On the Road with Adie

Filing my taxes!

Taxes. I love doing my taxes. Or, more accurately, I love going to have my taxes filed. As a writer, tax season is when you finally see the benefits of your hard work—mainly all the receipts you have saved and cataloged to claim as expenses. Do I file my own taxes? No. Am I capable? Probably not. Since nineteen years old I have been fortunate enough to have Taylor Herrick as my tax guy. This past year, Taylor opened Tax Retriever Inc. with the best business partner possible—his golden retriever, Jasper. Over the years Taylor has been able to give me guidance on how to claim expenses and mitigate my tax liability and/or maximize my return. Taylor has seen me through a divorce, two international book deals, and a major job transition. Jasper has been a good boy. The main thing though: I trust Taylor (and Jasper) completely.

Now, let me tell you about being a writer and taxes. Most of this has come from years of Taylor’s advice and guidance and I’m probably not going to explain it thoroughly enough (because I am not an expert at all). Again, this is why I trust Taylor to do what he does and why you should schedule an appointment with him:

Off the Grid

Can we talk about this nonsense phrase for a minute? You quit a job and take off in a VW Bus for a year and for some reason or other folks will say you’ve gone off the grid. It’s a weird and often thoughtless turn of phrase that I want to clear up in this post because we have never claimed to live off the grid. In actuality, what Miracle and I are doing is pretty much the opposite of what that phrase is meant to convey. I want to do two things in this post:

Define off the grid
Define what we are doing in relation to that phrase

Podcast: Nellie

While in Quebec, Canada, we met a woman named Nellie Surprenant who owns a pale blue Vanagon. While life, relationships, and even the van’s name have changed over time, her love for the VW has remained steady. Oh, and she grows some pretty amazing flowers. Visit her website here: https://www.capucinevoisine.com/

Snow!

Jolene loves the snow.

Two months ago, Miracle was lamenting the idea of a winter without snow. I had planned a route that would keep us well outside of extreme temperatures since the bus is, at once, terrible in the heat and terrible in the cold. We would go north in the summer, south in the winter. Simple enough. Then the engine broke.

Playlist: Places in review

Okay, folks, while we wait out the snow storm of 2022, let’s play a little game of catch-up. We’ve been to 26 states and I have missed some tunes along the way. Here’s what I’ve added to our ever-growing playlist:

Run it like a business

I made a comment on Facebook (always a mistake, I know) kvetching about the societal chants to “run it like a business.” The thread of comments afterward were few because, like real life, folks in the digital sphere tend not to talk to me. The pithiness and meme-size thoughts of social media don’t really allow us to expand on thoughts in a way that provokes meaningful conversation. But three things emerged from the conversation:

What does *it* mean?
We should define what business we are holding up as a model (which was my point).
If you don’t think the *it* can be run like a business then you are anti-business.

So let’s go point by point:

Keep on keepin’ on

The long, cold drive as we left Minnesota

After the breakdown in Florida, we really thought this bus venture of ours would be over. Finances are tight on the road and podcasting is not exactly a gold mine. As I ran the diagnostics on Adie at that gas station just outside of Sopchoppy, Florida, I had the sinking feeling that we had reached the end of the trip and the only thing left to do was figure out a way to limp Adie home, where I would find a conventional job and tell my coworkers about the time I tried to do something different. I imagined standing in the nondescript break room while the microwave hummed along and the smells of everyone’s reheated lunches—frozen Healthy Choice meals, leftover Chinese food, stale coffee—all wafted together. Between talking about TPS reports or some bullshit I might mention that once I had to clandestinely enter a campground in Quebec via a dirt road because we had our dog and the attendant hadn’t mentioned the park was no dogs—or at least not that I know of; I don’t speak French.

Podcast: Ben

We sat down with my former neighbor, Ben Abramcyz, at his house in the quaint little village of Alpha to reminisce about an epic bus trip he took nearly fifty years ago. It is a story fueled by beer.

Just hanging out at the studio

Gotta say, as terrible as engine troubles can be, we have some great luck with breakdowns. We traveled back to the ice lands of the north, where we could be miserable. Where we could be slowly going broke renting a hotel room or paying out the nose for cleaning fees on AirBnB. Instead, we had a blast hanging out with our friends, Shawn and Emma, at the Happy Productions Studios in Minnesota.

Help get us farther down the road

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When we set out on our great bus adventure we had a budget—a budget that included a column for catastrophic breakdowns. But, now as we are five months into the adventure, and on our third motor, we are feeling the squeeze of the budget. We came very close to calling it quits when we broke down in Florida. Had it not been for the kindness of a few strangers and our friend, Neil, we would have likely thrown in the towel. In the time we’ve spent sitting at Happy Productions studios, I was able to wrap up the editing and mastering for Season Four of our podcast and release it. The reception has been amazing.

We’ve received emails of support from friends and strangers. The downloads are far outpacing the previous seasons (which are also seeing more downloads). It’s gratifying to see a project gain some momentum and we now know that we need to press on and produce Season Six and Seven. And Eight. Nine. We love what we are doing; we love sharing VW stories and traveling and writing and taking pictures and meeting people. As two people who worked in libraries, Miracle and I believe that you should be able to access the arts for free. The problem is that each episode of the podcast costs quite a bit to produce.

If you have the spare change and the inclination, if you have gotten a chuckle from an episode or teared up during another episode, if the winter weather has grounded your bus for the time being and you’re getting your fix by listening to our podcast, consider hitting the donate button on our website. Help us get a little farther down the road and collect the next great story.

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