Month: July 2018

Embracing Remote by Working Outside

Even though I’ve worked remote for years I’ve always been a work from a desk kind of person. I liked having everything in a certain spot, a certain daily routine, and the comfort of the mundane.

This year I’ve been thinking about ways of changing this. I debated getting an office in town away from home or possibly renting a spot at a coworking place. Both of those adds a lot of expense and I didn’t want to spend that much only to not use it.

Yesterday I decided to try something a little different by just riding my bike to a local trail system, putting up my hammock, and working. During the summer UserScape, where I work, gives us summer hours which means half day Fridays and i knew four hours would be a perfect opportunity to try this idea out.

I woke up Friday morning and grabbed some coffee and breakfast and then hit the road. The trails are ten miles away and because I haven’t ridden on a road bicycle in years I wasn’t sure how long it would take to ride. I left home at 6:50am which gave me an hour for the ride and the setup. After all was done it was 7:52 so it was almost a complete hour. What I didn’t account for was how slow riding the trails would be.

As I fired up my phones hotspot and did the morning checkin everything seemed to run smoothly. I contribute to this to the area where I live which is outside of Charlotte NC but close enough to get a lot of the bigger city infrastructure.

The morning went great with the only annoyance being that I didn’t bring any food and that morning ride really made me hungry.

Riding to some remote place in my city and working from a hammock is definitely something I plan to continue doing. It was awesome being out in nature. I seen fish feeding, birds flying by, and even a deer.

If you work remote and get bored working from home or a coffee shop give this a try. The new style hammocks are amazingly comfortable and you can experience the tranquility of nature.

Travis Pastrana Makes All Three of Evel Knievel’s Historic Jumps

Last night in Las Vegas and live on the History channel Travis Pastrana landing all three of Evel Knievel’s historic jumps.

At the end of the day, Travis Pastrana made leaping over 52 cars, 16 buses and the notorious fountain at Caesars Palace on two wheels look easy. Even in 100-plus-degree weather. Even using a heavy, stiff, flat-track bike unlike anything the action-sports stunt icon is used to jumping with.

As I’ve mentioned before I used to race motocross as a kid and although I’m a little older than Travis we still attended a lot of the same races and he was always a super nice kid that would talk to anyone and had no fear.

I remember around 1995 or 1996 at Loretta Lynn’s all the kids would go to the creek and jump off this tree with a wooden platform. It was high enough where you needed to land in a pencil position so you didn’t smack the water. For Travis, I’m guessing 10 or 11 at the time, this wasn’t good enough and he climbed all the way to the top of the tree where the branches were swaying and then did a one and half out of the top.

This is just one story in the many of insane things I’ve seen him do and my short description doesn’t do it justice but I’ve always had mad respect for him.