Copyright 2017 by Robyn Robledo First Edition — 2017 All Rights Reserved. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher. www.nomadswithapurpose.com !1 The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. !2 Prologue ! I Took The Jump June 2017… People do this all the time. They set out to travel for one full year. For some, it’s an escape from reality, for others, it’s a quest for self-discovery. For us, it was a little bit of both. Mainly, it was just time. We needed to fully embrace this nomadic lifestyle that we had been living for so long, but weren’t completely committed to. We needed to sever the last thread of attachment that we had to safety and predictability that all normal human beings embrace and find solace in. Not us. Not anymore. We have owned a gymnastics and personal training facility in one of the richest cities in the United States for twenty years. We have impacted the lives of thousands of children by instilling strength, confidence, and athleticism. But still, we had to do something different. As you are about to learn, we set out on a journey over two years ago that was supposed to be a temporary !3 escape from reality that, hopefully, was going to bring us a little enlightenment, and definitely would create family memories and bonds. We really didn’t know when we started out that it would lead to this point. Maybe if we weren’t so addicted to the surfing and rock climbing—maybe if the amount of raw nature we were constantly immersing ourselves in hadn’t been so powerful, so profound—it could’ve remained a temporary tangent in an otherwise normal pattern of existence for any typical family. We were astronauts. We’d prepared and invested time and brain power to make the ship fly to a place few would go, but we just couldn’t break the atmosphere unless we let go of the extra cargo that was pulling us back to Earth. We had to allow the boosters to fall off. The last tie to our old way of life—a valuable and necessary element to the trajectory we wanted to go, but now it was time to use our main engines. The ones fueled by our vision, passion, and persistence. !4 And so, after two years of having one hand on the cup of security, normality, and predictability and the other trying to balance a quart of adventure, exploration, purpose, and fulfillment, we let the cup go and now are ready to fill that quart, raise it high, and share its contents with others. For one more year we are saying strikhedonia— the pleasure of being able to say “to hell with it.” We are nomadswithapurpose.com. We are a family of adventurers who hope to inspire others to travel more, prioritize movement in everyday life, and create a life defined by wellness. In a world driven by money, consumerism, power, and eating way too much of the wrong foods, we hope to be your inspiration to live a life of meaning, simplicity, connection, intention, determination, love, and eating a lot of really good food. !5 Chapter 1 ! I Hear A Banjo Playing April 2015… “I can’t believe you pulled this off,” were the exact words Victor said to me the morning we moved out of a huge, spacious, three bedroom house overlooking the ocean into our thirty-foot Class C motorhome. I let my ego bask in the compliment and thought about all the work that went into that exact moment. Imagine filling all the stuff you own into shopping carts. How many carts could you fill? Now imagine only getting to keep three of those carts. It wasn’t easy detaching from most of our belongings. It would have been easier to perform a mock fire drill and just tell myself to grab whatever I can find in one minute, which would have been my computer and photo albums. The only problem is that the albums were spread all over the house so I wouldn’t have been able to !6 find them in one minute anyways, so in the end, I would have just grabbed my kids and gotten the hell out. Stuff is all replaceable and the amount of brain power and emotion it requires to detach from your belongings or to evaluate the necessity and importance of every item you own isn’t worth the effort. In retrospect, I’d try to convince myself to leave it all, but who could actually walk away from all their stuff? (It would be freeing though!) Victor was really attached to his high school medals and yearbooks, but after moving them from one corner of a garage to another in a half dozen houses and never looking at them, I encouraged him to throw them away (in all fairness I had already tossed all of mine). His knee-jerk reaction was “Hell no!”, but after reflecting on it for a few days he agreed that What was the point? We expend tons of money and countless hours of our lives preparing for what ifs. What if I need this one day? What if I want to look at it one day? We think that we need to hang onto these sentimental objects in order to protect !7 and sustain their memory, but often forget we are the sum total of all these great moments in life and if we spend more time “maintaining” ourselves these sentiments will live on. Imagine how spacious your house could be if you removed the what ifs? My kids got so tired of me asking, “Do you really need that?” They were good sports about it and were already beginning to understand the big picture…that having stuff is nice, but it’s not as important as having the time to do things you love with the people you enjoy being around. Like all siblings, they bicker, but they still found a lot of joy and friendship in each others presence. My kids are the only kids I know who have been around their siblings practically every minute of their lives. We took them to work with us almost every day of their lives and we are those weird people who homeschool their kids. I realize that my kids are doomed to be seen as abnormal for the rest of their childhood, but at least they are getting to see the world while they develop their unconventional personalities. !8 I’m sure I will be 80 years old and still be able to vividly remember the surreal feeling as we pulled out of the driveway. In some ways it felt normal because we had taken many road trips from this house and part of me felt as if it was just another quick escape from reality for a few weeks until you returned home, invigorated from your adventures, yet yearning for the comfort of a hot shower, soft bed, and the security and familiarity that walking into your own home brings after being away from it for some time. It’s not like we were leaving the ghetto behind. For the last two years, we had been renting a beautiful home that overlooked the Pacific Ocean in one of the most expensive areas in the world, Coronado, California. We spent evenings sitting on our balcony watching the most gorgeous sunsets. We spent mornings surfing in front of our house. We enjoyed life in this house. My kids brought my thoughts back to reality as they said, “We won’t ever live here again.” I’m a huge believer in change, living outside your comfort zone, dreaming big, and moving forward without fear or guilt, but I’ll admit a !9 little fear that this was a bad idea and a little guilt that I may be traumatizing my children, did creep in. My kids were slightly emotional, no tears, just reminiscent type feelings. I too would miss that stage of our life, but I didn’t give myself a chance to dwell on it. One, I was probably too exhausted from packing up to be sad. Two, it was a rental so I knew we would eventually have to move on (even though some part of me hoped the landlady would sell it to us, but then we’d have to win the lottery to afford it). Three, I had already mentally gone through what I thought it was going to feel like for me months before it actually happened, which really helped me work through all the fears I did feel ahead of time.