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Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
- bfe 13y agoNow imagine how much undistracted work you could get done on a six-month trip to Mars.
- himperdunk 13y agoIf somebody is blogging about their lifestyle you have to question it. Creative geniuses seem to vary in their response to distractions. Leonhard Euler claimed that he did important work with baby on knee. The inventor of the shape sorter (I forget his name) used to head off to a place of absolute quiet and stillness to conceive his inventions. John von Neumann turned the TV volume up in order to work. Go figure
- bujatt 13y agoAirport trips I like the most for the same reason, but they never take 9+ days. Tynan made a good point.
- btgeekboy 13y ago"Airport trips"? Can you elaborate?
- bujatt 13y agoWhen I was a student and had lots of free-time in the summer. I did some trips where I intentionally spent long hours on airports. Taking advantage of the many low-cost airlines in Europe, once I managed to buy a whole Budapest-London-Cork, Dublin-Barcelona, Barcelona-Budapest trip for $120. That made a trip with 5 flights, 8 different airports in 7 days and 3 cities where I actually stayed over. I find airports very neutral in-between spaces and thus perfect for concentration and work.
- wehadfun 13y agoThis could be somewhat bad for the cruise industry. I think cruises sell at a loss and hope to make there money back through alcohol spas, gambling or things someone working folks will not do.
- melindajb 13y agoThis is an insanely great idea. Cruise ships are incredibly quiet places. the lack of internet/expensive internet is a forcing function. Great way for co founders to spend time together if they're normally in different locations. We might just do this for a big push. Transatlantic cruises are very, very cheap and not crowded; and since it's not incredibly warm outside there's an added incentive to work. :) Another benefit: take your spouses/partners; so long as they are able to let you work during the day while they hit the gym/spa/bingo etc. Everyone wins. Only danger I see is eating too much.
- philsnow 13y agoMost of the repositioning cruises are in November or April, which probably won't work for any employees with kids in school. I don't think you could make this mandatory if you have any employees with kids. If it's not mandatory then you're splitting your team up for 1-3 weeks.
- melindajb 13y agoneither my co-founder nor I have kids. so it could work out well. not every technique has to work for everyone. Some startups demand you travel for 2 weeks a year for "hackathons" in remote locations. I don't see the difference.
- atlbeer 13y agoTo the eating part; if you aren't on "vacation" the gyms on cruise ships are ghost towns usually. Good way to fight to free food factor.
- melindajb 13y agoyes. also another tip I got that worked the last time we did a big family cruise: never take the elevators, always take the stairs. On at sea days we made it a point to walk at least 3 miles on the track outside on the ship. Managed not to gain any weight, which I counted as a win.
- joelgrus 13y agoI can see how the lack of Internet is awesome for preventing you from checking Facebook / Twitter / HN all day. At the same time, I'm not sure how productive I could be without near-constant access to StackOverflow. :)
- ngoel36 13y agohttp://kapeli.com/dash http://kapeli.com/dash
- jimbishopp 13y agoFeel like I've had my head in the sand. Dash is great - thanks
- pacofvf 13y agoawesome, I clicked the purchase button and.... only for mac :(
- finnw 13y agoYes, why is this not mentioned more prominently?
- AlexMuir 13y agoI too work from a lot of different places, but I find that I absolutely need internet to be productive. Pulling a Gem for instance, or checking Stack Overflow. My favourite places to work are all-inclusive holiday resorts. Lanzarote and the Algarve most recently. Being all inclusive means there is no thought process in eating or drinking. Nor any need to shop, clean, cook. The most difficult thing is finding out what the internet situation is in hotels - but this has vastly improved even in the last year. I generally call up reception, and travel with an ethernet cable. Incidentally for an individual or a couple, Airbnb is generally far more expensive than a reasonable half-board hotel. I've only ever found Airbnb type stuff useful in capital cities. I've been at my most productive working in: - Wetherspoons in Slough - An apartment in Cairo - A bungalow in Lanzarote - The lobby of the Apex hotel in Dundee (current) Downsides are seeing a laptop screen in the sun (wear a dark shirt) and being surrounded by happy couples while on one's own. (I'm back to Lanzarote for a week at the start of December if anyone fancies a coffee)
- mathattack 13y agoI agree completely on the internet access. Very hard to work through issues without online resources nowadays. How did we do it before there was such great online help like StackExchange?
- AlexMuir 13y agoI now find a lot of better answers through Github issues and personal blogs. I should remember to search Github code when I'm stuck trying to figure something out.
- mathattack 13y agoThe point is similar though - need the cheap internet connection on both.
- larrys 13y ago" How did we do it before there was such great online help like StackExchange?" Books. And if you were lucky you would buy 2 or 3 so you could triangulate something that didn't make sense. At least that is what I did. Also plenty of trying and iteration. Try this. Try that. For hours on end. (Not sure by your question if you had done this or were just asking btw.). When I bought a Unix system (mid 80's) it came with a bound set of maybe 10 manuals iirc. Getting other books was difficult I had to drive miles to a University bookstore to even find anything on Unix or C. Software wasn't free of course. It cost real dollars and was pretty expensive and came on floppies.
- drum 13y agoThe idea of being able to travel around the world with just a laptop reminds me of being a 21st century writer. Take the notepad to a remote beach and just write. I love the idea of working on a cruise ship but I imagine it would get kind of hard to code without internet. Is that something you face?
- ufmace 13y agoInteresting idea, but the lack of internet to look things up easily could be a headache. I suppose it would help if you already have expert-level knowledge in the tech stack that you're working in, and/or you can download local copies of lots of documentation.
- astine 13y agoI find that for myself, that when I work without Internet access, the boost I get from a lack of distractions usually cancels out the problems caused by inability to look things up. A lot of the time, having to figure out things that I would usually look up helps me to think more deeply about the problem at hand. Downloading a manual or two is often all I really need to be productive offline.
- antonius 13y agoI really like the simplicity of the UI of your cruise deal website. As someone who is currently looking to book a cruise trip, this helps.
- tynan 13y agoThank you! I actually redesigned it to be simpler on the flight over to where the cruise started.
- MattBearman 13y agoWow, I don't think this would have ever occurred to me, but it's genius! I can go from London to San Juan in 14 days, for about £32 / day. That's cheaper than life at home. Think I'm gonna book myself a cruise soon Edit: Just exploring this guy's blog, and it turns out he's Herbal from "The Game" - an excellent book if you've not read it.
- triangleman 13y agoThat was a terrible book! You might as well read Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
- MattBearman 13y agoI've not read RDPD, but unless I'm mistaken isn't it a self help type book? (in the vein of 4HWW). Where as The Game a novel, you can't really learn to pick up women from reading it, so not sure they can be compared.
- vinceguidry 13y agoThe Game isn't a novel, it's an account of the author's experience in the so-called seduction community. It's arguable as to whether you could learn how to "pick up" women from it, whatever that means. (it's not an instruction manual) It is a decent read though, Strauss is a talented author.
- MattBearman 13y agoTrue, I didn't mean literally a novel, just that it reads like one (as opposed to a self-help book). I thoroughly enjoyed it, I quite like some of Strauss' other books too.
- triangleman 13y agoThey are both self-help books disguised as pseudobiographies. They both make overt and covert attempts to direct the reader to buying more of the author's products, or at least buy into the author's bullshit. They are both filled with the kind of empty rhetoric that, in the wrong hands, are capable of ruining someone's life. They have both found the bottom of my trash bin. Perhaps I'm just bitter, but still, readers beware!
- spindritf 13y agoI had no idea cruises were so cheap. I though they're ~$100/day. This is what it costs to get a cabin on a cargo ship.
- jonlucc 13y agoI think many of the cruises leave on very short notice. That would bring the price way down.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoIt can be much cheaper than that to get cargo ship carriage: http://www.flightlesstravel.com/plan/cargo-ships/ http://www.flightlesstravel.com/plan/cargo-ships/
- mmphosis 13y agoThe prices do not include taxes and tips. Tips are added to your bill. Taxes can easily exceed to cost of the trip.
- pastylegs 13y ago"Frankly, if you're not into bingo and ballroom dancing, you may find there's not much for you to do on the ship other than work or read." What is happening to people? When you are insulating yourself from nearly every aspect of day-to-day normality just to be able to concentrate without distraction there is a problem and it's likely you are working to much. I'm all up for travelling but this just seems like an easy way to remove yourself from the world to get more done. Why not just check into a mental health clinic with a wifi dongle - you won't have to cook or clean and they'll be perfectly equipped to deal with you once the monumental burnout hits.
- sp332 13y agoWhat if there's something I want to get done, and I have the time but I keep getting interrupted? I'll just go off somewhere with fewer distractions. That's what this is for.
- eddieroger 13y agoI got the same impression from reading it as pastylegs did. To me, it sounded like the author does thing on the regular, as opposed to a one-off or rare type thing. If you have that much trouble creating a segmented space to work in your normal life, you either have too many distractions in your space, are too easily distracted, or have an unreasonable expectation of what it means to work.
- DanBC 13y agoMaybe they just enjoy working from a ship? The food, drink, sports and international travel are all attractive.
- icebraining 13y agoLots of people sought isolation to do mental work. The writer's cabin is not a cliché by chance.
- rattray 13y agoI'd agree with you if he recommended doing this constantly. But to me it seems like a great way to promote a healthy work-life balance most of the year, with infrequent work-vacations for times when you do want extreme productivity, and even a break from your social life. This tactic seems like it could be more of a sanity-booster than anything, if applied responsibly.
- eli 13y agoHmm, I wonder if I could publish a dd-wrt fork that requires you to pay me $0.20 to $0.70 per minute for internet access.
- invalidOrTaken 13y agoPrediction: This will be a trend. People are less likely to be married now than they used to be. People increasingly feel loyalty to a culture rather than a country. Internet access on cruise ships will become cheaper.
- melindajb 13y agoAlready this is a trend, but for senior citizens. Many of them use cruise ships as retirement communities for nearly similar reasons. http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/2013-2-2-cruise-ship-retirement-assisted-living/ http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/2013-2-2-cruise-ship-retire... "According to Dr. Lee Lindquist’s 2004 study comparing assisted living costs and benefits to those offered by cruise ships, “cruises were priced similarly to assisted living centers and were more efficacious.” Lindquist claimed that over a 20-year life expectancy, cruise ships only cost about $2,000 more than the cost of assisted living. And, she says, “when you compare that to the $9,000 a month or more charged by some assisted living facilities,” a cruise ship may seem like a bargain indeed."
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- arbuge 13y agoOK, I have to be that guy. Barcelona to Casablanca is not a "transatlantic cruise". Anyway, interesting idea if you can live without internet. Technically speaking, if you're in international waters (and not a US citizen, which is a long story), you won't even owe taxes on the work you do aboard.
- jhvh1134 13y agoThose could have just been two connecting ports of many.
- busterarm 13y agoIn ship lingo it is. A trip from Florida across the Suez Canal and out to Singapore is also considered "Transatlantic". Basically it just matters what your starting ocean is and if it's round trip or not.
- busterarm 13y agoUgh. I meant to say Panama, and I'm wrong anyway. Derp moment. Disregard.
- reeses 13y agoThanks for coming back for that. I was scratching my head trying to figure out if there was some horrid route cruise ships took to get to the Mediterranean from Florida that involved them not going into the Atlantic. "And then everyone gets out to help carry the ship over the Darien Gap..." or possibly,"Shackleton, the adventure."
- tynan 13y agoOriginal author here... I wrote the post in transit between those ports. On cruises you go to a lot of ports... this particular one ends up in Florida (Florence to Florida, with 8 stops or so)
- kayoone 13y agoAs much as id like to work from different places alot, i just cant stand the fact of being hunched over a laptop all day. Most of these places that are not an office, just arent very ergonomic.
- xradionut 13y agoIn my humble opinion, this is a shitty idea. There are other quiet places with decent enough bandwidth that don't have the costs or risks of a cruise ship. My favorite one is the study section of the local library. I've also gone out to a cabin in the woods that only had a satellite link. My neighbor has soundproof walk-in closet. As for the risks of a cruise ship, if something goes wrong, your options are limited. I say this as a navy veteran that's had to deal with multiple things that go wrong on a ocean vessel. (Fire, flooding, engine failure, etc...) As a civilian, I'm very wary of cruises.
- kayoone 13y agoWhat kind of risks do you have on a cruise ship that you do not have in everyday life traffic, public places and outdoor activities ? Statistically, your cabin in the woods with nobody around is probably an order of magnitude more dangerous than a cruise ship ;)
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoGetting sick is a big one.
- brador 13y agoWhat things can go wrong on a cruise ship that are very bad for people onboard? Isn't a life boat just a short run away?
- slg 13y agoLike others here, my major concern would be access to the technical resources that are freely available on the internet like StackOverflow. I was curious and consulted the StackExchange API and license. They seem to indicate it would not only possible to pull down the site's entire contents but it also would be allowed under the CC license that is used. Although judging by the various throttles in place, it would take you roughly 11 days to grab all the data. So who wants to take the plunge, write up the scripts, pull the data, and then share it with everyone else?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- davorak 13y agoThe work is already down regularly: http://www.clearbits.net/creators/146-stack-exchange-data-dump http://www.clearbits.net/creators/146-stack-exchange-data-du... I do not know what format it is however because I have not gotten around to using it yet.
- ZoFreX 13y agoIt's always friendlier to first look for an official data dump before thinking about scraping - and in this case, SO does have one[1] :) [1]: http://www.clearbits.net/creators/146-stack-exchange-data-dump http://www.clearbits.net/creators/146-stack-exchange-data-du...
- wiggle_bar 13y agoI wonder if Tynan would be as gung ho about working on cruise ships if he didn't happen to be launching a cruise deal aggregator site
- edsrzf 13y agoI'm pretty sure it's the other way around: he wouldn't be launching a cruise deal aggregator site if he weren't so gung ho about working on cruise ships. http://tynan.com/cruisesheet http://tynan.com/cruisesheet
- tynan 13y agoYeah... this is my 12th cruise or so now. I really love them. For a while I was going twice a year pretty regularly. The cruise aggregator started as a way for me to find the best prices (because cruisehotsheet.com went down), and I decided to try to make money with it to fund access to better cruise data. Also... I didn't post either of these... did one of my 2 minute cruise-internet email checks and was pretty surprised to see that I was on the front page twice.
- benmorris 13y agoOne of the reasons I enjoy cruises so much. So easy to disconnect from the rest of the world, but you still have access if you really need it. I bought an hour of internet on the last cruise we took to ration for the week, mostly to check email once a day. I used RDP on the way to Puerto Rico from my cabin to fix a quick server issue also. Connection was useable, but very laggy (as expected).
- plainOldText 13y agoIn case someone didn't get to the bottom of the article, the author also built Cruise Sheet, which helps you find the cheapest cruises http://cruisesheet.com/ http://cruisesheet.com/.
- bane 13y agoFolks who are interested in this in terms of lack of distractions might also want to consider doing commercial freighter cruises.
- busterarm 13y agoI'm actually not into the whole cruise entertainment experience anyway and would appreciate a few weeks to mostly be a loner while my needs are taken care of. Commercial Freight is a fantastic idea that I plan on doing hopefully next year.
- VikingCoder 13y agoI can't wait for a Google Driverless Car to essentially be the same thing for me. I order one with my cell phone, it shows up, I hop in, type my destination, and then I can ignore the world while I'm getting stuff done. Or sleeping. I get to see interesting places, but get stuff done.
- lifeformed 13y agoNot for me: I get horribly carsick if I try to read inside of a moving car.
- VikingCoder 13y agoIf I could SLEEP in a Google Driverless Car that would be awesome. And there's no real reason it should feel like car seats, if there's a more comfortable design. On a Friday night, I could order a car from my phone, hop in, fall asleep, wake up in destination city on Saturday morning. On Sunday evening, I go home, waking up on Monday morning right outside my office. It'd be awesome.
- philsnow 13y agoCan't tell if trolling or serious... Take a train.
- VikingCoder 13y agoYeah, okay, I'll take a train... That requires that I get from where I am to a train station. That also requires that the train leaves NOW to get to my destination. That also requires that the train has anything like a reasonable route to my destination. That also requires I get from the destination train station to the actual destination. I'll just take a train to the Grand Canyon.
- kronholm 13y agoHe's serious, and so am I. Trains go on rails, so a driverless car can go many places trains can't. Can't wait for it to become reality either. Like in Children of Men, but with time better.
- reustle 13y agoGreat work on the article and CruiseSheet.com. Could you update the "From" dropdown to combine "New York, New York" and "New York, NY"?
- mjn 13y agoOne of the academic conferences in my field has been on a cruise on and off [1], for some of these reasons. One of the main things people like about it is that it keeps everyone together: everyone eats in the same dining room, drinks at the same bars, and it's easy to meet up and split off into impromptu discussing/working groups somewhere. Whereas in a big city people tend to diffuse, partly by income (well-paid people go to different restaurants than grad students), partly by interest, partly by what part of the city they found a hotel in. Many people also like no-internet. No temptation to respond to work emails or check Facebook during talks! And finally, it means everyone has to come for the whole conference or none of it: no showing up for half the conference, or just for your keynote. The cost is also surprisingly low, typically coming out less in total than a typical "big hotel" conference does: when you add up conference-room rental, catering for coffee breaks and lunch, cost of hotel rooms, restaurants for dinner, etc., the cruise ship's all-in group pricing typically ends up cheaper per person, sometimes substantially so. The downsides: 1. It looks bad externally, like academics wasting taxpayer money on a boondoggle. Even if it's cheaper, the image is too luxurious. It looks better to have a conference at a Marriott in Chicago, even if that costs the taxpayers more. It looks bad enough that some people won't come, because their source of funds won't approve the trip. 2. Flipside of the community tightness aspect is that it can feel claustrophobic to be essentially stuck at the conference, literally unable to leave the floating conference hotel. 3. No internet means certain kinds of demos won't work, or need added preparation. Although this is good practice anyway, because conference-room internet is often flaky even on land. 4. Not being able to come for only part of the conference can also be a disadvantage, since the schedule is inflexible. If you have a hard conflict anywhere in the conference, you have to skip it, since there is no way to arrive half a day late, or leave even 2 hours early. Last year we experimented with having it in a medium-sized town with a compact city center, in a lower-cost-of-living location [2], to try to get some of the advantages without the disadvantages. I think this worked fairly well, and I personally liked it more than the cruise ship. But there is an added travel disadvantage, because there are few compact towns that also have good international airports. [1] http://www.fdg2014.org/ http://www.fdg2014.org/ [2] Chania, Crete: http://www.fdg2013.org/attendees/ http://www.fdg2013.org/attendees/
- wehadfun 13y ago
- gmays 13y agoGreat post. Being new in my entrepreneurial career I'm just learning the pleasures of working from anywhere. I live in San Diego, but a few weeks ago I drove up to NorCal to visit the parents. While there I attended Startup School in the bay area. The next week I flew to Boston and stayed with a friend in Cambridge and attended WordCamp Boston. I attended the Business of Software conference next and stayed at the Seaport Hotel. At the end of the conference I took the short ride to Cape Cod and stayed there for a week or so with some family. It was a little chilly this time of year, but with everyone gone during the day and the tourist season over I could really enjoy the beauty and eat at all of the great restaurants. It's incredibly peaceful. I even spent some time at the Chatham Bars Inn and worked from there...absolutely incredible. By staying with friends and family and managing costs the whole few weeks probably cost around $1,000 including plane tickets. The most expensive thing was the three nights at the Seaport Hotel, which cost around $500 even though I split the room with someone. It would have been a lot more if my wife was with me since we would have wanted to do more. So now I'm back in NorCal staying with my parents. I'll probably stay here through Thanksgiving then head back home to San Diego for the winter. This lifestyle really is incredible. It'll be interesting to see how it works out when my wife and I have kids, I assume it'll be a pain in the ass. I can't believe I had a 'real' job for so long. Sure I work about 2x as much, but I love it. Besides, it's really only work if you'd rather be doing something else.
- ssharp 13y agoHaving been of a few cruises, I'd like to point out a few things: 1) Listed prices generally DO NOT include gratuities. Low level cruise employees like the cleaning crew, cabin stewards, waiters, cooks, etc. are paid ridiculously low wages, because cruise ships are registered to countries like Panama and the companies do not need to adhere to U.S. standards. I don't recall offhand, but for a 7-day cruise the "automatic" gratuity is, I believe, around $100 or so per person, so take that into consideration. You can remove the charge if you want to, but you'd have to be a pretty big asshole to do that :) Also, prices are based on double-occupancy, so if you go by yourself, double the fares. 2) Internet is expensive, slow, and charges by the minute). However, if you do this a lot, some cruise loyalty programs will give you free internet. I know Princess does this. Also, you're cell phone my work in certain locations. I'm a U.S. AT&T subscriber and I have full service in U.S. ports like San Juan and the U.S. Virgin Islands. If you can tether your phone, you'll get much faster and cheaper service that way than on the boat internet. 3) Don't get sick / injured. My wife stepped on broken glass while wearing open-toed shoes and got cut up pretty bad. The doctor on board used strips instead of stitches, and the cut reopened in two days, by which time we were already off the ship. The crew handled the incident terribly. The problem with the glass was not resolved quickly, my wife had to wait a fair amount of time for someone to show up with a wheelchair to take her to the doctor and the crew went into "don't get sued" mode really quickly. They gave us pushback when we refused to sign a liability waiver before getting treatment and we had some security guy who kept insisting to come into our room to photograph the shoes my wife was wearing at the time. When we complained the next day about the process, a nice woman sat down with us to hear out our complaint, but never really did anything. We were adamant about NOT paying for the care and it never showed up on our bill, so we let well enough alone. Three months later, they sent us a bill for $300 for the care. After we sent their HQ a letter in response, they ended up waiving the fee and giving us $100 credit towards our next cruise. Nice, but it was ridiculous in the first place since. 4) In regards to the above, had something worse happened, or they had refused to waive the fee, good luck fighting the cruise company in court. You're not only bound by typical consumer-crushing stuff like forced arbitration, but you're also getting into international legal difficulties. For big cases like the cruise that tipped over, it's worth the hassle, but for smaller claims, you're pretty limited in what you can realistically do. All that said, I think this is a pretty cool idea and had always thought about how cruises could be a cool little work/vacation thing.
- FWPsuck 13y agoI would punch this asshole through the internet if I could.
- graeme 13y agoI had this same experience working in Cuba for a month. I was writing, so I didn't need internet. They don't have it there, except for occasional slow access in certain access points, where I went to handle correspondence once a week. I stayed in a family's house. They cooked, cleaned and made coffee. I had zero responsibilities. Results: I wrote 50% more than usual. I read 7 novels, including Moby Dick. I socialized more than usual. I exercised and went for long walks every day. I studied for the GMAT. Not having internet was very helpful, but outsourcing all domestic tasks made a huge difference.
- benhebert 13y agoI took a cruise earlier this year with my girlfriend and we paid $600 combined. After tips and a lot of boozing, we ended up spending around $1000 combined an average of $100 per day. You can do it for a lot cheaper as well, plus we weren't using the internet. I'd do it again in a heartbeat and work if there was a steady internet connection.
- noarchy 13y agoPosts like this seem self-congratulatory, to me. Working in this field, we're well-compensated, and in a position of relative privilege based on that alone. Add to that the flexibility (when we have it) to not be tied down to a daily commute or an office/cube-farm, and we're living in another world entirely. We shouldn't forget this.
- badman_ting 13y agoThere is no honor in acting like you aren't privileged when you are. But moreover, cruises have a generally more glamorous image than the reality. You can often get on a cruise ship essentially for free, because they want you to spend money shopping and eating on the ship.
- macspoofing 13y agoWhatever works for you.
- jscheel 13y agoThis guys is enjoying life while making money and seeing the world. Who am I to argue :) I'm not sure what I would do without internet for that long (especially since I listen to internet radio all the time), but if you can get past that, more power to you.
- Zoomla 13y agoInternet on cruise ships is fairly cheap
- mixmastamyk 13y agoLot's of choices on the West Coast as well, looks like you can go up to Alaska and down to Santiago, or over to Hawaii. Interesting idea, although it's going to be a really tough sell to go without the family. :/
- mrjatx 13y agoI went on my first cruise last year, 4 days, and it was one of the worst vacation experiences of my life. Don't go when school is out unless you're planning on bringing your asshole children and letting them roam free with the other kids.
- chrissnell 13y agoOP touched on another great remote work idea: the RV. Find a smaller model in good condition and outfit it with a Verizon mobile AP and you're in business. Sadly, I didn't move into remote work until after I got married and started a family but if I was 22 again, this is how I'd do it. I'd spend my winters in South Texas, around San Antonio and Port Aransas. In the springtime, I'd head up to Southern Utah, places like Escalante and Moab where I could mountain bike and go canyoneering. In the summer, I'd head for the mountain towns: Telluride, Colorado...Aspen...Park City, Utah...Idaho...for more mountain biking and hiking. In the fall, I'd head south again and start it all over. All of these places have easily available wifi, good food, great people, and lots to do after work. If you're smart about it, there are even nice places just outside of these towns where you can camp (< 14 days) for free and still have 4G cell service.
- bri3d 13y agoI think the RV is ultimately a better lifestyle. Biking, hiking, sightseeing, canyoneering, etc. appeal to me a lot more than being stuck on a ship with a sad crew and tons of vacationers. I don't think I'd compare the two directly, though. Driving an RV is probably more expensive per-day even discounting the food and services on a ship and assuming very little depreciation on the vehicle (i.e. you got a deal used), and it's a lot more work. Between finding places to park/camp, run the generator or hook up power, empty the toilet, maintain the drivetrain, cooking, and the inevitable RV disaster-breakdowns RVing is a lot of work - a far cry from "saunter to the restaurant, pick a meal, eat it, come back to a freshly cleaned room and more food."
- driverdan 13y agoI find Las Vegas is a great place to get work done, assuming you don't have a gambling addiction and don't mind working from hotel rooms. Hotels are super cheap, food is reasonable (if you're careful where you eat), and you can usually find cheap flights. Downsides: You'll need a wireless hotspot since hotels charge too much for internet access (ones without resort fees). Starbucks is overpriced and there aren't many other coffee shops on the strip.
- triplesec 13y agoSo yes please: what are those tricks for getting cruises cheaply?
- tynan 13y agoWill be writing that post very soon... I don't normally submit my own posts to HN, but I will submit that one if no one else does.
- mdip 13y agoThis was an interesting read. His arguments for why he likes working on a cruise ship are very much my arguments for why I prefer to vacation on a cruise ship: (1) Internet access is "limited". I'll stick with "limited" because it's a mixed bag. It's been 5 years since I cruised, though not Mediterranean and was able to find flat rate per-day, however, the one day I broke down and purchased access I found it to be very unreliable (single shared satellite connection for the entire ship). This is the same for phone service. The last ship I was on had a ship-board cell "tower" that showed up as international and I can imagine even T-Mobile doesn't cover that in their zero roaming considering ship to shore calls were $9.00/minute from the suite. This also encourages my coworkers to think long and hard about whether or not to call me in an emergency. (2) Everything is taken care of, including entertainment. I find it difficult to relax, even on vacation -- it's an exercise of planning what to eat, when to eat, what to see, what to do and when to do it. When "at sea", the cruise director provides a menu of what you can do and when. You pick. Very little energy is expelled in enjoying myself. (3) When in port, same rules apply. You don't have enough time to plan some grand excursion, so you pick one or two things to do and head back. I always opt for a room with a window and have found that if the ship is oriented with me facing the shore, I can pick up free Wi-Fi from restaurants at shore for a fix (even when the ship is too big and has to be anchored at sea). This provides for a quick fix of internet and stretching. Because there are many times of the day where there is literally nothing else to do, I find it's the only thing that slows my mind down. By day 7 or so I'm ready to be home again, and the weeks that follow my vacation are usually amazing. The time spent being forced to be alone with my thoughts results in me returning with new ideas, new ways to solve old problems and just a generally more positive outlook. It's the only vacation I take where I truly get the idea of taking time out to decompress.
- WalterBright 13y ago> or to get caught up in the dreaded Reddit -> Hacker News -> Reddit cycle. Dang!
- rholdy 13y agoGreat idea. Pretty sure I wouldn't get much done with limited internet access though. Maybe I'll try to simulate limited connectivity for a while a see how it goes...
- theorique 13y agoPerspective from David Foster Wallace - "Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise". Also known as "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". [pdf] http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazin... However, I don't think this (somewhat critical) article should deter any would-be cruise goers, especially if you have work to engage you during the time.
- peteforde 13y agoEarlier this year I wrote about how shrinking my business size down to one (me) allows me to work from trains. Specifically, I wrote that post while on board VIA Rail's The Canadian, which goes to/from Toronto to Vancouver in four days. It was awesome, and if you know where to look, these trips are always 50% off. http://hackertourism.com/growing-by-shrinking http://hackertourism.com/growing-by-shrinking
- snogglethorpe 13y agoI totally second this... I took the Toronto to Vancouver train in 1984, and although I understand the details of that route have changed quite a bit since, it was a wonderful experience. 95% of the trip is through wilderness, with occasional stops in small cities that seem to just spring up in the middle of nowhere (Winnipeg...). Once past Thunder Bay, the train suddenly empties out a bit, so it doesn't feel crowded, and spending all day reading, in comfortable seats, with wilderness streaming by the huge window next to you is just wonderful. I found the other passengers quite interesting—I shared my four-seat "section" with a forestry student off to work in a lumbercamp for the summer, and learned a lot of interesting stuff about Canada, and forests... :]—and the vibe was very amiable and quiet. People were friendly, but there was a distinct lack of "chatterers" and most people seemed content to do their own thing most of the time. Because the trip took five days, and there was basically no demand on my time, it felt incredibly unrushed, and combined with constant low-level "passive" distraction in the form of scenery, the wonderful light, and the soothing motion and sounds of rail travel, it left me feeling both incredibly relaxed and oddly energetic. Extreme long-distance train travel is generally way underrated, I think; obviously it's not ideal if you're in a hurry, but if you have a few days, it's often a treat. Although the Canadian trip was the best, I've also traveled by train from Seattle to Boston, and it was a great trip too, for many of the same reasons (Amtrak long-distance seats are just amazingly huge and comfortable though).
- lmm 13y agoI went London-Osaka by train and ferry, which was great fun, but the longest single train was two and a half days (Moscow - Shymkent) and I wouldn't've wanted it to be any longer, even travelling with a friend and a tablet. Possibly the scenery was more repetitive than yours - empty snowfields as far as the eye can see is beautiful for a day or two, but does become boring.
- guiomie 13y agoI fuckin love this guy.
- tynan 13y agoThank you. I love you, too.
- fcoury 13y agoI am currently on a trip to Miami where I am actively working every day. For me the worst part about being away from home is finding a decent workspace where I can really concentrate and get in the zone to program. The chairs are usually terrible and anything more than a few hours seated makes me want to move somewhere else. Even when working standing (using a kitchen counter for instance) is bad: the height is sub optimal. I would love to hear suggestions if anyone has insights or good tips for what you do in cases like this.
- feverishaaron 13y agoAccording to his site, the daily rate is actually cheaper to take a cruise than to pay rent on a 3 bdr house in much of the bay area.
- taternuts 13y agoI've always wondered about this, the relative price of cruises make it a cool place to do the work from home thing. I lived in Costa Rica for 6 months while working from home, and it was a great experience. I was wondering about the internet connection, and I guess if you don't have to maintain visibility via some chat program then I guess you wouldn't really need it that often.
- simonsquiff 13y agoCruise ships are also an amazing alternative to nursing homes. I did some work for p&o cruises, on a ship that focused on round the world trips. These was one old lady there in her 80s who had swapped a nursing home for the ship - and had been there for 3 years or so. The food was incredible, she had diffent company every night due to other guests coming and going, was treated like royalty by the crew (unlike normal nursing home residents), and had an onboard doctor and nurse when needed. And all this was cheaper than any nursing home. Inspired idea.
- jacalata 13y agoProbably about the same cost, according to snopes - http://www.snopes.com/travel/trap/retire.asp http://www.snopes.com/travel/trap/retire.asp
- ritchiea 13y agoThey are also similarly priced, there was a discussion of this earlier this year on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5806006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5806006
- archagon 13y agoThis is a pretty great idea. I'm trying to travel and work on a few projects right now, and my average is turning out to be around $75-$100 per day for the US. $50 per day sounds like a fun, cheap way to get some work done, assuming you can get access to the internet at least in some capacity.
- gurkendoktor 13y agoThat sounds like a great idea. I've tried programming on a trans-siberian train ride, but it was SO HARD to get any exercise at all - feels unhealthy. Plus you end up thinking about food a lot (missing good food, mostly).
- ThinkBeat 13y agoAm I the only person left who enjoys having a nice comfy office, a nice beefy desktop, some books and a nice little sound system? Even some co-workers who you can bounce ideas off of. I find working for long periods on nothing but a laptop challenging.
- rdl 13y agoMy personal preference is 5 day stays in cat I to IV Starwood hotels in interesting places, during lower occupancy periods, with top tier status -- ends up costing $20-100/day all-in by gaming the points system. I tend to go full Howard Hughes (not leaving my 2-3 room suite) for a few days, do some limited local exploration, etc. I feel a lot better having a separate bedroom and office. Free breakfast and lounge means effectively unlimited food, although local restaurants, room service, etc are options. This week I've been at the Le Meridien Bangkok, probably my favorite hotel in town, for 5000 points/night, net, which is essentially $50/night in foregone cash back on credit card purchases, or about $100/night at retail. It cost me $50 to fly here from Singapore, where I couch surfed with friends for a few days, after 10 days in Bali with the girlfriend. Less risk of fire, norovirus, my hotel is mainly full of nice Japanese people instead of either obnoxious partier spring break types or old dying people, 50M Internet, etc.
- kozikow 13y agoRegarding the internet - one can set up the iodined server somewhere at home http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/wiki/HowtoSetup http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/wiki/HowtoSetup and use elinks to browse internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELinks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELinks) . m.facebook.com, m.google.com, m.gmail.com have light, html-only versions of their websites, which works OK in slow net conditions. I would like to have an app that learn from my browsing usage and from time to time caches my favorite part of the internet (for example in my case it would cache the hacker news site 1 link deep from front page)