Boyinks4Adventure

For the non-geek readers of this site, South by Southwest (SXSW) is a huge festival that takes place in Austin, TX every March.  The SXSW website has this description:

The South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conferences & Festivals offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery. http://www.sxsw.com

I’ve been to the Interactive portion of the festival the past three years, and have heard it more accurately described as “spring break for geeks”.  In addition to presentations by industry leaders, awards, and (lots of) after-hours parties, a significant aspect of the festival are the audience-proposed panels covering an incredible array of topics.

This year, one of the proposed topics is Technomadism - Living/Working Full-Time on the Road, and we’re pleased to be included as one of the prospective panelists.

Tractor Supply is beginning to like us - maybe they should become a sponsor?  Anyway - today I bolted one of their shiny aluminum toolboxes into the bed of the truck.

Four trips to Tractor Supply later (don’t ask) I finally have the rear utility lights installed.

I’m a bit spooked about tire trouble while on this trip - when we owned the Disastermobile it seemed every outing included limping into a rest area or parking lot and calling roadside service for tire issues.

I know many tire issues are caused by improper inflation - and this quote strikes to the heart of the issue.

85 percent of all tire air pressure losses are the result of slow leaks that occur over a period of hours, days, or months. NHTSA

I’m guilty of it as well - not checking tire pressure as often as I should, even with compressed air available literally three feet in front of the truck when it’s in the garage.  As I started thinking about this trip I had nasty visions of attempting to finagle the truck and trailer combination into gas stations to check the tire pressure.  I had already put on on-board air compressor on my previous Jeep, and knew that decent-quality 12v pumps were now available for under $100, so set out to outfit our tow vehicle with a similar setup.

Don’t let the recent lapse in posting here fool you into thinking we’ve gotten complacent.  Quite the opposite.