The Genesis Of An Idea (or How Did This All Get Started?)

Sometime in the 1980's or 1990's I subscribed for a year or two to a really cool newspaper called Out West. It was produced by a gentleman named Chuck Woodbury who traveled around the back-country areas of the western states in his RV and wrote about the places and people he met. Being English, I have a strong regard for what the English might call mild eccentrics. On the west coast of the US, we just think of these people as having the strength of personality and singularity of purpose to do their own thing. I loved reading "Out West" and was impressed by the fact that Chuck wrote, edited and produced the whole thing (as well as managing the subscriptions) from his RV as he traveled around. Brilliant!

I had a high regard for the newspaper and the many characters featured in it, but at that point hadn't started thinking about an RV life for me.

Besides, weren't RV's for old dodderers? It seemed odd that in America, the older people get, the larger the vehicles they drive. Little old ladies weave

nervously down the road in extra-wide boats with huge fins and big bench seats, barely able to peer over the steering wheel. By the time extreme old age creeps in, the average driver has graduated to driving a gigantic house on wheels - you know, the kind that is reduced to a pile of kindling by the side of the road after a few gusts of wind and the resulting gentle collision. RV's made no sense to me and besides, being under the age of 97, I was far too young to drive one. I was living in Los Angeles and working as a radio DJ, record store DJ, voice-over guy and commercial producer. I was living the life, and trundling around the boonies in an RV was just not my cup of tea.

But that was then and this is now. I loved working as a DJ, getting to see many famous musicians actors and celebrities, going to film screenings in Hollywood and seeing the insides of voice-over studios as part of my work. It was heady and lots of fun. For the first 10 years or so, it was exciting. Then very slowly, it turned into something that I still enjoyed very much, but didn't pump the adrenaline anymore. Then the industry started changing and many of us started to see the writing on the wall. The economy went south and the expected happened; I was laid off. By the time it happened, I was prepared and almost looking forward to it. I'd had tons of fun working in a media industry in LA but was intrigued to know what else life might hold.

My former life as a DJ

Many people who knew me said that I should think about getting back into radio, others that I should look for more voice-over work. I'm also fairly web-savvy and literate with a keyboard so figured that perhaps I could do website maintenance, online customer service, or something similar. I had ideas, but what I wasn't prepared for was the fact that for the first time in my life, I felt no real motivation to work. Criminy! What did this mean? Was I a listless, inept wastrel, incapable of contributing to society anymore? Anytime I told a friend, colleague or family member that I didn't feel like working anymore, I felt slightly guilty. What made it worse was that I was quite happy for the time being just getting up every day, drinking coffee, reading about all sorts of things on the internet, and indulging my hobby of ham radio (both building and operating radios).

"What are you doing" people would ask, and my answer was often "nothing much". Now, this sounds like a contemptible waste of time but the truth was that I wasn't actually doing nothing. I was getting up when I wanted to, drinking coffee and wandering about in my pajamas, and often building or operating radios like this one:or this one:

(which impressed a columnist in a national ham radio magazine so much that he featured it!) The point is that I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I know it would have sounded a lot more exciting had I been able to say that I was spending my days sky-diving, river-rafting and hiking the Marin headlands, but I was having a good time just being a homebody. Add to that a lot of time spent with my friend Antoinette, watching movies, eating food and talking about music (she's also a DJ) and you can see that I was spending most of my time "just chillin" (as the young 'uns say) and thoroughly enjoying it.

Since my late 20's, I've been saving and investing regularly (more on that in later blogs if anyone is interested). I was driven to save by the fear of ending up old, unable to work, and forced to exist on a tiny income. The truth is probably that what social security wouldn't cover, various other social programs would, but I didn't want to take that chance, so I saved. I also spent quite a lot of time doing math on scrap bits of paper and trying to figure out how much I would have by the time I hit 60 or 65, and then attempting to calculate if that was enough. I like figures, so I spent a lot of time doing simple sums and trying to figure it all out.

I'm not loaded. When I was laid off it was apparent to me that I didn't have enough to retire and needed to work for at least a few more years. I had already moved to a smaller and cheaper apartment and wouldn't have enough money to maintain this new, cheaper lifestyle in the future without working. I then moved to an even smaller and cheaper apartment and discovered that I was just as happy. Wow! Revelation!

At this point I had a life that I realized I could afford to fund indefinitely with my savings and investments. Problem was that I was getting a bit bored and needed something to hold my interest. With my DJ career, I had a mission and now I had none. There was no point in being able to afford not to work if I was bored.

I thought about building or buying a Tiny House. I was also quite inspired by a couple of visits to England where I stayed with my brother and his wife on their boat:

Slowly I began to realize that if I lived in an RV, I could live relatively affordably while being able to travel wherever I wanted throughout North America. This realization didn't come swiftly; it has taken me a while to get from the point where I thought it was a really neat idea, to being convinced that I could actually do it. I'm now at the point where I'm living in a rented room in a nice old house in Oakland and looking to buy a small RV next year and start going away for short trips to acclimatize to life on the road. If during this period I decide that I don't want to go ahead with the plans to full-time RVing, then I can continue part-timing or even sell the rig. At worst, I'll probably only lose a few thousand, but at least I'll know that I explored that idea.