black_son_of_gray's Journal

[black_son_of_gray]

ERE as Chess

(This post is inspired by and derivative to the money is a solved problem thread and recent related discussions)

Preamble
Confession time. I "got into" Chess when I was in high school. Incredibly enough, my high school actually had a Chess Club, which I enthusiastically joined. I devoured books about Chess strategy in my free time, and I eventually competed at a couple of tournaments. Here's the thing: I wasn't any good. I know this because I was been beaten at said tournaments. Badly. At least once by a bored-looking elementary school kid who knocked me out in about 4 moves.

That being said, I do know a little something about Chess, and as it is my habit for unnecessarily extending metaphors, I'm going to attempt to frame ERE through the lens of Chess to see if anything interesting can be gleaned. If you know more than I do about Chess, which is highly likely, and I make a mistake, which is also highly likely, please correct me in the most strategic way possible.

A decent Chess game has three distinct temporal divisions: the first handful of moves are considered the Opening, the meat of the battle is the Middlegame, and the final cornering of the opponent's King is the Endgame. I'll consider them each in turn, slightly out of order.

The Opening
There are many, many possible games of Chess, but there are only so many ways to start a game of Chess. So it is with the pursuit of financial freedom and building your own personal economy. Indeed, of the possible ways to start a game of Chess, only a relatively few make much sense at all. This is because the Opening revolves around the following conundrum: you have a bunch of fancy pieces (neat!) stuck behind a bunch of laggard, clunky cannon fodder (ugh!). So the challenge is to develop a position where you can open up your ranks to make use of those fancy pieces without taking too much damage or getting stuck behind blocked, impotent peons. There are some efficient ways to do this (less moves is better), and they have all been extensively studied and given fun names (e.g. "Giuoco Piano","Accelerated Dragon").

In ERE, the Opening comprises the initial moves that give your fancy job income room to breathe. Again, there are some efficient ways to do this, including the basic, fairly obvious stuff like reducing unnecessary expenses, eliminating debt, matching contributions in 401k's, etc. At the end of a successful Opening (e.g. 21 day makeover, couple years emergency fund, "FU" money), the player is poised to take full advantage of the fancy pieces in his or her possession.

One aspect of gameplay that can show up an any time, but is a particularly spicy addition to the Opening are moves called "gambits". The idea behind a gambit is the intentional sacrifice of a piece for some advantage down the line. In Chess, an example might be to sacrifice a pawn so that you have a particularly favorable positioning of your pieces which you hope to capitalize on later in the game. In ERE terms, I would liken a gambit to using very aggressive crowbar maneuvers (or, as I call it in a previous post, the spaghetti method) or levering up on an income-generating portfolio.

The Endgame
If the Opening represents a rapid expansion of possibilities (divergence), then the Endgame is where possibilities rapidly contract (convergence). To have gotten to the Endgame in good position is to have already won. The real challenge here is to avoid drawing a stalemate and darker shades of waterfowl (see below). Beginners are drawn initially to studying Openings and Endgames because the possibility space is smaller, making it is easier to identify and wrap their heads around the principles of good gameplay, and the moves are relatively linear and transactional.

The ERE equivalent here is the 35X+ expenses, covered-by-multiple sources, runaway mode. Having many solid, diverse income streams that can each cover your expenses is like having several fancy pieces and your queen against the opponents king and a few pawns. You still have to play the game, but you're playing with your food at that point.

Chess has an interesting, if not rarely encountered, rule about pawns called "promotion". If a lowly pawn somehow trudges all the way across the board and lands on the opponent's back row, then the controlling player gets to "promote" this pawn to a higher ranking piece (typically a queen). Because this typically happens in the Endgame, when the board is cleared of many pieces, this represents either a white swan (if you get the goods), or a black swan (if your opponent is now considerably more powerful). In ERE terms, these would be events such as windfalls/inheritances (white swans) or uninsured disaster/unexpectedly large medical expenses (black swans).

The Middlegame
This is the real heart of Chess and ERE. In some ways, the Opening and the Endgame are formulaic and have a vague sense of "just going through the motions" because they are diverging from and converging to known states (the starting positions and "checkmate" respectively). But the Middlegame is where there is an explosion of possibility, and why it is so enjoyable to read people's ERE journals - there are just so many unique paths from Opening to Endgame. Let's explore this from the mindset of a beginner and a more advanced player...

The beginner:
For starters, the beginner often lacks a contextual awareness and may not understand that the Opening, Middlegame, and Endgame have different goals and priorities. As such, they often play in a purely transactional ("I take your piece - you take my piece") style. To this extent, their understanding of good gameplay is to know and identify as many tricks/tactics (e.g. a skewer, et al.) as possible, and try to develop a deeper search depth for possible moves ahead. Which isn't to say they are wrong - there are just more hierarchical levels to the game. They play locally smart, but globally unaware.

The advanced player:
The advanced player knows what the beginner knows, but adds broader perspective. In the Middlegame, a typical priority is having a general control over the center of the board. The logic is fairly simple: fancy pieces in the center of the board can move to (or attack) more squares. So if you control this space, not only can you attack more squares easier (and therefore provide more opportunities for clever tactics), but it also means that your opponent will have a difficult time opening up successful lines of attack if they have to crawl around the edges. What's that two-birds-with-one-stone idea again? Oh right - web of goals. This positional priority may not manifest as any singular move (which is why it is easy to miss as a beginner), but informs general decision making that shapes the course of the game.

The clear ERE analogues here are the lower Wheaton level tactics employed by beginners, and the more holistic, systems-level approach of the advanced. As Jacob mentioned in one of his posts, there is a nesting of facts>knowledge>wisdom. It's worth point out here that because I'm not extremely good at Chess, I can only wonder about what the extra tiers of gameplay are for the Grandmasters out there (to adjust your style of gameplay to match your opponent?? I have no clue).

Time
The last point I want to emphasize about ERE and Chess generally has to do with relevant time windows. Let's start with Chess.

As a general framework, you might consider three time windows:

• a single move (you move, opponent responds) = "near term"
• a series of moves chunked together as a group = "middle term"
• the whole arc of the Middlegame = "long term"

The middle term here is difficult to define. Maybe something like an "offensive" as used in a military campaign. It is the space between a single battle and the war. In the context of a Chess game it might be something like "I was pushed into a bad position so I took 3 or 4 moves and reasserted control over the center" or "my fancy pieces were trapped behind a cluster of pawns, so I took a few turns to maneuver into open spaces".

I would argue that the "middle term" is the most interesting and influential aspect of Chess gameplay, but also ERE. This middle term is: the full business cycle, the time it takes to master a new skill (or e.g. earn a Ph.D.), the time it takes for nature to start paying recurrent dividends (e.g. a fruit tree to begin bearing fruit), the time it takes for a hobby business/side hustle to start taking off, etc. From what I can tell, people spend a lot of time thinking about their financial life in "near term" chunks (e.g. hand to mouth/ gotta make it to payday) or "long term" chunks (e.g. traditional retirement at 65+ or... never), but relatively few emphasize the "middle term" (with the exception of maybe "saving for a house down payment/kid's college", which I think fits at middle term). One of the neat perks of ERE seems to be that it frees up and permits more "middle term" options, thus making for a more interesting Middlegame possibility space. When people study Chess games, which I can understand but not personally enjoy, I imagine that they are trying to identify and dissect these middle term moves in the Middlegame to get a flavor of the "why" and "how" a Grandmaster accomplished their goal. Similarly, in the ERE realm, it makes sense to pay keen attention specifically to the middle term Middlegame moves that people are making. That's where the juicy bits are. There are just as many ways to ERE as paths to win at Chess, and both wins and loses can be instructive.

Note: I neglected to incorporate en passant and castling, which play minor and major strategic roles, respectively. Any ideas?

[suomalainen]

Great post. Like the analogy. En passant may be a reach too far, but castling is typically seen as a necessary part of an opening (or the last move of an opening) and necessary/desirable for the protection of the king. Hence, I propose castling = paying off debt. That’s when the real fun begins (middle game).

[Fish]

That was a fantastic post @black_son_of_gray! Jacob has some chess-thoughts in the blog post "Alternative Histories" but it's nowhere as satisfying as what you have just written. Here are some thoughts to continue the chess analogy (for reference, I'm a terrible chess player and didn't develop an interest in the game until I was 28).

Playing Strength
Chess is a game of skill. Even before a single piece has been moved, the outcome of the game is heavily influenced by the relative strength of the two players. For example, outcomes are virtually pre-determined where there is a large disparity in playing strength. Among people who play chess competitively, an Elo rating of 1200 roughly corresponds to a median (50th percentile) player. Based on probabilities, this person only has a 0.05% chance of winning when pitted against a grandmaster (2500 Elo).

What makes a player strong in the personal finance (PF) game? Self-discipline, frugal skills, patience, knowledge of basic strategy (saving aggressively, avoiding debt), advanced strategy (systems thinking, web-of-goals), etc. This is not a complete list but you get the idea. Your strength is determined by who you are as a person.

The opponent's strength is determined by your life situation. Holding a high-paying job makes things very easy. By contrast, it's also possible to accumulate time-liabilities like children, or money-liabilities like student loans which increase the difficulty. If you have a strong opponent (i.e. you have a lot of liabilities) then you will need some "personal strengths" to balance it out to make it a fair game, or better yet, a lopsided game in your own favor. (For a discussion of strengths and liabilities, see this ERE blog post: Angry people, online insults, frugal lifestyles and the poor) Thanks to the strategies of the ERE book, most here are playing the FI-chess game on easy mode and eventually win given enough time. By contrast, the general public is more like the 1200-elo player facing off against the grandmaster.

The Opening
I prefer to think of the opening as your early life decisions. Unless you and your opponent are both playing "by the book" usually after 10 moves you will arrive at some unique board position. What subjects did you study in school? Where do you live? Where do you work? Did you get married? Have kids? Own or rent? Etc. There is a possibility of quick wins such as Fool's mate (winning the lottery?) or Scholar's mate (cashing out a startup?) but they happen too rarely to be of interest.

The Middlegame
This is where the struggle to reduce debt and build wealth occurs. Most journal writers are in this phase, and it is interesting. Material advantage can be thought of as a kind of net worth. Your pieces are financial assets and the opponent's pieces are financial liabilities. You want to knock out the liabilities without having to give up assets. If you want to end the game (reach FI) quicker, good strategy is essential. There is also the concept of initiative where one side can issue threats that cannot be ignored. Examples of initiative working against you might include a car breaking down, or a temporary job loss. When board position is favorable, this is a minor annoyance; when you are losing the game it could be catastrophic.

The Endgame
I agree with @black_son_of_gray's characterization, let me give a few examples of different levels of financial independence using the material advantage as net worth metaphor. With less material, more skill is needed to achieve mate/FI (and there is a real chance of blundering your victory away).

• King and pawn vs. king = ERE (200k)
• King and rook vs. king = MMM (600k and paid off house)
• King and queen vs. king = "The proverbial million"
• King and 2 rooks vs. king = Multi-millionaire (it's really hard to mess this up)
• All 16 pieces intact vs. king = Buffett

I'm not sure this contributes any insight but it sure was interesting to think about.

[daylen]

I really like this analogy. I don't know a whole lot about chess, but I am curious as to how many mathematical concepts can be tied to chess concepts? How much math do grandmasters actually use? I imagine many use mathematical tools to develop heuristics for in-game play. Is there an accurate way to estimate how many moves are left?

[Astra]

Nice metaphor. Go is very similar in this respect.

In some ways, the Opening and the Endgame are formulaic and have a vague sense of "just going through the motions" because they are diverging from and converging to known states (the starting positions and "checkmate" respectively).

When watching a chess game, the opening moves fall very quickly, then as the middlegame begins the players start to take their time thinking - trying to gauge the other's abilities and mold your strategy to the opponent's moves - making the middlegame both hard yet infinitely creative. I think similarly the path to FI can be very fast at first, jumping into action with a makeover or a specific goal. Budgets still have a lot of fat so they are easily trimmed to yield fast, big savings. It is later, during the middle game, when the going gets tougher: one might take greater efforts to shave a few dollars here and there, and more importantly, there is no pre-fabricated solution anymore. While most starting challenges/openings are easily adaptable to anyone, there are no predetermined moves for the middle game. Just like a chess game, your life is unique, and you must find your unique strategies, moves and solutions. While this may seem frustrating at times, it is also important to remember that this part is where one can unfold creatively and choose one's own path, just as it is the most exciting part of a chess game.

Also, while every chess game inevidably ends in the same way, there are many differnet lives ERE people have carved out for themselves: some travel the world, some homestead, some write books, some live in tiny houses or run buisnesses for fun. This individual endgame (and win!) can be a direct product of the middlegame, but sometimes not (pulling a 180).

[jacob]

Ha! The working title of the book I've been writing/working on is actually "The Middle Game", but it has very few chess references. Only 1 so far. I'm probably gonna change it eventually lest the book drown in a bunch of chess-related search results, but it's an interesting coincidence nonetheless.

For those who are interested in how players at different ELO ratings think (and what mistakes they tend to make at each level), this is a great book:
https://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Tu ... 890085022/

And for those who are really interested, Alpha Zero (google's Go computer) recently spent 4 hours playing against itself and figuring out the game---then proceeded to beat the best computer player in the world over 100 games with zero losses. Some of the moves make no sense at all from a traditional "point-counting" perspective and some of them not even from a balance/position sense as far as I can tell (I'm only around 1350-1400 or so, so I don't know much, and it's been a few years since I last picked up a chess piece). Many of the released games show qualities of the Immortal Game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Game ...

As far as AI developments go, watching those games is some of the most scary AI stuff I've seen yet. Not only is it winning, but it's winning in ways that often don't make sense or are hard to explain. Imagine if something like this was put in charge of military/nuclear strategy Also crazy how Alpha Zero apparently managed to come up with many of the standard openings (French, Italian, etc.) on its own. More here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf

[black_son_of_gray]

2018 Spring Update:

Last fall I detailed how life might soon be changing. The recent developments are:

• I'm still in a weird spot professionally. My current position has a non-negotiable must-leave-before end of 2019 timeline, and I do not have anything lined up for that time… nor am I very enthusiastic to "move up" in the academic world. I have been medium successful at being a bench scientist (in terms of publications, citations, presentations, etc.), so I could probably obtain another low-paying but enjoyable science job by moving laterally at the same level. I'm a little ambivalent about that option - it has pros and cons.
• My SO has some personal projects she wants to do on the West Coast. [Little background on my SO: she stayed with me so I could play scientist for 6 years in a location that wasn't particularly compelling for what she prefers to do or where she prefers to live. She is already FI, so she has had many options - but stuck around with me nonetheless. I find that to be remarkably kind, and I am more than willing to make her personal preferences a priority going forward.]
• The timing is looking really good on leaving my current job in the summer. A project at work is nearly wrapped up, which makes it a convenient time. Our apartment lease is coming to an end then. My SO's mother (whom we would move in with) is really excited about the idea. In addition to wanting us around, she is planning an extended international trip in late summer and we could house sit. There is an opportunity to potentially join in for part of the trip and travel around the world for a few weeks, which is exciting. I haven't been to these countries, and we would have extended family to stay with!

None of this is set in stone yet, and I have a few more weeks before I need to start making more serious commitments to this path - but here are my current thoughts:
Financials: We aren't necessarily thinking about living with her mother permanently. More like "we'll see how we feel about this after 6 months to a year". We often talk about various places we might want to live with respect to various lifestyles we might want to try. In any case, the lack of a rent payment while staying with her mother immediately puts my financial situation in a very good place. I started thoroughly documenting all of my expenditures at the beginning of the year, and it looks like my monthly expenses (everything but rent) are $600. This currently puts me in the neighborhood of "living off of investments", but 1) I don't trust investments to perform well for the next few years, and 2) I don't trust my expenses to stay that low (future travel and health insurance being difficult to predict, but probably not lower than now). Even in worst-case scenarios for both (e.g. gold, bonds, stocks, and cash all do poorly at the same time + expenses are much higher than expected), I still have 10+ years to figure things out.
Income Sources: So it looks like I'll need to bring in some moolah, which is fine. Actually, I was planning on it anyway. If I make a couple hundred dollars a month, my SWR should be <2%. My current thought here is to create my own "coasting-to-FI" three-legged stool of diversified income. First is investments (primarily stocks and bonds), second is a part-time job 2-3 days a week (ideally where someone pays me to learn a skill I want), third is some self-directed activity (e.g. freelancing, writing, consulting, market gardening, etc.). So: 1) others working for me, 2) me working for others, and 3) me working for myself. Well diversified in a sense. Bonus diversification: non-overlapping with SO's income sources. Ideally after a few years I get to the point where in any given year at least two of these sources can independently cover my expenses (i.e. ERE Indicator > 2), with a best-case scenario being all three.

[Randy]

I read through your journal after reading the thread about coasting to FI, and I want to say it's been a pleasure to read. I think your extended metaphors are getting better with time I can say without a doubt that reading your thoughts about chess and ERE has been the only time I've enjoyed thinking about chess, and I can already tell that this will be a framework (opening, middlegame, endgame) I revisit.

Third, have you actually thrown pasta against a wall? (I have...a lot, actually)

I wouldn't mind a some elaboration on this part of the story.

Also, good luck on your tripod of income for coasting to FI. I'm interested especially in legs two and three with the part time and self directed work. I spend some time daydreaming about these possibilities at work right now. Do you think you will stay in a highly technical realm? I wonder if you will miss the scientific environment when you leave. Also a general question: what field are you in? Maybe I missed this detail in the journal or you were deliberately vague to keep some privacy.

[black_son_of_gray]

@Randy

Pasta: The story isn't too exciting, I'm afraid. After a childhood of not cooking, I started dipping my toes in during college - thinking I was 'fancy' because I could add vegetables and some meat to a jar of store-bought sauce and boil some dried pasta. Naturally, as any budding gourmet knows, you gotta test the doneness of the noodles, and -rather than just bite into it like a civilized human being - I thoroughly tested the 'sticks to wall' method. (I stopped doing that when it was my wall to clean)

Science: Will I stay highly technical? Hmm... well the technical aspects of my job are a weird mix between well-developed skills and "stupid human tricks". Let's just say that outside of certain computer skills and a deep knowledge of my specific subfield, anyone with above-average fine tactile skills could perform the day-to-day experiments I routinely do. Most of the more challenging aspects of the job arise when something breaks or stops working correctly and you have to figure out which one of your 15 connected pieces of equipment is the source of the problem. It is this type of problem solving that is simultaneous the most interesting to me (because it is new, unpredictable, and challenging), and the most frustrating (because it is preventing me from moving forward with my work). I think diving into new hobbies and learning something from the ground up fulfills this role just as well. I'm open to exploring new technical fields... we'll see what pops up.
Will I miss the scientific environment when I leave? Probably not. Now that I think about it, I've probably attended ~1000 scientific lectures/presentations. The vast majority of them are completely forgotten (including at least 2 Nobel laureates), maybe 10% live on in my brain as a single-sentence (or less) nugget of information, and maybe 10 (about one per year) were really fantastic. Pretty much every environment I've been in has had the same mix of interesting/boring people as the scientific environment. The people I've enjoyed interacting with the most at my current job are not only excellent scientific thinkers, but are also well-read, very creative, and lead interesting lives. But I've found people like that in every environment I've been in... I don't think that scientists are more likely to be well-read, creative, or interesting - they might even be less likely (e.g. this rings true to me). As far as the physical surroundings, labs aren't particularly cozy places, and it would be wonderful to not have to sit and/or stare at a screen for hours on end. Large chunks of my typical day are essentially solitary (I'm fine with this). The one thing I can think of off the top of my head that I might miss, is that logic, evidence, and questioning are the major currency of conversation in academic science settings. People generally respect and defer to others' expertise. This isn't always true or always desirable, but it does make discussion/interactions easy to navigate because most people are "playing by the same rules" so to speak.

I am deliberately vague about my field for privacy reasons. In the real world, when I meet new people and the "what do you do?" question comes up, I've found it is easier for both parties if I either stay very vague or jump immediately to my very specific research topics. If I just give the field, an awkward series of questions ensues.

[black_son_of_gray]

2018 Beginning of Summer Update

I have a date - I will be leaving my current job at the end of July, two months from now. The people who need to know have been told, and others will find out soon enough. Can't say that I am looking forward to that awkwardness… but I am excited generally.

Knowing the date instantly creates a nice long "to do" list, but thankfully this is something I have already been thinking about, and I have a decent amount of time to complete it in a less stressful way.

Two questions for the ERE community:
1. If you were to take (or have taken) a road trip from sea to shining sea across the USA, where would you go (or avoid), and why?

In August, we need to get from the Baltimore-Washington DC corridor to the Bay Area in California. We considered a couple of ways to do this, but have settled on a road trip where we take our time and see what the broad expanse of the country really looks like. I have a little experience with this, as my family did road trip summer vacations during my childhood, but we mostly just powered through the country on interstates, hell-bent on getting to the destination as soon as possible (i.e. 12-14hr driving binges). Having lived entirely on the coasts, my SO has almost no experience with the middle of the country.

We have about two weeks of time budgeted to go the ~3000 miles (direct route). Right now we are thinking about following Route 50, with some detours here or there for various points of interest. We would like to avoid interstates as much as is reasonably possible. I find interstates to be the great cultural homogenizer of US road travel: everything looks the same, tastes the same, and the driving itself is the same monotonous ball of stress where entitled speeders endlessly jockey for position by weaving between semis and tailgating the elderly so that they can complete their 500 mile drive to the beach 30 minutes faster. I realize there are some serious "efficiency" tradeoffs in avoiding interstates - they really are faster many times- and that Route 50 certainly will be a lot like the interstates a good chunk of the time.

In any case, I spent the better part of yesterday planning out details of our route. Currently, we'll be passing through:
Morgantown, WV
Parkersburg, WV
Chillicothe, OH
Cincinnati, OH
Bloomington, IN
St. Louis, MO
Jefferson City, MO
Kansas City, MO
Wichita, KS
Pueblo, CO
Grand Junction, CO
Moab, UT (or at least very close by… we want to spend extra time in Utah to explore)
Nevada will be along Route 50 (aka "The Loneliest Road in America")
Lake Tahoe, CA
Sacramento, CA

My car is a manual transmission and SO can't drive that, so I'll be doing the grunt work, so to speak. Neither of us want to spend all day just sitting in a car, so we plan on taking breaks every 1-3 hours to explore the smaller towns or parks/forests along the way. We'll have our camping gear to do some overnights when that makes sense.

I get the feeling that most of my opinions about places come from stereotypes that I wouldn't otherwise challenge if I didn't have an actual need to go through the place to get from point A to point B. Like most people, I'm lazy at wanting to correct my ignorance. But because we actually have a need to cross the country, one of our big goals with this trip is to see America as it really is - if a place really is boring and ugly or "backwards", I want to see that. If it is unexpectedly beautiful or quirky or enjoyable or inviting, I want to see that too…

I'm also going to use this trip to informally test my current, poorly-supported opinion that mid-size cities (~100k-1M) are the "best" sized cities. Too small lacks cultural amenities and diversity, too big and it is unmanageable at a human scale (e.g. can you bike across town?; do you have access to nature?).

Any thoughts, tips, experiences or advice greatly appreciated!

2. How do you deal with cheaply moving boxed items across the country?

I've been whittling down my possessions for a while now, and I thankfully don't have much stuff to deal with. I doubt it makes any sense financially for us to hire movers to truck our stuff across the country, and I plan on getting rid of all my furniture (not attached to any of it, and some big items are already gone). That being said, I do have maybe a half-dozen large boxes worth of things I do actually want to move (e.g. some books, BIFL pots/pans, tools, clothing, documents). Anyone have any experience with this? I'm trying to figure out if FedExing vs. PODS vs. "shipping" (by rail?) is most prudent. We won't need any of these things immediately so slow is fine.

[trailblazer]

I have done almost the exact same Route 50 trip, going East to West. Highly recommend it! A few highly subjective opinions:

1 - www.roadtripusa.com and the guidebook they publish are indispensable for thinking through possible itineraries - they represent what you are going for - getting off the interstate, slowing down, seeing the real America. They have several similar road trips as well (I’ve also done their “Oregon Trail Trip” and parts of “The Great Northern”) - always interesting to see their suggestions on food, lodging and sites - it is 100% authentic Americana from sea to sea.

2 - Take your time in West Virginia - the driving is very slow on the first part through the mountains - it is beautiful. I had a flat tire adventure in the middle of nowhere which brought me into contact with a number of friendly West Virginians over a couple days and added actual names and faces to my head full of stereotypes.

3 - Frankly I’d start speeding up a bit in Ohio and maintain a relaxed but consistent pace through Kansas. Nothing wrong with those in between states but I found I got the idea after a while. Somewhere in Missouri I started to understand why Interstates were invented. Slowing down every 15 minutes to wait at a stoplight in a small town (or sprawling suburb) is fun until suddenly it isn’t. You don’t want to get burned out before you reach . . .

4 - Colorado! So beautiful, so many scenic detours - it is exciting when you first glimpse the rockies after crossing Kansas. Utah and Nevada are worlds of their own and then the Sierra. Have fun planning!

[Kriegsspiel]

When you get to Parkersburg, you can take 77 north from 50 to Marietta, OH, and walk around their downtown, check out Campus Martius, rent a kayak, and grab something to eat if you want to stay for a bit. It's a nice little town.

[black_son_of_gray]

@trailblazer, Kriegsspiel
Thanks for the suggestions! I've spent a good amount of time in W Virginia/ SE Ohio. I've been through Parkersburg a few times, but not Marietta… we'll see what the schedule looks like when we are in the area.

1- My SO already had roadtripusa on the radar before I made my post. Looks like we are looking in the right direction.

3 - Yeah, I've been thinking about this. The good news is that if southern Kansas (Garden City, Dodge City) isn't working out, we can pop up north to I-70 and "get the hell out of Dodge". This might be a better plan anyway due to the wildfires that are going on in southern CO right now… SO and I have both been through Denver and surrounding area recently/a decent amount, so that wouldn't be as interesting though. Still, I love mountains any way I can get them.

Update - Less than a month to go!

As far as my second query goes ("How do you deal with cheaply moving boxed items across the country?"), my SO and I have looked through the bowels of FedEx, UPS, and USPS websites, and wound up at a bunch of poorly described documentation for Less Than Truckload ground freight options. The little blurbs that the websites use to describe these options sounds perfect (often something like: "multiple boxes totaling over 200lbs can be shipped together without a pallet at freight pricing"), but the details -which are not to be found conveniently on these websites- end up disappointing. For example, you need a business account with daily pickup schedule in order to use these services ("ask your account manager"). There are other cheep options, like shipping boxes on Greyhound buses, but I think I'll pass on that. One strategy that I know will reduce my shipping costs is simply to not have as much stuff. Speaking of which…

My foray into the second economy

I've never been too big into consumerism. However, that didn't stop me from accumulating a lot of "stuff". This is largely because I: 1) tend to take good care of my stuff; and 2) I tend to hang on to stuff that is "still good", which it usually is if you take good care of it; and 3) twice a year (B-Day and X-Mas) I kept getting more stuff. This move across the country is forcing me to chose one of four options for everything I own: ship it, sell it, donate it, or trash it. This has so far been a really liberating experience, but thank god I don't have more stuff than I do.

As a result of the four options, we have plunged into reselling, largely on Craigslist and Ebay, which neither of us had ever done. From what I can tell, Craigslist is best for a barbell of goods: big stuff (e.g. furniture) that is too expensive to ship*, and small odds and ends that have little value (e.g. plastic bins, used gardening supplies). We were worried that we would have to pay to get rid of large furniture items if they took too long to sell (donating big furniture here has months-long waiting lists!), so we have been pretty aggressive with our listings, and with around 3 weeks to go, we are down to a futon, a desk, some shelves, an entertainment console, and a small filing cabinet. Easy. Looks like we'll be indoor camping for a couple days.

*The pricing is really interesting here. Really big furniture that requires a truck is well under-priced (or rather, under-bid) because 1) it requires a truck, and most people don't seem to want to go through the time or effort to rent one, and 2) you aren't likely to get someone to pay you $1000+ in cash (they probably have <$400 anyway), and you probably aren't going to take a check from some random person from the Internet. Price points that seem to work best are $50-200. We listed a potted Norfolk Island Pine for $10 and it damn near broke the system with responses. Anyway, I know how to get really cheap furniture now - other than finding it for free at the dumpster, which I have been successful at in the past. (Shh-Just sold that dumpster furniture to someone on the internet too!)

Ebay has been good for high-value items that ship cheaply. I liquidated my original Nintendo and Playstation games, which I had looong ago written off as worthless, and it turns out - I apparently had some rare items. All I had to do was sit on them in near-mint condition for 20-30 years. Ditto with come collectable cards. I now have less to ship and an extra half month of expenses. Once everything is said and done, I hope to have my excess stuff pay for: 1) shipping the stuff I actually want to keep, 2) travel across the country on a multiweek road trip, and 3) a month or more of living expenses.

One lesson learned is that a modicum of effort when it comes to listing stuff for sale pays off. I'm amazed at how poorly people list some things. A single, blurry picture shot with a potato and a caption "Widget - works good" followed by a price way too high is surprisingly common.

A bit of a slapdash post this time - Preparing all your worldly possessions for a move across the continent is a full time job, and exhausting when you already have a full time job. But soon, not so much!

[black_son_of_gray]

About 3 large bags into processing the ridiculous amount of documents (nearly all useless) I've kept over the last 10 years, I stumbled across this nugget - an original poem I produced during graduate school (why work when you can procrastinate??) in the style of Frost's "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening". Keep in mind this was circa 2009.

The S and P swings to and fro,
Where it will stop, nobody knows.
Ominous at end of year
Are forecasts of an all-time low.

My broker, I should think, is near
The lowest point in his career.
A smile he simply cannot fake
Despite the shine of his veneers.

He does a mental double-take
Considering his clients' fates -
Old folks now must work for keep,
Retiring at a later date.

But life goes on, on his dear Street -
He still has profits to reap,
And balancing of balance sheets,
And balancing of balance sheets.

[Mister Imperceptible]

I like it.

[black_son_of_gray]

Field Report:
The deep dive through my collective "stuff" and subsequent purge is revealing some unusual stuff.

For example, for the last 12 years or so I have apparently been driving around with an unopened 1993 Coca Cola bottle in my trunk. Right next to a thoroughly melted and hideously deformed Jesus candle, a portable hammock and an answering machine.

Quick check with ebay reveals that I can get approximately nothing for anything, although if I call the candle "art"...

I am only 1/3 of the way through the trunk. Pray for me.

[black_son_of_gray]

Update:
We've completed our 3186 mile drive across the US (Maryland, W. Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California), and are now settling in as Bay Area residents. It was a pretty good trip!

Car story: A few weeks out from the trip, I took my car into the shop for an oil change. I had only driven a couple hundred miles since the last oil change, but it was still due in terms of time. While I was there, I told them of my trip and said, "If you can find anything at all that might be/become a problem, please let me know". They changed the oil, and said they couldn't find anything wrong with the car. Actually, they said it was in great shape considering its age (15 years old). I had sold my bike and its accoutrements so I commuted for the last two weeks to work by car (bleh!), and things seemed good to go.

Then on the Monday of my last week, I noticed something… peculiar? I was getting situated in the car after work when I noticed the gauges on the dash moving erratically. The temperature and fuel gauge needles would go from 0 to midway in a sudden tick, then would flip back down to 0. Even more interesting - the car was not running and the keys weren't in the ignition. So back to the shop it goes after some furious web searching. Looked like it could be many things, some no big deal, some more sinister. The shop spent a day taking out the instrument panel circuit board and cleaning it (this was the cheaper option vs buying and installing a new instrument cluster). I got a call mid-day at work from one of the guys. Paraphrasing, he said something like "Welp, we cleaned it and reinstalled it, and when we first tested it, it looked like it was fixed. But now it has come back, so we won't charge you. My advice is that you just learn to live with it." Now there is a phrase you don't want to hear just before driving down the "loneliest road in America"! To be fair, they did their best (the "ticking" of the needle was dramatically improved and didn't always happen, so it was more like a partial fix), and I appreciate their efforts (they were a fairly-priced shop that did good, honest work over the years I went to them- I commend them for that).

Long story short - the dash needles weren't an issue for the trip. Somewhere around Nevada, I did notice the engine started having a "rougher" idle*, and that may portend some other problem developing (maybe with the transmission?), but I plan to donate my car in short order because I now live in a 100% walkable location and steep hills+manual transmission= more stress than I want.

*Is it just me? After 20 years of driving a manual, I feel like I notice all the different hums, hiccups, and frequencies of the engine. Also, inexplicably, my manual car doesn't have a tachometer display, so listening is the primary way I navigate shifting. This may have turned me into a engine hypochondriac. I've found that people who have only driven automatics have a hard time/cannot sense when the engine is under strain or at high RPMs etc. I can't quite wrap my head around it, because it seems to obvious to me, but I found this to be true with multiple people.

More to come.

[black_son_of_gray]

Trip report with some thoughts/opinions/observations from on the road peppered throughout

Maryland:

"There's … no prettier sight that looking back on a town you've left behind" - Townes Van Zandt

Although most of our journey was along U.S. Route 50, our path out of Maryland was on speedier Interstates. Having lived in the Maryland, DC, Virginia region for about 12 years, we felt like we had seen most of the sights we cared to see within a few hours drive, so we booked it out of town following I-70 and I-68 west out of Hagerstown, MD. Despite it being the last time I'll likely be there for a good long while (or ever), the drive here was quite normal feeling and familiar. I'd done this route at least a dozen times in the past (visiting family), and there was no hint of nostalgia or sentimentality. Also, we were both so incredibly busy up until the moment of leaving that we just didn't have any time to dwell on it or take it all in. Perhaps fittingly, this stretch of road was about as clogged and congested as any we were on for the whole trip.

W. Virginia: West Virginia is pretty straightforward when it comes to moving through space: you are either going uphill or downhill. We took a brief afternoon stop on Morgantown to stretch our legs and see what the town looked like. The downtown area was pretty dead - as most college towns are in the summer - in a sleepy and sad way that resembled when the house lights come on at 2:30am in a bar after last call. Colleges are typically surrounded by what I refer to as "college poverty" - retail areas that look a bit grimy and beater houses with couches on the porch that landlords don't want to fix up because frankly the tenants (and their destructive behaviors) aren't worth it. That being said, I was impressed at how many Middle Eastern restaurants I saw both in Morgantown and in other towns we passed through. Wasn't expecting that. Well into the hills, we also saw a single, massive black bull on the highway at a junction with another road. He seemed to be following the general flow of traffic (we were at a stoplight) and in a relaxed mood with a bouncy step. Wasn't expecting that either. Spent the night in Parkersburg, a relatively sleepy town on the banks of the Ohio river.


Technically this was taken in Ohio, but coal-country nonetheless.

Ohio: Added up across various times in my life, I've spent about a decade in Ohio, and for a while it was my answer when people ask "Where are you from?" I'd never cut straight across the south of it before, though. Turns out, it is a similar but gentler experience to W. Virginia - lots of lush greenery and gently rolling hills. There are others on the road with you, but essentially no traffic - you drive however suits you, with plenty of lanes and time to negotiate others. Summertime, and the driving is easy. We spotted Amish in buggies for the first of three times on our journey (all sightings east of the Mississippi).


Southern Ohio: lots of green, not a lot of people.

At one point, perhaps as I was enjoying the scenery, I missed a turnoff and we found ourselves on another highway running parallel to our intended road. Oops. It was a happy mistake, though, because I spotted a Skyline Chili restaurant along the road and we stopped in for some Cincinnati chili (which could make an appearance here). This was to be our only fast food stop of the trip, but because of morbid fascination and the hyper-regional aspect of this "cuisine", we got ourselves a coney and a 5-way. And it was good. Cincinnati itself was an interesting drive because the road hugs the steep and winding banks of the Ohio river, so you don't really know how close in you are until BAM, there is a break in the hills and the downtown is just splayed out right there.

Before the trip, we had considered that we might spend a few hours in the big cities to take a break from driving and to get a sense of place. We abandoned this strategy at Cincinnati - the first big city we came across. For one, the logistics get ugly, as juggling the tasks of (taking the correct exits| avoiding construction| following detours| lane changes| finding parking |negotiating rush hour, which always seemed to coincide with our arrival) is more stressful than you probably want. Furthermore, through extensive discussion on more lonely stretches of highway, we both agreed that big cities tend to all be the same anyway*, and the nuances probably could not be appreciated in only a few hours. In any case, because we were less familiar with rural environments, we felt like it would be a more enlightening use of our time to explore those spaces rather than bigger cities. So we just kept on going, and soon we were out of Cincinnati and Ohio.

*Urban, suburban, and rural are different, sure. But consider the space of "urban" as a Venn diagram, with everything that a city can possibly offer as the "whole". Within this whole, you get stuff like: the arts, restaurants, regional cuisines and cultural practices, nightlife, parks, museum, etc. I contend that almost any relatively big city will cover many of these things (i.e. the subset of this city, while smaller than the whole, is still relatively large within the whole potential space), and because of that, comparisons with other cities result in very large intersections (i.e. mostly overlap of amenities) with only relatively small slivers on the edges as unique features.

Indiana: I have to admit it: southern Indiana was a not a place I would have thought would be enjoyable, but it was probably the best experience we had east of the Mississippi. Finishing up with my job and the tight deadlines of moving meant that we had a rough list of places to see and things to do, but we did not have a firm plan. This turned out to be perfect, because it allowed us to bail on lame places and explore longer in neat places. Not having time pressure helped.

So in Indiana we began winging it. We deviated north to Columbus, because it has a lot of quirky architecture and we thought we might see some of it driving around town. We saw a little from the road, but not a whole lot. Furthermore, we got stuck in traffic in the middle of town because of a slow-moving freight train (#smalltownproblems). After realizing that architecture sounds more appealing that it actually is (to us, at least), we left town. Between Columbus and Bloomington is a tiny town called Nashville, where we stayed the night. Nashville has three things going for it: 1) it has been an art colony for a long time (and continues to be one); 2) it is nestled in the middle of some really nice woods; and 3) a super-cheap but tasty Mexican restaurant (full meal for me: $7.25).


Artsy/touristy shops in Nashville, IN.

We spent an hour or so sauntering by all the little workshops and stores after dinner, with about the best summer evening weather you could ask for. The mixture of touristy kitsch and art was a little sad to me, though, because while on the one hand, these kinds of small tourist towns are probably one of the few places some artists can make it, on the other hand I got a distinct vibe of "art as consumption"*. What I mean by that is, I got the sense that the art, lovingly produced by a dedicated and skilled craftsman, serves mostly as a commemorative tchotchke of the well-to-do spending the weekend glamping (more on glamping later). The next day, after stuffing myself to an embarrassing extent at the all-you-can-eat country style breakfast**, we chose to connect back to Route 50 by taking a scenic route through the Hoosier National Forest. Lots of twists and turns, deep broad-leaf forests making an almost-dark tunnel of the two-lane road, open pastures with a soft morning mist and lots of wild animals (we even saw some turkeys). In the autumn, this sort of place must be crack to city-dwellers, as I'm sure the trees just explode with color.

* Definitely a similar feeling in all the mountain towns of Colorado. Do they exist except to serve the RV-towing vacationer?
** Maybe it's worth chiming in here to say that I basically eat one breakfast every day of the year: oats with berries and nuts. In the week and a half that we were on the road, I probably ate more eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, and pastries than in the preceding decade. It actually wasn't too bad, because 1) it was usually included in the cost of lodging, and I am sure I got my money's worth, and 2) we usually weren't hungry until dinner time.

A pretty great evening and morning in south-central Indiana... then down the road to Illinois we went.

[black_son_of_gray]

Illinois: Despite a couple hours of research spent trying to find something of interest in southern Illinois, we couldn't. It's just endless fields of grain. Maybe we missed something. We did stop briefly to stretch our legs and take in the sights of Carlyle Lake, which is the largest non-"Great" lake pertaining to the state. Here were the sights: a giant boat ramp and affiliated parking lot, picnic area, and lake-front restaurant - all completely devoid of people. No cars. Nuthin'. The restaurant was closed. Near as I can tell, there was only one boat on the lake.

Missouri: A lot more action in this state. When I was a kid, our family took an epic roadtrip to the Southwest from the Midwest, and I distinctly remember the awe that I felt when we passed through St. Louis and saw the Gateway Arch. Route 50 would have taken us around the city, but because of my nostalgic enthusiasm and desire to share such an incredible awe-inspiring visual spectacle with my SO, I decided to plunge straight through the heart of the city via interstates. Although it was a still pretty neat this time around, there is something about seeing it from the confines of an interstate in rush-hour traffic that dampens the mood. Understandably, I think SO thought it was just alright. More than any other city, traffic was heavy and intense. One interesting aspect to me was that the interstate was just suspended over the city on stilts about 3-4 stories off the ground for a good chunk of the built up area.


Maybe not as glorious as 8-year old me remembered.

Once out of St. Louis, we were a little off course - and once again decided to wing it. We ended up crossing the Missouri River and taking Missouri Route 94 towards Jefferson City along the River. This unexpectedly turned into another great scenic drive. The road winds through some of Missouri's wine country, and also follows the Katy Trail - a pretty nice 240-mile rail trail that I'd be tempted to spend a few days on if I come back to the region. We dropped into a riverfront town for a meal before heading off to Jefferson City to spend the night.

We spent the next morning exploring Jefferson City. It is a weird mix of pleasant (cute little historic downtown, sumptuously decorated capitol and governor's mansion) and unpleasant (large sections of blight one block away from downtown, crazy people wandering the streets accosting people, an infamous penitentiary turned tourist attraction??). Speaking of prisons, SO and I made a fun little game while driving through the numerous small towns on our trip: "Is it a prison or is it a high school?" The fact that we sometimes had a hard time answering that simple question speaks volumes.


The nicer side of Jefferson City.

Back on the road, we stopped in Sedalia to try some supposedly authentic Kansas City style BBQ for lunch. Honestly, the best thing there was the green beans - they were good. SO and I had a running competition of who would order the better meal at the various places we stopped. My strategy was, if a place put their name on a dish, they probably did that because it was tasty and they were proud of it.

I usually won.

We briefly stopped in Independence before driving straight across Kansas City. I don't really have anything to say about either place. Meh, they were fine. This might be the fatigue of multi-day travel talking, or the fact that it was hot that day, of the fact that the massive BBQ lunch was giving me a mild case of the meat sweats. But it's worth pointing out that up until Kansas City, many of the bigger cities looked pretty much the same, and many of the smaller cities also looked pretty much the same (regardless of if they were 1000 miles apart), and the vegetation pretty much looked the same, and the humidity was pretty uniformly high. The biggest difference seemed to be "hilly or flat".

But all of that was about the change… westward, ho!

[trailblazer]

Awesome travelogue. Look forward to hearing about the West!