The Life of a Nomad: Experience the Unexpected

You may have noticed that we have not updated this blog in some time. My apologies. Natalie and I have been busy working on another blog that will keep any interested readers up to date on the ever changing life of Justin and Natalie.

To summerize, Natalie and I will be spending the next 12 - 18 months backpacking through Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. To find out more, head over to nomadbackpackers.com

This will be the last post on this blog until we return home from our travels.

The last couple of weeks have been a blur of packing, planning and tying up loose ends in Kalamazoo. First off on Friday my friend and mentor Ben Andrews

gave me a huge hand in loading the great majority of our furniture into the trailer that Natalie and I recently purchased. I really could not have done it without him. By the way, Natalie and I purchased a Haulmark cargo trailer to put our stuff in as we move around the country. (Admittedly, it took me several weeks to figure out that Haulmark, H-A-U-L-M-A-R-K, was a play on words referring to moving items from one place to another. Before this realization I was thinking of, H-A-L-L-M-A-R-K, and wondering what trailers and greeting cards could possibly have in common.

Needless to say, with a fully loaded trailer Natalie and I set off around 8:00 pm on the night of the 15th heading for my parents cottage in Roscommon, Mi. (Roughly a 3.5 hour drive). Most of the drive was uneventful, although the trailer swayed more than I was expecting on the expressway which did lend itself to some white knuckle moments. All of that to say, Natalie and I were about 4 miles from the cottage cruising along Interstate 27 when the passenger side tire on the trailer blew. When I say blew I do not mean that the tire when flat. I mean the tire exploded and, incidentally, took the fender with it. After getting the trailer safely to the side of the expressway, at 11:30 pm, Natalie and I began to evaluate our options. We had, at the time no jack, and no spare tire. After a small run in with the police (they had gotten reports of a young women heading south on foot) my father and I, spent the night on the expressway while Natalie and my mom when back to sleep at the cottage.

After quite a bit of running around on Saturday, Natalie and I are now the proud owners of a jack, two new tires, a new fender, a spare tire, and several other items that should make traveling across the country with a trailer a bit less hazardous.

Today is 23-May-2007 and by the end of June, Natalie and I will be putting a great deal of our stuff into storage. With most of our stuff in storage we are going to attempt to live like modern nomads moving from city to city for an undetermined amount of time. When discussing this idea with others the general reactions we get are a mix between “Well that is about the stupidest thing I have ever heard” to “Can I go with you”. Both reactions are fair and, when looking at this situation from the outside I can understand where people are coming from. The truth of the matter is that Natalie and I have grown far to comfortable in Kalamazoo and we are both growing restless. While we are still young we want to see the country and experience the unexpected. For those of you who have know us for any amount of time you may be surprised to learn that we are not heading to China this summer. This is a valid surprise.

For a long time both Natalie and I have felt that God had called us to become English teachers in China. This winter while we were negotiating contracts with several Universities and teaching companies in China, we felt the Lord telling us that this was not the time to go to China. Confused, Natalie and I have begun to look at different roads while reflecting on possible reasons why this is not the time to go to China.

This blog is designed to be a record of a number of things. First, this blog will be a dynamic record of our experiences living as a nomads. We will try to post often about our experiences living in different cities and moving from place to place. 2nd, this blog will discuss what we are learning on our journey, what we feel the Lord is teaching us and where he is directing us to go. Lastly, this blog will help friends and family (along with others who are interested) to keep up on what is going on with Natalie and I. So, do yourself a favor and subscribe to the RSS feed so you can receive regular updates.