12.24.15 Merry Christmas!

Christian and I are spending the holiday down on the Texas coast at an RV park almost entirely made up of full-time snow-birds. To say that we and the bus stick out a bit would be a massive understatement. However, we're loving it. The days are hot and humid to the point of needing paddles to get through the heavy air.

It's amazing that we only left Colorado on Labor Day weekend in the Campbulance and here we are living in Stubbs the Bus. Who knows what the next year may bring, but we're both excited to find out. 

I always love sending out Christmas cards, but with our current situation it just wasn't going to be realistic, so instead you'll have to settle for a digital card!

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[A huge thanks to Austin Light for his wonderful illustration of our family. Click on his name if you're interested in commissioning work from him.]

12.17.15 Drawers, propane, heater and more!

Sorry for the big hiatus!  We were fast at work over on the tree lot. Mostly selling trees, but a little bit working on the bus in our spare moments as well. 

However, as of last Wednesday, we were officially done with the trees, which meant we were able to continue working on the bus until we left San Antonio on Monday. And now that we're settled into our comfy RV resort on the coast of Texas with plentiful wifi, I can start catching up on posting about the work we've accomplished.

Because we've managed to eek out so many projects during our time in Texas, loading it all into one post not only seemed daunting to me, but Christian made the smart observation that anyone reading it might quickly become overwhelmed as well.

So, I'm going to tackle blogging about one project (or, in this case, small group of projects) at a time until we've completely caught up!

Drawers/Propane/Heater:

One of the big projects we needed to tackle was finding ways to utilize some of the empty space in the kitchen. There were some spots where there used to be drawers, but they didn't come with the set. Christian set about to make some drawers for that under-counter space to hold our dishes, cookware and pantry. Beneath the oven space we created was also a spot screaming its unused potential, so he decided to make a drawer to hold random household objects and cleaning supplies as well as providing a spot to mount our small propane heater.

I wish I'd taken a better photo of these drawers. When I finally take the time to build a dedicated photo page for our conversion, I'll include one for sure. There are two large deep and heavy duty drawers to hold our cooking ware, dishes and pantry items in the far side of the kitchen.

This is the under-oven drawer that will house the heater.

Christian left the propane hookups to me (I'm still not certain why he ever trusted something so dangerous to me). I had to spend half a day driving all the way across San Antonio to a special propane shop to find all the specific connectors we needed to hook up our tank to the oven and heater for dual use.

After running through the order in which I needed to hook everything up no less than three times with the fine gentleman at the propane place. I also made him retell me how to correctly use teflon tape to wrap the connections and then how to test with soapy water for leaks.

The connecting took me a while, because I did find some leaks and had to redo multiple connections or ask Christian to use his brute strength to tighten them a little bit more (tight plus grunt!).

Once we were finally confident that I wasn't about to kill us via propane leaks, we fired up our heater to test it out.

It had gotten particularly cold a few nights in a row (down in the 30s), so we had been driven by the chill to push forward with this project. We were glad we did, as the night we got it all working was a frigid one. It also provided an enormous drying power, which is arguably as nice as the heat.

Loulou was at first skeptical of the odd hissing noises and crackling sounds the heater made as it was warming up, but she quickly realized that it gave off heat and made it her business to stick nearby.

Hooking up the oven was the final leg of the propane project. It meant no more dragging out our single-burner camp stove to heat up food or water. We were excited.

In addition to the hookups, we wanted to make the propane/water storage area more travel friendly. We're fairly certain we will upgrade our water storage at some point (we just took these jerry cans from the Campbulance), but until then, we operate with two 5 gallon cans.

We decided to cut holes in the base of the kitchen to allow the propane and water to nestle into cubbies on the floor and not move while we drive. This meant dragging out the jigsaw and adding a little more sawdust to our already dusty construction-zone of a bus. (I keep telling Christian I want a Dirt Devil for Christmas, but he's not convinced.)

The cubbies work like a charm, giving us the peace of mind that when we drive we won't have a propane tank or water jugs sliding around. (We still haven't decided on a permanent grey water storage system yet…this was also stolen from the Campbulance.)

As always, I've got to include a photo of Loulou enjoying the bus life. Here she is taking advantage of the afternoon sun. (She's well-trained enough that she'll only venture out if we set her stool out for her.)

A Very Special Christmas Tree

I've got an upcoming post in the works about our latest bus conversion projects, but until I have time to write it, I wanted to write this quick post about a special Christmas tree that ended up at our lot.

We received four semi truck shipments of trees to our lot over the course of a few weeks. Each delivery has anywhere from 100 to 250 trees on it just for our lot in addition to the hundreds allotted for other lots in the area.

This particular shipment was our last and we were the last stop for the semi, so our trees were piled all the way in the back of the trailer.

Our process for unloading the trees starts with simply dragging them to the opening. We have two measuring sticks taped up to the sides of the truck so that we can measure each tree as we take it out. After we measure it, we'll reference a pricing sheet (we price trees by height) and write out a price on a tag, tag the tree, then inventory it. The tree then gets unbundled and added to our pile to await being put on a post to be sold.

While unloading this particular shipment, we unearthed a tree with a green tag on it. Upon closer inspection, we were excited to see that it was being tracked by a class in North Carolina (where the trees are grown).

The note reads:

As a class project, a 1st grader at Blue Ridge Elementary has tagged this tree. We would like to know its final destination. Will you help us "map our trees" by sending us the name of your city and state  to the address below? Thank you!

After reading the note, we decided to go a step further and document our side of the process for them!

When the tree finally found its home, Christian asked if we could take a photo for the post and they happily obliged.

So, to the 1st grade class at Blue Ridge Elementary School, your tree ended up at the Papa Noel Christmas Tree lot in North San Antonio for a little while before he went to a nice family nearby! Thanks for the little bit of purpose and excitement we found while helping to track your tree!

11.23.15 - Christmas trees and countertops.

We've been adapting easily to living in the bus for a few weeks now. It's pretty awesome, given that for most, moving into a short bus would be downsizing. For us, it's a major upgrade from the Campbulance! We absolutely love it and Loulou seems to really enjoy the extra space to run and play as well.

Loulou loves sniffing the air while soaking up the afternoon sun.

When we arrived in San Antonio, we thought we would hit the ground running, but due to a delay in shipment, we waited three days for our first truck full of trees to pull into the lot. Following closely behind (literally…30 minutes later) was our second shipment. So, just like that, we had 170 trees to unload, untie, set up, inventory, price and organize.

Prior to that insanity, Christian worked on getting the tent and decorations all set up, including repainting some of the signs that had fire damage. 

Christian cutting a space for the oven to be installed. The perfect-fit kitchen counter that we got at the Little Rock Restore is slowly, but surely, being edited to fit all our small appliances.

I spent a fair amount of time staining, poly-ing and prepping our kitchen counter to be installed. After my last coat of poly was applied one morning, Christian and I carried it to the edge of the tent to lay on some cardboard to allow it to dry in the sun.

I headed to the gym for a shower and came back to the bad news of a fire inspector having run over the counter. It was an odd moment of defeat and anger mixed with total confusion about how anyone could be dumb enough to find the one thing laying in a giant parking lot and decide to run over it. (And then apparently try to innocently claim that they thought it was trash…[why would you choose to run over a pile of trash in an entirely empty lot??])  Anyway…it happened, and there's nothing to be done (I might still be a little sore about it though).

It's really hard to see in the photo the cracks, but the whole thing was cracked and ruined. You can see a faint tire mark.

Our lot mate, Chris (also our friend that got us this job) was kind enough to let us borrow his truck to run out to the closest Home Depot to get a new piece of wood so I could begin the countertop process again.

They didn't have the same type of wood that I'd previously used, so I had to settle for a nice ply. Due to my disheartened state, I didn't document the process of re-staining and cutting the counter to fit the oven. It's now installed and it looks great, so I'll take some photos of that later for you and post them.

And here's a few photos of the trees arriving to the lot!

11.17.15 - The bumpy road to Texas.

We arrived in Austin on Sunday afternoon, after breaking up the drive over the course of three days. Since we didn't leave until Thursday night (we finally called UPS and went to meet the UPS truck to get our package…), we stayed the first night in Little Rock, only about 40 miles south of Searcy. Our next night was spent in Atlanta, Texas and the third night was in Jewett, Texas.

Since we hadn't had time to sort out window coverings, we used the remaining foam insulation and a piece of cardboard from the oven box to hobble together some privacy. It worked remarkably well and I slept like a baby our first night in a Walmart parking lot in Little Rock.

We opened our oven up the next morning with a bunch of excitement after all the hassle we'd been through to get it.

Wouldn't you know, the box was damaged and the oven has a large dent in the front of it. We both think it's just superficial damage that won't affect its ability to work, but it's just one in many hiccups we've had dealing with the company we ordered it from. We're still debating as to whether we will try and send it back or keep it and enjoy the extra bit of personality the bump gives it.

Loulou is adjusting quickly to the bus life. Having spent about a month and a half living and traveling with us in the Campbulance definitely didn't hurt. She hates when we're driving, as to be expected, but after about the second day, she was moving around and finding her favorite places to lay while we drive.

She seems to alternate between being totally enamored by the ability to watch the road from the bed and being terrified by it.

One of our absolute favorite things about the bus that we didn't have in the Campbulance is being able to live completely inside. We took full advantage of this on our trip and pulled over to cook breakfast/lunch every day at the plentiful "picnic areas" along the way. Being self-contained in such a manner that we don't have to roll out the motorbikes to use the space is so great. And being able to stand is just such a spoiling element having never had that with the Campbulance.

I finally got brave on the second day of driving and asked Christian if he'd like me to drive. He was surprised, but gleefully took ownership of the passenger seat as I found my way behind the wheel. Honestly, after just a few miles I was completely comfortable. (I'm sure my past history of driving food trucks around San Diego has a lot to do with that…) We're both excited that we can now comfortably split the driving between us.

We're now parked at the Christmas tree lot in San Antonio where we'll be living and working for the next 5-6 weeks. I'll try to post updates every time we have the chance to do work on the bus, but I have a feeling we'll be keeping pretty busy slinging trees from here on out.