Goals

I’m Chris, and I think too much. Here’s what I think about this project for what I plan on doing with the website.

My goal with easytochris.com is to start creating content about the journeys my wife and I take with our dogs across the Pacific North West. It will start as written content about our trips and the gear that we use along the way, but I want to see it eventually turn into a full blown podcast production within two years. Hailie and I need to get out of our apartment and into a place of our own before I can consider having dedicated space for recording at home, so that’s a future Chris problem.

For this first year, I’m hoping to bring a total of 2 stories a month, delivered on the 1st and 15th of each month.

I recently traded in my 2006 Scion xB and got into a 2020 Subaru Forester Limited. We’re on the path to transforming it into an overlanding rig that allows us into the back woods for a few days at a time. We’ve added a king spring lift kit and skid plate trio from primitive racing, now we just need to get some hybrid tires that perform better offroad. The top has a Front Runner Slimline roof rack system and I just received my rear ladder from NashFabCo yesterday. For the time being, we will have constant access to roof top storage, and the front runner offers a solid platform for what will eventually hold a James Baroud Explorer tent.

Long story short, she’s great for where she can take us, but we need to put more into her to get the places we actually want to go.

Once the Subaru gets set up for long range travel, we will be going on a cross country trip starting in Alaska and making it all the way down to Georgia before coming back to Idaho.

I’m roughly $25,000 away from making the trip a reality.

• James Baroud Explorer Tent

• Hitch Installation

• Custom Hardware for 5th Wheel

• 5x Wheels and Hybrid Tires

• Gas Expenses for 45 days of driving

• Lost Wages for 45 days of not working real job

• Canon R5

I want to make sure that I am saving cash on hand for the money I won’t be earning in the barbershop to cover any unexpected expenses on the road. Or, if for nothing else, so we can have a constant supply of road trip snacks.

Understanding the milestones along the path towards your goals is one of the first steps I take to measure my progress. I can set realistic goals surrounding them. Is it realistic that I have $25k by spring 2021? That’s only 6 months away, and it will still be at the height of covid restrictions across the country, so with regards to exploring cities to their fullest extent, that seems like a real stretch. Can I make the trip happen for Spring 2022? Probably. Realistically speaking, that’s around 18 months of putting aside $1,500 a month, but that’s putting an awful lot of hope in people and the government to get the situation under control. With an additional consideration to our current state of affairs, fall 2022 might be in order, but would the few extra months make any difference? It should make my monthly contribution closer to $1,050, and 2 years is a long time when the whole world is working on a fix. I think 2 years is a little more realistic.

Goal Date - 09.04.2022 - 10.15.2022
Stretch Goal Date - 04.10.2022 - 05.21.2022

The small trips in the PNW will still happen on a regular basis, but they will all be within limitations. My wife and I both have full time jobs, and our schedules only have a single common day where we have the full day off together, Wednesdays. All of our trips in the beginning will likely be the length of a day trip, and the updates around trips will give a history on the location, why we wanted to go there, what we liked and didn’t like, and how we think the trip would change our actions if we had known we would have another day before driving home. I also don’t expect we will want to do day trips every single week. Between having other hobbies and the limited time off to do all of the things we want to do, I think it’s far more realistic to say we will do a day trip every 2 or 3 weeks.

Understanding your limitations is insanely important if you ever hope to set any of your goals around them. I’m not having lofty goals that require Hailie and I to have 3 days off every week to go on some insane adventure adventure in a state we’ve never been to. Those goals are realistic only if you choose to ignore the reality of your limitations. My goals are based on an end game scenario where I can say, “Let’s leave Tuesday night, sleep in the car, and have a ton of fun Wednesday morning before we come home.” I want to increase the capabilities of what our time off together is capable of achieving, not simply change the amount of time off we have together.

Upgrades to the car are going to be managed in a way that we can get the most benefit out of each incremental addition. Hitch installation and a custom 5th wheel mount will be the first priority. After I have a place to put a new spare tire, I will likely gut the existing spare bay and find some way to repurpose the space. Regardless of what comes of that project, I’ll be taking advantage of the new space for a spare by ordering a set of 5 smaller wheel wells and hybrid tires to replace the stock tires. The roof top tent will likely be the last of all of the upgrades before the trip can take place.

If you enjoy following our story, would like to see more of the content we put out, or would like to support our journey to introduce the country to you, we will eventually be looking at moving towards a Patreon model in the future, so we can be available to create the content you enjoy the most. If you just want to see more content but don’t have extra money to give, subscribe to Satan’s car porn account for free, and follow @morningstarsubaru on instagram.

-Chris