A TALE OF TWO LIVES: A Story of a Life of Extended Travel while Still Calling the Big City Home

It’s been four weeks since we left our home. Four weeks of being on the road. Four weeks of eating meals from our truck. Four weeks of incredible scenery, unpredictable weather, and endless memories. Our home has become a faded memory at this point. Our future consists of what’s happening the next few hours, or, the next day. We bathe ourselves with being in the moment. We savor each new destination. We try to log into our memories how the ground felt beneath our feet, or how the rain tasted that day, or the moment our dogs, Stella and Kyia, found an old smelly fish carcass by the lake and proceeded to roll around in it. Out on the road, each day presents itself with its own bouts of misery, delights, and endless snippets of another life seeming so far away.

Karissa and I have a wonderful little nook in Los Angeles with a nearly extinct feature, a decent sized backyard. Our two 15lb dogs bask in the sun throughout the day, and our 15lb indoor and outdoor cat endlessly wrestles with the girls. We both have our own day-to-day routine and list of chores to take care of. I do all the cooking, and kitchen-y things, and Karissa takes care of the laundry and always has her hand at improving whatever needs improving around the house. We both make our living as commercial automotive photographers. Our work life consists of being in productions of various sizes. Some days, we find ourselves shooting cars for private owners, on other days, we find ourselves to be one small cog in a giant commercial shoot with hundreds of other people on set.

When we’re not on set shooting, we’re both in our office with headphones on and our faces glued to double monitors editing the day away. We regularly go grocery shopping. We have date nights. We make food for our dogs (from scratch) once every month. We have quiet nights cuddled up in front of the TV. Pre-COVID, we hosted backyard BBQs and get-togethers, and visited friends and family. It’s everything you would expect from a typical, and what some might call, a traditional, life.

But the days in-between jobs and editing? You won’t find us at home. We’d open up our favorite mapping app, scroll around to look at places we’ve never been, decide to go there, and go. However many hours it takes to get to the destination is trivial. It’s the hours in between the destinations that are always the most memorable.

We had a job that took us to the Jackson, Wyoming area. Most productions fly creatives to and from a shoot location. We opted to drive out in our Mitsubishi Montero and extend our stay away from home indefinitely. What was supposed to be a simple romp around the Teton area, turned out to be a month long excursion that took us from our home base in Los Angeles, to exploring northern Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and the whole Pacific Northwest. Seven states. We put down roughly 4,500 miles by the time we stepped foot back into our house.

Bouts of misery

Social media never paints life on the road in a bad way. Each photo we scroll past highlights sunny days, breathtaking sunsets from far away lands, and tight, well toned, well tanned bodies which were created from eating only the most healthy and nutritious of food. This is not the case for life outside the screen.

We found ourselves in northwestern Utah on the first few days on the way to Wyoming. We rolled into camp on a cold, windy, and rainy afternoon. Thick mud caked on our boots. Even our dogs weren’t happy as we let them out to pee in the pouring rain. Dinner that night consisted of whatever the hell we can scrounge up and bring up to our roof top tent as quickly as possible. Deli meat, crackers, slices of cheese, a bag of Doritos, and a few Oreo cookies was the menu.

The rain followed us as we entered Wyoming. We rolled into camp that night after an internet search mentioned a hot spring can be found at the end of the road. Our spirits were drained after the said hot spring failed to materialize. Camp that night was the same as Utah: cold, windy, and damp. It was also my birthday that day. We had my birthday dinner in the two front seats of our truck that night. We leveled up our meat and cheese game after passing through a small town. We had brie, we had fig jam, we had dry salami, and Karissa also found a small chocolate cake! A candle blow-out session was quickly had outside, followed by a birthday kiss, and we went straight to bed to the sound of rain pitter-pattering on the tent with the sun still trying to hold onto the remnants of what was left in the day.

In eastern Washington, we camped out by a lake. All indications were set for the perfect night. The skies were blue, the temperature outside warm, and there was a very slight breeze in the air. This was going to be one of those nights that we would remember. It would be social media perfect even. But the moment we rolled up, we let the girls out to do their business. They immediately rolled themselves around a well dead, and well beyond ripe fish that washed up to shore. They came running back to us with giant smiles plastered across their faces, only to be followed by a brick wall of rotten fish smell. We didn’t pack any dog shampoo on us. Since Kyia and Stella both sleep up in the tent with us, there was no way we were going to sleep with them that night. The decision was made to leave camp, and drive an hour and a half into the nearest town with dog bathing services.

Camp that night was a dirt pull off near the highway.

The fish rubbing episode actually happened twice on this trip. We now pack dog shampoo and conditioner with us no matter how long we’re on the road for.

Roadly Delights

On the road, life was simpler. Emails started to become meaningless. The need to scroll through our social media apps fade with the passing of sunsets. Each day presented itself with endless delights that woke our bodies, and minds, that a caffeine high couldn’t equal.

The day we arrived at Grand Teton National Park, we drove into the park for an exploratory “let’s see what this place has to offer” kind of jaunt. We were greeted with a heavy snowfall that covered the barren ground white in a matter of minutes. It was the middle of June. Oohs and ahhs constantly left our breaths. The snowfall prevented us from seeing the actual Tetons, but everything was beautiful nonetheless. This delighted us to no end.

In Oregon, we experienced a breathtakingly beautiful waterfall hike. The short hike took us through an incredible amount of different biomes. The path snaked us through a dense tropical-like forest reminiscent to Hawaii, to a seemingly endless lava field, to the mossy forest-y wonderland that Oregon is known for, and ended at the most deafening and awe-inspiring waterfall we’ve ever seen up close.

We delighted at the sight of the California coastline as we crested over the one last hill. It was our first time seeing the ocean since we left Los Angeles four weeks prior. The setting sun was just the cherry on top of it all. This marked our last few days on the road. It was finally time to head home. An important email beckoned us.

Endless Snippets of Another Life

There’s no way we can silence out our home life. A cacophony of notification chimes greet us the moment we get back into cell service. This usually is marked by us pulling over and spending a few minutes digesting what has come in.

Somedays, we leave camp to be in service to be able to hop on that 3pm conference call. For the days we’re feeling extra bougie, we roll into the nearest town, have lunch at a local jaunt while furiously tapping away at emails, and text messages. This is the double life we chose to live.

We receive updates from friends and family. Invites to birthday parties, nights out on the town, and dinner socials start to fizzle out after the first two weeks. Photos updates of friends and family’s day-to-day doings still come in. Those are the notifications that keep us grounded. Baby photos are received with smiles. Life updates are jubilations that are replied back with the best GIF reaction spotty cell service can load up. But what’s the single most important update about our home life? Photos of our cat, Kitty, from the sitter. Photos of him laying about the bed, stretching out on the sofa, or basking in the sun out on the deck. Those are the updates that remind us that we have a life to come home to. Those are the updates that reel in how important every other notification we receive. Those emails and texts are the reason why we’re able to temporarily live on the road for an indefinite amount of time. They’re our lifeline to this other life we live. A life filled with dirt, rocks, and the endless horizon.

We were away from our home in Los Angeles for a solid month. Four weeks. It was our longest trip to date. The moment we stepped inside our place, there was no audible sigh of finally being back in our own space. It felt alien. It felt as though we stepped into an AirBnb --a feeling that this wasn’t our place, but also, a place to temporarily call home.

Some days, we come home and are immediately off to a job. There is no slow transition period. It’s something we’re both used to at this point. But the moment there’s a lull in work, we pack up our truck, and head off into the unknown. It’s worth every bit of misery, and worth every delight that comes upon us.

It’s never social media perfect. But to us, it’s a wonderful double life worth living.

—Linhbergh