| It's become difficult to keep up with all of
the email that I get regarding converting a bus... I had written some
of my thoughts here at one point, but took them off because I got sick of
defending myself from those people that disagreed with my opinions. It
is interesting to me how much emotional attachment some people have to the
idea of being free. They don't like to hear that there is really not
much freedom to be had from the mobile lifestyle without cutting yourself
off from society or living in a pretty shitty environment with less than
desirable neighbors. It is very difficult for me to explain why we sold
our bus. It's complicated. There were so many different influences
working against us at the time that we made the decision to give it all up.
It wasn't just one reason, but a compilation of many reasons and a deep
feeling of hopelessness and helplessness that eventually won out over our
desire to keep the adventure going...
Our bus was not exactly a dream. It was (at best) a self contained
cabin of sorts. It had problems. Not the least of which was a
leaky transmission that resisted all of my efforts to be repaired and
electrical problems that kept the blower motors and A/C system from ever
working properly. Finding parts for an older bus is a serious pain in
the neck. Especially windows, seals and other model specific parts
that can't be obtained from your run of the mill parts catalog. Being
afraid of a breakdown every time we moved the bus made us a lot less mobile
than we had originally planned as well - and if we are going to be parked in
one spot for extended lengths of time, what is the point of living in a bus?
Money ran out sooner than expected. Some of the parts that we
scavenged from the trailer for use in the bus crapped out on us and needed
to be replaced almost immediately. In my opinion, RV appliances in
general seem to be much lower quality and much higher priced than their
household equivalents. We were able to save some money by savaging for
parts, but in the long run, we still spent $15, 000.00 on new items.
In all honesty, we spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $23,000.00 on the
bus project. For that same amount of money, we could have bought a
very nice RV and started traveling immediately. Sure, there were
advantages to the bus, but they did not nearly offset the disadvantages in
my opinion.
Society really looks down on the whole bus conversion idea.
Everyone that I knew thought that I had lost my mind when I started this
project. My parents were generally concerned that I was making a big
mistake and made it clear that they did not approve of my decision -
especially the decision to go full time in the bus with the girls. We
learned early on that it was better to refer to the bus as a "coach" instead
of a transit bus when talking to anyone about the whole adventure. The
RV manufacturers know this one too - most of the really high end RV's are
just buses, but they're all referred to as coaches - I imagine for the same
reasons that we referred to ours as a coach. People hear bus and think
of an old school bus with a VW attached to the top and wood shingles on the
exterior. I don't know what is so bad about a wood shingled schoolie...
Apparently I was born too late to fully understand that stigma even though I
made the decision not to go that route from the beginning because I knew
that there was that extra baggage attached.
Nobody seems to have a problem with mass produced RVs of any age, but
when you pull into an RV park with something that does not look like a
standard RV, you run into quite a bit of resistance. All of the RV
parks that we inquired at during our travel stated that it is their policy
to only accept RVs that are no more than 15 years old. This is not so
much of a policy as we discovered, but more of an excuse that is used to
keep out undesirable RVs and busses. After all, it's not about the age
- I saw a 1960's Airstream (pretty run down) parked in one of the RV parks
that refused to let us stay even one night. I talked with several RV park
attendants and was told that the management did not want any conversions
parked in their spaces because it turned away the luxury coaches and big
RVs. In addition, I was told by one attendant that if they make an
exception for a bus like ours (one that doesn't look too bad) then they
would have a difficult time turning away other not so desirable "mobile
dwellings". I think that our bus conversion got lumped into the same
category as the "hippy bus" even though we made every effort to conform and
blend in as much as possible.
I understand the point of view of the RV park manager. I wouldn't
want to have a bus full of 20 "free spirits" splitting the space rent, using
4-6 times the resources of a typical RV and having questionable fluids leaking
out of the underside of a mostly converted schoolie. I think
those type of people are also generally not interested in spending much money on
amenities while living as cheaply as possible on space rent... I imagine that kind of thing has happened in the past and
has basically ruined it for those of us that just want a nice convenient
place near town to live a somewhat "normal" life.
What went wrong? We made quite a few mistakes... We settled
on a bus that I did not originally intend to convert. I originally
wanted something a lot more modern looking like an RTS. I knew that it
would be difficult to make an older bus look nice enough to pass the visual
critique we would get from society. I also wanted something that would
be easy to find replacement parts for and had a good sized group of people
that had already done a similar conversion. I tried for a couple of months to get
one, but for some reason every deal that I came across fell through. I
was so frustrated (and running out of time) so I basically grabbed the first
bus that met my absolute minimum requirements. Another huge mistake
was not finding a suitable place to convert the bus. I did the entire
conversion outdoors and quite a distance from our house. The
conversion process would have gone smoother and taken even less time if I
had planned ahead and found an indoor space (nice and level and sheltered
from the elements) to convert the bus and store all of the items needed for
the conversion. Almost all of the construction was
done from inside the bus. It would have been a lot easier to build the
cabinets and interior walls elsewhere for example, and then install them
inside the bus. Being forced to halt the conversion process early each
day to lock up the tools and protect everything from theft and the rain
slowed progress immensely as well.
The bottom line is this... We learned a lot. I would never
convert an older bus again. It just doesn't seem worth the financial
cost to have a home that carries that much stigma with it. The amount
of money required to remove that stigma makes the final cost too high for
the final value. We sold our bus for $10,000.00 and considered
ourselves lucky to have been able to find a buyer even at that price. We would have been
better off buying a $18-20,000.00 used RV from the beginning and started living in it right away.
By buying a ready made RV, we could have tried out the full time mobile lifestyle
(without the stigma)
and been able to recover 80% of our investment if and when we wanted to
settle down again. True, it would not have been as sturdy or as
customized to our liking, but then what good did the bus do for us when we
couldn't afford to finish it or even find a place willing to store it for
us. That's right, nobody where we wanted to visit for a couple of
weeks was even willing to store the bus for any price once they found out it
was an older bus conversion.
We don't have the bus now because we really couldn't find any good
location to live in it. Sure, we could park it lots of places 150
miles from anywhere, but we wanted the girls to go to a good school and to
have the same opportunities as other kids their age. Full timing seems
to be reserved for retirees and single individuals that have no real need to
stay tied to the big cities. Becky and I need jobs, schools, fresh
produce and high speed internet access - the kind of things that are not
available in the areas where free or low cost RVing exist. The other
big reason we are not still living in the bus (and one I hesitate to
mention) is because we had no peers to RV with. Almost everyone that
we met was of retirement age. Those that were not did not want to have
anything to do with a couple that lived in a bus (they had their brand new
RV and their 4 wheelers, ski doos, etc. - you know the type). The few
people that didn't meet either of those categories were religious freaks and
scared the crap out of Becky and I... What is it that attracts bible
waving weirdos to bus conversions anyway? And why did they all assume
that because we lived in a bus conversion that we were religious freaks too?
Anyway, I will do another conversion someday. Why?
For the enjoyment that I get out of creating and problem solving.
When I do it again though, I will not choose an older bus to convert.
I will most likely go another route altogether. I will either convert
a newer hybrid electric vehicle or create something similar to the "toy
haulers" that I see at the local RV lots. I am beginning to see
the advantages to having the "motor" and "home" as two separate parts.
In any case, whatever I end up building/converting I want to be able to
blend in so that we can have the freedom to go wherever we want and not
stand out. In fact, the more we can blend in with the crowd and not be
taken notice of the more freedom we will actually have... If you are still
convinced that a bus conversion is the way to go then my advise would be as
follows:
- Get the smallest size bus you can get away with. We went with
a 40 foot bus and we were not able to stay at any national parks (and
most campgrounds even if they specified 60 foot spaces) while traveling.
We just didn't fit anywhere. Get something a lot smaller and your
freedom/options will be much better.
- Get something with good ground clearance. We were not able to
boondock in Quartzsite where we wanted to because the bus was so low to
the ground. This also goes along with the shorter length...
- Get something with underside storage. We never had enough
storage space and I wish we had held out for anything with even the
smallest of underside storage.
- Find something that is easy to get parts for. Verify the parts
are available before you buy!
- Get something that looks modern right off the bat. Unless you
are willing to be shunned from most places, planning to stay in the
desert exclusively or made of money and can afford to update everything,
avoid the old looking stuff - you're not going to ever make it look like
a modern coach.
- Consider RVing first. You have nothing to lose by testing the
water in a smaller boat. We went straight from the shore to ocean
liner and found out really quick that our options for docking were very
limited.
- Make sure that you have a place to store your creation if you find
yourself out of options.
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