The foam was certainly a score, it was in a zipper sheet and had no oder or stains and was obviously placed behind the dumpster and not in it because whoever threw it away knew someone could use it. I still washed it out and let it dry on my roof for a day. Rachel and I had just biked 50 miles and in the last mile I got a flat tire so I was walking my bike and spotted it. Even in my fatigue I scooped it up and carried it home (home being the van of course). A good deal is a good deal no matter how small, which brings me to my next tip about traveling cheaply…
Take advantage of Casinos. No really, don't wager any of your own money and walk out the door with cash you didn't have when you entered, every time. This is a trick I picked up while hitchhiking with one of my good friends who has hitchhiked across the US several times. This particular time, I joined him to Ukiah, California (from Portland) where he was going to work on a Marijuana farm for a month or two. Once in Ukiah I returned to Portland solo and continued to make money at casinos whenever I had the chance, which wasn't a lot because I would be sacrificing my ride if I asked them to drop me off at a Casino. One time I was catching a ride with some hippie kids who had no money and had there own resourceful trick for navigating their van along the coast. They would pull into a gas station and one of them would walk around the parking lot with a giant empty gas can and ask people as they pulled up if they could squirt a dollar or two in their can after they pumped their gas. It usually took them about a half an hour to get a full can. I liked it because when compared to just standing there begging with a cardboard sign it's clear where the person's charity will go towards, it's easier then pulling out a wallet, the perspective gas pumper is already spending a likely $40 or so, and it just get's simple clever points which always makes people smile. Personally, I like to avoid asking for people's charity no matter how clever the plan so I'll leave that strategy for my friendly van dwelling travelers.
So where were we, Oh yes! Stealing money from Casinos. No just kidding, actually the "trick" is completely legal and more of an exercise in self control than anything. Here's how it works: Not all, but about 95% of Casinos that are peppered throughout the United States give you anywhere from $5 to $20 in promotional slot play for signing up for a "players club" or "rewards club" card. All you have to have is a valid ID. Just walk in, find the counter that says something to do with a club and tell them you'd like a card. First they'll ask if your address is still correct, and you have a couple options here. You can give them a bogus address to avoid junk mail or you can simply ask them to put you on the "no mail list" and that solves the junk mail issue just as well. Next they will hand you the card and explain how to get the free money to play with. Pay attention here because this part is always different from casino to casino. Sometimes they just tell you to put your card in a machine and instructions on how to transfer the promotional money to your card. Sometimes you have to put in a dollar of your own before you get the $20 in promo spins but this is fine because it's almost a guarantee that you'll make that dollar back in wins with 21 spins betting a dollar a spin. Everyone with me so far? Here's the catch. You have to play. You can't just cash out the $20, the cash out stub will say "promo" on it. Once you play the $20 worth of spins then you can cash out whatever you won during that time - or you can keep playing which is what they hope you'll do. The #1 rule to the casino trick is to cash out at this point even if you have only won three dollars because once it's real money, then it's yours and you're not there to gamble, your there to win and leave. It get's tricky because as you win a dollar here and there a lot of times there's no distinction between the real and fake money total on your machine and it's easy to just keep betting and not realize you're betting money you won and are past the promo dollars. The best way to avoid this is to set it up so that it bets a dollar a spin, count your spins and spin it for however many dollars you got in promo money. I got used to just finding machines that allowed you to bet 20 lines for 5 cents a line each spin (20x.5 = $1.00).
One time when Rachel and I were doing this, the Casino just gave us each a ten dollar bill for signing up….so we left- twenty dollars richer than we were when we walked in having not wagered a cent. It all sounds like small potatoes for a lot of work and possibly not worth it based on the odds of winning at a casino being very low but consider this: When Rachel and I did this while driving from Seattle to New York we stopped at 20 Casinos, spent a maximum of 10 minutes at each one and ended with a combined total of $1,342 -and two free buffets. Granted, we hit a couple of good jackpots to get us there, but if you add it all up that's about 500 spins at a dollar a spin in total and odds are you'll hit something big in that many tries. Slot machines are rigged so you'll lose over time but the odds of winning at them are a lot higher than say lottery tickets. That's why you never see a bus full of senior citizens pull up to a gas station and have them all run in there to buy a ton of scratch-offs. The other catch is that you can only do this once at every casino you go to because the promotion is for new members only and they take down your ID. However, do a Google search for casinos in the United States and you'll see that excluding Vegas, there are literally thousands of them with locations in almost every state.
Once we went to a Casino and it was one that only gave you the free money after you played at least $20 of your own. Since that was going against our rules we began to walk out. I think Rachel asked one more time if there was anything free we could get and the lady's eyes lit up and she said "Oh, well yes there is actually. There's a free slot tournament going on right now. It ends in ten minutes so if you hurry you might get to play". We raced over to where she was talking about and there was a crowd surrounding a group of slot machines that were cycling people through every five minutes. Basically, it was a promotional event that the casino put on to get people excited about gambling. There were over 600 participants and the top twenty got paid one or two hundred dollars with the first place winner getting a thousand dollars and like I said, free to enter. A relatively low cost for the house but really exciting for everyone there. Rachel and I entered and did what everyone else did and hit that bet button as fast as I could for five minutes during our round and amazingly I placed 1st and Rachel placed 2nd (for that round). When everything was all tallied up ten minutes later I ended up placing twentieth overall which earned me a crisp one hundred dollar bill, then we left.
There's a few more hoops here and there because every casino is different but you'll get the hang of it fast, and above all- it's fun! Just remember to resist the temptation to keep betting once your promo dollars are up -even if you've only made a couple dollars, and that's really the hardest part. If you don't pay for hotels every night, ate cheaply, and did this trick along the way, It's very possible to drive five states away end the trip with more money than you started with. Even with stiff gas prices.
Another method I frequently used to cut down on the gas bill is taking on "rideshares" from Craigslist postings. In case you are unaware of what a rideshare is, it's a section of Craigslist under "Community" where people post where they want to catch a ride to, or where they are driving to, and how any seats they have available. It's very cut and dry with the price for the ride almost always stated in the ad along with a phone number for quick organization. It's a fantastic system, way cheaper than bus or train and far safer than hitchhiking for both parties involved. If my friend Jesse were writing this blog (the same Jesse in the Pirate Mike story) he would suggest you ask for their weight as well. He once had two women agree over the phone to each pay $15 for a ride to Portland From Seattle. Jesse had two seats still open in his modest sedan and when he showed up to pick them up, he discovered they each weighed around 400 lbs. Once they squeezed into his car the wheel well was less than an inch from the tires and whenever they went over a bump it screwed up his alignment. I could go a lot further into that story but I'm going to stop myself before I write something too offensive. Let's just say I don't feel as bad for Jesse as I do for the guy he had picked up a stop before that was in the middle. Despite a few isolated horror stories, I've used rideshares hundreds of times over the last ten years, either catching them or providing them. When traveling in a van the squishing problem is almost nonexistent because vans usually have so much more space. Most of the time my trips to Seattle from Portland had the gas bill 100% covered by the rideshares I arranged the night before. I'm happy and they're happy because they get an affordable ride. I always go the extra mile and drop them each off at their desired location as does almost every rideshare I've hopped on in the past. The reason it's safer than hitchhiking is mainly because the very few dangerous people hitching out there are the ones with no money, no computer, and no phone -three things you must have to participate in the rideshare program.
One last tip I can think of concerning traveling is dumpster diving. You've heard it before and what it comes down to is there are people who are willing to take the plunge and people who aren't. To be honest I've only done this on a couple trips in my life but it's worth mentioning especially if your venture is inspired by "Into the Wild" and you burned all your money before setting forth. I ask of you to indulge me for a moment and hear my own personal spin/rational on it and maybe you might change your opinion.
First of all, it's hard to eat healthy and/or cheap while traveling. Gas station food usually doesn't even pass for food and restaurants are expensive plus you have to tip. Grocery stores are good but your still spending money. When I travel, I usually go to a co-op before I begin my trip and buy a large sack of bulk hummus powder, one that involves mixing with cold water only. Hummus is good with almost any vegetable, an excellent source of protein, you don't have to heat it up, and very inexpensive when bought in powder form (especially since it expands a lot when mixed with water). Along with the sack of hummus powder I also bring a small cutting board, and a knife. Then I look for a dumpster that's not locked. The best odds here are health food stores. This tip works very well when traveling up and down the west coast because almost every little town along highway 101 has a Co-op that does not lock their dumpster.
So isn't it gross and possibly dangerous to be eating old food out of a dumpster? Well that all depends on the dumpster and the time of day. It's important to consider why the food is being thrown away. Most things are good a few weeks past their expiration date but produce isn't even thrown away for being expired. The way it works is a grocery store gets a delivery of vegetables every few days, so when they do, everything out that is not sold gets thrown away to make room for the newer fresher ones regardless of how old it is because why wouldn't they always be trying to push the freshest stuff they have? Maybe Carrots just weren't big sellers that week. If your lucky, which can happen quite often, all the recently discarded produce will be sitting on top of the pile. When I see this, I'll simply take what I want of the very top, inspect it, rinse it, then cut up whatever I found into little tiny chunks. I add the hummus and I have a dense, fresh salad that's better tasting than anything you could get at a fast food stop and because it's not cooked it's about as vitamin rich as a meal can get. I'm feeling great, full of healthy energy, not a dollar poorer, and I'm back on the road! For this post I'll leave you with a silly video Rachel and I made one morning after waking up in the van.
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