Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Off the Grid, but Still Online

motherboard.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 171 posts

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#141

Post by jestar_jokin »

grecy wrote: post #40
Luc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aw, I'm so jealous of the amount of grand nature in North America. It seems out of the question for me on a EU passport to live long term in Canada. You're lucky!

I'm Australian, and have gone through ~7 years of paperwork to become an Canadian Permanent Resident. I have another ~5 years for citizenship, which I'm working towards because Canada really is that awesome :) I'm sure there are places equally as stunning in the Northern European countries.

Why was Tasmania not an option? Lots of remote areas to hide away.

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#142

Post by timmaah »

comrh wrote: post #139
timmaah wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still working and saving a good amount of $$. A developer job that likes me around during normal business hours. So it is a pretty normal existence in that respect. Just a tent camper and when we left I had never towed anything before. We were prepared and knew what to expect so had no real surprises. Not alone. I'm married. She does a mix of writing and editing and most of the day to day logistics.

I'm probably younger than you and not married so this might be a silly question, but do you still have a social life with moving so much? Also the Airstream looks so cool, like your trailing a space ship from 1955.

Way more of a social life then I originally thought I would have. There is a pretty good sized community of likeminded folks living the same way. We seek each other out via blogs, instagram and facebook and hang out constantly. For new years there will be a gathering of 100 or more out in the CA desert.

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#143

Post by grecy »

middleclick wrote: post #130
grecy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have actually been living and working in Whitehorse for the last 4 years, as I wanted to save enough money to do something big again (going for 2+ years around Africa in my Jeep). While Whitehorse is a city, I have world-class mountain biking from my backyard, and 20 minutes from town in any direction I have no cell reception and rarely see other people on the weekends. 3 hours from town we can be hundreds of kilom…

How do you manage the winters?

Actually, winter is by far the most beautiful time in the North. Everything is frozen and extremely peaceful. Also Whitehorse has on average more sunny days per year than anywhere else in Canada, so often in winter it's -30something C and perfectly sunny. Gloves, a toque and a good jacket, and you're good for hours outside.

Winter is also the best time to get around, because all the rivers and lakes are frozen, meaning you can go places where there are no roads (and there are very few roads - I've driven them all). So you quickly get into snowshoeing, cross country skiing, downhill/backcountry skiing/snowboarding, ice fishing, snow mobiling, etc. etc.

The days are short, so you do whichever of those in the dark you have to. Snowshoeing at 4pm in -35C crunchy snow looking at the bright stars/northern lights is a magical thing [1].

Basically, you get outside and do stuff. If you don't like winter, you'll likely leave, which is another amazing thing about the North - everyone that lives there loves it.

[1] My latest attempts at Northern Lights Photography http://theroadchoseme.com/northern-lights-2

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#144

Post by grecy »

middleclick wrote: post #130
grecy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have actually been living and working in Whitehorse for the last 4 years, as I wanted to save enough money to do something big again (going for 2+ years around Africa in my Jeep). While Whitehorse is a city, I have world-class mountain biking from my backyard, and 20 minutes from town in any direction I have no cell reception and rarely see other people on the weekends. 3 hours from town we can be hundreds of kilom…

How do you manage the winters?

[dead]

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#145

Post by grecy »

talsraviv wrote: post #127
grecy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is there some kind of unmentioned catch Speaking from experience, the catch is you won't get to live the life of convenience and luxury that marketing has been pushing down your throat for the last 20+ years. When you work less, you have less money, which means you spend less money, which means you often do things for yourself. Oil changes can be dirty, chopping wood can be hard work, and canning vegetables is a lo…

That part I'm sold on. I'm wondering about, as another comment mentioned, what happens if you discover one day you're not self sufficient, even temporarily (significant illness, chronic illness, major injury - or something I'm not considering). If I don't want to be a burden on anyone on the grid, but don't want to depend on social services, how do I factor that in?

I assume you're American, because you're worried about health/insurance.

I've never lived like that, so excuse me if what I say makes no sense.

Can you not find an insurance policy that's affordable even when working part time? i.e. consider health insurance like other expenses that are very hard to entirely remove (some food, gas, car insurance, building materials, etc.).. i.e. most people wind up working something like 20-50% time to pay for those things, maybe after you add in health care you'll need to work 30-60% time?

Not possible?

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#146

Post by micro_cam »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #54
codingdave wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central Utah - quite a few small family/hobby farms, but also I-15 comes down through Salt Lake and Provo, so there is a strand of civilization (jobs, people, etc) along the interstate south of Provo that makes the small towns be a little more suburban than you might expect. And many of us have quite decent internet connectivity - my town in particular has its own municipal network, currently at 120MB, and they are u…

Would you be more specific? What town are you in? How much land do you have? Do you have water rights? If so, how hard/expensive were they to get? What do you grow? Do you grow just for your own use, or do you sell some? Do you do contract programming, or do you work for a single company? If for a company, how hard was it to get that set up? How often do you go into the big city (Provo/SLC)? For what? What's the bigg…

I'm not the OP but doing something similar and feel like answering as well to promote the life style.

I'm near Hamilton, MT, a town of ~10k an hour from Missoula. Hamilton is home to Rocky Mountain Labs, the US's center for ebola research which attracts lots of scientists and post docs so it has kind of a collage-town-minus-they-undergrads feel. Also amazing outdoor recreation if you climb, ski, hike, hunt, fish, mountain bike or pretty much whatever.

We have ~4 acres with good water rights and a gravity fed irrigation system. We paid under 300k for that land with a large house in good shape on it. We do have electricity from the local rural electric co-op, a microwave link for high speed internet, a well for drinking water and propane for heat and cooking. You could pay under 200k for a smaller fixer upper in a less desirable spot still with enough land to grow some stuff.

We are basically at the level of having a (very) large garden but have some established apple trees and are putting in larger amounts of plum, appricot and peach trees and blueberries, raspberries and tons of strawberries. Maybe soon grapes...some people have had success with wine grapes in the valley we are in and we are in a good spot for it.

We grow things for for our own use though if we grow enough we will sell or trade...many of the species I list are just starting to do well in Montana thanks to global warming and newly developed varietals so I kind of view growing them as a research project. I plan on keeping engineering as my main money maker.

There are lots of full time farmers in the area and some great farmers markets and farm stands.

I work for a single company I connected with through hacker news. Before that I convinced my boss to let me go full time remote after working in the office for a few years. I work in a specific area of machine learning which is in demand at the moment and have enough open source contributions to convince people I can work from wherever.

I go into Missoula (70k people) about once a month for a Costco and specialty grocery store run. Hamilton has two micro breweries, a great coffee shop and good grocery and hardware stores and I could easily get by without the city but there are some things that are cheaper and easier to find in Missoula. Missoula is also a great outdoorsy, progressive, town with a thriving river surfing community.

Biggest drawbacks is that local politics at the moment is dominated by ridiculous tea party shenanigans. Even the conservatives seem to be getting fed up with the sheer incompetence of some of the candidates but there has been some elimination of local women's health services and other services like that.

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#147

Post by grecy »

lovemenot wrote: post #135
grecy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right, but the point means nothing. Capitalism says that if a person wants to work 100+ hours a week and drive a Porsche, they can. If another person only wants to work 10 hours a week and walk everywhere, they can. Simply because Porsche sell $200K+ cars, does not mean I'm obligated to work enough to pay for that. > have to be made by someone doing a 9-5 job somewhere Actually, the person making th…

> Actually, the person making those things could also have chosen to live a simpler life and only be working part time. It's their choice. I did not interpret the point you responded to the same way as you. It's not about that individual's choice, but about the necessity for some person to be producing those products under those working conditions, in order for the off-grid folks to be able to consume them. For some…

>under those working conditions

Why do you assume those are the only working conditions possible?

>your new lifestyle necessitates that others have to fill in behind you

My lifestyle doesn't "necessitate" anyone to do anything. I buy solar panels because they are available and I can afford them. If all of a sudden nobody wanted to work more than 10 hours a week and solar panels were not available or too expensive, I would not buy them.

What each individual does with their time is up to them. When the world changes because of how people spend their time (i.e. stuff might get way cheaper, or way more expensive, or self-driving cars may or may not become a thing), I, and everyone else, will continue to re-evaluate their choices about how they spend their time, and adjust accordingly.

Re: Off the Grid, but Still Online

#149

Post by dnr »

derefr wrote: post #16
ctdonath wrote: post #10

Don't underestimate how much effort and devotion to the lifestyle it takes. Most of us just want a "turnkey" lifestyle, buying whatever on a whim and expecting it to just work (plug-in gadgets, packaged foods), with even our "staples" coming in such perfect condition (box of nails from Home Depot, beautiful fruits at Whole Foods, etc.). To the contrary, off-the-grid requires devotion to the act of surviving from basi…

> It can certainly be internalized to the point of being "normal" and "comfortable", but still requires that focus I would argue that there's a feedback loop in this particular case between the requirement of such effort, and the ability to generate it. The same sort of flow-state you get from e.g. playing Minecraft, also exists in the real-world equivalent of survivalist bootstrapping. Our brains were evolved to be…

Definitely agreed.

The greatest flow state I ever had was building a "raft" out of small logs and lots of cord on a rest day on a backpacking trip. It took hours to gather wood of the right size, break apart the pieces that were too big, scrounge around for all the cord I could find in my gear, arrange the wood in a sensible way, and tie it all together. During all that time I was so focused on the task that I don't think an unrelated thought even entered my head.

It was completely useless: I had nothing to use the raft for, except to swim out a little farther into the lake than I could by myself. The raft didn't even work very well! And yet building it was tremendously satisfying. I can only imagine the satisfaction one might get from a task of similar complexity, but that's essential to one's survival!

Post reply on HN