Why "beans"?

Eat beans to save beans.

Less than a year after we married Dave transformed his carrier as a "surgical technologist" into a "traveling surgical technologist" carrier and we began to travel the country.  We moved from state to state at 3 or 6 month intervals.

One day Dave said... "I met a pair of travelers who live in an RV as they travel the country working!"
Heather replied... "Good for them."

We looked into the RV life and at a dealership we talked with a salesman who did the math for us and the very large $60,000 5th wheel would need to be pulled by a very large $40,000 truck (all brand new with loans and interest) and that was the end of that.

A few years later and revisiting the idea several times we finally found a setup that worked.  $26,000 in loans had us an almost brand new truck and a few year old travel trailer (tow behind).  Just to show the extremes in trying to make it work financially Dave wanted to try living out of a van but Heather objected because how would we fit inside with 2 cats... not to mention how would she sew quilts on her sewing machine?!

Fast forward a few years.  Dave decided he wanted to take a break from the travelling surgical technologist arena.  But the money wasn't right.  We had loans to pay and the living stipend we were given for not living in the provided furnished apartments was how the RV and truck and a new car was all paid for.

It was time to look at the budget.  Where was our money really going, what were we buying, what were the bills that we didn't really want to have looming over our heads?  We'd always accepted some credit card debt, school loans... this was the American way.

To be able to save money and blitz ourselves out of debt in just a few years we ate beans and loved it.  We'd pretty much been accidental vegetarians because we liked it.  Now we made it a mission.  Meals were prepared for less than a dollar a piece and we stopped buying anything.  There's not much room for stuff when you're in an RV but we always found something to buy.  We lost weight, we saved money, we walked and walked and walked.  It was cheap entertainment to throw some snacks in a backpack, tie on our shoes and walk the country roads we lived among.  Sometimes we rode our tandem bicycle, but mostly we walked.  Through a lot of work over a few years we'd paid ourselves out of all debt with the exception of a car loan.

One February day a few years later we were on a walk.  Heather asked Dave where he'd like to travel to next.  Dave threw his hands in the air and said, "I'm done!"  Dave wanted a break.  In fact, Dave wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail.  Heather said, "We don't know anything about backpacking, hiking, and 2 months to prepare is not enough.  How about that bicycle trip we'd always talked about?"

That's when we decided to take our bicycle trip.  You can read about that here.  We ate a lot of beans on that trip and have ever since.  In trying to find a catchy name for our blog we named ourselves "The Biker Beans".

It's now several years after that trip and the thought of hiking has never left us.  We've day hiked, we've walked, we've ridden our bike and have actually now sold our bike... all to move ourselves to the next big thing... and now it's a very long walk.  When we cast our minds about for a name for our new blog about hiking it was pretty easy... The Hiker Beans.