About
road pick·le
[rohd pik-uhl] noun, verb
noun
1. a motorcycle road trip so profound and/or comprehensive, that it becomes a life changing event. (eg: "I'm quitting my job, moving out of the apartment, and doing a road pickle this summer.")
verb
2. the act of embarking on a road pickle. (eg: "We're going to road pickle all summer long and reassess ourselves.")
The History
It started with a plate of fried pickles.
Sash and I had long threw around the idea of running away from our lives, getting rid of our belongings, and just escaping into the great wide open. But it had only been an idea.
Yet on this particularly night, while the pickle chips were winding down, and the cacophony of middle-aged bar flies, young urban professionals, and camera-wielding tourists had finally toned down into the later hours of the evening, the atmosphere turned into the kind of environment that jostled that old idea towards a long-overdue resolution.
Scribbled across a paper menu at Knotty Barrel we drew out the plans. We'd ride that direction, and then we'd go this direction, and finally we'd go up around there and work our way across until we got down into that long, lonely stretch of wide open country, looking to see what the road might bring to us. And once we got a look at it, we'd do it all over again, but in a different direction.
And such was the genesis of Road Pickle.
"So what exactly are your plans?" people asked us when we told them about it.
"We don't really have any", we'd respond.
"Don't you have an idea of where you're going to?"
"Nope, none."
I suppose most people are comfortable staying put, digging their roots down deep, and investing themselves into a community. But the reason why Sash and I ever came together is because we've been running away from our real selves the whole time. We've been trying to be people we were never meant to be, homemakers, soccer moms, and weekend warriors. We were attracting friends based on a façade we had been putting on.
So instead of running away from ourselves, we're now running to find ourselves. This is really a story about a romance, a guy and a girl who spent the first 45 years of their lives trying to be people other than themselves, for some perceived notion of fitting in and pleasing others. When the two of us met, we were already married to other people. But after getting to know one another, and realizing the chemistry between us, we divorced our spouses, tore down our facades, and started living for ourselves.
We threw everything away, well at least not our businesses and our laptops, but pretty much tossed out every other material thing that made us appear more than we really are, and ran away. Now, we're off to see the country, meet other people, learn about other ways of living, and listen solely to our hearts.
And that's the essence of doing a road pickle.
We're looking at doing this for 2 1/2 years. The first six months will be one trip across the USA and back. We'll take care of some business in San Diego, get other things in order, and then head back out again. I don't know if the idea of riding motorcycles forever, living out of cheap motels, hostels, and friends' homes, is really our idea of living. I'm not sure if eating at the worst places, pissing on the side of the road, and wearing the same dirty underwear for days in a row is what the little kid inside my heart really wants. But, we're going go ahead and explore roads as if we were the last two remaining humans on Earth, and just go willy-nilly across the USA.
So how do we pay for it all?
Clear Digital Media and Too Much Tina. My business is to operate Internet properties and sell advertising on them. Her business is to teach people how to do what I do. All of our files and data is stored on the cloud, allowing us to stay in touch on the road.
This very blog you're reading is the culmination of what we do professionally. Live our lives on the road, financed by the world of e-business.
