Never knew how good we had it.... Travel used to be so easy and simple...

A couple blank pages in your passport, a relatively low amount of chemicals required in your arm, approximately zero nasal stabbings, no tracking and tracing...

The good old days....

Until they come back a lot of us will wait.

It's hard to travel now. Even locally.
Covid ruins everything. Be safe out there guys.

Feels like I haven't done much since my last post almost a year ago - and I guess that's true, lol. Went snowboarding, went to stay with family for a couple months, and now back in Mazatlan, Mexico. I like it here. Started playing some cash games since I was in the states for awhile. Nice to still keep some connections to my poker roots, and cool to see games ain't dead yet.

Edited a friend's section from this past winter and was fun to relive some of the memories. Still need to edit my own section which was more park and tricks and stuff, but probably won't share that here. And next up I want to make a halfway legit surf video - just need to get better at surfing first!!

Glad to hear you're enjoying Mazatlan, are there any cash games in that area?

I've kicked around the idea of settling there for awhile, I think it's a good up and coming spot. We're still trekking in/around Europe, but maybe in a year or 2.

There's cash games down the street at one of the two casinos I stumbled into drunk to see what was available. Told myself I'd go back and play sometime but limits are like 25/50 pesos I think so really don't think it's ever gonna happen.
Actually started to reply before going out for the night, and the casino I claimed had no poker is now the big one that claims to be the place to be in Sinaloa for poker action now. I see some $100-200 weekly tournies, Some kinda mexico main event is gonna be here in September and the event is a worthwhile punt of $1.5-2k USD I believe.

And yeah I'll be buying here for sure (zihuatenejo has a bit of interest for me because I think it's a few years behind maza), I get a passport in 2-2.5 years and will pull triggers then

Went to an awesome rap battle event tonight, although it wasn't freestyle it was really good. My friend's brother was one of the contestants and they shut it down so incredibly hard, it wasn't even fair. Full on show, with a lil dicky feat. snoop 'professional rapper' full scene at the start, to 5-6 backups dancers choreography, to tossing out tshirts and weed products to the crowd for the hype. This was the finals and 'we' won without a question of a doubt. I might make a full edit of the competition, but this is one of the last videos they released. Dude in the wifebeater (2nd verse) is my friends brother. randomly enough we met at a club last year and were dancing like ballerinas together as a joke - cool girl. now i'm good friends with her bf who also skates and tag along to a bunch of events.



OVERTIME FAM!!!!!!!

doing more video content stuff lately, and obv not upating the blog very much.

Anyways here's my video from the same snowboard season I posted above. was a fun season but not very impressed with the park setup at all. Zero truly big jumps all season long and squaw is just full of disappointments for a park rider. Had a decent season but really didn't get the progression in that I was looking for

then I went back to mazatlan and got a bit better at surfing. had a good time, saw all the old homies, even got sponsored by a local skate/fashion company there and made a video with them in collaboration with Vans shoes, but the vid basically sucked so we still got paid, but it never went up on any major skateboard sites or adverts. anyways, the surf:

then I went to thailand since I'm gonna be trapped in mexico for awhile to fulfill some requirements about living in the country while applying for citizenship here. I actually kinda messed up and my asia trip may have cost me an extra year in having to stay "in" mexico (I can travel as long as my passport doesn't get stamps in it, so basically USA and Mexico only for awhile). Will get an immigration lawyer to see if money will make that problem go away. I am a permanent resident of mexico now and that's good for life, so I can do citizenship anytime but techniallyyyy should be in the country for 2 years without leaving before applying. 2 years in mexico is absolutely not possible for me.

Anyways thailand was fun. Saw a ton of old homies and did my first real real moto trips around the country. Went to a vipassana meditation thing but it was very mellow relative to others. I'd still hop on my phone every couple days, I didn't stay silent the whole time, I brought a ton of extra food since the last meal of the day was 11am, and I only stayed 5 days instead of 10 because a friend told me to leave and go have NYE dinner with the crew. I can def see the silent meditation for 10 days benefits, but also don't think its nearly as applicable to me as it may be to others. I don't leave my apartment for 4-5 days ALL the time. I really don't have boredom in my life in the least bit. Really love just sitting there thinking all day, and I think extended silent meditation is more for the people who go crazy without social interaction or 'stuff' to do.

Since vietnam visas were only 30 days at the time and most countries were either closed (china/philippines) or crowded af (indo/bali), sri lanka had just announced zero requirements to enter and easy to stay for 6 months on a single visa, so I went and did 3 months there. Feel like i finally got decent at surfing and since there wasn't **** else to do - I really just surfed, read, and played some video games.

when I was in Sri lanka I heard that california had gotten the most snowfall in like 50 years and one of my favorite mountains promised to stay open till august. I had the idea of buying a van and living in it while snowboarding everyday, so I did that for a couple months. Now I'm in mexico doing vanlife while surfing. It's pretty damn awesome for me, and I'll be building another bigger and nicer van when I go back to the states to do another round of snowboard season/surf season. Can get into that a bit if there's any interest. I don't play professionally anymore with poker, but my setup would completely allow for it and I've mayyybe only seen one other full time van life poker pro out there, although a lot of twitch gamer streamers do it. I like it. camp on the beach, surf, eat food, play guitar, watch netflix. pretty much my life now

Vanlife sounds awesome. Post some pics and ideas of improvements to the setup you want.
Going way back, I was a liftie at squaw when they 1st put in their park in. It was mid season and the grooming dept had to agree to take all responsibility for it from mountain operations or something. Some kind of political ****.
I think them not prioritizing park even today is just that mountain's culture.
Loved Sri Lanka when I went there but 6 months seems like a bit of a grind.

Sick life and nice videos man! Subscribed

Subbed.

I haven't kept up with travel thread in long while ... did you hit it big in crypto and/or poker backing in order to now live a semi-retired traveling lifestyle?

As a permanent resident of Mexico (assuming you stay 330+ days out of USA) ... you don't owe any taxes to USA on first 110kish right? And then are you tax free in Mexico as long as the $ is being made 'remotely'?

You'll always be on the hook for 15.3% self-employment tax (social security/medicare), but you can get first 120k-ish excluded from income tax if out of the USA 330+ days.

BTW, what's that water park with the zipline in Thailand?

i dont see your staking thread but that looks awesome. i really want to go to thailand or vietnam for 3 months and just grind poker online, MTT or cash what do you think

I have the same plan for this winter, let me know if you are still interested, maybe we can travel together during the road or even find more people and share a poker house

wowwww, squaw liftie from the classic days - thats amazing man. the terrain there has always been world class for technical skiing, I guess I can't fault em toooo much for having wacky parks either. A big part of it nowadays is just marketing material. People who actually shred parks don't pay for passes anyways. Makes a lot of sense hearing the history of it, thanks for sharing.

Sure I'll toss in some van pics when I get a decent chance. My considerations for future builds are:
pickup truck with cabover camper. Honestly ideal in every way but mpg is trash at <10 often, and you completely lose any sense of being stealth when you have an actual home in the bed of your truck. I think it's just for a different time in my life which is a shame, but I really appreciate being able to just pull over in random neighborhoods or parking lots and look like any other white car there. Cargo vans being mostly similar.

And then my other option besides some random funky find like an ambulance conversion would just be the typical mercedes/dodge sprinter, ford transit, ram promaster, or even nissan NV200 - all high roof cargo vans. Would be nice to buy the van for 10-15, put in 10k or work, then sell it for upwards of 40, but when I randomly check facebook and whatnot I'm not finding many deals that are even under kbb.com value. I don't really care what kind of van it is, I just want a steep discount to help ensure max profitability. Will see what happens. lots of things and plans going on now and I might even just run back to asia sooner than I thought with some recent developments

most people make a lot of money. I don't, but I also don't spend much. No big hits and quite the opposite multiple times, but I save and invest probably 80% of my income for the last 10 years. I'm quite the nit, but sacrificing my todays for better tomorrows has paid off in plenty of ways and was never really a big compromise for me.

idk a thing about taxes

BLUE TREE! it's so good man. highly recommended and you get 50% off or something with your residency docs as well.

click the buttons good, gl bro

ur traveling around the usa in a van and snowboarding a ton? im confused because then you mention interest in a poker house. I don't play poker and live in my car. feel free to PM if u shreddin this season tho!!

Always loved your updates, and saved this thread for future ones

You never talked about poker too much so was always wondered how you could afford to bounce around so much, did you just invest all your winnings basically?

do you speak fluent spanish If i remember? Have you learnt that via your travels and school, or from a kid?

yeah, plenty of other resources to chat poker, and I haven't played a ton in the last 5 years or so. Dabbling in cash a bit, but a big month for me is maybe 10k hands and a couple grand profit - not much to talk about. people always wonder how I can afford to bounce around. I often spend $500-1000/mo for everything.

People in usa make 100k+ a year and are dead broke just living a typical american life - no splurging. I make less than half of that and save over 50% of it - for the last 15 years. Whose gonna have more money and retire earlier? this guyyyyy. I do have various investments and have gone plenty periods of 100+ hour work weeks.

and yeah I speak spanish I guess now. learned more in a weekend in spain than I did in a few years of school though. Language is hard. Speak only that foreign language for 6+ months though, ZERO english - and you'll make some progress
Portuguese was mostly duolingo and living with locals. gf there was peruvian so we just did spanish or english. mistake
My thai got quite a bit better last year, thats a tough one to study. mostly youtube.
Indo I've forgotten like 80% of the little I used to know.
Now studying Mandarin and moving to China after snowboard season! duolingo only for now




My spot for a couple weeks, feels gooood to be back on the snow again. I'll add more pics of the van setup as well sometime. Just added a heater, sink, water faucet, more solar. avg rent in california is $2300 right now. vanlife is rad

test trip with the van was a success, Heater I put in is way too hot but I roll the windows down a bit and works fine. rest of the season I'll be trying to avoid big storms and head to the mountains when its clear. Think my build is pretty much finished now, a water heater for shower could be cool instead of using a solar shower as I do now, but regardless I have to shower outside and am not going construct an in van shower - which is possible but meh.

So this was the start of the build, just figuring out a bed solution. With some piano hinges this folds up and down really easy from a 2 sided couch into a bed. I have to move around cushions and pillows but can sit like tailgate style if I'm hanging out at a beach or park, inside couch I use when day/night while in the van, and then it folds down for a nice bed which is super easy to make as I leave the scrunchy bottom sheet on the far cushion and then it just pulls over the rest, toss a sheet and pillow down and good to go.

I've added more, but typical setup for when I'm in the van at night. I got rid of LED light strip since it uses AC power, now I have 12v lights that I don't need to run the battery's inverter for

Back couch. I use that alot after surf/snow as I don't want to get in yet and am still sandy/wet/taking off snow gear

Bed folded down. I don't like sleeping bags unless its super necessary, normal bed has been fine down to 15 F so far when I turn the heater on for a bit at night.

Have a table that I use as a desk or cooking space for inside/outside. If its windy on the passenger side and I want to cook outside - it's easy to setup the desk on the driver side or back hatch. Just using a single burner propane stove that's as big as a laptop. Also have a USB screen that folds down from where the stock DVD player was so I have another screen either for poker work stuff or mostly netflix

Roof headliner is saggy in spots but I fixed that with becoming mexican and tossing up a flag

Table off the back for beach cooking. This is in Abreojos, Baja, Mexico. Stayed here for a week, was a perfect spot to get my paddle arms back and even bought a cheap 5'6" foamy to lessen the back to surfing struggles.

Nine Palms, baja sur, mexico - not too far from Cabo. Spent probably a full month here. So hot in the day but found out that inside with doors open and fan on is way cooler than sitting under and awning if there's no wind. Glad I had the awning anyways.

Nine palms - dawn patrol getting ready for sunrise session

Current state of the build and not sure what else I really want to add. Installed a diesel heater and ducting, sink, faucet with a 3gal tank below and another 3gal water storage I can refill with. 12v lights are bright but I should have done more smaller lights. They do dim and have a blue night setting, but I miss my LED strip lights a bit. Extend-o table is where I put my stove for cooking. Little trash chute i thought was rad, as normally the trash is just a can that floats around the cabin. Battery is also in the middle shelf and I was able to run most things 12v (if you run off AC power, the inverter turns on which is less efficient and takes electric just to run) - so I have lights, solar, fridge, diesel heater, and cig outlet that charges the battery all connected to 12v now. Top shelf is kinda just for stuffing clothes in, and with snowboard season that works fine as everything is puffy and bulky. Come summer I might put in more dividers or shelfs for better organization. Bottom shelf is where heater sits in the back and the duct work runs thru and comes out under the sink. Also have a blackout curtain installed for easier stealth, which is one reason I love this van. It's just a random minivan you can't see into, unless I have the heater going which exhausts under the car and has a noise- I can be full cooking a meal or watching TV with the lights on and nobody would have a clue. I poop in the trashcan or dig a hole or swim out into the ocean or go to any store/business.

Ideally this is my last year of ultra cheap living and making sacrifices. Next build would be something that I can stand in that also has a stand up indoor shower, larger kitchen space, much larger battery/solar that can support A/C in summer. Great learning experience overall though and I'll be 6+ more months in this rig before moving back to asia

Dude that is sic .... imagine what you could do with the extra size && comfort of a full sprinter van?!

Where you at for this "atmospheric river" or whatever tf they're calling it?