Jerry

About @road to roam

49 years old • Male

Budget travel - $15 per day - has been my thing since 2013. In pursuit of this my gal Fiona and I have hitchhiked from Portland, Maine to the Panama Canal and back. This took exactly 365 days round trip, with a lot of stops along the way to see sites, sights, cities and towns. We continue to travel slow (and cheap!) to this day.

We've been traveling since 2017 with only a very loose idea of what to do and where to go from one day to the next; in this sense, not always knowing what to expect (and being fine with that) is, to me, at the very heart of true travel and exploration.

To supplement our itinerant lives we work the sockeye salmon season on Bristol Bay in Alaska. The season is short (six weeks), the work is physically and mentally demanding (16-hour shifts, no days off) but the pay is certainly enough to keep us going for a good while. During that time our food and "housing" are fully provided for, so we don't spend a penny the entire time we're earning - the company we work for even pays for our transportation to and from their facility in Alaska.

We also house-sit for a few weeks or a few months at a time - this allows us to settle when we feel the need to, cook loads of salmon, work on our website and even shower on a regular basis.

• Hobbies:

  Backcountry hiking, slow travel, reading non-fiction, soaking in hot springs, cooking (and eating) and getting lost wherever we are. On most mornings you'll find me walking through town before sunrise; this is the best part of the day.

  Listening to music and especially seeing live shows while traveling has always been a passion. I enjoy multiple genres of heavy metal music from bands such as GWAR, Entombed, Misery Index, Xerosun, Carcass, Hessian, (old) Sepultura, Job for a Cowboy, Death, Six Feet Under, Annihilator, Bolt Thrower, Cannibal Corpse, Machine Head and Obituary.

  I'm currently exploring more and more soul music and several different sub-genres associated with it.

  Sociology documentaries fascinate me and I love to watch boxing and mixed martial arts matches. I like to fix things, be it a toaster, cars or computers.

  Increasingly, running our own website is becoming a real hobby and I continue to learn more about this on a daily basis. From both caching and SEO optimization to learning about databases and perfecting GTMetrix results, our website has become a great hobby and a way to make a (very!) modest living.

• Favourite places:

  In no particular order whatsoever:

  Huancayo, Peru
  Trujillo, Peru
  Albuquerque, New Mexico
  Guayaquil, Ecuador
  Riobamba, Ecuador
  Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
  Mexico City
  Patras, Greece
  Latacunga, Ecuador
  White Mesa near San Ysidro, New Mexico
  Marche (Treia, Cingoli, and Avenale), Italy
  Abruzzo (Orsogna and Castel Frentano), Italy
  Real de Catorce, Mexico
  Big Corn Island off the coast of Nicaragua
  Howth Head in Ireland
  Mazatlan, Mexico
  San Salvador, El Salvador (honestly!)
  The Cotswolds
  Panama City, Panama
  Laguna Bacalar, Mexico
  Watching fireflies from Mom and Dad's front porch in summer
  Grogan's Pub in Dublin
  Portland, Maine
  Birmingham, England
  21st floor of Foxwoods (facing the forest)
  Any hiking trail in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
  Northern Ontario
  Boston
  San Antonio Hot Spring in New Mexico
  Killester, in North Side Dublin (D5)
  Wild Sheep Mesa in Ramah, New Mexico

• Elsewhere: A Couple Of Drifters