was speeding, but the question always is how fast. It was fast. As I began talking to the State Trooper to try to minimize the damage, I could now hear my cell phone ringing.  I picked it up as the Trooper ran my information.  It was my new manager based in Virginia calling to introduce herself and ask if I had noticed that I had missed a call I needed to be on.  I stated I was just out getting a coffee (which was 100% true; it’s just that the coffee was 200 miles away).  This was probably one of my more challenging multitask scenarios (i.e., signing a speeding ticket while on an introductory call with my manager).  To this day I feel I would have been able to get out of that ticket had I not been so distracted by work. Lesson 1 as a remote employee learned.

After that day I knew I should take my work a bit more seriously and slow my pace.  I continued to ride, but always ensured I attended every call (which I did over the next 13 years). My work ethic has always been strong, and I didn’t want to compromise this position and what I could possibly do with it by losing my focus.  Continuing to merge my work responsibilities with riding was something that I honed to an art form.

Once I was comfortable performing my work one or two days a week off the motorcycle, I thought I would step the adventure up a notch: California.  I had relatives in Oakland and there was a Harley rental in San Francisco, a short transit ride away.  It made sense to fly there for two weeks and work remotely in a new environment and time zone to see how I would perform.

The test run couldn’t have gone smoother.  I was on Pacific Time when my team was on Eastern Time.  This ensured that by 1:00 p.m. all my tasks and calls were completed.  Having earlier workdays provided much more time to explore San Francisco and the Bay Area.  A couple of vacation days in the mix allowed time to rent a Harley in San Francisco and take a 3-day trip to Tahoe and Yosemite.  Even though I was on vacation those days I felt obliged to join work calls whenever possible just to stay on top of my projects, while obtaining bonus points from management for doing so on my time off.  I felt this made up for my missed meeting when I had first started this position in New Hampshire.

The California trip had solidified my abilities to work from anywhere.  On the return flight to Boston my thoughts focused on a farfetched mindset:  What if I don’t have a home?  It would take a few months of planning and a solid leap of faith.  As with all leaps of faith you never know where or how it will end, but I felt sure I could make this dream a reality. What I didn’t realize is how far I would take this and the new experiences my decision would deliver.  I turned my life into Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on steroids over the next 13 years.

The Sportster of Seville

By Joe Berk

When I was a kid, I used to watch a weekly television comedy show called The Little Rascals.   In one of the episodes, one of the rascals named Alfalfa sang a song from Gioachino Rossini’s opera, The Barber of Seville.  Until very recently, Alfalfa’s rendition and a Cadillac made in the 1970s (the Seville) were all I knew of Seville.  That changed with our recent trip to Spain.

I found it: The Barber of Seville!

Cards on the table:  I didn’t know anything about Gioachino Rossini’s opera until I Googled the Little Rascals and the Barber of Seville.   In so doing, I found out that Warner Brothers also had a Bugs Bunny cartoon with the same song.  I know…I digress.  Indulge me for 56 seconds more. Here’s Alfalfa belting it out.  Told ya…

You might be wondering:  What’s with the Sportster in the cover photo up top?   I saw it my first afternoon in Seville.   Believe it or not, in Spain, the land that brought us Bultaco (the motorcycle, not the Mexican bullfight snack bar delicacy), Ossa, and Montesa (or, as some might say, Montessa), the ultimate motorcycle status symbol is a used Sportster.  Hence the title of this blog:  The Sportster of Seville.  We’ve had a lot of fun with Sportster blogs here on ExNotes, but let’s get to the main topic of this discussion:  Seville.

One of our first stops in Seville was the Plaza de España, which is a magnificent building and park area built in 1929 when Seville hosted the Ibero-American Exposition World’s Fair.  The Plaza de España is impressive.  Today, the building has been renovated and it is used for Spanish government agencies.  It’s beautiful.

Photo opportunities abound. This shot of the tower through one of the many arches almost took itself.
Any time there’s water or a mirror, I’m there. You can do a lot with reflections when you shoot a photo.

We saw a bunch of touristy chotchkas in the Plaza de España courtyard that made for good photos (I would never buy this sort of stuff…if I need to generate a breeze, I’ll hop on my motorcycle…you know, to get my knees in the breeze).  But it was fun to photograph.

Fans for sale in the Plaza de España courtyard.

My attention then turned to the tilework along the Plaza de España courtyard wall that stretched for half a mile.  Each tile-based mural depicts a Spanish province.  The work was impressive, but what was even more impressive was what happened next.

One of many tile murals in the Plaza de España courtyard.
Another Plaza de España courtyard tile mural.

Two Spanish motor officers rolled into the Plaza de España courtyard on (get this) police motor scooters.  I always thought small motorcycles and motor scooters made a lot of sense in urban areas (I’ll say more on that in a second).   I asked the motor officer in the photo below if I could grab a picture and he was cool with it.

A Seville motor officer. If I was 50 years younger and spoke Spanish, I might try out for a job like this. It looked like a great gig, and I like the colors.

I didn’t realize why the motor officers had appeared out of nowhere.  All those tourist chotchkas like the fans you see in the photo above?  The folks  selling their wares there (I’m told they were Gypsies, if you can even say that anymore) weren’t supposed to be there.  When I looked up after grabbing the photo above, all the chotchkas (and the chotchka merchants) were gone.  They just went poof and vanished. Wiped clean from the face of the Earth (as they said in that Indiana Jones movie).  I guess you don’t want to mess with a Spanish motor officer.

On the motor scooter/small motorcycle thing for police motorcycles:  When Gresh and I were at the Zongshen factory in Chongqing, one of the many very cool things we saw there were RX3 police motorcycles.  Imagine that:  A 250cc police motorcycle.  I talked Zongshen into giving us (“us” being CSC Motorcycles) three or four of the things so we could market them to police departments in America.   Imagine that, too…one short email and poof: Three free motorcycles.

The CSC RX3 250cc police motorcycle. I had a lot of fun on these.
The obligatory blog commercial: The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles. Did I mention these make great gifts?

I thought I knew the police motorcycle market a little bit because I had written a book about police motors.  Man, I tried, but it was a bust.  The Sacramento Fairgrounds Police were interested, but I couldn’t close the deal.  We shipped one to the New York City Police Department (I knew they used Vespas for police work), Andy Sipowicz and crew kept the bike for about two months without ever taking it out of the crate, and then they shipped it back.  I took one to a couple of local police departments, but the only thing to come of that was one of the cops told me I wasn’t allowed to ride it around with the red and blue lights and the siren still attached.  I told him not to worry; I only used that stuff if people wouldn’t get out of my way.  Zongshen, on the other hand, has done fabulously well with their police bikes.  They are selling RX1s, RX3s, RX4s, and other bikes as police motors literally all over the world. Just not in America.  I’ll do a blog about Zongshen police bikes someday.

I know, I’m digressing again.  Back to the main attraction:  Seville.  We walked around quite a bit (I did 17,000 steps one day) and there were tons of photo ops.  Doors, tiles, alleys, and more.

A door in Seville. Spain and Portugal are an artist’s palette. Both were awesome.
A Seville sidewalk. The sidewalks were awesome everywhere we went. Think of the labor that went into this. Joe Gresh, this is your new concrete standard. I’ll take a photo when you finish and put it on the blog.
Decor on a home in Seville.

As we walked around Seville and took in the sights, Jose (our awesome guide) told us we were in the Jewish quarter.  I asked if Jewish people still lived there.  Very few, he said.  You know:  The Spanish Inquisition.  Oh, yeah.  I remember reading about that in James Michener’s The Source (a great story and a great read).

In Seville’s Jewish Quarter. Note the sign on the wall on the right.

Our walk through Seville presented one photo op after another.  I had my old Nikon D3300 (the current version is the Nikon D3500), an entry-level consumer grade digital SLR, and the relatively inexpensive (but vibration-reduction-equipped) 18-55mm zoom lens.  It was great.   The D3300 is a light camera. My other Nikon (the D810) has more capability, but it is much heavier.  For this kind of tourism, the D3300 (or the current D3500) is a better deal.

A fountain in the exterior corner of a Seville structure.
I saw this and had to ask: Is Antonio here? Which one, they answered…we have lots of Antonios. Sometimes, my humor is an acquired taste.

We continued our walking tour, and it was on to the Catedral de Sevilla, a massive cathedral built between 1434 and 1517 over what used to be the city’s main mosque (when the Moors occupied the Iberian peninsula).  It rivals the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s cathedral (it’s that big).

The 18-55mm lens wasn’t wide enough to take in the entire Catedral de Sevilla. It is a massive church, the largest in Spain.
Susie, my traveling buddy for 40 years, with the Catedral de Sevilla in the background.

The Catedral de Sevilla interior is impressive, but it is dimly lit and flash photography is strictly verboten (I wouldn’t have used flash, anyway), so I relied on finding something to brace my camera against and the lens’ vibration reduction technology (which did a great job).  I could do a photobook with just interior shots, including the Catedral de Sevilla’s beyond impressive stained glass windows.

This was but one of many stained glass windows in the Catedral de Sevilla.
Shooting in the camera’s RAW mode and allowing PhotoShop’s Auto adjustment to work its magic brings up features that can’t be captured with jpeg alone.
Incredible sights, incredible detail, and lots of photography fun.

You may not know this (I certainly didn’t) but one of Christopher Columbus’s crypts is in the Catedral de Sevilla (folks apparently spread his remains around a bit).   The photo below shows one of his crypts in the Catedral de Sevilla.   Columbus was an Italian from Genoa, but his expeditions were funded by Spain’s Queen Isabella.

Columbus lies within. Impressive.

So there you have it:  Seville.  There’s more to come from our Spanish adventure, so sign up for your free subscription (don’t forget to tell your email program we’re not spam) or check back often.  Or maybe do both.  And if you have comments, we’d love to hear them.

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Évora!

By Joe Berk

I know, we’re a motorcycle (and other interesting stuff) site, and you might be thinking this blog is going to be about a Lotus Evora (the Evora is a Lotus sports car).   The Evora is probably an incredible automobile, but that’s not why we are here today.

A Lotus Evora.

The word Évora is a feminine word of Portuguese origin; it means “she who lives near yew trees.”  That’s about as irrelevant as the big photo up top.  But hey, we’re a motorcycle site, and who wouldn’t enjoy a photo of a Barbie-themed pink BMW cafe racer carousel ride?  I saw those carousel Beemers as we walked into Évora.  They called out to me.  I had to get a photo.

But I digress: Our focus in this blog is indeed Évora, but it’s not about the Lotus.  It is about a small 2,000-year-old town in Portugal, a World Heritage Site, named Évora.  Before I get to the Évora photos, let me digress a bit more and tell you about our stop as a gas station on the ride from Lisbon to Évora.   That gas station had a magazine rack.  They still do printed motorcycle magazines over there, you know.

Moto mags in Portugal.

On to Évora.  One of our first photo ops was the Capela dos Ossos (the Chapel of Bones).  It was one of many churches we would see on our travels through Spain and Portugal, but this one had a rather bizarre twist:  The walls and columns are covered in bones.

Yep, I said bones.  Human bones.  Weird stuff, this is.

An interior shot of the Capela dos Ossos. The little 18-55 Nikon kit lens was earning its keep.
The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone…or something like that. Skulls, too. Go figure.

The Capela dos Ossos is a small chapel (it’s located next to the larger Church of St. Francis), and it was built by Franciscan monks in the 16th century.  I guess they wanted it to stand out, and to accomplish that, the guys dug up medieval cemeteries and used the bones from an estimated 5,000 dead folks as interior decor.  It was weird, man.  Bones.  I tried to imagine the conversation hundreds of years ago that led to this decision.  Sue and I have  had interesting discussions about our interior paint and wallpaper choices.  I get it that these decisions are not always easy and everybody has opinions.  But bones?  Those old Portuguesers must have had some spirited interior decor conversations.  Paint?  Nah.  Wallpaper?  Nah.  Tiles?  Maybe a little, but everybody’s done tiles.  Bones?  Yeah, that could work.

All this kind of made me think about cremation as an alternative to burial, but I’m not going with either option.  I’ve already left directions to my heirs.  I’m going to be stuffed when I go.  Stuffed with bullshit, and mounted in front of my laptop.  You know…so I can keep writing the blog.

One thing I love about travel anywhere is that it gives me lots of photo opportunities.  Here’s another picture of a more conventional statue in the bone barn.

High ISOs, the 18-55mm Nikon lens, shooting in RAW, and Photoshop’s noise reduction filter brings it all home.

Gresh asked me about two-stroke motorcycles in Portugal.  The only one I saw was this older Zündapp.  It was very clean, it was plated, and it was obviously still in use.

An old Zündapp still in use in Evora.

I would see a few more two-stroke motos in Spain, but two-strokes have pretty much had their day on the Iberian peninsula.  Bultaco, Ossa, and Montesa (or was it Montessa?) are no more.  Gresh loves his two strokes and he owns several.  I’ve only had one, a BSA Bantam two-stroke.

An excellent resource: The Clymer BSA book.

My Beezer didn’t look anything like the one you see on the Clymer BSA book above (which is an excellent reference, by the way).  Mine was a clapped out, rattle-can black beater bike.   But it was fun and frisky and for a 175 it had power way out of line with its displacement.  Maybe some day I’ll get another two-stroke motorcycle, but the odds are low.  The way the world is going it’s more likely I’ll have an electric motorcycle first, but that’s a topic for a later blog.

I’m digressing again.  Back to the main attraction.  Colors abound in Portugal.  I grabbed this photo of a few plates on display.

Portugal’s photo ops abound.

As we walked through Évora, the door handles and knockers caught my attention.  Here are a few photos.

The macro shots of the door knockers were fun. Take my hand…
Another handy door knocker.
A set of stereo knockers. The one on the right sees the most use.

Many of the doors were cool, too.  I’ll show more of these photos in subsequent blogs.  I took a bunch.

An impressive entry.
And another.

Cork is a big industry in Portugal, and we saw many different cork products (cork bowls, cork pads, cork purses, cork hats, and more).  Did you ever wonder where cork comes from?  Cork is made from tree bark (something I did not know).  The tree is called a cork oak, and the bark can be harvested every 9 years after the tree matures (the bark grows back).  Spain and Portugal are the dominant suppliers.

Our local tour guide with a chunk of cork oak bark stripped from the tree. Who knew?
Cork hats and purses.
Cork bowls and spoons.

Évora is a colorful place.  Walking Évora’s narrow and climbing streets was fun, and the photo ops made it even more so.

Frida Kahlo?

Évora dates to the Roman occupation of the Iberian peninsula.  The remains of the Temple of Diana are on a hill overlooking the city’s center; the temple was built in the first century.  It’s known today as the Temple of Diana, but that’s not what it was when the Romans built it.  A 17th century priest, Father Manuel Fialho, is believed to be the person who tagged it as the Temple of Diana.  It’s too bad we don’t do politics here on ExNotes; this story screams out for a Father Fialho comparison to Fox News or CNN (depending on which way you lean).

Roman ruins in Évora.

Portugal is a well-developed nation with excellent roads.  I’d say it is better-maintained and cleaner than a lot of places I’ve been in the US.  The expressways were every bit as good as ours, and other than the fact that signs were not in English and there was little traffic, the freeways were no different than the ones in southern California.   The climate is about the same, the towns and roads are much cleaner, and we didn’t see any homeless people.  Prices on everything except gasoline were similar to those in the US (gas was around $8 per gallon), but the average wage is substantially lower (their average annual income is about a third of ours).  Somehow they make it all work.

The photo below shows the view from our bus just before we entered Spain.

Espana bound. Spain was a quarter mile in front of us. We didn’t need our passports to enter Spain nor did we need to stop. It was like driving across the state line between California and Arizona.

I’m skipping around a bit.  There’s more to cover from our time in Portugal, and I’ll touch on that in subsequent blogs.  For now, it was on to Spain.

To be continued…

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