I had been laid off, outsourced. The phone was not ringing. I was heading to be just another 99er. One day while cooling off at the coast in Oregon, my wife and I speculated about looking for opportunities that we might find in a full time rv life style. We thought to ourselves, others do it why not us? We realized we simply could not show our children the country in the depth we wanted in "two weeks a year" and if we waited too long our children would not be a interested it travel after so long stationary. We did not want to " hope we could do it" at retirement age, we wanted to enjoy the experience of it with our family. We wanted to see more of our world and continuing to go back to work for someone else's corporation wasn't going to do it for us. We decided to just make it work. We found a old school bus that we could afford that had been stripped to the shell. As our Mini-van was repossessed, and we missed rent due dates I made our bus Wayne as ready for travel as I could. With our eyes on the horizon we knew we were making the right choice for our family. Our family and friends all thought we were crazy to the degree that when we had packed our bus and were preparing for departure they all looked at us and said, " oh, you meant you're actually doing it." With our home rolling we could not believe the new size of our back yard (3.79 million square miles).
The glow that started in my children's eyes has continued to grow to fire that lives there today. Their road wisdom gives them confidence and strength I see in their every action. They possess a calm in new an different situations that I see growing with their experiences. Lex really enjoys meeting new people and building new relationships, he is fascinated by astronomy and physics, and has been known to pull back to back 20 milers on his bike without breaking stride. Nova loves animals, gardening, and cooking/cleaning. Petra, like her brother loves to wrestle and rough-house but has an eye for art and loves to sing. The twins although inseparable, have also blossomed as individuals, and express their joy of travel anytime we stay in one place too long.
Although outnumbered by the positive experiences the lessons learned by the difficulties range from humility to bravery. The brake downs were varied, some avoidable, others not. Note: if you have the opportunity to quickly and easily remove the rear heat ex-changer in your school bus, just do it. Ours got a leak our first week on the road and blew coolant all over our new kitchen, and was our first scare. It was not our last, from Power steering loss (temporary repair with a metal ball-point pen tube) before running from electrical storms near the Grand Canyon, to street racers while Walmart camping in Albuquerque in yet another electrical storm. From the man begging for a ride because he "had just got outta jail and brain surgery" (he had paper work to prove it!) to others who donated money and gave our children gifts, the people crossed the spectrum. Opportunities to build my wife's' budding art-craft business also presented themselves and changed plans and made their own.
That is about how we got here, but I will save the details of the journey for other posts.
The glow that started in my children's eyes has continued to grow to fire that lives there today. Their road wisdom gives them confidence and strength I see in their every action. They possess a calm in new an different situations that I see growing with their experiences. Lex really enjoys meeting new people and building new relationships, he is fascinated by astronomy and physics, and has been known to pull back to back 20 milers on his bike without breaking stride. Nova loves animals, gardening, and cooking/cleaning. Petra, like her brother loves to wrestle and rough-house but has an eye for art and loves to sing. The twins although inseparable, have also blossomed as individuals, and express their joy of travel anytime we stay in one place too long.
Although outnumbered by the positive experiences the lessons learned by the difficulties range from humility to bravery. The brake downs were varied, some avoidable, others not. Note: if you have the opportunity to quickly and easily remove the rear heat ex-changer in your school bus, just do it. Ours got a leak our first week on the road and blew coolant all over our new kitchen, and was our first scare. It was not our last, from Power steering loss (temporary repair with a metal ball-point pen tube) before running from electrical storms near the Grand Canyon, to street racers while Walmart camping in Albuquerque in yet another electrical storm. From the man begging for a ride because he "had just got outta jail and brain surgery" (he had paper work to prove it!) to others who donated money and gave our children gifts, the people crossed the spectrum. Opportunities to build my wife's' budding art-craft business also presented themselves and changed plans and made their own.
That is about how we got here, but I will save the details of the journey for other posts.
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