rv tech life

A generic update!

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It’s been awhile, friends. Work has been keeping us both busy, and there just hasn’t been a lot of energy leftover for blogging. Which is great in some ways— David loves his job as an RV tech! And tiring in others— I’m a tax preparer, and I haven’t had much of a break thanks to covid. Living with chronic illness and disability means I’ve got time to work or time to take care of myself, but not both. (Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks full-time RV life means full-time vacation!) We are still in Crescent City, California. We absolutely love this area, and hope to explore more of the Pacific Northwest when we are able. We’ve decided to spend the winter here in Crescent City, and experience a PNW winter firsthand. One of the reasons we’re sticking close to our current favorite city is Covid-19. It had …

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So what do we do, anyway?

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One of the biggest questions we asked ourselves in the planning stages of full-time RVing was “how will we pay the bills?” We aren’t going to go into details of dollars and cents (there are tons of great posts out there about that, and despite blogging about our life, we’re actually fairly private people), but we’ll certainly give you a good overview of what we’re doing and how we got here. We did not have a house to sell when we decided to do this. We didn’t even have an abundance of possessions to downsize, because we’d already done that when we made a big move from Michigan to California about 10 years ago, following a fairly traumatic layoff. We are lower-middle class Gen Xers who have experienced poverty and housing insecurity a few times during our lives. We have shared one car for the last 7 years, and haven’t …

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The second time our Keystone Laredo blew a bearing on the highway…

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In July 2020, on our way to the worst work camping gig, we were coming down the hill into Tehachapi, California, and the truck alerted us that it’d lost the signal to the trailer brake. We immediately pull over, I run back to check the plug, thinking it’s a simple problem. It was fine, but I smelled burning and when I got back to the truck, David said “we’ve got flames out there.” We ran for the fire extinguishers, and David put it out quickly. It was the same bearing that caused us to spend a cold night on the interstate back in November 2019. This time, we got lucky (or so we thought) because it was early in the day, and all the parts stores were still open. We even had a spare bearing. Unfortunately, the bearing and race had welded themselves to the spindle, so it wasn’t quite …

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Heading in my new direction

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I am officially an RVSA Certified RV Technician! We’ve been full-time RVers since September 2018, but only on the road since July 2019. Jen and I have been planning and working to fulfill our dream of full-time RV travel. Making this transition meant letting go of the career that had sustained me up to this point. I spent much of the last 20+ years working as a operations and equipment maintenance supervisor in the manufacturing industry. I was very good at my job but I was fed up and burned out. The politics, dehumanizing management, and frustrating environments meant each day was a soul-sucking blender. We budgeted, scrimped, and saved in order to help make the transition possible. I have always been a hands-on person and enjoy fixing and making things. My favorite job was the three years I spent working as a residential electrician before going back to school …

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