Posts Tagged “fulltiming”
Nov
01
2009
Workin’ for the Man . . . for NowPosted by Rene in Making Money, Work, tags: fulltiming, lifestyle, money, seasonal, workamping
A few months ago thanks to our friends at NuRVers, I learned about the seasonal job opportunities available at Great Satan locations around the country. Everywhere from Delaware to Las Vegas, thousands of little elves spring up out of nowhere and take over the company’s million-square foot warehouses to fulfill all of those holiday season orders for consumers. The hours are grueling and so is the work. But the money is great and I’m really thankful to have this opportunity during such an awful economy. Originally we were going to Kansas,where most fulltime RVing workampers go. But a few weeks ago, thanks to Jenn at HiTek Homeless, I learned about the Satan gig in Fernley, Nevada, just outside of Reno and south of the road to Burning Man. So we pointed West instead of East, and will be here until Christmas. I’ll be punching a clock, while Jim stays home to run our Internet endeavors and babysit Wyatt the Wild Dawg. Tomorrow is my employee orientation, and then I start working ten-hour days next week. Meanwhile, as all of you consider your holiday purchases this year, remember all of the bargains that Satan has to offer! And when you shop, please help us out by starting here with our link, so we can get an additional cut on the action! *Recently I was told that I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement which stated I cannot disclose anything about the Great Satan’s company or work conditions. Therefore, the real name of this company has been changed in all blog posts.
Jul
24
2009
Mission Accomplished: Our Dream Mountain PropertyPosted by Rene in Dream, Live, Our Story, Quality of Life, Simple Living, Work, tags: Colorado, expenses, fulltiming, home ownership, lifestyle, road trip, sabbatical, spending
I’d like to apologize for our premature announcement. We didn’t get the house. Instead, we pulled out of that nightmare-waiting-to-happen, but only until our offer for a better property was accepted. We haven’t wanted to say anything, fearing that we might jinx the deal. But now it’s safe to spill it, since we are closing escrow Monday at 11 am. What Really Happened We are now the proud owners of a 3 bedroom 2 bath mountain home, on 4.98 acres in Red Feather Lakes, about 50 miles northwest of Fort Collins.
A few weeks ago we learned that our fixer-upper had a very questionable foundation lying underneath it. Cosmetic repairs are one thing, but buying a house with bad foundation can be a horrible mistake. The heartbreaking news brought back bad memories of our previous money pit, of which we had to put a $23,000 foundation underneath. I cried as we debated whether or not to move forward on the deal. That’s when we received a beautiful statue of St. Francis, from our friend Heather.
St. Francis was sent in honor of the 9 month anniversary of our Jerry’s departure, which happened on the Feast of St. Francis. Heather sent this to us on Jerry’s behalf, with an encouraging message essentially telling us to hang on to our dream. She had no we were already in escrow for the fixer-upper. “It’s out there,” she said, don’t give up. Days later, as we were just about to give up on our search here, we saw the listing for something that sounded too good to be true. Why We Bought It Priced way below market value, the sellers are divorcing and just wanted to dump their weekend getaway. As soon as we saw it, we knew this was the spot we’ve been looking for.
The house lies in a beautiful mountain subdivision with exorbitant HOA fees, but they get us year-round road maintenance, and all the fishing Jim wants on about a dozen private lakes and river frontage. We could live here all year if we wanted to. At 8400′ above sea level, Red Feather Lakes is a cool summer escape and a winter wonderland for Fort Collins residents. There’s a small community nearby with a couple of restaurants, a bar, a convenience store, gas station, and a post office. Many people live here year round, as Fort Collins is an easy drive to make. What more do we need? It’s as close to perfect as we can get, but there’s just one problem: Unlike the last place, which had a big flat space for RVs, this house sits on top of a gradual slope. and the driveway isn’t big enough for more than two RVs, at least until we do some grading. But, the good news is that the subdivision runs a nearby private campground with full hookups ($20 a night) for property owners’ guests.
Jul
22
2009
Can Our RV Lifestyle Coexist with Homeownership?Posted by Rene in Dream, Live, Quality of Life, Rants & Raves, Simple Living, tags: expenses, fulltiming, lifestyle, Mone, RV lifestyle, spending
For too long, Americans have been shammed into believing in the homeownership myth. We have been fooled by our banks, our lenders and even my financial guru, Suze Orman, into believing that buying a home is the greatest investment we’ll ever make. It’s a lie. Over the years there have been studies that show that if you take the amount you spend on a home and put that same amount into the stock market, even in horrible markets like we have now now, the stocks will always yield a greater investment over the long term than the house will. So, why have we always been so convinced by financial “experts” that overextending ourselves to buy a show home is such a great investment? Now that people are waking up to the fact that buying a house isn’t going to get us on the Forbes Who’s Who List, could we be entering a new era when people finally understand the true cost of home ownership?
“Who knows that is in store tomorrow? . . . If a plant or factory closes down, you’re not trapped with property you can’t sell. Suppose the husband has a job and is buying a house and there’s a layoff. The value goes out of his house. But if he has a mobile home he rents a trucking service and moves on and he hasn’t lost anything. He may never have to do it, but the fact that he can is a comfort to him.” Steinbeck goes on to say that even if the homes are financed through a lender, “the payments, even if high and festoned with interest, are no worse than renting an apartment and fighting the owner for heat. And where could you rent such a comfortable ground-floor apartment with a place for your car outside the door? Where else could the kids have a dog?” And so, I ask you, dear reader, when was it that trailer parks started getting such a bad rap? Steinbeck asks a father living in a trailer court: “One of our most treasured feelings concerns roots, growing up rooted in some soil or some community.” How did they feel about raising their children without roots? The man answers him with: “How many people today have what you are talking about? What roots are there in an apartment twelve floors up? What roots are in a housing development of hundreds and thousands of small dwellings almost exactly alike?” Steinbeck wonders, “Don’t you miss some kind of permanence?” The father answers:: “Who’s got permanence? Factory closes down, you move on. Good times and things opening up, you move on where it’s better. You got roots and you sit and starve. You take the pioneers in this history books. They were moovers. Take up land, sell it, move on. . . “ He adds: ” . . . suppose the place I work goes broke. I’ve got to move where there’s a job. I get to my job in three minutes. You want I should drive twenty miles because I’ve got roots?” Even back in the 1950s, being able to go where the money is just made so much sense. I’d like to know when this ideaology fell by the wayside, and we started believing that being a chained to a mortgage and a big house was the smart thing to do. Everyone wants a nice place to live, but what’s the real cost of that lifestyle? So, why are Jim and I buying property? Because there’s got to be a happy medium, dontcha think? For starters, it’s nice to have a break from campground fees. And we also need a place for our stuff! We think we can reconcile our need to roam with property ownership, because we’re only buying what we can afford, and won’t be indebted to a bank. Without that threat hanging over our heads, we’ll still have the freedom to live on relatively little income, move with the seasons like snowbirds, and go where the work is, if and when we need to. At least, that’s the plan.
Jun
12
2009
Road Trip Expenses: April and May 2009Posted by Rene in Spending Money, Work, tags: expenses, fulltiming, lifestyle, RV lifestyle, RV road trip, sabbatical, spending
Some of our biggest expenses in those months weren’t really suprises, just the unpleasant realities of what it costs to maintain a fulltime RVing rig, such as $823 to repack the trailer wheel bearings, four new tires, a water heater repair and $111 on truck maintenance. April also included paying taxes and our CPA, and $200 to join Escapees. Our phone bill went up, because we dropped our Virgin Mobile account after getting sick of their poor coverage in rural areas. Now we have Verizon, which gives us better service, but at a higher cost. Finally, all of these expenses seemed to have led heavy drinking because we overspent on booze again! With these hefty spending months behind us, we’re hoping for some low budget months ahead. The plan is to find some land, get our remaining stuff out of storage in CA and bring it to Colorado, and then camp for “free” on our own property until the snow files.
Apr
18
2009
The One Thing We Can’t Live WithoutPosted by Rene in Full-Timing Tips, Live, Simple Living, tags: cooking, Full-Timing Tips, fulltiming, lifestyle, RV lifestyle
Our cast iron skillets. Back in our stick house, we had a whole collection of Griswold and Lodge Cast Iron Cookwear Cast iron is so versatile, and not very expensive. You can use these pans for stovetop cooking, baking, broiling and even over a campfire. And because you don’t need a lot of water to clean them up, they’re great for boondocking. Our Calphalon pan isn’t nearly that versatile. Best. Cookwear. Ever.
Mar
26
2009
Alpine’s Cowboy Gathering: My Heroes Have Always Been PoetsPosted by Rene in Attractions, Dream, Local Flavor, tags: alpine, Cowboy poets, Elko, festival, fulltiming, road trip, RV lifestyle, RV road trip, sabbatical, texas
Last year we missed the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in the West Texas town of Alpine, by just one week. This year, we hightailed it back in time. The YouTube playlist below includes six movies Jim made from all the footage I shot of performers including Doris Daley, Jeff Gore, Dale and Brittany Burson, Sam Noble and Gail Steiger; At 23 years and going strong, the Alpine Cowboy Poetry Gathering is the second oldest in America, just one year behind the much larger Elko, Nevada festival. I’ve always wanted to make it to Elko, but it takes place in January, and being in an RV during Elko’s frozen winter isn’t my idea of a good time. Guess that makes me a real city slicker.
The only bummer is that the poetry and music sessions are held on a college campus, and we wish they would’ve had some in bars or in a campfire setting. Jim isn’t a huge fan of cowboy poetry like I am, but he patiently endured the festival so he could get a good dinner or two out of it (and he did!). We both fell in love with the town of Alpine itself. It’s small but not too small, real estate is affordable, and the high desert scenery can’t be beat. We plan on heading back there to look for our winter Texas property in the fall.
Mar
23
2009
Under Big Skies and Blazing Sun in West TexasPosted by Rene in Dream, Great Outdoors, Local Flavor, tags: big bend, Boondocking, Full-Timing Tips, fulltiming, road trip, sabbatical, stereotypes, texas, three legged dog, travel
Now that we’ve been to the Great State two times in the last year, we just want to say; We were wrong. Sorry Texas! The most peaceful, relaxing drives we’ve had in the last two years have been along the back roads of West Texas. The land here is as varied and beautiful as anything we’ve seen in our travels. Nowhere else in the United States can you drive through such wide open spaces and see vistas that go on for miles, without a single inhabitant except for a herd of cows. Tall rock formations line the horizon against a deep blue sky, and even if you’ve seen “No Country for Old Men,” Hollywood still can’t come close to replicating this kind of beauty. One visit to Big Bend National Park, and you’ll see for yourself how stunning this country is: We haven’t been to a national park since saying goodbye to Jerry in Yellowstone. Coming here felt somewhat like a betrayal to our baby, since the last time we set out to do the tourist thing was with him.
Arriving at the park and hitting the trails without him didn’t seem right at first. But after a day of sweating in the blazing sun, and getting stabbed by cacti on the trail, I realized that Jerry probably would’ve hated this kind of terrain, which helped my pangs of guilt to subside.
Mar
14
2009
Maintained batteries require maintenance.Posted by Jim in Boondocking, Full-Timing Tips, Live, Spending Money, tags: batteries, Boondocking, fulltiming, Slab City, solar, spending, upgrade
My brother in law Rich O’Connell is a brilliant electrical engineer. He has grown a successful solar business with my sister, built his own off-grid home, designed multi-gigawatt systems, and patented a solar panel washing system. He also designed the RV power system we rely on for boondocking. Recently, I got to meet another expert; Solar Mike. He operates The Sun Works from his solar powered rigs on the slabs. Mike knows the DC side of the business and how to get the absolute most out of what you got.
It just didn’t seem like we were getting the run time out of our batteries that we expected. Loving to boondock as much as we do, we explained our issue to Mike and asked him for an estimate for upgrading the system. He immediately discovered one of our batteries was weak, and pointed out how dry it was. Bone dry.
I might have kicked my feet and mumbled a bit, but – don’t tell Rene – I still think it was worth the $95 we spent on two new batteries to have not been pulling them out and checking them every month for the past year. Truth is, we just forgot.
Had we spent the $4000+ on the original system design Rich gave us, we might have never even had this discussion. But having worked this over with Mike, I now know where in our 24′ trailer we can fit six maintenance free 6 volt batteries – much better suited for our use than the two 12 volts we have. And having done it a couple times now, I know it’s not such a big deal to pull our batteries and check on them. We even carry some distilled water now so we have it when needed.
When we will make that investment is the $3000 question. But that all depends on where we’re going to be purchasing property come Spring, and whether we will need to upgrade what we have or build a larger off-grid system in a shed or trailer. And we’re not even sure where we’ll be next month.
Mar
12
2009
Making Movies on the SlabsPosted by Jim in Best of, Boondocking, Campsites, Local Flavor, tags: art, Boondocking, California Desert, fulltiming, lifestyle, Slab City, video
I consider this an honor since Dave taught me the term and was the first advocacy journalist I ever met … until that is, we caught up with Flux Rostrum and Skinny Chef in the Mobile Broadcast News bus.
But for those of you who don’t necessarily tune into our video channel on a regular basis, here’s our take on the Slabs. I wouldn’t necessarily call it journalism, but the playlist below does include five videos documenting slab City culture – from a drive by and a fly over to the Niland Tomato Festival parade, art cars and Salvation Mountain. Enjoy! Paying it forward … Our generous friends CoffeeSister and RhodesTer will be happy to know the Verizon wireless PC card they insisted we take has found a good home. We donated it to the Mobile Broadcast News crew to support their efforts of raising awareness and hell online through indie media. We were unable, however, to get a receipt from them for the tax deduction. I guess the good karma will have to suffice.
Feb
22
2009
Greenhouse Gardening in Paso Robles, CAPosted by Rene in Dream, Live, Quality of Life, Simple Living, tags: CA, electric car, fulltiming, greenhouse gardening, lifestyle, Paso Robles, road trip, RV, RV lifestyle, three legged dog
We met Joel and Ross online in 2006, when Jerry was diagnosed with cancer. Their Great Dane Moose was on the same path, and throughout the next two years, we became friends. Joel and Ross sounded like such nice people, and gave us an open invitation to stop by and visit them in Paso Robles, near San Luis Obispo, CA. “Be careful what you ask for,” we warned them, and showed up after leaving L.A. What a fun surprise it was to learn we had other things in common besides our heroic dogs. Joel and Ross live on five rural acres, in a solar-powered house, and even drive an electric car. They have many animals, and a great little garden too. Their compound resembles what Jim and I envision for ourselves someday. Here’s a clip of Joel giving a tour of his gopher-proof greenhouse: |

A few weeks ago we jumped the gun. In our excitement to actually commit to something tangible again, we told you about 

It fits our criteria perfectly. It’s a simple, affordable property that won’t get us into debt. It sits on manageable mountain acreage near a town we love. And it’s almost within 2 hours of a major airport (Denver). The house is 9 years old and has hardly been used. It’s in perfect working order; it even has running water and heat! Other than the ugly kitchen cabinet doors, we love it.
So, with many thanks to









Yup, our upgrade cost us less than a hundred bucks. And it was so cheap because Mike took our good battery as a trade-in. The ones he carried were a bit better, and I wanted a matching pair. Not bad since we were considering spending over a grand on couple new panels.





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