Date:         Sat, 22 Jan 2011 23:07:56 +0300
Reply-To:     Joy Hecht <jhecht@ALUM.MIT.EDU>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Joy Hecht <jhecht@ALUM.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Phrydae Topic: Who Is Living in Their Vanagon Full Time?
In-Reply-To:  <AANLkTinRUCT-bFav=sa5c9WbMn+inE6FoVE3m1DPBTmo@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I think the real challenge on fulltiming is the job situation.  If you're
independently wealthy you can do what you want, but otherwise you need a way
to earn money as you go.  Otherwise you're not really full-timing, you're
taking a break until the money runs out.  Barb does that by picking up
waitressing jobs.  I had intermittent overseas consulting work - for my
work, full-timing in the van was no different from what I'd be doing if I
had regular housing.

Another question is whether you have a community you expect to return to at
some point, and perhaps whether you have a home you may wan to move back to
at some point.  I wasn't living in my house when I went on the road (I was
in a different city for a job, and my house was rented anyway).  I didn't
particularly want to move back to where my house was, but I was having
issues with my tenants, I was tired of traveling, and taking my own house
back was basically a diplomatic way to get the tenants (who were friends)
out and have a place to go. Easier than evicting my tenants and then having
to replace them.

I think doing it Barb's way - using the van as a way to go from place to
place, but stay there for a while and pick up jobs as you go - might be
easier than traveling all the time.  I can't really imagine wandering
indefinitely - I just lost interest after two and a half years.  At time I
thought it would be good to take some basic job (probably in a coffee house
- that would be my equivalent of Barb's waitressing, I think) and stay to
get to know what the community was like.  But I never did that.  It probably
would have been a good thing to try, maybe I should have.

In my next life...


Joy

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 6:02 PM, Peter T. Owsianowski <
pnoceanwesty@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Joy!  Forgot you were doing that when you came through Buses by the
> Beach that year.
>
> Maybe your model is the way to:  Down size to the point where the situation
> is manageable enough to just take off for 3-6 months at a time.  That way,
> one has a "home base" to come back to if road weariness sets in.
>
> Thanks for the links - we always enjoy your great photos!
>
> Pete
> '79 Westy "Aardvark"
> '87 Westy "JoesVan"
> WWW.Busesbythebeach.com
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 11:28, Joy Hecht <jhecht@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>> Actually, the fulltiming list is really no more about fulltiming than this
>> list, and very few of the folks on it are actually fulltiming.  But it can
>> be interesting.
>>
>> At the end of 2003 I liquidated much of my stuff and went full time in my
>> van - lived in it for around three years without housing elsewhere.  More
>> than you ever want to know about my life in a van can be found on my
>> website, www.joyhecht.net - click on the link for "travels with Matilda."
>> By the end of that period, which I spent traveling (as opposed to living
>> in
>> one place in my van), I was tired of traveling - moved back to my house
>> (which had been rented) and reassembled the makings of a household.  Since
>> then I've been moving around a lot, though - moved back into the van, a
>> lot
>> of travel for work, etc.  I supposedly have a home elsewhere now, but I
>> don't seem to spend more than a few months a year there.
>>
>> Barb Cotton has been fulltiming for a few years.  She has an intermittent
>> blog, but I don't think she updates it a lot.  She travels some and does a
>> bunch of picking up jobs in or near national parks - waitressing and
>> stuff.
>> She's spent a lot of time in Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, that neck of the
>> woods.  Aha, I found her blog:  http://inmy83westy.wordpress.com/
>>
>> There are a number of people who take maybe six months or a year of
>> traveling, and maintain blogs about where they go - then return home and
>> go
>> back to somewhat more conventional life.  Not so many who really liquidate
>> their homes and don't have one at all.
>>
>> This site isn't specifically about vanagons, but it's kind of cool:
>> http://tinyhouseblog.com/
>>
>>
>>
>> Joy
>> and Matilda, who's resting in NJ now while I'm working in Nairobi
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Loren Busch <starwagen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >  RE: Full timing
>> > You need to join the Yahoo Group vwvanfulltimers.. Several full timers,
>> > several some times full timers, and several who have full timed in the
>> past
>> > in the Westfalias.
>> >
>>
>
>