Random Musing ep.1 – Scooters, Omicron, and YouTube

Lifestyle

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Hey Everyone, I’m on my way to Thailand and I’ll be there for about 3 months. I’ll be busy with families so I’ll take it easy with the blog occasionally. Hence, this new series of random musing. It’ll just be random off-topic thoughts and YouTube clips. I’m planning to release a lot of YouTube videos this trip. Let’s see if I can get any traction as a travel/food vlogger. You can see my test video at the end of this post.

Scooter Charging

In 2021, I had a great year with my scooter charging side hustle. I love it because this side hustle hits the trifecta for me. You can see how I drop off the scooters in my YouTube clip later.

Money – I make some money.
Exercise – I get some exercise and fresh air.
Personal time – I get a bit of alone time. That’s hard to get with Mrs. RB40 working from home and RB40Jr online schooling. I was used to having a lot more personal time.

Scooter charging was quite good in 2021. I made $17,548 last year. However, I worked a bit too much in the summer. I must have spent around 30 hours/week collecting scooters and riding around. Unfortunately, this side hustle is about to go away soon.

Check out my earning record through the years.

Lime shut down in early 2020 due to Covid. Then they found that people rather ride scooters than buses so they opened up again.

I’m not sure what happened in 2021. I think many chargers quit because Lime shut down in early 2020. They probably found other side hustles and didn’t come back. So less competition for me. This is just extra income for me so it didn’t have to be regular. Other people probably need a dependable source of income. Also, delivering food might be a better side hustle. You get tips.

The end is nigh

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure this scooter charging side hustle is coming to an end soon. Lime is slowly upgrading the scooters to a new version. The new scooters have swappable batteries so they won’t really need chargers anymore. I heard they’ll move to the “fleet manager” model like Bird.

I think this is how it will work. Lime picks a few of the most prolific chargers to work with and signs them up to be fleet managers. They’ll give the fleet managers some scooters, maybe 25 to 50. Then the fleet manager will be responsible for those scooters. So you’ll have to deploy the scooters, keep them charged, repair, retrieve, and do whatever else it takes to keep your mini fleet going. This is way too much work for me. It’ll be more like a full-time job rather than a side hustle that you can do whenever you want. Anyway, Portland is pretty slow with upgrading so this new model probably won’t arrive here until 2023. That’s fine, though. I don’t mind slowing down a bit. As Tawcan wrote below – it’s OK to slow down. I’m getting too old for this $*%!. Hahaha.

Omicron surging

Holy moly, Omicron is surging. I have been extra conservative over the last few weeks because of my upcoming trip to Thailand. If I test positive before departure, I’ll have to cancel the trip. Fortunately, I tested negative on Monday and I’m clear to go. Oh, I couldn’t get an appointment to test anywhere. So I walked in and waited to get tested on Monday morning. There were 4 people ahead of me and I waited 90 minutes. Could have been better, but I’m done so good enough.

Also, I dodged a couple of bullets recently.

We were planning to spend Christmas in California with friends and family. But we decided not to go because my niece and nephews were a bit sick. It turned out the kids didn’t have Covid, but our friends did. Whew! If we went to dimsum as planned, there’s a good chance I’d caught it.
RB40Jr wanted to go play at his friend’s place last weekend. On Saturday, his friend had a little sniffle so I didn’t let RB40Jr go over. Turns out his friend got Covid. Whew, another bullet dodged.

It sounds like Omicron is very easy to catch even if you’re vaccinated. Let’s be extra conservative for a few weeks until the surge slows down. Hospitals are filling up and it’s been very difficult to get tested. I hope we peak very soon so our healthcare workers can get a little break. It sounds pretty crazy out there.

YouTube

I’m going to give YouTube a go as a travel/food YouTuber. I got a GoPro and I’ve been testing it out. Here is a clip from last week. I went to return scooters, dropped by Trader Joe’s, and went to get my son at the bus stop. It took me a few takes before I got the setting right. Check it out and let me know what you think? RB40Jr said it’s too ordinary and I shouldn’t post it on YouTube…

Subscribe to my channel to see the latest upload.

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Oh, I got the GoPro 10 on sale for $400 at their website. This was the GoPro + Accessories Bundle. If anyone is looking to buy a GoPro, I don’t recommend the accessories bundle. The accessories are not that useful. In particular, the “shorty” tripod/stick is useless. It’s better to get just the camera and then buy the accessories you really want.

That’s it for today. I hope you like my video!

Oh, open an account at CoinBase and invest in cryptocurrency. Gotta sell a bit. 🙂 Sign up with CoinBase to get started in 5 minutes. Check them out! I’m writing a review and will post it soon.

Joe started Retire by 40 in 2010 to figure out how to retire early. After 16 years of investing and saving, he achieved financial independence and retired at 38.

Passive income is the key to early retirement. This year, Joe is investing in commercial real estate with CrowdStreet. They have many projects across the USA so check them out!

Joe also highly recommends Personal Capital for DIY investors. They have many useful tools that will help you reach financial independence.