Ain’t looking for nothing, but a good time…

There is a board game that I like to play called Cashflow. I like to describe it as "Monopoly for Big Boys" but it is actually quite different. It was created by the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad as an "educational" tool that is just fun to play.

In the game, you start by randomly being assigned a career ranging from janitor to teacher, doctor, lawyer, and a range of others. You get a little card that has information about your "life" such as your income, debts, bills and what not. As you take your turn in the game, you move around the board and you are given the opportunity to make different investments, mostly in real estate, that give you additional income. The object of the game is to earn enough additional income to cover all of your stated debts so that you can retire.

As is expected, if you have the career of a doctor, you have a higher income than a janitor, but you also have more bills. This means that you are able to make more investments more quickly, but you have to have more additional income to "retire".

In most cases, as the game is played the person with the janitor's job retires first.

This teaches one of the things that is stressed in the books, which is basically that if you live modestly, it is easier to invest your money and have it work for you. If you decide to spend your extra money on a flashy car or house or 110 inch plasma tv, then you do not have that money working for you, instead, you are working for your things.

This reminds me of one of the lessons from Fight Club, "the things you own end up owning you."

Taking both lessons into account, it seems logical to me to take the Tyler Durden inspired route and back away from the consumeristic lifestyle while at the same time preparing for a more modest future and retiring "early" as opposed to being a slave to my possessions until I die.

For the past 4 years I have had a BMW and while they are fun cars to drive and have all kinds of cool dripping off of them, they have drawbacks; mainly their total cost of ownership is pretty high. I have recently decided to get rid of my Bimmer in favor of a used Xterra. The Xterra is significantly cheaper, yet performs more functions than the BMW such as towing things and taking my beloved dogs to fun places. Major drawback: gas mileage kind of sucks.

I have ditched DirecTV in favor of over the air HD, Hulu and Redbox. I would probably do better to ditch all of that for books and even then explore the wealth of free literature available from Project Gutenberg.

I now buy very little "crap in a box" food that is pre-prepared and terrible for your body in favor of real food like vegetables, meat, spices, and other ingredients. Yes, it is more work because I have to prepare it. I have to plan and learn to cook myself, but it is actually easy, extremely self satisfying and surprisingly tasty.

I have a modest home and while I do not care for its location (actually I just do not care for the location of some of the other people in the proximity of my house), I see no point in spending half of my net income on a house when a fourth will do.

 

Many times I have talked of living in a van (or RV, or boat) and living solely from online income. While that is an extreme example, it does embody the sprit of what I want: FREEDOM.

I can close my eyes and imagine a life different from my own as it exists now. A more simple life. I would wake up with the sun, eat a simple breakfast and drink coffee outdoors. I would then prepare for my adventure for the day. That could be anything, but I believe that it would be good to seek adventure in our lives, see something new, go somewhere you have never been, try something you have never done, learn something just for the sake of learning. Later in the day, enjoy time with your family and friends, because connections with people are important for both their growth and your own. Finally, I would take time in the evening for a good book and finally for reflection on the days activities and prayer.

I understand that life gets in the way and that not every day will be like that, but the way it stands now, no days are like that and frankly, that is not acceptable.

 

Sometimes I wonder why I bought into this suburban lifestyle in the first place. Oh yeah, so I could have things… Now I have things I don't need and a job I don't care for. (Note to my employer, I don't hate you, I hate being your slave.)

 

Where do you put this on your resume?

When I was younger I used to spend a lot of time playing role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons or Traveler. In these games your character would almost always have a job description of "Adventurer". You would always be on some sort of quest for riches, fame and glory.
As a kid, this seemed to be a perfectly normal profession and one that anyone would want, but what happened to that? Surely there is adventure to be had in the world today. What would the life of a modern adventurer look like? How would you explain that to a future employer? Would you ever need to explain?

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Thanks,
Scott McArthur
www.antbytes.com

Montana Trip - Spring 09 - Wrapup

Ok, so I have been doing blogs like "Day 1" etc, but I have been taking forever to get them out and now I am already preparing for another trip to Montana, so I am just going to wrap all of this up and move on to other things.

The fifth day of my trip, Paul and I spent a lot of time chilling out and working together sharing business ideas and what not. We did go out hiking though and as we were cruising down the street, we ran into a group of wild big horned sheep. We were able to creep up on them and I was able to get some good pictures from the SUV. The hike was very enjoyable as we spent most of it talking and discussing life and philosophy. It was really nice to be able to spend some one on one time with my uncle.

I am not really sure what we did that evening, but I think that is the night that we went out for sushi. The sushi place there was really good and they had this smoked salmon roll that was AMAZING!

Day 6 we did some more bumming around the house and then we went on an adventure. Today's adventure was a quest for Bruce. Bruce the Moose.

Bruce is a young, adolescent moose that lives in the Hamilton city park. From what I understood, he lost his parents while he was very young and has lived in the Hamilton city park ever since. Don't get me wrong, he is still very much wild. Keep in mind that "city park" may not be what you think. Hamilton is only like 5,000 people and while the city park does have all of the things you would expect in a city park, it is in Montana and has a lot of land with hiking trails. Bruce the Moose is not hanging out amongst the playground equipment.

We get to the park and Paul tells me of his run in with Bruce. Paul had been hiking around the park trails and turned a corner only to be greeted by a huge wild moose. This made me a little nervous since I have been chased by cows before. It is not really a very enjoyable experience and a moose is a lot bigger, so I would imagine that it would be less fun.

Anyway, after hiking through the park for a while, we did find Bruce. I was able to walk up and get pretty close. The pictures do not do him justice. He was as big as a large horse, but his antlers were really small since he is still young. He seemed ok with me watching him, but wanted to keep a close eye on me. After a bit, he went back to eating and scratching himself. I thought that it was kind of funny when he would scratch because he would bring his hind leg up to scratch his neck like a dog does. Is that normal for a moose?

Anyway, it was pretty neat getting that close to Bruce the Moose, but there is only so much looking at a moose that you can do.

We headed back to the house and played some games with the kids then Kasey called.

Normally, this would not be a big deal, but this time she was calling to let me know that Big-a-Toe and 4 of 7 were fighting all bloody like and had been for a while. She was not in a happy place at all. I had my dad go help separate them and told Kasey to lock them up for the night and that I would be home as soon as I could. I had to cut my vacation short a day, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

I was bummed that I had to go home because we had planned to go snowboarding the next day again. Although the lifts were not running, we were going to ride up with a snowmobile. FUN!

I got home the next day and we enrolled the dogs in special training that cost an arm and a leg (which we have yet to use all of as of now). It was either that or we would have to get rid of some of the dogs. In retrospect, it has been way worth it since they are a lot mellower now and seem happier now that we have set the pecking order for them, but that is a whole other story.

Now, Kasey and I are planning another trip to Montana in the October / November time frame. We are going to both drive up and take some of the dogs with us. We will probably spend most of the time visiting hot springs!

Facebook Blogging

A while ago, I hooked my blogger blog up to my facebook notes. It is pretty handy because now if I post a blog on blogger it automatically alerts my facebook peeps.
What I have been wondering though is how I can tag people in the facebook notes. Usually when you make a note in facebook, you can tag people that are mentioned, but when it does it automatically, you can not. I had hoped that there was a way to go back and edit the note in facebook, but I can not seem to find it. Does anyone know?

Montana Trip - Spring 09 - Day 4

My fourth day in Montana was a Sunday and we had made plans to go to a natural hot spring. I had never done this before, but I have heard about all kinds of health benefits and how relaxing and cool it was, so I was pretty excited to go. Craig would not be joining us though because he had to go to a training course to become a soccer referee. It was kind of a bummer, but it was a great opportunity for him! That morning, we got up, ate some breakfast and hit the road with some snacks for the road and our swimsuits. Paul had a book about all of the hot springs in the north west USA which I glanced through for about 5 seconds.

Now, let me take a pause here to let you in on what was going on in my head. I figured that we were heading to a spa like place with a natural hot spring, maybe some mud baths, seaweed wraps and possibly a hot stone massage. I was wondering how much this was going to cost me, but I was on vacation, so… whatever right?

Ok, Paul, Kristen, Kara and I pile into the car and head out. The place that we are going to is in Idaho and about two or three hours away. We are cruising down the road and jamming to some tunes and they begin to tell me about some of the other hot springs that they had been to and that they had never been to the one that we were heading to. As they tell the stories I begin to get the idea that what I had envisioned was not exactly right. I explained my idea of what we were doing and I am told that there are some that are kind of like that, more commercial, but we are going to a more rustic one. I get out the book that Paul had given me earlier and look up Weir Hot Springs. As I read, it becomes clear to me that I was REALLY wrong in what I was expecting. Apparently this is just some natural spring that random people have built up pools for in the middle of nowhere.

I was not disappointed at all. This would be pretty cool. I mean it was in a book, so it had to be a pretty great place, right? I was starting to get hungry though and I asked if there was going to be any restaurants near the place and Paul just kind of looked at me with a smile that said "dude, you have no idea", but just said probably not. I then realized that I was going to need some food and asked to stop at the next gas station.

We were not anywhere near civilization and it was quite a while before we came across anything. We continued our drive through the mountains, the humongous trees and ever increasing snow fall until we got to a gas station in the middle of nowhere. It was kind of a gas station / camp grounds and was pretty much empty. They we went into the main house and asked if they had any snacks for sale. They had to go find a guy and then go find a key to open a different building that had some things for sale in it. I don't think that the place had been opened in a couple of weeks, but they had some chips and some other forms of sustenance from Costco, so I spent $10 on a few things. While I was checking out, I asked the guy if he knew how to get to Weir Hot Springs as the directions in the book were a little unclear.

"You're going to Weir huh? Just go up to mile marker (whatever) and watch for where the road widens. Don't park there though, you will get towed. You will see the trail and it is just a little walk in." I told him thanks and got back in the car. We continued down the road and I told Paul what the guy said.

"I am sure that we will see a sign or something though," I mentioned.

I was greeted with another smile at my naivety from Paul. "Probably not," he said.

We eventually got to the right place and saw a couple of other cars parked on the side of the road with snow all over the place, so we got out and started walking up the road. I had realized that I had not made a snow man yet, so I made one really quickly on the side of the road and we continued on, for like a half of a mile! This is not what I was expecting and it was all beginning to dawn on me what was really going on.

We found the trail and then hiked for about another half mile into the woods. Now, it is important to remember that it is winter, it is snowing like crazy, there is already a LOT of snow on the ground, and we are in the mountains.

This is NOT what I was expecting. It was so much more. The hike in was amazing. We travelled in next to a creek and through ever increasingly large trees. There were many trees that had fallen over due to the weight of the snow on their branches and they lay across the creek with two feet of snow piled up on their now horizontal trunks. Their still standing companions were easily four to six foot in diameter and rose what seemed like forever.

The terrain was not crazy ridicules or anything, but it was covered in snow and did pose some problems as some bits had to be travelled via a mandatory butt slide down the side of the mountain. It did have me wondering how exactly we were going to get back though.

After a while, we reached an area where the snow was conspicuously melted indicating our arrival at the hot spring! There were two couples already there and we greeted them and then found a secluded area to change into our suits. We were maybe 100 feet away from the hot pool and had to make that trip in the 20 something degree weather in just our suits. (some advice, BRING FLIP FLOPS!)

The hot spring itself is just a natural spring of water flowing out of a crack in the side of the mountain. It travels maybe twenty feet down the granite and is caught in a pool made by local residents from piled rocks, concrete and logs. They even put in a couple of PVC tubes at different levels to allow for emptying the pool or changing the water level. The water comes out of the face of the rock at about 117 degrees, but cools to about 105 by the time it reaches the pool. The pool is constantly circulated by the never ending stream of hot water that flows over the top of the pool. The pool is about the same size as a 12 person hot tub.

We said hi to the other people there and quickly dipped into the warm water of the pool. It was an awesome way to just chill and enjoy time together. The scenery was amazing! Since we were basically on the low side of a mountain, the best view was across the creek to the side of the mountain on the other side. I was just relishing the time spent looking at the majestic trees, and the contrast of the warm water vs. the huge falling snowflakes landing on my head that would quickly melt into a memory.

We spent a couple of hours there talking to the couples there and just having a great time. After a while though, a large group of people ready to party showed up and that was our cue to leave. We got dressed and headed back.

I had thought that the trip back would be unbearable after so much relaxing, but the stay at the spring was actually very invigorating and the trip back to the car was nothing.

This was definitely something that I could do again… over and over and over again.