About us

Hello!  It’s time we introduced ourselves.  I’m Marcy and I’m usually the one doing the planning and writing and website creation.  My husband John is the one usually doing the actual doing.  We have a shared love of adventure, travel, and sustainability.  This project brings together many of the pieces we have been working on over the years and we’re pretty excited about it!

It all started in 1999…

1) Adventure

My brother Kip and I were looking for an adventure racing teammate.  John was also looking for teammates, and a mutual friend connected us.  We all lived in Austin, TX at the time and we all got along fabulously.  In our first race together we ran, biked, paddled inflatable kayaks, solved challenges, got muddy, got dirty, and got covered in Crisco.  It was glorious!

More adventure racing ensued, including what may well be the highlight of our career at Eco-Challenge Borneo.  Team Vignette (John, Kip, our friend Darran, and I) persevered through 10 days on the ocean, through the jungle, down the river, over high peaks, into caves, and to the finish line.  Go Team V!

It didn’t take long to realize that John and I are well-matched teammates, both in races and in life.  We solidified our partnership by getting married on top of Jay Peak in Vermont.

So many chapters of other adventures to choose from!  Here’s a summary in photos.

Urban racing:

Running:

Orienteering:

Mountaineering:

FKT’s (fastest known times):

We have had such amazing adventures and we’re always looking for more.

2) Travel

Not long after we were married, we had the opportunity to live in France for three years for my job with Motorola.  I came home to ask John if he might be interested, and it took all of zero seconds for him to raise up his arms and say “of course!”

We sold the house in Austin, jumped on a plane, and spent as much of the next 3 years as we could exploring Europe.  I’d come back from vacation describing the great places we had found; my French colleagues frequently said “we’ve never been there!”  Conversely, they came back from their vacations to the United States describing all the beautiful places THEY had found.  I said that John and I had never been there!

If we weren’t already bitten by the travel bug, finding out how much remained to be seen in our own country pretty much sealed the deal.

A few snapshots of our European vacations:

Back in the States at the end of 2006, we decided we loved traveling so much that we weren’t ready to settle down.  So we purchased our travel trailer and named it “Home on Wheels-ie” or Howie.  We bought a truck to tow it and named it Tug.

Since then we have both worked off and on, sometimes stopping for a year or more.  I enjoyed my time in Albany at an IBM microchip manufacturing plant.  John loved installing solar on Hawaiian roofs in the sunshine.  We’ve stayed with my brother Kip in the San Jose area several times, with a lot of solar opportunities.

And in between we’re basically nomads.  Living on the road, seeing the country, racing in cool locations, learning new things, meeting great people, getting together with friends and family in new and fun places.

I’ve written about it on my personal site, That’s What She Said, which has been great for practice and learning how to blog.

Some of our focus has been on reaching state highpoints:

Also running races in different states (and countries):

Suffice to say, we’re having way too much fun to stop traveling now.

3) Sustainability

As I mentioned above, John likes to put solar PV panels on roofs whenever he gets a chance.  He got his NABCEP certification and he has done installations in Texas, New York, Colorado, Hawaii, California, Maryland, and Virginia.  He’s worked on large and small projects.  The more I watch this process, the more excited I am about renewable energy too.

The NABCEP certification in 2011 was a key piece to getting started, and it continues to help with job applications as we move from place to place.

Some of the many projects John has worked on since then:

When he wasn’t putting up solar for other people, John designed and built a solar + battery setup for our travel trailer.  After that, we could live off the grid (boondocking) for days if we had some sunshine, limited only by water.  I’ll go into this in more detail in future posts.  Here are photos from the first iteration:

One great benefit of all this is getting opportunities to work in places we might not have considered otherwise.  John attends the Solar Power International conference most years, and one time he sent me a photo that would decide our plans for the following year.  Similar to John’s reaction to the question of living in France, when he asked if I might be interested in going to Hawaii, my only possible reply was “Of course!”

John also enjoys doing volunteer work with nonprofits like Grid Alternatives – and since I can’t find a photo of that, here’s a picture of me getting into the action once:

John occasionally branches out into other areas of sustainability and energy efficiency:

We’re looking forward to putting all this experience to good use with our All-Electric Project!  Stay tuned…