ERE Adventuring

Where are you and where are you going?
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NuncFluens
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Joined: Fri Jun 26, 2020 6:25 am
Location: Bavaria, Germany

ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Welcome to my ERE journal. As I have no idea how to write something like this, I'll just go with my gut. If you'd like to know anything you're welcome to ask. I'll try to answer any questions as far as I deem it safe to do so without making myself doxxable.

With that said, I'll run you through my current situation, 10 year, and 20 year plans.

Right now, I'm 31 years old, I live in Germany and am engaged to my high-school (equivalent) sweetheart of 13 years.
I'm working a cushy government-job in IT for 32h/week and have 3x of my yearly expenditures saved.
Outdoor-sports (henceforth called "adventuring") are a big part of my spare time activities and culminate in 2-3 medium-length trips or projects per year.

In 10 years, I'll be 41 years old, still living in Germany and am happily married.
I'd like to still be working my government IT-job for 20h/week and have >= 10x of my yearly expenditures saved.
My expanding freedom will be used to do volunteer and/or badly paid work in the wider adventuring scene.
This can go from selling trail shoes in an outlet-store on the weekends to mountain guiding during the winter months.
Personal adventuring-projects are done several times per year.

In 20 years, I'll be 51 years old, have hopefully moved to a LCOL country (Hungary, Bulgaria) and am still happily married.
I won't have to work for money anymore, so I'll do a combo of homesteading, producing artisanal foodstuffs and my usual adventuring.
I'll own my house and don't worry about money anymore.

That's a very rough overview over how I see it going down.
From here on out, I'd try to use this thread like a diary of sorts, where I try to make plans so the above actually happens.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

So, let's start this diary right away.

I've identified the following Focus Areas as the most important for reaching the goals in my 10 year plan.
The time horizon for achieving all this is roughly 3 months:

Moving:
  • Cleaning out my old appartment (Decluttering, selling/gifting stuff, getting rid of the appartment).
  • Cleaning out both my fiances basements, so I can put my few remaining possessions there until we find a bigger appartment).
Wedding:
  • Getting a grip on all the legal aspects (we'll do a separation of goods, which is pretty clear-cut in Germany). This includes seeing a lawyer for questions of what's possible (excluding alimony?), setting up the documents and having the signed by a notary.
  • Planning the date, ceremony, evening program (it will be very small, family only). Buying dresses, etc.
Adventuring:
  • Defining a goal to reach by the end of september, a training plan to get there and a training plan to keep some of that fitness during the off-season.
  • Following the training plan. Eating well, doing all the mobility, etc.
  • Going on an organized hike with the Alpine Club to connect with the wider adventuring community (was strictly adventuring solo till now).
Finances:
  • Getting back into the habit of tracking my expenses. Analysing said expenses for potential savings.
And that's about all the big stuff I've identified.
I'll try to give semi-regular updates on all of the above, if some milestones are reached.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

I just scouted the basement and I've got So Much Stuff! When I turned minimalist, I only got rid of about half of my stuff and put the other things out of sight. So I guess I'm an appartment-minimalst/basement-hoarder hybrid, of sorts. The worst offenders after my cursory sweep are 9 guitars, 2 amplifiers, 10+ effects pedals, 3 bikes and all of my snowbording equipment :((( So I guess I'll have a lot to do in the next few weeks. My head is spinning.

On the marriage front, we talked about getting a pre-nup. But that we decide after seeing a lawyer and have him explain all the defaults of the system to us. Costs would be estimated at 2000€ (they scale with net-worth at the time of signing).
Also, the marriage date moved up to this year (father in law might not make it till next year). So everything needs to be handled ASAP. More stress, yey!

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Quick update:

Right this moment I'm taking a short break from decluttering/minimizing my old appartment. The plan for today is to empty out all dressers and drawers into piles on the floor (not enough boxes), sort through them and categorize them into "sell/gift", "trash" and "keep". Once that is done I should be able to sell off unwanted dressers and the whole "sale" pile over the next few weeks. The "keep" items will be moved into my fiances appartment, so that mine gets emptied out eventually. Since I don't plan on living in the appartment anymore, I'll also start removing all food/clothes/lighting over the next few days. This also means my current fitness routine will have to move from barbell training to kettlebells, which has a nice minimalistic touch to it anyway.

Regarding the marriage, I've researched up- and downsides of the defaults that the law applies without a marriage contract. The biggest downside is that I'll have to pay if my future wife will need care down the road, which worried me quite a bit*. I later found out that in Germany that's the case anyway if we live together though, so we might as well marry anyway and take the upsides with us. We're planning on seeing a lawyer in about 2 weeks, when my fiance will have a week off from work.

(*) It's not that I wouldn't want to do everything I can to help out in that case. But it's a bit unfair that they pay for all the consumers while expecting the savers to pay themselves. "Save up for retirement" they say, but you're always punished if you don't use up your money right away. Oh well.

Other than that, my brand new bike's shifting somehow got stuck, so I'm left with a fixie in 2nd hardest gear in a hilly city until I get around to repairing it, which sucks :(

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Right, the freewheel... Anyway, with great torque comes great knee pain, so I'll have to fix it sooner rather than later and keep my puny legs, I fear :/

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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by jacob »

... for the height of the saddle, that is.

This does come with some caveats though. If volume is high, it can hurt the knees regardless of how strong they are. There's a reason pros ride at 90-110 rpm instead of the more "amateurish" 55-70 "human default" rpm despite the former being cardiovascularly harder. It's to save wear and tear on the joints. (Same reason that long distance runners take shorter but faster steps than recreational/weekend runners. Leg length has a natural oscillation period. Pros push beyond this working harder in order to reduce the impact load from longer steps.)

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

yep, gotta watch out for arthritis. work on your cadence.

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

i got physical therapy for mild knee arthritis, and besides exercises to balance muscles (hamstrings, glutes, etc, to compensate for overdeveloped quads) i was told to keep the gears light from this point forward (i have a tendency to mash the gears).

entropy is real, and in the end it gets us all :lol:

eta: decent article here: https://www.bicycling.com/training/g200 ... our-knees/

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Wow, a lot has happened in this thread while I was away :p

Anyway, it's not (just) a biking problem. That knee has been whacked for 10 years now, for no apparent reason. It was analyzed with ultrasonic, X-ray and MRT both 10 years ago and in March of 2020. The orthopedist said that nothing is wrong with it that he could see, but maybe I should work on my core and would I like to buy a program from him? :/ After that I started hip and knee mobility, myofascial release self-therapy and (free) core work. In addition I seem to have weak or under-activated glutes, so I started Deadlifting and Squatting again.

With that I worked up to 20km hikes on hilly terrain, at least. But I still can't push the big gears on my bike and neither can I move fast on the uphills when hiking. I guess, after 10 years, this knee is more of a paradox to handle rather than a problem to be solved. And lighter gears with a high cadence definitely help with that.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Moving: I didn't manage to sort through everything in my old appartment on Wednesday and since I'm at my parents for the weekend, I can't do much right now. They'll drive me back home tomorrow, so we'll move a few things from my old appartment into the current one. My fiance seems to have made some space in the basement, but I will need to verify (lol).

Adventuring: I did a rather hard training-mesocycle up until two weeks ago, that ended just as planned. The celebration hike afterwards led to all the symptoms commonly associated with overtraining, so I didn't fall asleep, didn't stay asleep, was not well rested for 3 days straight. After that I avoided hiking in fear of going back into that dreadful state and biked a bit instead. Now my bike is fucked, and it's actually quite nice to hike at my parents, so I took a 12km hike real quick in the afternoon. Had IT-Band pain on the knee at 7km but managed to stretch it out. Overall it was very nice and invigorating. I think I'm ready to start training again.

Life: Since joining this board I started really thinking about how I want to live. The previous answer of "without having to go to work" was not satisfying anymore, so I'm taking a good hard look at myself while trying a few things. One new thing I tried is DIYing what I can, including food. I'm coming from a semi-elimination diet (long story) right now and adding in factory-foods felt iffy. Now I substitute those with my homemade alternatives. My fiance said the pesto-chicken was the best food I ever cooked, and I really liked the process of it all. So that's definitely something I'd want to do more of.
Also: Sprouting. I was listening to the Rich Roll podcast with Doug Evans today and it seems like sprouts might be my urban-homesteading spirit-veggies. I tried the search function, but there doesn't seem to be a resident sprout expert on these boards, yet. Maybe a niche I can fill. We'll see.

Finance: On the one hand, my tracking of expenses is getting better. On the other hand, more expenses keep coming up. So I'm not quite sure how to handle that right now. ERE-mind says don't go on a week long trip "somewhere in eastern europe" on a whim. My fiance says pretty please. So I guess I'll go. I'll need to find a way to keep the ERE machine going with these kinds of things popping up.
On a more micro-level: I socialized twice this week and both times food was ordered. Now, I hate ordering food because I'm more of a food-as-fuel kinda girl and so the taste (and quality of ingredients) just isn't it for me. Still, you're the weirdo if you don't order and eat with everyone else, so I bit the bullet. Overall I got away with 8€ for a third of my fiances glass-noodles on the first occassion and a serving of fries on the second one, so that was good. I like to think there's a lesson about finding ways to stick to your values while still participating in "normal" society, but maybe I'm just trying to celebrate my stinginess somehow :p

Anyways, I'm tired and should sleep now. Maybe this was a bit incoherent due to that, but it was nice to try a more stream-of-consciousness approach to writing. Bear with me, I'm still trying to find my voice.

ertyu
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by ertyu »

from somewhere eastern europe, welcome to somewhere eastern europe! It's not the most expensive place to travel, you could do much worse. Enjoy your trip!

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Yeah, thanks man, it will be good to get away from work. I've just finished reading your journal and couldn't help nodding along to the dread of having to work. Last time a vacation helped to stave that off for a few mongths, so hopefully the trip will make it better.

---

An update! On the moving-front, nothing much happened. I've started to move perishables and everyday items from the old appartment to the new one. I should start to write a letter to tell my landlord I'm moving out. Deadline for quitting is the 3rd of every month, which leaves me 3 months for moving out from that day on.

The wedding has been moved back to next year. My fiance is having a hard time at work, with corona messing everything up and half the colleagues on vacation. She might be approaching her second burnout, which is why she decided to push the wedding back a bit. I might have been able to do the lion's share of the organization to help out, but some things, like getting her birth certificate from the former CCCP translated and approved would have been up to her, and she doesn't feel like she wants the wedding ceremony bad enough to handle that stuff right now.
Personally, I feel okay with that as the official ceremony in itself doesn't mean that much to me. The moment she asked me to marry her was the high point for me. It's all bureaucracy and weird familial festivities from here, but being official is important to her, so why not. I definitely see the upsides in being married, like visiting rights in hospitals and her getting first dibs on my money if I die.

I'm also continuing to carve out a life I'd want to live once I don't need to work anymore. This involves long nature walks, picking berries, cooking, sprouting and baking bread. Right now it'ss so motivating that my job now seems even worse. As I mentioned above, I get like that when I need vacation. Hopefully that will fix things for a bit. Other than that I'm taking inspiration from @wolf's job-crafting. I started with taking the 2 wednesdays after my main vacation off, so I have a few 2-day mini-weeks instead of one dreadful 5-day block. A switch from my 32h work week to a more manageable 20-24h work week might be in order, but the decision isn't due until september (current contract ends in january, they are always extended, though). The pros are obvious, the cons are lesser pay and thus needing to work longer. I might feel better about this once I established a few solid months of tracking my expenses. They are currently estimated at 1100€ per month (including 2 trips and 1 normie-style vacation per year), but might be a bit lower, actually. If I don't take the chance now, I might be hit with another 3-year contract at 32h before I get the next chance to change it up. A mandatory pay due in december increase (yey, government jobs) might also influence the decision.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Moving: I tend to work less hours later in the week, so I tried to offset this by working longer in the beginning of the week. This led to me not wanting to do anything other than basic maintenance (which includes shopping groceries, cooking, baking bread, showering, strength training, laundry, etc.). So nothing much got done this week yet. But! my fiance and I will be goint to the old appartment today and get rid of some stuff before we're having date night at the local italian beer garden hybrid restaurant thing. So hopefully, things will be moving ahead for a bit before we go on vacation.

Vacation: We spent most of monday evening planning our trip. With the corona situation supposedly bubbling up there a bit in eastern Europe, we decided to go to the Netherlands instead. We set ourselves a limit of 1000€ for the whole trip (including flights, hotels and food), so we had to look veeeery long to find a hotel. Or rather, we didn't even find one until we cut it down to a 4 night stay. Anyway, we managed to get a flight to Amsterdam with 4 nights in The Hague, near the North Sea for 333€ per person, so that went well. I'm also quite happy that we cut the duration short, as I was afraid that I might get bored if we did the full 7 days.

Finance: I created a few budget categories last month, which left me with all the money I needed for our flight and hotel (adventuring budget) and enough money to eat out every day of the vacation (date night budget). I would have had the raw money anyways, but earmarking it in advance made it much more bearable to shell out for the vacation. After all, that's what the money was for.

Other: My warranty claim for the bike has been received and I will hear back from the mechanical division of the online-retailer in a few days, maybe more. This leaves me without a reasonable bike for at least some weeks :(

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

NuncFluens wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 6:47 am
Other: My warranty claim for the bike has been received and I will hear back from the mechanical division of the online-retailer in a few days, maybe more. This leaves me without a reasonable bike for at least some weeks :(
:o

is bicycle your main transportation to and from work, or did i hallucinate that?

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Alphaville wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 7:00 am
:o

is bicycle your main transportation to and from work, or did i hallucinate that?
I was in the process of making the bike my main transportation, as it saves 15 minutes each way.
But I can go back to walking for 30 minutes, as I did for the last 2 years. At least for work.

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

NuncFluens wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 7:05 am
I was in the process of making the bike my main transportation, as it saves 15 minutes each way.
But I can go back to walking for 30 minutes, as I did for the last 2 years. At least for work.
ah, that’s a relief!

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

I'm back from my 4 days vacation in The Hague, Netherlands and it was... draining. In stark contrast to my fiance, it didn't give me much. The city itself was pretty cool, since it seems to be designed with a "bike first" approach, which has the nice side-benefit of car drivers not going crazy as much. In the end it was still mostly a city vacation, though, which I don't really like. I'm not one for culture or eating out (more on that later). The 2 days at the beach were nice, but again I'm not exactly a beach person.

Most days were spent walking around (which I like), going to to the beach (meh), and going out to eat. I tried to source my food from grocery stores, as food on the beach was pricy and not exactly to my taste, which left me at odds with my fiance. She's more of a classic vacationer, where she doesn't care what she spends when she's on vacation. In the end we found ways to make it work, where everyone would buy most of their food for themselves how they saw fit. We did go to at least one restaurant per day, though. Overall I felt that my stinginess vs her spendiness put a lot of strain on the situation :(

As an added bonus, my fiance was so fascinated by the "bike first" approach of the city and the food variety that she's seriously considering moving to the Netherlands in the mid term. This panicked me out to no end, so we had a few talks and she's not going to pressure me (consciously) to move there. I do fear I have to wrap my head around the idea sometime in the future, though. I hate change, so this is immensely stressful right now. She'll be returning to The Hague in January, to scout out the vibe in winter, so at least I'm pretty safe until then.

Meanwhile I'm sourcing ideas for location-indepedent income to take the edge off my fears of increased cost of living hampering my FI-goals. Still, there's not a single mountain in the netherlands and hiking is pretty much my lifeblood, so I'm not sure how to cope with that.

---

Before the holiday I also started sprouting, which was interesting? The sprouts came out great, though I chose the worst kind (radish and mustard) by coincidence. Not sure if other sprouts might smell a bit less and will work with my stomach a bit better. My experience with the first batch was one of "sauerkraut on steroids", which isn't exactly what I'd want everyday. I'll have to try a few other varieties and see how that goes. I'm not ready to give up on my little sprouts farm just yet. If this turns out to be a thing I might start to document the process a bit more.

As for the warranty process with my bike, nothing happened yet. I might have to yell at someone on the phone tomorrow :(

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

I've had some time to let the impressions of the vacation and my fiance's subsequent plan to move to the Netherlands sink in. My fiance still would like to move there sometime in the next 10 years. I agreed to be cooperative if she'll agree to do it "right", meaning frequent vacations before moving, renting an appartment for a while before eventually buying, etc.

So my FI horizon looks to be 10 years max now, which is a bit faster than I would have liked. I'm at ~3-4x yearly expenses right now, with a savings rate of ~50%, so that won't fly. On the other hand, I do have a brand new socially acceptable excuse for being a cheapskate from now on: "I want to buy a house in the Netherlands" sounds so much more normal than "I only eat beans so I don't have to work all my life". This line of argumentation might even allow me to reel in my fiance a bit more, as she's more of a "live now" kinda girl with no savings to speak of (we have seperate accounts, obv.). Interesting times...

---

As far as moving goes, I received confirmation of my quitting the appartment, so I'll be free of it in about 3 more months! At present, we've uncluttered a good bit of my fiance's basements so I can store my stuff there. We also ordered (ERE fail!) a bigger dresser, so I'll have a place to put my few possessions. Next up will be finishing the decluttering of my stuff, packing it in boxes and driving it over. Then I'll just have to sell/gift/trash all the rest, paint the walls and hand over the keys. Or so the theory goes.

With all of the above, I didn't have the energy to ask after my bike warranty claim. I just want to curl up and hope it resolves itself T_T

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

i’d love to live in a bike-first city

i’m sorry your warranty claim remains unsolved—that’s the problem with online vendors and why i tend to prefer a local shop: service is included in the price or guaranteed or something along those lines.

usually public reviews and social media can shame online operators into action, but who knows in your case.

at some point you might need to look at the cost/benefit of waiting for your warranty and maybe take it to a local bike shop for inspection and get an estimate tor repair/replacement?

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

The bike-first approach really was one of the high points of the journey. I think I won't be too sad to substitute biking for the hikes I do now, depending on where we decide to settle.

I also just received a response on my warranty claim 2 hours ago. It was a copy + paste "did you get your first checkup yet? It's recommended to have one after ~6 weeks" slap in the face. I probably shouldn't answer until I calmed down, but it's on my todo-list for tomorrow >:(

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