process

i'm out on the road. while i'm out here i live in my car, hanging the loose "where" of my days on geocaches and stopping at regular intervals for prayer.

so out here i need campsites, food, fuel, and occasionally an open network.

there's a sequence to it.

to start, i have to establish a "home" from which i can cache. sometimes this is an actual campground, but i can stretch my trip a LOT longer if i find free legal campsites.

they're hard to find.

so if i have one, i can stay there and while i'm out caching i look for others, and when i find another, my area expands to what i can practically reach from that new base. it's kind of a game of leapfrog.

around the new campsites, i have to find public restrooms or outhouses that i can use, because these are not typically present at the campsites.

and you NEED those things.

i also need open networks that i can use to pick up my email, send messages, and do research. most libraries have open networks these days, but out in rural areas it can be tricky to find libraries.

and pizza! pizza is the ideal food for the roadtrip; $16 usually buys you enough pizza for three meals. it can be eaten cold, and it comes in a handy box. it's nutritious and you can get different meat and vegetables on every one you get, so you can kind of vary what vitamins you get.

sometimes you can find natural springs to fill up your jugs, too. sometimes the water is sweet and good, besides useful.

i also have to find gas stations and pharmacies and churches; i always say that wherever i am on sunday is where i go to church, but that's only partly true.

the whole truth is that as i travel from town to town during a week, i get a sense of where i should go to church. i consider it prayerfully, trying to get a feel for where i ought to be.

sometimes that's not a surprise. sometimes it's a church not so dissimilar from my home church, but sometimes it's a church very foreign to my experience.

typically at least once in a trip i will return to a church where i have gone already because i'm returning to friends, but i also like to stretch and make new friends.

i start to feel more at home on my earth, welcome and comfortable in wider and wider ranges.


and all of these places go on my map: springs, privies, campsites, churches, pizza places. it all goes in my giant database of amenities so i can find my way back later.

out where i am now there are a lot of roads that are on the map but they don't go through anymore. it's easy to get lost or have to go around the long way, so i got this brilliant idea: map those so i can avoid them later!

so my day is partly geocaching, partly searching for amenities, partly study and partly prayer.

if i can be of service to someone along the way, that's just gravy.




i gots ta go back to my campsite now.