Living, Loving & Learning!

Tons of people want to know… “What’s it really like to live in a RV?”. I get asked this question all the time, so I figured I’d take a few moments and blog about it.

Living in a RV definitely has it’s ups and downs. Let’s start with the negatives and get those out of the way.

Obviously, I don’t have room for my pool table or my luxurious massage chair. Those are long gone. There always seems to be repairs that are needed. I’ve had pipes break in the plumbing, issues with the fridge, water spraying everywhere when I broke the handle in the shower, and don’t even get me started talking about the grey water tanks getting funky.

Right now my muffler and mud flaps in the back are being held on by zip ties and wire coat hangers. I’m just too lazy to take it down to Camping World to get it fixed right now. And anyone who’s followed my travels since the beginning a few years ago will remember the front tire blowout on the freeway during my first few hours of travel. Oh what an experience that was.

I’ve had battles with ants, shitty internet reception, diesel gas is 4.37 a gallon, I smashed my side view mirrors against some trees, cops pulled me over and accused me of smuggling narcotics, blew multiple fuses and spent hours troubleshooting them, and more. However, the worst of the worst is dealing with emptying the sewage, also known as the black water. One royal screw up with the black water and you really learn your lesson.

Despite all those pitfalls and many others I’m forgetting at the moment, the positives far outweigh the negative. Living in a RV truly is an incredible way to experience life.

First of all, if you don’t like where you are living, you can pack up and leave at a moments notice. Screw having to give 30 days notice to a landlord. Turn over the key, pull in the slides, lift the hydraulic jacks and hit the road. It’s incredibly liberating to know that you can bounce at any time you want.

While it’s not comparable to living in a 4000 square foot home, it’s actually quite spacious once you have all 3 slides extended out. Think of it like a studio apartment with all the amenities. It’s even equipped with a washer and dryer! Score.

One nice bonus is that I no longer am forking out $4000 to $5000 a month to have a roof over my head. In fact, my rent can be as low as $400 to $500 a month and even cheaper if you really want to get frugal. I could essentially live for free if I really wanted to, but I do like to spoil myself and enjoy staying at nicer spots.

The people I’ve met at various RV parks are a trip. I get to spend lots of time with very cool, experienced and wise elderly folks. There’s some nut jobs too. But overall I’ve loved meeting such a wide variety of people that have decided to live on the road. They are a eclectic bunch of travelers and adventure seekers who really know how to experience more out of life than your average neighbor you’d meet in a suburban cul-de-sac.

I tend to wake up really early while in the RV because my dog Webber wants to go outside to piss on everything. While it’s tough to get out of my cozy dark den, it’s good to wake up early and see the sunrise. I’ve quit watching tv as well. I could get a satellite dish, but I’ve found that I get way more things done by eliminating most tv from my life. If there’s something I really want to watch, I’ll just DVR it at my girlfriends house.

Another bonus is that I’ve found that I work quite a bit more while staying in the RV. I think it may be because I have less room to wander around like a ADHD style lab rat. When I’m staying in a house I’ll often find myself wandering from room to room and then wondering what the hell I”m doing or what I’m looking for? In the RV, I’m pretty much stuck in the same place and seem to be able to focus a lot more.

I don’t have to do yard work, pay a gardener, and housekeeping is way easier. I listen to a lot more radio, play my guitar more often, and am getting in the flow of writing much more often. I spend more time with my dog, take him on more walks and get to interact with more animals in nature than I would living in a city home. Right now I’m camped out on a lake and there are tons of species of birds, fish and other random animals in the area.

The main thing I think I enjoy about RV living though is that there is really little sense of worry. Once you learn to grasp and accept the fact that things are going to go wrong in the RV, and it will periodically need repairs and maintenance, you start to adopt a calm that is much different than normal house living. It’s a freedom that most people will never understand. It’s luxurious camping. High life vagabonding. Care free cruising. You simply have to experience it to understand.

I’m not sure how long I’ll stay in the rig. I’ve thought of renting a house again. But the idea of signing a 6 month to year long lease freaks me out. And considering I just sold or gave away all my furniture and much of my belongings, I’d just have an empty house anyways. Truth is, I really don’t care right now. I’m enjoying myself and that’s all that really matters.

I’ve been more productive than I’ve been in a long time, making really good money, staying relatively sober and am in really good company. I really couldn’t ask for much more at the moment. Life is good.

So that’s what RV living has been like as of lately. I’m sure I’ll have some more updates/adventures soon.

Peace

Jason

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I’d say it’s time to cue “On The Road Again” but I don’t really have any plans to do any significant traveling at the moment. Instead, I’m hunkered down near the lake and working on a bunch of projects from inside the RV.

I love being in this RV. Her name is Mary J, and she’s a gem. Last night I drug the cable wire in through the window and caught the last 5 innings of the World Series while lounging on the couch and petting my dog Webber. What a game!

My stint in West Hollywood lasted about 7 months, and it was good. I met a ton of great people, got to perform some comedy, ate like a culinary champion and experienced the worst traffic snarls known to man. I won’t miss the latter at all. It’s time for a new chapter and I’m really pumped about it.

Last week I either gave away or sold about 70 items on Craigslist.com and seriously downsized my belongings. I don’t know why I always end up accumulating so much stuff, then just give it away. I’m weird like that. However, it feels very liberating to lighten the load at times. I don’t need the majority of that stuff anyhow. Who really needs 12 guitars? Not I. I’ll stick with my Strat, the Taylor acoustic, The Warwick Bass and the always fun Ukulele.

I’m thinking about purchasing a stand up paddle surfboard and riding that baby on the lake each morning. I really need to work on my core strength to support my lower back issues in my L2 vertebrae. I have a feeling SUP-ing around the lake will be perfect for that and help me get back into the water for some surfing. Boy oh boy do I miss surfing. I really need to get back in the water asap.

Fishing in a kayak sort of sounds fun too. Maybe I’ll give that a try. A boom box with some country tunes, a cooler of cold beer and some good ol sunshine on the noggin while paddling around the lake sounds like a groovy time to this kid.

Anyhow, I’m just thinking out loud and letting y’all know what I’m up to. This blog should get a lot more posts in the near future, but I always say that every few months and then slack off. So we’ll see if that really happens. It so easy to get distracted by social media sites like Facebook, Google +, Twitter etc and abandon our own web properties which I think is a dumb move. I love Facebook as much as the next person, but all the time and effort on there doesn’t do much to build your own site and establish more pages in the search engines. So I’m making it a priority to focus on my own site instead of folks like Zuckerbergs.

So wish me luck, and please do come back and read often. I got a few tricks up my sleeve that have been in the works for a long time and they are WAY OVERDUE.

Love, Peace and Bicycle Grease!

Jason

PS: Speaking of bicycles, I’m about to grab my fancy Jeep bike off the back of Mary J and give her a good spin down to the local pub called Lucky’s. It looks like a super dive. Just my kind of joint.

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I’ve got a Foreigner song stuck in my head. Okay, I really don’t. I just needed a smooth intro for the title of this blog post.

So I picked up the RV from storage at Campland By The Bay. It’s been sitting still for almost 6 months now. The house batteries have been drained. She’s severely in need of a good wash, and requires a few repairs. The Norcold fridge has another recall, and I did a bit of damage to the side mirror when visiting Mike Morgan in

Coeur De’Alene last 4th of July. I don’t recommend 4×4-ing and navigating through narrow trees on a dirt road in a 38 foot diesel rig. Learn from my mistakes.

Since I hadn’t driven the RV in many months it was a bit nerve racking to jump back in the drivers seat and crank over the engine. At first, it appeared if it wasn’t going to start. Oh no! Dead battery? Thankfully after a couple of chugs if fired over like a champ. I adjusted the mirrors and hit the gas. Off we go!

It only took a couple seconds and it felt like old times. I was back in the saddle. The nerves went away quickly, but they do serve as a great reminder that I’m driving a really big vehicle and with that comes a lot of responsibility. I don’t take that lightly, especially when I share the road with other people.

I drove the RV to my place atop of Mt. Soledad and parked it out front. It feels nice to have my baby at home with me. I’ve missed her.

Once I had her parked I dialed in an extension cord from the garage and plugged in the shore power. Time to recharge. I also had to fill the batteries with some distilled water as they were pretty dry. Thanks to the help of a turkey baster it makes the process a bit easier. I kind of have a feeling these batteries may be towards the end of their life, but I’m unsure. I’ll have the mechanic check it out when I get the fridge recall fixed next week. The part is ordered and on the way.

While I had the rig charging, I couldn’t figure out how to turn the lights and a few of the other electronics on. It was weird. The fridge, television and microwave worked, but not the radio and any of the lights. I was puzzled. I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t working.

Then I remembered the master power switch. Duh! Yeah, it really did feel like the first time again. After a while I familiarized myself with everything and I felt like an experienced RV’er again.

I’ll be moving the rig up to Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles. It’ll be stored in a safe lot and it only costs $95 a month. Hard to beat that. I’m thinking of doing some northern Cali trips this summer. That’ll be fun. Lana has never seen the Redwoods and I’m sure she’d love to see their beauty.

The thought of selling the RV has occurred to me and I did place a Craigslist ad offering to trade it in exchange for a down payment on property in Hawaii. I got a couple of leads, and a really good offer on a cute house in Chehalis Washington, but I really didn’t follow up that well with them. If I really wanted to sell it I guess I’d put it on eBay as that seems to make the most sense.

However, I think I’m gonna keep the baby. No, that was not a Madonna lyric. The RV is here to stay.

Anyhow, I just wanted to give a brief RV update because I know a lot of you enjoy following my travels and reading the stories I share. I’m pretty sure I’ll have some more stories and travels before the end of the year. I still need to see a bunch of the states in the northeast part of the country. And I’d like to do the entire Florida coast as well.

Cheers,

Jason

PS: My buddy and former RV traveling companion Randy Primm AKA The Road Bandit has just set up a new campaign to try and raise some money to get back on the road. He’s using a cool service called IndieGogo that uses a thing called Crowd Funding to support each persons personal mission.

Randy’s mission is to get back out on the road and to film the next season of Road Bandit. If you have a business or person that needs exposure, wants a commercial made, or just wants to watch a kid on some crazy travels check out his IndieGogo campaign and flip him a couple of bucks!

You can check out Randy’s campaign for the next season of Road Bandit at http://www.indiegogo.com/roadbandit/

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So I finally got back to San Diego. I’ll finish recapping the rest of the trip later this week but for now I’m just excited to be home. Yesterday we drove all the way from El Paso Texas to La Jolla. I’d be cool with not getting into another car for a few months after all that driving.

So today we had to unpack our stuff and take the RV back to storage. However, there was one big problem. The amount of room I had to park this 38 foot rig was inches on each side. If you thought parallel parking was a bitch, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Amazingly, I backed this baby in with no real troubles. Unreal.

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For the last month I’ve been on the road traveling, living life and enjoying getting to know my new girlfriend. She’s rad.

During these travels and adventures I’ve really neglected my blog, my business and many of my friends. Sometimes it is important to unplug, disconnect and blaze new trails. That’s what I’ve been doing.

Lana (my super awesome new lady) and I just got back to Texas. Amarillo to be exact. Tomorrow we’ll make it to her home town of Austin. From there we’ll spend some time with her friends and family and then will be en-route to San Diego.

I plan of updating everyone on all our travels and sharing some fun and crazy stories. However, for the time being I’m just trying to experience the ride and not feel enslaved to have to blog or do work.

Yesterday I jotted down notes for about 10 new blog posts. I promise they’ll be worth the wait.

Keep on rocking in the free world.

J-Mo

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Stoked to see some beautiful scenery again (and snow!).

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I made a a stop on the Gulf Coast of Florida because I was duped into believing a surf report that some ridable waves were in the future. I should know by now that putting my faith in the surf forecast is a bad move.

The waves came, but the only ridable ones were at about midnight on Sunday evening. A wicked rain and lightning storm hit at about the same time. If I weren’t afraid of sharks, and had a buddy with me to surf I may of tried a night surf. Not this time.

Despite missing out on the surf I have had a pleasant time hanging out in Miramar Beach. There isn’t a whole lot to see here other than the white sand beach, but I was fine with my stay.

One cool thing I’ve been experiencing is that people at RV Parks are super nice, adventurous and love to share travel stories. Most of them are retired older folks, but they have the spirit of a 12 year old playing little league. They really enjoy fun. And I’ve really enjoyed getting to know quite a few of them as well.

Anyhow, I loaded up a few photos from my iPhone and a couple vids from the camera and made this quick Animoto video. If you’ve never used Animoto, give it a shot. It’s super easy and pretty fun!

Oh, hell yes baby. Some micro waves actually came the day after I put this video together. They were only knee high but I was able to yank out about 12 of em. Not too shabby. It somewhat cured my jones for a couple of days at least.

I think in the next day or so I’ll head down to Cocoa Beach and try to score some waves with my pal Eric Farewell. Wish me luck.

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Before the Road Bandits departed to New Orleans, we had to drop a load (literally).

Couch Surfing Ori was there to document the entire thing. Believe it or not, I think it may of been messier walking on Bourbon Street then it was to empty my sewage tank. Thanks for the vids Ori.

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We had a blast in New Orleans. But we decided to move on to Florida to try and get some heat and sunshine.

The clouds have been feverishly stalking me since I began this voyage and I’ve been longing for some yellow beaming rays of warmth ever since. So, Florida here we come.

Before bailing The Big Easy I wanted to stop by my buddy Chad Mac’s house to say hello. Sadly, with a 38 foot coach, traffic snarls and construction it made it a nightmare. So, I opted to just get on I-10 and head east.

While departing New Orleans I witnessed a ton of destruction from Hurricane Katrina. Abandoned houses were scattered everywhere. I get the feeling we didn’t even come close to seeing the worst of it either. It was pretty depressing to think what the locals must of went through. The recent super bowl victory was much needed in this city.

Before completely leaving Louisiana, I needed to fuel up Mary J. While at the Flying J truck stop I had an interesting encounter from a southern truck driver. He was bitching about gas prices. I told him… “this is nothing, you should see what it’s like in California”.

He replied… “California if full of Fucking Communists”.

I laughed, paid my bill and looked for a pink commie hat in the store to antagonize him. They didn’t have any.

Within minutes of leaving the fuel station I was quickly in Mississippi. Instead of traveling along I-10 I decided to hit up highway 90 (the scenic route). I’m sure glad we took this detour. Within minutes I saw a sign that read “Beaches”. I almost got a hardon.

The beaches in Mississippi aren’t much to brag about. The water was brown but the sand was nice. Webber enjoyed pissing on bushes though. It was interesting to roll through small towns like Biloxi. I’ve always wanted to see that place since I saw Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick as a kid.

After a few hours through the scenic route we headed back for I-10 East and made much better time on our travel towards The Sunshine State. Next up was Alabama. We didn’t stop here. I saw a lot of Confederate flags and to be honest, it sort of freaked me out. I seemed to miss Sweet Home Alabama playing on the radio too.

Before I knew it, the welcoming sign for Florida was in my view. We’d made it. Almost. Dying to see the beach and bright blue water I pushed down on the gas pedal. Unfortunately the sun was setting fast. We’d had to wait until the morning to see the water.

A quick bite at the Waffle House and some internet browsing told me that we should hop over the bridge and drive along the Gulf Islands highway 399. After passing the toll booth and the bridge we were finally at the water. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find parking anywhere. It was tough. The one spot I tried to park at resulted in a lady coming out of her house to give us the boot.

Luckily we found a parking lot right on the beach that had no visible signs prohibiting us from parking. Since it was 10 pm already, we thought we may have a good chance to avoid the 5-O’s for the evening and we could depart at sun-up. We made it through the night unscathed.

The sunrise in the morning was beautiful. I mean beautiful. It’s been a while since I’ve been up that early. (Note to self: get up early more often. It’s worth it)

Next, I read the surf report for the gulf area. It appears that waves are in the forecast for Sunday. Waist high waves. Hell yes!

Being super pumped on the idea of catching a few waves I decided to book a RV spot for a few days and wait out the swell. We ended up in Miramar Beach about 2 blocks from the beach. Not a bad spot at all. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring a few ridable waves.

The water here is stunning too. A bit cold, but stunning in it’s appearance. I think the temperature is about 56 or 57 degrees. I went knee deep in the water and it didn’t feel that cold. Thankfully, I have my wet suit with me.

Can’t wait, can’t wait, can’t wait for tomorrow. Cmon wave gods!

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Vegas. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That pretty much sums up most of my trips to sin city.

On new years eve, my buddy Randy Primm was having the best of times, then quickly the worst of times.

Check out this video of his new years eve debauchery…

I’ll be meeting up with Randy in about a week to start our trip. Can’t wait. To read the rest of the story (hey that sounded like Paul Harvey) head on over to the Road Bandit Blog by clicking here.

Go leave Randy a comment on the Road Bandit blog and commend him for pulling off such epic trip to the ER.

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