The State of Life Nomadic

Here’s what’s going on with Life Nomadic. The site still isn’t ready, but it’s getting close. I also said that it was close a month ago, so take that with a grain of salt.

The primary delay is that the site is being coded by hand from scratch. It’s not built on wordpress, drupal, or anything else like that. Todd is custom coding it from the ground up. This means that it takes a lot longer to get ready, but will also be way more advanced than any other site like it.

The second delay is that we basically did zero work for two weeks while we went everywhere in Panama. Can’t say I regret that at all.

Moving on…

Todd is no longer on Life Nomadic. He left Panama a couple days ago to return to Austin. He’s been having mixed feelings about traveling since Christmas, and ultimately decided to hang out in Austin for a while. I’m sure he’ll still go on some Life Nomadic trips in the future, but couldn’t guess when.

The good (great) news is that he’s still going to be working on the site. Even as he was wavering about traveling he was enthusiastic about the site. He’ll also be in the next few videos (which he’s also editing).

I love Panama to death, so I decided to stay an extra month. I rented a great apartment right next to Parque Urraca (in case you know Panama), and I eat at one of my very favorite restaurants in the world, Casa Vegetariana, every day. Paradise.

After Panama I’ll be heading to the Dominican Republic and Haiti for 3 weeks, and then I’ll be taking a ship across the Atlantic to St. Maarten, Spain, Portugal, and England.

That’s as far as I have booked up for now. Three of my friends will be in England then, so I may stay for a little while. Then I’ll either head back to Austin before the summer trip or maybe squeeze a quick trip to Peru in there.

But you never know… a random cheap fare to India or Kyrgyzstan could send me away as well.

Waiting for Life Nomadic to be live shouldn’t be a big deal. I am currently posting content in three different places:

1. Blog posts at www.gadling.com/lifenomadic
2. Pictures at www.flickr.com/lifenomadic
3. Videos at www.youtube.com/lifenomadic

LifeNomadic.com will combine all of that (and more) eventually, but for now it’s easy enough to check them all separately. Each one has an RSS feed, too.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I am writing a good amount of content that you will see later, which is why BTYB isn’t getting tons of updates. Bear with me, please.

A few things you can do:

1. I’m going to be in Fort Lauderdale / Miami for seven hours on March 31. I would really like to ship a few supplies to someone who could somehow get them to me. If you’re willing to do this, dinner is on me at my favorite vegan restaurant in Fort Lauderdale (Sublime).

   And actually, if you have any sort of awesome adventure that can be done in five hours or so, let me know. I might be in.

2. Reader and active forum member Tim is applying to STA Travel’s intern program. If he wins he will basically get to live Life Nomadic and get PAID for it for a year.Please check out his video, rate it, and leave a comment. When we voted for Bobby together he won a huge competition. Maybe we can help Tim win and we’ll have two nomads associated with Better Than Your Boyfriend.
3. My friend Dova made a Facebook group for BTYB. I switched my Facebook to Japanese to practice, which means I can’t really figure out what you’re supposed to do on a Facebook group, but if you have a Facebook account, you ought to join us and see who else reads here.