Growing at the Speed of Failure
Adventure
Far from Haggersville – Unreleased Videos
Since the public release of the music album and short film Far from Haggersville, I have not made public the following video scenes. The scenes were originally on the discs and only a couple hundred people have seen them. Though hundreds and hundreds of the Multimedia CDs are on the market, I know that only a fraction of them have seen these videos.
Both Mac & PC operating systems have trouble opening multi-session (Enhanced) CD content. I just found Windows 7 to be the most restrictive. A user can put the CD in their computer or CD player and listen to all of the tracks seamlessly, but they may not be able to access the html content, the flash and video scenes, the CD as mp3 files, posters, wallpapers, hidden content, other band’s bios, their links and mp3s.
My idea for marketing the music on CD was, Fill up the CD with content. If you look at the back of a CD, you’ll see that there is a lot of unused space. So what did I do? I created a lot of content to include (more…)
Breaking Out of the Box by Matt Bailey
Today’s post is from a friend of mine Matt Bailey. I met Matt in San Francisco last February at Tim Ferriss‘ Worlds Collide II party. I got to hang out with Matt a bit over the next couple days before I headed back home to Wisconsin. Fortunately, he shared some of his stories and adventures and how he was willing to stretch himself and live outside his comfort zone. That is what I really admire about Matt – he doesn’t confine himself to live within a comfort zone.
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“I can’t believe you jumped out of a plane!”
This was one of the many reactions I received upon returning from my 6-month adventure through New Zealand and Australia.
I couldn’t really believe it either. It seemed like just a few years ago I was (more…)
Is There Life After Vagabonding?
My wife Fiona and I love to travel. Our first real adventure was driving throughout the western states-living out of our car for five weeks; just a few weeks after our wedding. At the time I was working at Best Buy and Eddie Bauer while Fiona was working nights at Olive Garden. It wasn’t exactly the life of adventure we dreamed about.
Shortly after returning from our honeymoon in northern Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we decided to leave everything and everyone we knew behind and start out on our own. We gave notice to our employers that we’d be leaving and let our landlords know that we wouldn’t be continuing our lease. Surprisingly, we were able to pack up everything we owned into a 10×10 ministorage unit.
From there, we hopped in our old sedan and headed out west seeking adventure. We spend five weeks living out of our car and camping in our $25 Wal-Mart tent when the weather permitted. We settled down in Fountain Hills, Arizona and were there for about a year. Then back to Madison to work a state job.
Shortly after returning to Madison, we had an opportunity to go to Argentina for five weeks and just wander where the wind took us. We ended up trekking across Patagonia, climbed mountains, trekked on our own for days at a time then headed down to Ushuaia to sail the Beagle Channel before heading homeward.
After returning, we settled down for a bit. Soon, we bought an old 1981 Goldwing GL1100 motorcycle and took it out to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. Later, we went to Europe and spent three weeks hiking Italy, headed up to Switzerland and then to France. We were home for one day when we seized another opportunity to hop on a chartered jet to Reno, Nevada and rented a SUV to spend a week in Yosemite.
The next year we took off to Hawaii and tooled around Oahu, Maui and Kawai for three weeks. Since those adventures, we have travel all over the US for fun, for business and even to visit family in warm climates for the winter.
Interspersed throughout these trips were a few two week jaunts down to Juarez, Mexico. I joined groups of volunteers that were building houses for families who were currently living in cardboard and chicken wire shanties. Having the money to travel and having the time to do what we want when we want is the ultimate in freedom and what I believe money is actually for.
How do we do it? We find deals, stay with friends, stay with family, rent luxury condos for pennies on the dollar and hostel it. Now with two toddlers, our travel has changed a bit and is less centered on rugged adventure.
What I failed to mention through all of this is that since that first trip out west for five weeks, my wife and I have been resident managers of apartments. All the time we’ve spent traveling in far off places, we’ve had those responsibilities and have paid nothing for our home. It’s actually been over 9 years now! The best part of paying nothing for our home is that it gives us thousands of dollars more every year to spend on traveling and keeping away from being stuck in debt.
“The best part of paying nothing for our home is that it gives us thousands of dollars more every year
to spend on traveling and keeping away from being stuck in debt.”
We’ve found (by owning homes in the past) that there is actually much more responsibility in home ownership than there is being a resident manager. Sure there are short term house sitting positions or opportunities to work on organic farms or becoming a housemaid in exchange for free rent; but all of them seemed to be too much work required, too short of a term to make it worth our while or didn’t fit our lifestyle that I wanted to provide my family.
To us, renting is just throwing money away when we know full well that we have the opportunity to pay nothing in exchange for one or two hours of work a week. We actually work an average of 1 hour a week in return for our free housing. So for us the decision isn’t, should we buy a house or rent an apartment? It has become, do we want to pay for our housing or not?
We get to travel whenever we want. We give notice to the management company and make our arrangements and take off. We take care of our duties and once they’re done and out of the way (or we outsource them), we may do what we please. The amount of travel we do now is solely governed by the budget we have toward it.
Life after vagabonding doesn’t have to mean living meagerly, scraping the bottom of the tin, giving up on travel, moving back in with mom and dad, rooming with a bunch of strangers, buying a house, or renting an apartment. You can have your own space, have the stability of a home base many people desire and still have the mobility and flexibility to travel all over the world when you choose for weeks at a time.
The way we do it, we balance the stability of living in a nice home for free with the mobility of being able to travel and not even be stuck in a 12 month lease contract. We truly have the best of both worlds.
Fly First Class for Coach – Best 2 Seats On the Plane
I have flown first-class and I have to say I did like it. I was bumped from coach because I asked to be put on a list. I just asked the person at the Delta desk, “If first class is not full, I’d like to be put on the waiting list. Thank you.” That is it.
That doesn’t work every time obviously. I want to tell you the best second option. Reserve an exit row. I’m a tall guy and I have had the unfortunate experience of being in a standard seat and having the passenger in front of me drop their seat back. It would be comical if it weren’t so physically uncomfortable. I couldn’t put much on my tray table and it was hard to even read a book. I thought of resting the book on their head to make a point, but I didn’t.
The exit row is what you want. if there are two exit rows over the wings as in the example of the DC-9 above, The best seat is the window seat in the first of the two exit rows. “Why is that?” you may ask.
1. The exit row in a DC-9 has an extra 8-10″ of legroom.
2. The first exit row has an exit row behind it so you won’t feel bad dropping the back of your chair into someone’s lap. Always ask first – even if they don’t like the idea, they will appreciate the gesture. (more…)
I Gained 10Lbs of Muscle & Lost 12.9Lbs of Fat in 2hrs 5min of Lifting Weights Over 30 Days
If you know Tim Ferriss and his “Geek to Freak” Experiment, you will read that he was able to loose 3 lbs of fat and gain (back +) 34 Lbs of muscle by working out a total of 8 x 30 minute lifting sessions over the course of 30 days.
I have commented back to Tim on his blog and instead of going into all of it here, I will copy my post on his blog here:
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Link to Tim Ferriss’ post that I commented on.
Hey Tim,
First off, let me say that I always hated going to the gym. I never considered myself an athlete. I was never muscular and didn’t go out for sports in school. Pretty much stayed away from athletics my whole life.
I followed this plan as best as I could read from the initial blog post and your updates for exactly 30 days. There were some questions I had about amounts of each supplement, but it seemed to work the way I did it.
Since I had not worked out for years or even jogged for 15 years, I didn’t ramp up enough to get the most out of my first two or three workouts.
Here are my stats:
Before After
Weight: 182.8Lbs 181.7 Lbs
Caliper Fat Pinch:
Chest: 22mm 20.5mm
Abdomen: 34.5mm 25mm
Thigh: 24mm 22mm
Waist: 34in 32.5in
Abdomen: 36.25in 34.75
Thigh: Right (32 inches up)
Unflexed 21.5in 21.25in
Arm: Right
Unflexed 12in 12.25in
Flexed 13.5in 14in
Shoulders: 46.75in 47.25in
Chest:
Flexed 41.5in 40.50in
Unflexed 40.5in 39.75in
Body Fat: 24% 17.9%
43.9 Lbs of Fat 32 Lbs of Fat
139 Lbs Lean 149 Lbs of Lean
Just wanted to note that my 30 days (From G2F experiment) ended on Wednesday. Overall, I am very happy with the visible results and the increased energy. I am actually continuing with the program in a modified way starting on the 15th of November 2009. About ¾ of the way through I found a couple exercises that accelerated the results and unfortunately, I experienced food fatigue and didn’t get the calorie intake that I should have during the second half – e.g. I could have had even better results.
30 day totals:
Total time at gym: 6Hours 5Minutes
Weights in motion: 2 Hours 6 Minutes
Number of lifting sessions/days: 8
Cardio: walk 23 min, jog 7 min 6 days a week
Every snack, meal, protein shake, supplement was recorded
Every lift duration, weight and reps were recorded
I am making plans to modify the program and do a second run at it starting November 15th.
Just a personal thanks to you Tim for making this public. My chiropractor (a 3x Ironman, U.S. National Greco Roman Wrestling Team, Wisconsin Golden Gloves runner-up, National Rugby Team and marathon runner) and a famous personal trainer friend who humored me and took my before and after measurements accurately, were truly amazed at these results.
It is one thing to drop weight for a weigh in, but to drop that much fat and gain that much lean muscle mass in 2 hours and 15 minutes of lifting and walking every morning for 30 minutes is another.
Tim, you really have something here and I am telling everyone about what you have. It is hard to see my friends struggle so much and face so much discouragement by overworking to lose weight and gain muscle mass.
If you need any assistance with other methods or want any records, just let me know!
P.S. The turkey-bean chili with tuna and mac is fantastic. Highly recommended.
Tim ferriss
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Much more to come…
150 Videos of 30 Day Experiment(s)
I’ve recorded about 150 videos in the last 60 days. Many of them will make it here eventually. Until then, there are a few posted here.
Multimedia Mistery Project – Haggersville
ADN Keystone - Far from Haggersville Mystery
Far From Haggersville is a music album, cross-continent treasure hunt, mystery and short film.
Yes, this is me when I went by the stage name “Peter Mathews” – now I’ve done it!
I didn’t want to record another album/cd just like the 35,000+ others that are released in one form or another every year. The Haggersville story is about a boy named “A.D.N”. or Aidian (whom I named my son after) because of the initials on the demo tape that was found with the journal and other items in a backpack in a bus station locker in the Chicago area. There is a lot more information on the href=”http://haggersville.com”>website.
The story isn’t told in a book. It is told through lyrics, cd liner notes & photos, scenes from the movie, journal pages, hidden content (that is all I’ll say about that) and through the cross-country treasure hunt.
You see, if I was going to create an album, why not incorporate all of my talents and interests? Why just go into the studio with a guitar and strum out a few songs and sell it at coffee houses and bars across the state. Sorry, but that idea doesn’t excite me to move toward excellence.
With CD and music sales through the floor, it is hard for a musician to lay out thousands of dollars and hundreds and hundreds of hours just for people to “share” it with their friends. There needs to be some monetary pay off for that commitment and investment of monetary and time resources. Haggersville was about a $25,000 project and it wasn’t easy to make all of that money through various jobs and businesses to invest into the project. Think about your income and having to come up with living expenses and then put some into a project. It is a gamble to move toward a dream.
I learned a lot through this project and I loved creating it. The cross-country treasure hunt with the keystones in ongoing. There is literally thousands of dollars in gold coins buried at the end of the hunt. It is extremely difficult to move forward on the hunt, but it is also quite entertaining.
4-Wheel Over Your Fear
This creek bed had never been crossed before. It had remained un-mowed and untouched until this day. This video is of my third crossing. The first time I thought of it I walked up to the ravine and checked it out and measured the risk. I was willing to take a risk if I wasn’t “risky” about it. There is a difference. I decided to go for it and I almost went over the handlebars the first time. I got such a rush out of it that I did it again – this time I almost fell off the side when I hit the rock at the bottom.
Okay – so this may not be super-cross or monster trucking over an RV, but this was crossing over a pre-conceived limitation I placed on myself. I was mr. safety. What do I mean? I mean for the longest time I had placed a fence around me that separated what was “safe” to do and what is “not safe.” so many times I have limited my experience in life because I thought something may be risky or dangerous in my mind. The fact was that I didn’t have all of the facts. The truth was that I was just scared to try something new that I may risk getting hurt either physically or emotionally.
Those boundaries began to be tested a few weeks ago and have launched me on to a new path or expanding my life experiences. The fact is that I was probably living about 10% of what life has to offer through experiences.
This ATV video is just one case.
