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Showing posts from September, 2022

A popular hike in the Adirondacks, NY: Silver Lake Bog Preserve

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  At the bluff overlooking Silver Lake, Silver Lake Bog Preserve, NY John Muir:  “In wilderness lies the hope of the world.” During the first week into our month long stay in the Adirondacks (New York) in April, my wife and I had hiked to the top of Mt. Jo and we absolutely loved it.  We were exhilarated, at times scared, but also had the time of our lives on that hike. We did get lost on our way down, but it’s these trips that you tend to remember when you think back.  We were secretly hoping we could do more hikes in the Adirondacks after that first hike to Mt. Jo. Our AirBnB rental provided a local magazine called “ Adirondack Life ”, which we got to read at our leisure.  In one of the magazine articles, I came upon one of the quintessential hikes to do in the Adirondacks, the Silver Lake Bog Preserve . After our exhilarating hike to Mt. Jo, followed by our hike to Mt. Arab, the following week, we were totally excited to hike the Silver Lake Bog Preserve.  So, on a beautiful, sunny

Learn to say “no” for life and for FIRE (financial independence retire early)…

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  Kaminski House Museum, Georgetown, SC Steve Jobs:  “Focusing is about saying no.” Now that I’ve lived through half a century, there are some truisms that I’ve learned through my personal experiences.  One such thing is the ability to say “ no ”.  Saying “no” seems so easy, yet for many people, this is just not the case. Growing up, there are plenty of circumstances that call for the “no”.  For example, your friends from school want you to try drugs, but you don’t want to, or your friends dare you to bully someone they don’t like, but you don’t want to. As we get older and have to work with others in a work environment, plenty of opportunities will present itself for you to say “no”.  Such examples are when your colleague asks you to do his work, but you’re mobbed as well, or your colleague tries to take advantage of you by asking you to lie, so he won’t get into trouble. I do want to clarify when you should say “no” and when not to say “no”.  Generally speaking, when your boss asks

Review of Saranac Lake, NY: A scenic little town in the Adirondacks

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  Saranac Lake Riverside Park, NY As is usually the case, our slow traveling, where we stay at a location for a month or longer, allows us to see more places during our stay in our temporary AirBnB rental.  Whereas if we were on a typical one week vacation, we would stay in the same area for the most part, slow traveling allows us the time and the freedom to venture out to places we normally wouldn’t. Because of that, our radius of exploration (how far we’re willing to travel by car) varies on each trip, but in general, we consider up to a 3 hour drive time to be the outer limit of that ‘exploration radius’.  When we’re booking our month long trips, we’re booking it knowing we may not come back to that same AirBnB/Vrbo rental anytime soon.  It’s because of this fact that we’re trying our best to see as many places near that temporary home as possible.  For example, during our 3 months long trip to South Carolina (December 2021 - February 2022), we didn’t just stay near Myrtle Beach ar

Our minimalist lifestyle update: Year Two!

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  Quebec City, Canada  Albert Einstein:  “Make things as simple as possible but no simpler.” My wife and I have been living a minimalist lifestyle since around 2019.  Little did we know then, but in hindsight, we were preparing ourselves for our early retirement.  Our habit which started in 2019 to live with only the absolute essentials and to live with much less , has brought us to our second year of living this minimalist, nomadic lifestyle. We still remember August 2020 (our early retirement jumping off point) like yesterday, when we had to sell our townhome of 14 years.  We scrambled to get rid of our belongings, and to pare down to around 10% of our stuff within about 3 months.  Overall, we succeeded in donating, recycling, throwing out, and selling most of our stuff by August, but we still had quite a lot of stuff left, which were sent to our parent’s place in New York City.  Even on the closing day of our townhome, our Chevy SUV was jammed packed with our last minute stuff like