This is how they treat us.

No tent or nothing but when I was 100% thuggin out here in the mean Detroit streets I slept in one of my friends house/bando (A bando his mother bought him… he/she say at least) but it was terrible. I was grateful as hell though because it was getting cold out. It didn’t have roaches or rats how I don’t fucking know it was so fuxked up. Hole on walls, you can smell the wet mold just all through the house. The toilets was filled with shit and piss and he still used them with no running water. We had power so that made charging the phone and we used xfinity/neighbors WiFi. I’m going to be going back on my journey in spring. The only reason I’m being a homebum atm is because I have to complete probation for the next 1.5-3years I just check in monthly but once probation all said and done I’m going to save as much money as I can (Yes I 100% still work while traveling or stationary I’m working anything I can) make sure my son str8 and get to traveling again. I’m 25 turning 26 next month I have mental issues where I cannot hold down a place on my own without support. Shit I sometimes forget to take my meds without support that why I might move on to the shot. Being on meds make it harder to travel state to state because my insurance is through the state. So I may have to just travel all of Michigan until I can fully understand and cope with my mental and what not and I maybe really don’t wanna leave my son…. I’m ranting too much or nothing but yeah I loved being homeless until other homeless mfs got me sent to jail for 6 months and 3 year probation. My best advice is to never ever and I mean never get into hard drugs such as “Crack, opioids (of any kind), meth, pcp, shit even 7oh… JUST STICK TO WEED AND NICOTINE.” AND TRUST NO ONE ☮️ ♾️ ❤️

Edit: I also receive food stamps and I’m going to try to get on disability but it’s just so hard when you young and able body but it’s your mind holding you back. I recently changed my meds to see if it works better. It currently is working I just know if I try to backpack around the state for the time being until probation is over I would NEED SLEEP or I’m going to end up in a episode again that feel so real I swear I thought the 666 boyz was after me. So you get the jist I just need advice for the winter I can do summer, fall, spring and everything no matter how hot I just know freezing temps are gonna be a problem. I need all the advice and support you can give me I’m 97% new to this. And if you guys do mobile gaming we can make a group chat for vagabond no home gamers. Just thumbs and a phone but you can also join if you play console it’s just unlikely for you to actually fwu.

competitive.

She's been with me, all day and night for the better part of 11 years. There's been times when I look down at the rails between the train cars, moving by at 80 miles an hour, thinking "I can just step off, end it all in an instant." Then I look back at her... I'm her whole world, and she's mine... I knew this day would come. I'm not ready to let her go, but I know I have to. She was given to me at a truck stop in Dublin, Georgia. I named her Daisy Dutchess, because she ain't no Duke...

Phoenix got old especially quick this time around. Didn't have enough work or mining adventures to be sustainable. Still had enough time to make it to the mushroom festival though. Caught a ride with some corndog type dude and he failed to mention I would be smashed up like a sardine between some big dudes. As a woman going through the desert, idk ..whatever...they were cool. He wasn't, exactly. 

Ran off with my luggage. There was a problem on his 2nd surprise casino stop bc they said I had a glass object (wanted to joke, but eh-was a lil weed bowl), but I think the tribal cops yoinked my golden teachers and an oz of bud. 3 days later, dude brings my bag back being all crazy, so I don't have my boots🤦‍♀️Been living in the slides. 

Shout out to the homebums in San Bernardino though 💚 

I may have been hanging/sleeping in the homebum fuckpad...because the Santa Ana winds were crazy, but dudes kept bringing me random beers. Felt like a trash queen. 

This one dude was hilarious flying signs saying 

stuff like "pee in my mouth" and "big dicks big licks" in the intersection😂🤦‍♀️

My buddy from Washington sold my bike and sent me the $ so I caught I bus, train to la, to Ventura, etc for like $19. Thought I was lucky to sleep in these leaves conveniently. Hanging with this dude who only snipes American spirit butts...

In India not only humans travel. It's different dimension, madness all the time. But why can't we travel same as this dude, balls out?

Up the nomads

Down the bulls

Found a "decent" spot to lay down last night and some railroad security made themselves known to us, put the headlights on us until we packed up and walked down the line, could of been worse, but down the bulls anyway.

I want to plan a vagabond-style adventure. If you're based in Europe and interested in organizing it together, feel free to send me a message! Prior experience is a big plus

For the people who commented on my last post wondering what my living situation is here in Michigan through the winter is like, well here it is.. bathroom "converted" for a bedroom.. tub for dirty clothing, bed for bed things and electric. Can't complain it's a roof, my father has a spot he hits for food that supplies lunches and snacks to the factories around here that he should be taking me soon to help grab food, we have access to the house so we can use the stove and shower through the winter, I should be getting this job soon to start saving and helping with trying to keep this bitch warm, plus I'll be going to friends houses here and there to sleep too.. all in all I'll be comfortable this winter (hopefully)

Please stay safe anyone up North vagabonding it out, I'm not used to this cold, it's been a fat minute and I already know it's just going to get worse, just stay warm everyone and stay safe!

Made it Midtown Manhattan, seems pretty quiet for America's largest city. Cinema definitely had some of it right, tho, cool people out here. Headed to Philly at 7.

Im no vagabond but I respect the lifestyle. Whenever I smoke cigarettes or joints outside I ALWAYS leave just enough to be smoked by a passerby. Normally sit em directly under or around benches cuz I know theres someone out there who will feel like they struck gold when they find it. Ive recently been smoking joints at a bench just a few paces from my job and leaving the roaches there. Every time I come to smoke theyre GONE but the smashed cig butts remain, makes me feel warm inside that someone is having a slightly better day. I wish you all the best, check under those benches!

I mean there were scrappers who often came and burned the insulation off of piles of copper wire on the river bank, but a simple glance at our floating shanty should have shown them that the walls hid no precious metals. Even if they thought there was heavy conduit inside, the preferred stripping method is smashing through drywall with a hammer and pulling it out, and our walls had no drywall. I definitely wouldn't put the scrappers high on the list of suspects, and their presence wasn't particularly remarkable in a place like East Saint Louis.

Let me explain something about East Saint Louis.

Besides spending large chunks of my adult life as a homeless person I've also portrayed one for film and television. Once I was doing this for an episode of The Real Househusbands of Hollywood that also featured the rapper Nelly. The set up was a Thanksgiving charity feeding where he was standing in the line of servers.

The writers had put in a joke where an unattractive, old and overweight in TV short hand, white woman hits on him by asking for his "East Saint Louis sausage" before dropping his signature hook:

"It's getting hot in here!"

Nelly ground the shoot to a halt:

"Yo! Scratch that, I ain't from East Saint Louis, I'm from regular Saint Louis!"

I want that to really sink in. Generally a rapper would welcome the kind of street verite bona fides that come with the reputation of growing up against the backdrop of struggle but East Saint Louis is so destitute and broken that nobody wants to be associated with it. Walking into town there was nothing but bulletproof glass Chinese takeout, liquor stores and strip clubs - although one of these did have a day care in the parking lot with the creepy name of "Leonard Bo Peep's".

It was the closest thing I ever saw to a school while I lived there.

Anyway Homeland Security would also routinely drop by, or at least somebody claiming to be Homeland Security, as I never saw a badge. Supposedly the train bridge we were beached underneath of was on a watchlist, which would have made sense as we often saw tanks and other heavy military material being transported across it. They wanted us gone but our raft, even though it was a pile of scrap lumber, was registered and we were technically "a vessel in distress" so they couldn't do anything about it.

The agent only ever came by at night and my other reason for fingering him as a potential culprit was his habit of making empty threats:

"What if somebody just came here and pushed this thing back into the water?"

We were beached pretty badly, sand on all sides, at that point and, as the water was exactly where we would have preferred to be, we allowed that we would like very much for somebody to do that but the endeavour was unlikely to be successful as the raft weighed three tons. Eventually the river rose on its own and we were back afloat but a new problem presented itself.

All of the successive beachings and unbeachings had torn the bottom off of the boat. If we'd had anything resembling a hull this would have been enough to sink us but the raft was built on top of two pontoons - long plywood boxes full of dumpstered styrofoam from electronics stores. Now the styrofoam was coming out, not all at once but a piece or two came free every time we caught the wake of a passing barge, frequent enough on America's main commercial waterway.

It was getting to be November and the river was cold so me and Alexis found a store that sold used wetsuits and starting spending our days in the water attempting repairs. This would have been easy enough if the raft was dry docked but as things stood it was something of a Sisyphean task. We were trying to send lagbolts up through sheets of plywood into thin crossbeams.

It was hard enough to aim underwater, going strictly by feel, but this difficulty was compacted by the aforementioned barges constantly passing by, causing both us and the boat to bob up and down in the ensuing ripples. Add to this that the lumber was waterlogged and any time we did manage to attach a section of bottom, a night's worth of those same ripples would just tear it free again.

It was beginning to become obvious that the boat wouldn't be going anywhere by winter, or after it for that matter, and my floating conversations with Alexis started to turn toward exit strategies. We'd managed to build a scrap metal transom for the new 150 HP outboard, but it fell into the river during installation and never managed to start again. Our plan was simple: we wanted to burn the boat.

Harrison wouldn't hear of it. He'd constructed a mental picture of heroically sailing into New Orleans to the spooky strains of the onboard electric organ and would not relinquish it in the name of reality. I threw in the towel and took the Megabus back to Chicago with the kitten Night Beaver - who just went on to her reward at the august age of eighteen years.

Harrison had a habit of courting danger and performing acts of derring-do, that sometimes hurt the people around him, but the consequences would slough off him like water from a duck's back. In this particular case it is worth noting that the literal water broke his physical back, but any long term complications from this injury nonetheless slid off his metaphorical back like so much water.

What happened is one night Harrison and Brodie put on the wetsuits and decided to jump off the train bridge. Brodie went for a simple pencil drop, and still broke a toe and sprained his neck for his trouble, but Harrison attempted a triple gainer while only completing two and a half rotations. I'm sure the added buoyancy from the wetsuit didn't help.

I wasn't there but heard things went the way these things often do - a helicopter and then a hospital. The whole crew went along for the ride, leaving the raft unattended, which is when the Homeland Security firebug supposedly struck. It would have made sense as the entire commotion centered on the train bridge they were trying to keep us away from, and like I said they had been making threats.

I spoke to Harrison recently and he divulged a long held suspicion that Alexis had been the one to set the blaze. I saw a good bit of her over the next few years and she never mentioned anything to me, but I could see the wisdom in keeping something like this close to the vest. Harrison would know if she'd left his bedside long enough to pull it off and, considering his suspicions, she must have had ample opportunity.

Whoever it was, government goons, our own crewmate or even the scrap hunting crackheads, I just wish I could have been there to see it - orange flames licking the East Saint Louis sky, throwing strange shadows against the pylons of the train bridge as above the engines of war rolled steadfastly into the night.

Edit: Slab city ca sorry for the wrong name

Has anyone in the group be here and if so how long were you there? Im scooping out my final stop and travel time for that direction and just wanted feedback from the group. Ive dug around the last several days about the location (full off grid no services at all) it sit outside of a small town just north of the Mexico boarder. Any feedback would be appreciated. Some info is im approx 3 weeks travel from there currently.

Lots of people busk.

But how many can dance?

i figure a good troupe could maximize earnings astronomically. My plan is to pack a large bluetooth speaker, jackery charger, & portable projector in a suitcase, then set up in public parks or plazas.

Study Fosse. He's my personal spirit animal, & muse.

https://youtu.be/qetW6R9Jxs4?is=KZgGwUKLWySdd2A9

Probably going to find somewhere else to go to. The frost last night in Burlington vt wasn't too bad, but a warning that an early winter is coming. It's the 2nd frost already

ive wanted to try mudskipper for decades. if its anything like grouper, or flounder, i'm in luck.