Building a motorhome

One of the bloggers I follow (Life Rebooted) posted a pointer to their motorhome being built.  I'm fascinated by this... this is a much bigger and more luxe rig than The Beast, but seeing how these things get put together is fascinating.  Here's a link to the slide show. If I ever decided to pull up stakes and full-time, I'm not sure if I'd go with something like this. It would surely require a Toad, and we know how I feel about pulling something behind an already enormous box.

Still ...

One of the pleasures of the blogs I list over on the right is seeing the maps of places people have been and reading their descriptions of what it's like there.  The posts from Nina of Wheeling It are always interesting and professionally produced.  And she just posted what looks like a killer gluten-free chocolate cookie recipe!

Maps and communications

If you look to the right on this page, up on top, you'll see an experiment -- following breadcrumbs from one of the folks whose blog I list at the right, I found uMap, which is an open source mapping tool developed in France.  It's WAY complex and I'm only cracking the surface of what's possible, but it seems promising.

Being able to put up maps of where I've been and where I'm headed is a part of the general project of staying in touch while I'm on the road.  This is a simple map of where I am right now.

UPDATE:  It's no longer there, so you're not doing anything wrong. I took down the static map and replaced it with a weather widget. I'll be putting together a large map with records of trips, when there are more trips.

Today I tackled the issue of internet service.  Last year I made a mistake.   I bought a T-Mobile HotSpot so I could have internet access on the road if I wasn't staying in an RV resort or parked outside a Starbucks. T-Mobile has many attractive features, but their network just isn't built out enough.  So today I cancelled that and activated a Verizon "Jetpack" "Mifi" hot spot.  It's as spiffy as a little box the size of a deck of playing cards can be... and has the added feature of a monster battery, which can be used to charge other devices via USB.  Yesterday I charged the JetPack up to 100%, and then used it to recharge an iPhone from53% to 100%.  That took the Jetpack down to 78%, still plenty of juice to run some brief upload/download sessions from my laptop or iPad.

Did I mention I'm looking into ham radio for when there's no cell service at all? :-)

R

Hitting the road!

Folks over in Albuquerque have asked me to give presentations over there the last weekend in January.  It turns out that with the currently-low cost of gas, it's cheaper for me to drive the RV than the little Hyundai -- IF I park overnight in a Walmart parking lot along the way.  I've never done this, so that'll be part of the adventure.

That's spurred me to get some of my current RV projects completed sooner rather than later. I have an appointment with my RV service place on Monday morning; they'll keep it a couple of days and do the following:

Fix the cut-over switch which make it possible to start the vehicle if the starter battery is run down and the coach batteries have juice.  This isn't so critical for a trip like this where AAA will never be far away, but for later trips to more remote places...

Drill some holes and put in fittings so the solar panel can be plugged into the coach battery bank without removing one of the entrance steps.

And some other holes and fittings so I can run my inverter off the coach battery without -- you guessed it -- removing the entrance step.

There's also some little stuff which I may ask them to do while it's in the shop.   Arizona Road- Runner is the furthest thing from the big glossy RV sales/service outfits which are easy to find south of the city.  This is literally a Mom-and-Pop operation, which I've had good luck with before.  Plus, they're real close.  This is their web site

The end of next week or the first thing the following week, I'll take the Beast in to Buck's Auto for a general checkup and a few mechanic-type things which need attending to.  Buck's web site is here.

Doing this reminds me how different my situation is than some of the people whose blogs I'm reading.  I can afford (so far!) to have pro's look over and take care of the stuff which I can't.

I've been enjoying fiddling and fixing, but I'm looking forward to getting on the road again... as the Willie Nelson song says.

Yee-hah!

About that stuff...

As I said last time, I'm not into RV-ing as a Great Renunciation of Stuff.  One of the reasons I got a Class C was to have enough room for me and the things I want to use on the road.  I see pictures from  people with small rigs and they all seem to be overflowing with ... stuff!

It's probably very un-Green of me, but I'm a believer in plastic boxes, available pretty cheap from the likes of Target and (for heavier duty containers) Home Depot.   Like so:

The tool box moves between the RV and the car trunk. It's what I think I may need on the road, in any vehicle.  The small plastic box is an example of what I use to organize stuff which I may use either on the road or at home; this applies as much to shaving gear as it does to electronics.

The larger boxes contain stuff which will have a permanent home in the RV and not much relevance elsewhere.


One of my RV-related activities today (When the fog clears. Yes, fog in the desert!)  is to go measure the storage compartments under the coach and see what size boxes will fit where.  Is it a little twisted that I'm actually enjoying this part?

Cloudy and cool ...

The last couple of days here in Tucson haven't been really conducive to going out and doing much.  Nice to have a warm comfortable place. Which leads me to think about RV travel.  A few months back, I spent a long weekend with a couple of friends up in the White Mountains of northern Arizona.  They were in a tent.  I was in the RV.  It rained.  It was then I realized that the RV is pretty comfortable even in less-than-ideal situations: warm, dry, and with all the windows, fairly light even on a cloudy day.  I don't deal well with dark and gloomy.  In a way, it helped validate the decision I made not to get a van-style RV, in spite of the inconveniences of parking and navigating in traffic.

I've been watching a really first-rate documentary on the "RV lifestyle" on YouTube.  It's a fully professional product, technically and creatively.  It runs about an hour, but I recommend it highly:

"Without Bound"

There's a couple of themes here which don't describe the way I feel.  Many of these people seem to subscribe to beliefs which border on conspiracy theories.  "They" don't want "Us" to live free.  "They" want us to keep buying stuff so "They" can control us.   I do think that income inequality, or resource inequality, is one of the major issues of our day.  But I've never felt the need to stick it to the Man, possibly because I've always been The Man ... a middle-class white American male. And I'm well aware of the tension between neat new toys and simplifying life.   Thing is,  I'm not sure I need to simplify my life.  I'm retired, with  steady income. I don't need to buy economy brand dog food, although I do grumble at the cost of Eukanuba.  I've never really lived some of what the full time RV'ers are fleeing: the rat race of bigger houses and newer cars and classy clothes.  The height of my sartorial splendor for much of my life has come from LL Bean or (more recently) Carhartt.  I chose an academic career because it gave me some flexibility in my daily life and in its overall arc.  I drove a small pickup truck more or less into the ground, and I now drive the smallest hatchback Hyundai makes.   Oh yeah, and now I have the Beast ...

I've crunched the numbers six ways from Sunday.  My fixed housing expenses are something like 20% of my after-tax income.  I have no long-term debt other than the mortgage which is included in that figure.  I have good health insurance (Medicare plus supplement) which isn't tied to any one location or provider. I can afford to go on the road and maintain my "sticks and bricks" home in Tucson.  Moreover, if I need to, I can afford to spend the occasional night in a motel and eat out if I need a fix of conventional living.

If this sounds like I'm trying to talk myself into something, I am.

A lot of my hesitation about just taking off and hitting the road comes from fear.  More fear of some kind of vehicle problem than medical emergencies or getting mugged.  I seem to be drawn to staying in places which are less "civilized" than the basic RV parks which are everywhere.  So what do I do if I have a flat tire driving into some relatively remote campsite on BLM land?  Maybe with no cell service?  Or if the RV has some kind of conniption fit and just won't go?   Well, I make sure I have the tools to change a tire if I need to.  And practice changing a tire in the comfort of the parking lot.  And I get a Verizon hot spot which will maximize my cell coverage.  And I maybe get an RV-centered road emergency policy which will tow the big guy to service.  And be prepared for some hellacious service costs.   And I make sure that people at home know where I'm headed, and check in on schedule. And I stop fretting and Just Do It.

Thinking ahead

This won't be about sorting out anything physical.  I'm still working on that project: Emma and I paid a quick visit to the RV to bring back all the tools that were there so I can organize what should go where.

No, what this is about is where I go when I do hit the road.  I've been reading a lot of video and other blogs (and blogs, I guess) from people who spend a LOT of time in their RV.  They like to call themselves nomads,  particularly the full-timers.  These folks, some of them, have decided live on the road.  They have various styles: some do it rather grandly, some in pretty frugal ways.   Some are constantly on the road, others settle in for a while at locations which please them.  Some are retired, some are restless kids.

I've provided pointers to some of the blogs these folks maintain, over on the right.

I'm pretty clear that full-time nomad just doesn't suit me right now.  I like having a "sticks and bricks" place to come home to.   But I'm edging toward a style of travel which would be new to me, and more than a little scary: Wandering.   Just taking off, say, northward in the summer, and winding up who knows where.  Maybe Canada, in the summer.  Maybe Mexico in the winter once I get over serious anxieties about travel where I don't speak the language. Maybe (gasp!) Florida?

The few trips I've done so far have been pretty closely planned: campground reservations made ahead, all that.  So just taking off and seeing where the road goes with no specific destination and no hard and fast schedule -- that's really scary stuff to the control freak here. But I'm getting more and more comfortable with the Beast: I think I understand its components and its (few) foibles.   And in the words of the immortal Dr Bronner: if not now, when?

The problem is, as it has been, the dog.

Sorting stuff out

The Brits have a wonderful expression about getting "sorted."  It translates, roughly, as "organized and understood" and can be applied to one's current overall life situation or to a specific problem.

Here's mine at the moment:

I've been going back and forth between the house and the RV storage lot getting stuff done.   It's my DIY side.  But the tools are often elsewhere.  Last week I needed something at the house which was at the RV, and yesterday the reverse.  No biggie here, with no fixed schedule and plenty of other things to do.  But when I take off for a while in the Beast, it'd be good to know I've got the right tools.

And not a lot of dead weight.

So I pulled everything out of the RV and most everything out of the closets here at the house, and I'm trying to get it all understood and organized.  Sorted.  How many sets of diagonal cutting pliers do I need?  End wrenches? Channel Locks?

Part of the problem is that some of this goes way back;  I can remember my father using THAT bulbous-handled screwdriver... But it's absurd to own this many duplicates of tools.  I think one outcome will be a big box of perfectly good tools which goes to Good Will.

Today's high is supposed to be in the mid-seventies.  It'll drop off to the mid-sixties in a few days, there's no expectation of an immediate return to the really cold temps of a few days ago.  You folks in the East and  Midwest are in for it, huh?