Monday, July 21, 2014

Starting the Adventure

The decision to go full time has been made.  We just have to settle on a timetable....

Both of us are approaching retirement and once we've finished educating our last (current enrolled at Mills College - a very expensive private school) we retire to the road.

This was not a decision we made lightly. 

Did we want to be away from our Children and Friends? No.  But our friends and family made the decision for us and scattered on their own to all points of the compass.

Did we not want to put down roots?.  No.  One of us was raised as a nomad - never staying in one place more than a few years.  The other, one house through college.  We put roots down in our adopted home town of Castro Valley and roots are good, but overrated.  We will fondly remember our town and the characters in it, but we will move on. There is lot of places to be out there.  Plus the California lifestyle and the state in general is deteriorating.  Or as friend put it - swirling around the drain.

Do we know what we are doing?  Probably not.  We recently lost our beloved class-a motorthome (more on that sometime in the future).  But the motorhome experience taught us a few things:
  1. It is hard and very expensive to find anyone who will work on a large Class A.  A lot of places change $300.00 or more just to open the engine hutch.
  2. Its very expensive and very hard to find a big rig tow truck that is necessry to tow a Class A.  It is not uncommon for people to have to wait 3 or 4 days for a big rig tow to become available.
  3.  They have massive blind spots.  Cars, at least in the bay area, do not respect blindspots.  We have scared the hell out of people with slow well signaled maneuvers in a class.  And no, we don't feel guilty - they were the ones in the blind spot.
  4. Gas Engines do not do well in RVs.  This is a hotly debated point in the RV community but settled as far as we are concerned.
  5. We don't want a Toad (RVism for a towed vehicle - typically a small car being towed by a larger motorhome)
So our next house will not be a Class A....