The other day my husband and I were visiting with a friend. My husband had just come home from helping another of his friends purchase an RV. I think it was 28 feet, a late 1980′s model. The fridge, stove, oven and air conditioner worked, it had a bathtub and slept up to 5 people. I was too small for our family, but he only paid like $1000 for it. So my husband was on this emotional RV high, just feeling his friend’s excitement and knowing that one day we’ll be buying ours, too.
Anyway- so we’re visiting with a friend and he says “Yeah, that would be fine for the weekend or something, I guess. You’d have fun for a little while but you couldn’t like live in it, you’d get sick of it.” and he tells a story of a funny movie he saw where the grandparents sell their house and buy an RV, then they go visit the kids and everyone comes over to sit in the camper for dinner and the grandma starts to cry and says “I want my dining room back.”
I laughed – it was a funny story. But I made it clear that I TOTALLY want to live in it. See, we wouldn’t be IN it all the time, we’d have an outdoor setup, too, with patio furniture or even just picnic blankets. It’s not about being inside, it’s about all the places it can take you.
He says “Yeah- but what about inclement weather? You don’t want to be somewhere and it’s like 100 degrees or freezing or something?” I said “We’d plan to go places when it’s best to be there, but we’ve dealt with summers and winters here without much heating or air conditioning to speak of. it’s not that big of a deal”
He said “People don’t really do that, though with kids. I mean, you can’t, can you? I bet they’d learn a lot, but you can’t just stay on a road trip as long as you want, can you?” I said “I can name like 75 families right off the top of my head who are doing it. I’ve made friends with so many families who are living on the road. For some it’s a year-long thing, others have been doing it for years and I know AT LEAST five families who have sold their houses this year and hit the road. So you CAN do it with kids, and we’re going to.”
And he says “But wouldn’t you get claustrophobic, all of you in that one little area?” And I said “Well, it wouldn’t be ABOUT the little area, it would be about exploring the whole big country, we’d spend more time outside of it than inside”
And he said “But how much can you really explore in one place? Wouldn’t you get bored” And I said “I don’t know- we’d stay long enough to collect enough veggie oil to move onto the next place. There would always be someone interesting in the RV park, some creek or stream for the kids to play in, some bicycle path, some public fountain, some library, some museum, some national park or historic monument. We could spend days just researching and figuring out where to go next”
So he said “OK- so you’re like a gypsy?”
I wish I could say that the conversation ended there. He got a little excited about the idea of just wandering around doing whatever you wanted. He’s thinking now it would be fun to just spend a few months fishing in all the rivers between here and Alaska. The conversation was a good exercise for me, this would be the first time I’ve spoken with ANYONE who isn’t totally into the idea. I suspect our families will be naysayers, too. But they might surprise us, who knows?
I’ve done a great job this week of getting rid of stuff. I’ve completely removed every trace of winter clothes from the house, with the exception of one coat for everyone. We had millions of sweaters, coats, scarves, hats, etc. Way more than we needed. I’m not saying we won’t spend any time in cold environments, but we don’t all need 3 months worth of winter clothes, do we? I’ve loaded up the Suburban THREE TIMES for Goodwill. Clothes, blankets, etc. I’ve listed a bunch of books on Amazon. I plan to list more on eBay. Whatever doesn’t sell by the time we’re ready to leave I can drop off with my friend Jamie and she can sell them. I’ve also been scanning family photos so we can have digital versions of them. the originals will probably go into storage.
I really admire how some people just DO IT. I don’t know why I need so much time to prepare. I know it’s all part of the process for me, I know these actions set the ball in motion and that we get closer every day.
We’re making vision boards again this week. Last time, mine was like an 8 yr old’s Christmas list. There were so many things on it that I had a hard time focusing. It wasn’t a fruitless project, it’s helped me reign in my true desires and I’ll be making a new one today, with just a few things to focus on. I’m having trouble finding a picture of an RV in real life so we’ll be visiting a dealership today to bring home sales materials. The only major important point is that it NEEDS to be diesel so we can convert it to run on veggie oil. My husband has a design in mind for a complete hydropower system, but I’m not waiting for that.
Anyway. That’s all. No real physical action this week, but a lot of mental shifting. I was really happy to see my husband having passion for this because so far I’ve kinda felt like I’m the only one into the project.
Baby steps…. I must appreciate this part of the journey, too. Everything happens for a reason, right? The day we leave will be the PERFECT day to leave because everything will fall right into place, like it ALWAYS does.
