This is an interview with Kif & Snayss, collectively known as Codercat, a digital artists duo who have been nomadic for 6 years. Their worldly belongings mostly fit into a backpack, and they get around the world with public transit and a pair of Brompton folding bikes. They are some of the most creative, fun, resilient, and resourceful people I know.
I've been good friends with these two for a few years now and I've always been a huge fan of their work and their lifestyles. Finally, I had some time to sit with them and learn about their stories.
The bike community is one of the most wholesome and uplifting communities out there. Doesn't matter who you are or where you are, when bike-packers meet they just so naturally connect with each other.
Nico: What was your first long-term bike-packing journey, how was it and did it change your lifestyle in some fundamental ways?
Kif: We met in SF and both worked as creative technologists. We would go biking on weekends, sometimes we would take longer trips and bike from SF to Santa Cruz or something. So biking has been part of our lives for a while.
One year we went on world travel with no return date. Our original intent was to hitchhike. Mexico was the first destination where we landed and where I convinced Snayss to go for a Bike trip to Guatemala. It was not an easy decision for her.
We flew to Mexico City, bought used bikes for under 500 dollars, and biked to Guatemala. We would bike on average 5 hours a day, we stayed in tiny motels in rural places only camping where we could not find any place to stay for a bike day distance. We only took buses when it was physically impossible to bike (in some areas the wind was so bad even buses were shaken from wind)
The journey was hard but unforgettable, it really tested our friendship and physical abilities. We saw a lot of rural Mexico and came to appreciate the scale of the land. There are also parts of it that were extremely hard.
We stopped in a city called San Cristóbal de las Casas which is about 4 days biking from the Guatemala border, we went to the market and bought a piece of cheese from a local lady. The cheese was spoiled and we both spent 5 days in bed with fever and throwing up. We could not stay any longer and decided to bike. That was the most difficult four days because our stomachs can not process any food that our bodies needed so desperately. On the 4rth day when approaching the Guatemala border, I almost passed out from exhaustion. Luckily it was the end of the stretch and we rented a room right at the border where I went to bed immediately.
Snays: It was so physically and mentally exhausting. Most of the time your mind gets tired before your body does. Many times I thought I was ready to drop and could not continue biking, but then I realized it was just my mind giving up, my body actually could still push forward more.
After the Mexico trip they moved to LA. Over there Kif started volunteering at Bicycle Kitchen, a community bike shop. They learned how to fix bikes and met a really cool and awesome community there.
Snays made her first DIY custom bike. We eventually decided to get into folding bikes for international long distance travels since it was a lot easier than buying and selling bikes on different continents.
I’ve always admired Snays’ incredible styles and how resourceful she is with materials and objects found anywhere she goes.
Nico: Snays I know you are very artistic and you’re super passionate about fashion. Was it hard to become nomadic to get rid of belongings?
Snays: It was difficult! In college, I had a daily goal to never repeat my outfit. So I had over 100 different t shirts and around 30 pairs of shoes. Before setting off on our adventure, I somehow had to transition from 100 shirts to 2 that could fit in my backpack. I sold most of my clothing and gave the rest of it to a homeless person on the streets of SF. Having limited clothing and space was difficult at the beginning, since now any item I wanted to purchase came with a plethora of practical constraints. Can I wear this item everyday? Will it take up too much space in my backpack? How does it match with my other clothing items? Does it hold up in the weather? One big optimization problem. Overall now I find that the constant rotation of a few optimally selected items allows for a fluid and evolving style.
Kif: She’s very resourceful when we move through places. When we moved to a new country Snays would swap for items, and always find creative ways to outsource items that fit her style.
Nico: Once you think in that resourceful way you can realize that we live in such an abundant world. So many people have way more than what they need, and they don’t even have time to properly give these items away.
Snays: One day we were having a conversation and saying how it’d be so nice to have a monitor, literally Kif went to take a walk and found a monitor on the street, in great condition! Every time when we move, I assess all the items as they go inside in my backpack, making sure they truly deserve some of the very limited real-estate. It's been interesting to see how things that I once thought I couldn't live without, end up eventually being left behind. This constant re-evaluation of belongings is a moment to also re-evaluate my own goals and desires.
Snays: Creating digital avatars became one way to be expressive. I love that I have infinite imaginative space and materials to create in the digital world.
When we started to minimalize our lives we gained so much more mental and physical space to dedicate to our creative explorations... Our cost of living is a lot less, our needs and wants became very minimal, we make enough to cover basic survival needs and we work minimal hours on client work, which gives us a lot of time to delve deep into learning programs and making our own art.
Houdini changed my creative practice in the 3D Graphics world. I used to mostly do programming and stay away from actual 3D asset modeling, however with Houdini I could now use math and code to create abstract interesting shapes. It gave me a limitless vector to dive into asset creation.
Kif: I have a background in coding and visual effects (VFX). I didn’t care that it was difficult to ‘make it’, I just loved the craft of doing 3D. The fact it was so difficult really excited me, it felt like the Wild West. I didn’t want to do things that were easy or predictable.
It’s also great when we share the love for similar creative expressions. We really excite each other with our passion for our work. Working as a couple is challenging of course, but it’s an amazing feeling that you exchange love and you get more love back.
At first, we had a complementary skill set, I was doing a lot of Houdini stuff and Snays was doing VFX shaders. We constantly learn from each other and we are actually reversing our skills by doing what the other person would do in a project, which is kind of funny 😄
Codercat: Making and maintaining social ties on the road has been the hardest part for us. Mars College is amazing for this reason. We spent a few years looking for a community like Mars, and when we found it, it was exactly what we needed. There are so many creative people here, hackers, musicians, artists… it’s a great community.
Mars College is a great place to experiment and explore, but it doesn’t quite have a creative focus, we love it for that reason but we also want to create space for people to focus and get some concrete results. Hopefully, we can make that happen soon.
We had an idea to gather a few people together with complimentary skill sets, find somewhere low-cost to live for a month, and make a project together. So we did this with the KikiYago projects in Tbilisi, and we have plans to dedicate more to creating these kind of creative containers.
Kif: Finding community really helps, going out to the world in the void by yourself is hard. We spent 4 years finding communities, and we had each other which was amazing, but having a community really helps uplift your mental health, so anywhere you go, anything you do, do it with cool people you like.
Change is scary, there can be many fears, fears of traveling are real, like what happens to my friends, my clothes, my career, money…. All that is reasonable, but if you really believe in yourself and your ability to make things work, you have to forget about those fears and just do it.
Snays: When I left SF, my job and belongings, I knew that SF would always be there, that I can always go back. And it’s the same for anyone, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, you can always go back. Knowing that made it a lot easier for me to jump-start this journey, funny thing is I never went back.
Kif: You should definitely save some money. Have a lot more runway than you think you need. Calculate the minimum amount of money that you need to survive.
For me for example it was $300 a month, and I would live in places like Thailand, and it would be fine. Most likely you would figure out ways to make money on the road, people do it all the time and it’s part of the challenge also part of the fun. But having your bare minimum covered for the rest of your mind is nice.
I would recommend a bag size of 30 liters, if you have a larger bag you would stuff it with shit you don’t need. Don’t get a larger bag. 30 liters is all you need.
I had a lot of fun with this conversation. It also gave me some inspirations on ways to live my life, and I start to question a lot of decision to accumulate ‘stuff’ a lot harder now. My life has become a lot more minimal, not yet in a backpack, maybe it never will but hey that’s ok! The minimal mindset has been incredibly helpful.
We don’t always have the chance to think about our priorities, we grow up with a lot of these priorities defined for us. When we do question them, we often realize that a lot of the ‘must-haves’ can become options. Life is full of tradeoffs, and the ability to prioritize makes our lives richer or harder.
One big motivation for me to continue working on Grid Free Minds and Agartha is to create resources for people who want to ’try out the lifestyles outside of societal default’.
For all the dreamers who are itching to wander, hope you’ll soon discover a reason to do so.
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Nico Shi - Writer / Interviewer