Ahh... back to freewriting since the first one. Choices. Go.
You might know I'm about to leave for a little bicycle tour around Finland when I'm getting out of my government slavery civil service, after which I'll start heading to Poland for Steemfest. Now, I have pretty much all the equipment purchased so I shouldn't need anything on my trip, but the problem is that I'm not a spirit entity, so I have to eat something to keep going. And food costs money. However, there are ways one can maneuver – make choices – around this problem. First and foremost: no restaurants. Buying from supermarkets probably gets a week worth of food than if you'd eat in a restaurant. And of course you look for the cheap stuff in the supermarket. Now, the following procedures might sound kinda extreme but, whatever it takes, you know.
Ok, so the next one you can do is to dumpster dive. This sounds way more gross than it actually is, because people are wasteful and throw good stuff away, and stores have to because of law. Although donating expiring food to charities has grown more popular here in Finland. It's obvious that doing this you have to be careful not to anything bad but that shouldn't be a problem with our tendency to waste food than not – use your head. And don't make a mess. And don't trespass (unless nobody sees you). Unfortunately big stores have their dumpsters behind locked doors which makes diving impossible, but you can look for small stores, which by my small experience might not necessary have things behind locked doors. And of course wash your findings thoroughly, because you can actually mostly expect to find veggies, because they expire fast. Or "expire" because a lot of them are still edible when thrown away.
In my slavery place I found a brown banana in the bio tin. I took it, opened it, and it was completely fine on the inside – no brown mushy spots at all. (Obviously I ate it.) Stupid humans have so much money to throw food away just because it doesn't look good, but that's not how I roll; if I see you not eating something, I'm gonna eat it. If it contains gluten – which I can't eat – I insist you to eat it. If not, I'm gonna be slightly upset and lay my slight judgment upon you, because I do not like food being wasted, because food is life, a bit love also, especially French Fries while tipsy, but that's completely off the topic.
Hobo's "live off the land" starter kitOk, the third thing: living off the land. "You say what? How do you get food off the land while traveling?" Well, the plan is to find a lake (which shouldn't be hard to do in a "country of thousands of lakes") for the camp to spend the night next to, and thanks to Finland's "Every Man's Rights" we are allowed to fish with a fishing rod anywhere. So, that's why I have a float-set so that I could get some fresh food straight form the lake.
And since it's autumn, it's good time to find mushrooms from the woods, from where ever I'm camping. To not eat any of the wrong ones, I got that small mushroom guide for the most common ones. That I got for free with a gift card to a book store my grandparents gave me ;)
Talking about my grandparents: the fourth trick for me is to go see them and potentially get them to buy me more food – because they're probably afraid of me dying or something.
Right, that was only the biking adventure part. Then we need to get from Finland to Poland as cheap as possible. Well, the first choices must be made by how I'm going to cross the Gulf of Finland – From Helsinki to Estonia. One option is to swim try hitchhike on to a boat. Yes, that is a thing. Though it could be hard since October probably isn't the most active sailing season. But I found a cheap line that takes you from Helsinki to Tallinn with about 20€, so that I can pay if luck shouldn't be on my side. Then of course I'm going to hitchhike from Tallinn to Poland, Krakow. I might go see few of my Steemian friends along the way in Latvia though, with whom I got drunk in the Tallinn meetup (the French Fries relate to this).
Basically my choices will be aiming to the least amount of money needed to be spent, so that might result with some interesting hobo tales at the very least if I manage to report from them and not die off from dosing wrong mushrooms (jk, NEVER pick a shroom that you haven't identified safe with 100% certainty).
I do not know when the next freewrite will come, maybe it'll come from the woods from my camp and showing you fish guts, climbing to a tree, hunting rabbits or fighting a bear with my bear hands. The road could turn out any kind.
PS. Fifth trick that you could actually use also, is an app called Olio. It's an app where people can report about their surplus food and mark the place where one can pick that up. Sadly the closest thing for me was black tea 350 km away from me... not many users in Finland yet.