Tesr

March 1, 2010 -- Day One

I watched $1.3 million and nearly 3 years worth of work leave Carmel Valley Ironworks yesterday, turn right on Carmel Valley Road and head to Ames, Iowa behind a U-Haul driven by my biz partner, Peter. I climbed all over that thing for two summers and two cold winters virtually in the back yard of our old Ford Road little farm house and on the other side of the fence of my elementry school. It felt like we blew a million dollar shot, during the greatest biofuels boom of history, to try and make history.

It was strange how little emotion I had over it: it was the final day in many frustrating months.

My wife and I decided that I would do a sabbatical--maybe six months. I wanted to spend time with my daughter and experience her first year. I'm in the middle of a short story titled "Arabie's Lion" and another silly little project trying to make a very light weight stroller of bamboo. In between, I wanted to hit the garden, eat healthy, do some yoga and live by the motto: "do only what is necessary".

This meant, first of all, drastically cutting our expenses. We managed to get our basic costs to under $2k. This meant that all travel, new clothes, even gifts would eat into our principle and erode our future monthly income of about $4k. We would have to live with one car; no data plans on our cells, maid every other week no more omega 3s for the dogs. Laughable, really, but it was a process in examining every cost.

And some hidden benefits: I now for example don't make calls or text while driving. I do yoga at home, in front of the fire--not at the $20/class spot in town. Saving driving into town, I calculated was an extra $20/day. What's cool is that you slip into a similar mindset of those annoying Prius ownders (a car a hate, by the way) of maxing their MPG since their dashboard displays real time info on energy usage: i asked myself before every purchase, almost every action, "is this necessary"?

I know this doesn't sound like much fun. Who doesn't love the small joys of saying "yes": to a cookie, to a new Mac, to going kite surfing. And I certainly do! It was a long way to fall from the five years ago when Wendy met me living in a splash pad on Russian Hill, driving Porches, Range Rovers and traveling first class around the world. But I swear there's a new thrill in being a "free-b-voir": we have a freezer packed with our neighbors beef, our garden cranks out an endless supply of greens, friends have given me their high end prototype "clean energy" things to try out; now that we have time, other friends insist we come stay with them and all along the way everybody wants to help and gift us miles, lend us their RV or buy our old Rolexes. It's hilarious!

So Day One, I emptied out my coin jar as a symbolic move to kick it off. We held a family contest to guess the value (lowest = $43.17, highest $77.99) and declared that would be all the money we were allowed to drink on our trip to Baja to kick off retirement (and get some kite surfing in of course). The nearest Coinstar money counting machine was in Salinas, but I found one next Orchard Supply (where I was returning un-used gardening stuff--another $177.12). I fed the change in, it rattled endlessly, and popped up $109.22 and kicked back a voucher and a handful of foreign currency that attempted to contanimate my loot. I stood in line at the Save Mart cashier and waited while a man tried to use his ATM card to buy a pack of Malboroughs. It was 10AM mid-week and this place looked like the waiting area at the DMV. I realized that living on the fringe of our economy meant doing everything with the lowest common denominator. I would see a world I missed entirely when I raced to and from work, gabbing incessantly on my cell phone and outsourcing everything I could pay a little more to avoid. Like counting pennies.