They come to you if you are worthy, or so I hear.
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I will keep waitingâŚThe more I glow forge the worthier I will become? That is my ingoing thought on the matter.
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Wow, simply amazing! Congratulations for cutting the cord, youâre in for some spectacular adventures. But take care of yourself, and Rio!
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Enjoy the ride and please share some photos now and then. I wish my cat would come up with good ideas like Rio does, but he doesnât even talk to me.
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Zowie! Best of luck!!
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Nice view.
Good dog.
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Wow! Amazing! That Rio is one smart cookie, you should give him a raise! Enjoy your new nomadic life!
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Isnât most of Missouri a level spot? At least where all of my cousins live it is.
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Ahh, the life of a vagabond.
In the days of my youth I hitchhiked across the country 3 times, and still remember the call of the open road. I could fit all I owned in a backpack, now I canât get it in a 50 foot trailer.
You have the best traveling companion there, please share with us your tales of adventure that we might live vicariously through you!
Good luck, hereâs wishing you many WiFi hotspots, and enjoy drawing the kind of free breath that is only found on the open road. 
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Very excited for you. I would love to do that, but canât imagine lugging my workshop around. Youâve just proved that itâs possible!
Do you use satellite broadband?
Canât wait to watch your progress. Do you have a blog?
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Your courage to walk/drive a different path is admirable. Enjoy your adventure
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BTW, if your travels bring you through the Denver area, be sure to give me a heads-up and stop by for a solid home cooked meal for you and your mate there!
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Great Story, Safe Travels. How do you have the glowforge secured from bumps in the road etc.
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This is amazing.
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I really wanted to do that from a sailboat but it is now too late in life for my body to manage it. There was a 60foot trimaran that I think finally sold for $45k but I could not swing that sort of cash at that time. I think you could play football on the deck, and it was rigged for single handing and way better shape than the price would indicate
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This is SO cool, JB. What a great life-change. If I were younger and more agile, Iâd be envious. Very happy for you both!
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Yâall always have the most overwhelming responses to things⌠this is a heck of a community!
Offers like these are just amazing and show what this community really is. I slept at a gas station in Lebanon, MO on my way back from a Minnesota ice-fishing trip; you offered then as well, which is just awesome. Itâs a good thing I didnât take you up on it at the time, since I came down with the flu the moment I got home. I love that area of MO down through the Ozarks and into Northern and Central Arkansas. At some point, I will definitely be back that way to explore some more.
As for Denver, I have a feeling that Iâll be going through at some point⌠that area has so much to offer and Iâve spent very little time in CO compared to the surrounding states.
Slow is definitely good; Iâve done a lot of trips before this but they were really run and gun, as I was a lot more mobile just with the truck and a tent. The advantage is that I was a lot more mobile, the disadvantage is also that I was a lot more mobile, so I didnât take full advantage of the places I was at.
I know a lot of people follow the craft circuit around - how cool would it be for a maker to be able to do that with the level of customization that the Glowforge allows for? The filter will definitely open up some possibilities for that type of environment; I wonder though, since youâre fully self-contained (Iâm guessing), if you couldnât have your booth and park nearby - and just ferry the finished pieces back to the booth for customers. Schedule an âorder readyâ/pickup time. Not sure if that would damper the immediate gratification thing and discourage sales or not?
WIth the Snapmarks, Iâve started engraving little quips, quotes, etc. on the back of the some of the specialty pieces⌠one of them that I use, if I have a cat piece, is âThe cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself.â Not sure how it goes over with cat lovers, but I think itâs true enough 
When I moved up this way from Houston, I rented the biggest UHaul truck they had and it was packed as tight as could be⌠and that was just for me. I told more of a story here⌠but the reality is, I sold a good portion of those things that were âweighing me down.â Granted, I have a storage unitâŚbut Iâm working at reducing the stuff that is in there as well. Which is hard - I hold onto a lot of sentimental type stuff⌠and letâs be honest, non-sentimental stuff as well (a good chance youâre going to need it at some point, right!?). But, I started going through clothes to sell and give away⌠a lot of them still had dry cleaning tags on them from before I even made the last move up to Wimberley (over 18 months). It feels good to get rid of a lot of that stuffâŚ
My original plan was to get a âtoy haulerâ style, since they have garages (that is mostly meant for hauling toys - motorcycles, ATVâs, etc.) but I just couldnât swing it with what I had budgeted. They seem to be in fairly short supply, with a fair amount of demand, so they really pull a premium on them that I wasnât willing to pay. The toy hauler route would have been much easier to make this work, and I could see someone being able to set up a pretty complete workshop in one of them. Iâll probably try to upgrade to one in a few years. Basically, youâre putting a shop into a ~10x8â area (but, the rear door can often act as a platform [they call it a party patio, I see workspace]⌠so you could have another 8x8â that you could pull mobile workspaces out onto)
I went the rear bunkhouse layout⌠so, the back is basically a slideout with a bunk area. I pulled out the furniture (mattresses, a sleeper sofa) and then just utilized the bunk structure and the open area with the sofa gone. Itâs tight though⌠and my workflow is more methodical now. Before, I had the room to just work on things as I pleased. With things being tighter, I find myself moving equipment around to the work area, which makes me work more in stages: print everything, trim everything, etc.
No satellite right now. Iâll see if itâs something that I really, really need. Also, no generator at this point, so Iâll be sticking to pretty established campgrounds rather than boondocking. Iâll just have to be a little more choosy about where I stay and make sure that it has some type of connectivity. I picked up a Verizon Jetpack to supplement my data and make it to where I didnât have to reconfigure devices as often (it also acts as a router, so I can send stuff to the printers, etc). I plugged it in the first day and blew through the 15GB 4G data allotment, so now Iâm at 600KB/s for the rest of the month⌠I did bring along the XBOX (for streaming on one of the TVâs and the occasional game if Iâm really bored). Apparently, when I hooked the XBOX up to the jetpack, it decided to update everything that hadnât been updated in the past month. Lesson learned
I thought about a blog. I really donât know what âvoiceâ I want to put with it though. There are a lot of travel type blogs out there that are chock full of good info. I donât really know what I could offer above and beyond whatâs out there (thatâs partly a problem with the way that I think â if I canât offer something better⌠then why do it? Which is probably not a great way to think about it, since the info could still be useful to someone.) And I would have to name it too! Thatâs always the really stinkinâ hard part⌠Ridinâ with Rio? Down Rio (River)?
Iâve had a couple of people use that word⌠courage. I appreciate it, but donât know that I fully get it. Itâs definitely not normal (I get that lol). But, I donât know about courageous. I hope to hell it works out, but if it doesnât, whatâs the worst that can happen, ya know? (Have I convinced you to do the same now? haha)
Iâm using the Glowforge packaging. I kind of wish I had a better solution because itâs a BIG box in a little space and I havenât found a good place for it yet when the laser is setup. But, itâs also a box that I have to bring along, if I ever need to send it in for work.
Thanks to you and your team. You bringing your vision to fruition is what really makes something like this possible (at least much less painful than other solutions). The form factor - a self-contained, fairly mobile/lightweight unit, took a lot of the potential frustration out of making it happen.
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While youâre at it, you could start writing a book about your adventures. Seriously.
For reference, one of my favorite books of all time is âThe Art of Racing In The Rainâ by Garth Stein.
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Thatâs one of my favorites as well! Would you happen to be a ghost writer?
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If you find yourself in the greater Sacramento area I would be happy to host you and Rio. It would be street parking, but itâs a quiet, level, pull-through street.
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