Bus Life Reality: The Sh*t We’ve Learned

When we started our journey together in the bus in 2022, we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

Some things we figured out because something didn’t fit. Some because something broke. Some because something just didn’t work the way we thought it would.

This isn’t a guide to living in a bus, and we’re definitely not claiming we’ve figured it all out.

It’s just the sh*t we’ve learned living in ours.

And we’re still learning.

The Dodge Was Too Damn Heavy

We travel in the bus, but we pull a vehicle too. From the start, it was a 1991 Ford Ranger. Zach also had a Dodge pickup parked at a friend’s house in Georgia. Since we only need one vehicle, Zach had to decide which one to keep, and he chose the Dodge. It worked out perfectly, because the friend housing the Dodge wanted to buy the Ranger.

That meant an 850-mile drive each way to make the swap, which Zach did in 48 hours, with our dog Louie along as a copilot who mostly sleeps.

Once they got back, we tried one trip with the Dodge behind the bus. The bus made its opinion pretty clear: it was too damn heavy. So I drove the Dodge behind Zach, which sounds fine until you’re trying to drive a manual transmission up a hill right behind a struggling bus. Zach eventually traded the Dodge for a teeny tiny car that got ridiculous gas mileage and was actually light enough to tow.

That Time We Set the Towed Car on Fire

After a tight left turn, the bus and car ended up jackknifed. We unhooked the car, got everything straightened out, and hooked it back up.

Then drove away. With the car still in gear.

About half a mile later, smoke turned into fire. Zach had it mostly out before help arrived, and a kind stranger who’d already called 911 knew someone who could tow the car for free. We were back on the road within about an hour. The car was toast.

The Great 48-Hour Reorganization

While Zach was gone for 48 hours swapping the Ranger for the Dodge, I had the bus to myself. So I tore the place apart.

I bake a lot (I mean A LOT) and I love to cook, which means I have a ridiculous amount of kitchen gear for someone living in a bus. While Zach was gone, I reorganized the under-floor storage, closet, above the bathroom, drawers, cabinets, and pretty much the entire front of the bus. By the time he got back, every single baking and cooking item had a home, and I could actually find it.

Eight Inches of Yarn

Zach knits, and he taught me to knit too. Now we have a ton of yarn. We found bins for it at A to Z in Alma, but finding somewhere in a 200-square-foot bus to put them was another matter.

Our bed is over the driver’s area. When we’re parked, it comes down. When we’re driving, it lifts high enough for Zach to drive and for me to sit beside him. Between the bed in driving position and the brow of the bus, there’s about eight inches of space. Eight inches doesn’t sound like much until you don’t have space to waste, so Zach built custom yarn storage to fit right in that gap.

The Window That Wouldn’t Leave Us Alone

One of our front windows was constantly blasting us with headlights at night or blinding morning sun. Zach made an adjustable curtain for it, so we can have it completely closed, halfway down, or all the way open. Then he made it reversible, because apparently simply fixing the problem wasn’t enough. It worked so well it’s now the prototype for our other windows.

Sometimes You Need a Backhoe

We’ve also learned that a bus this size can get really stuck. Once we buried it badly enough that multiple vehicles tried and failed to pull us out. A backhoe finally did it like it was no big deal. We became considerably more interested in level, hard-packed ground after that.

The Sun Doesn’t Care About Your Plans

We have solar and a generator, and most of the time that combination works just fine. Normally, we barely run the generator except when it needs to be run to keep it healthy.

Then we hit a stretch of rainy, overcast days in North Carolina, and the solar just couldn’t keep up. We found an empty boat launch, fired up the generator, and let it run for about an hour to get everything charged again.

Waiting on a Box Can Change the Route

We have a home. It just doesn’t have a permanent street address wherever we happen to be parked.

We’ve had packages take long enough to arrive that they decided when we could leave an area. That’s a strange thing to discover about traveling full-time: sometimes you’re completely ready to go, but the thing you ordered isn’t.

We’ve gotten much better at dealing with mail and packages since then. Amazon pickup locations, USPS General Delivery, and other options make it a lot easier. We keep the actual how-to in our Road Trip Resources, because otherwise this would turn into an instruction manual.

We Traded an E-Bike for a Car

After the towed-car fire, sightseeing in the bus wasn’t exactly practical. We had an e-bike, but it was more powerful than I wanted and just wasn’t my thing.

Then, at a PEV event, somebody wanted the bike. And had a Honda.

So somehow, we traded an e-bike for a car. The Honda gave us a way to explore again without taking the entire house with us.