Two Weeks in Review, Travel on BTC

Our first two weeks of BTC-only travel are over and we have learned many lessons about the practicality of travel on BTC. Our first week was nearly 100% successful. We spent only BTC on food, gas and hotel. Unfortunately, the toll roads took us by surprise and we spent our first Federal Reserve Notes late in the evening on Day Seven.

We stayed that night at a Holiday Inn in Brooklyn that just began a Bitcoin pilot program. Bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem helped set up the program and encouraged us to make the stop in New York as the hotel’s first Bitcoin customers. My husband John met Shrem at the 2012 Liberty Forum in New Hampshire. John interviewed him and they stayed in touch ever since.

We arrived at the Holiday Inn late in the evening. John paid for the room with BitPay and we soon found ourselves nestled in bed. The following morning, we met a reporter with the Daily Dot and enjoyed an amazing breakfast in the hotel cafe. I was pleasantly surprised to find Udi’s Gluten Free Muffins and Bagels. If you are traveling to NYC on Bitcoin, I highly recommend this location if for no other reason than the food!

After breakfast, John spoke with Yahoo News for an article they later published about our journey. We then met up with Danny Panzella of truthsquad.tv and his son, Xander. We had a chaotic lunch at a BTC-friendly restaurant in Brooklyn that we found on coinmap.org. The service was slow and it took twenty minutes on the phone with the owner to actually make the Bitcoin transaction.

The woman behind the bar knew we were coming because we called ahead, but she had no idea how to accept our payment after we arrived. Thankfully, a fire truck had pulled up in front of the restaurant and all three toddlers were allowed to stand inside the truck while John talked to the owner of the restaurant and helped the business figure out how to accept our payment. They accepted the payment through Coinbase, but only after much confusion. Unfortunately, this was a recurring problem on our trip; we would find a place to eat on coinmap.org only to find out the staff was clueless as to how to accept the payment.

After a fun day in the park, we took a subway to the NYC Bitcoin Center. The subway system does not accept BTC, so Charlie Shrem graciously purchased subway passes for us. We had to do this several times on the trip when a direct BTC payment was not an option.

I was overwhelmed with joy at the sight of the NYC Bitcoin Center. Just a half block from the Wall Street trading floor, the Bitcoin banners were a symbolic beacon for honest money. We gave a speech about our journey, screened the Bitcoin portion of Sovereign Living episode four (sovereignliving.tv), and watched the Bitcoin trading floor open for business. John even got to ring the bell!

We took off that night for the Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, NH. We were late for my Women in Bitcoin Panel in part because we changed our plans to visit the NYC Bitcoin Center, in part because we assisted a mugging victim in Manhattan, and in part because we had a long failed experience with Expedia that resulted in a late start the next morning.

Thankfully, Expedia reached out to us a week later and we are currently in the process of turning the situation into a positive one. I will include the resolution in my Week Three review.

We spent the next five days enjoying the community that annually convenes at the Porcupine Freedom Festival. Most of the vendors accepted BTC directly, although I did use an intermediary on a few occassions. We sold a variety of items at our own vendor booth. The Bitcoin-centric items were copies of Bitcoin Magazine, t-shirts, mining hardware, and a Bitcoin ATM that converted dollars to bitcoin through Expresscoin. We had internet issues with the ATM until a hotspot was set up on our site.

At the event, we had lengthy conversations with the New York Times and the Concord Monitor. Our journey has provided us an awesome opportunity for mainstream Bitcoin education. What a blessing!

The biggest lesson we learned was about gasoline. When you pre-order gas cards from coinfueled.com, you cannot stop at any random service stop. After we entered the white mountains of New Hampshire, we had to drive 20 minutes out of our way to get to a gas station that we had gift cards for. Word to the wise: stop at every opportunity you have in desolate areas so you don’t end up stranded or forced to spend Federal Reserve Notes!

We drove to Hollis, NH on Day 14 for a much-needed break with some friends. We have now started our trek back west to Texas and feel very excited about the coming weeks. Our second week of Bitcoin-exclusive travel was extremely rewarding. We feel empowered and excited about the future of mainstream Bitcoin adoption.