Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.  ~Robert Braul

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.  ~John Burroughs

Maybe a person’s time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.  ~Frank A. Clark

Live simply that others might simply live.  ~Elizabeth Seaton

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.  ~William Morris

Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than submit to the desolation of an empty abundance.  ~Michael Harrington

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.  ~Vernon Howard

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.  ~Edwin Way Teale

We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants.  Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.  ~Donald Horban

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.  ~Hans Hofmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap, 1993

A few days ago, I wouldn’t believe it if you told me it would be this way. Here I am looking around, and realizing, we don’t own much of anything. The realization of years of accumulated material wealth, gone. It is honestly liberating. Once the last few items go, there is nothing holding us in place. We have no need to maintain rent, or utilities or anything. This is the first time I have felt this since I was like 19 years old. It is kinda scary in the sense that I would hate to have to work to build up things again, but that is not our plan so I am not worried. Now, we work toward one goal and one goal alone, to get a home with wheels. There is no looking back now. No way to hit rewind or ask for our stuff back. Nothing in the way to make us change our mind. If everything pans out next week with our bus, we are only a few months away from a dream/vision come true!

I think it’s about time I posted something. You know, I feel the need to come clean and be honest, and share how scary this whole process is. Even though I know in my heart that we are doing the right thing, it’s as if everything on the outside is in shock because it literally feels like we are going backwards in life. A main purpose of our existance for the last 7 years has been to grow materially, to aquire more and better things, bigger and better residences, more stable and secure jobs, and in the last two weeks we have started shifting the gears to go in the total  opposite direction, to start the process of winding down this momentum that we had going in that direction, and eliminating physical things and cutting our financial ties here. It is so incredibly nerve wracking. It feels as if you’re throwing security out the window. And the hardest part is not knowing where we will be in a month. Even though I know we will have food clothes and shelter, it’s so crazy to not know what your circumstances will be or what you will be doing in 30 days time! In a way it feels like jumping off a cliff, and in a way I think that’s exactly what we’re doing. They say change and success doesn’t happen if you don’t take risks, and maybe that applies here. Well I thought I’d just be transparent here and say “yikes, this is scary!” to document this time and reveal this process. There is so much I know we will gain from this experience though, and there’s a 1000 feelings going on inside and all clashing togther at the moment. I’m also proud of us for finally doing this, and also really excited for great changes to take place and for great memories to be made with my family. I pray that we grow tighter as a family, and learn to live a deeper, more satesfying life and grow immensely as people throught this…. and in my heart, I know we will.

Ok. So this is my first real post about our coming adventure. I must say, we are getting really anxious about it and are having a really hard time controlling ourselves. We want to JUST GO ALREADY! However, we are trying to make sure we do it to the best of our ability and are adequately prepared for anything. Before we go buy an RV, we have to make a tough decision.

Our dream has been to live in a mobile home and experience freedom in this way. We knew that we would be cluttered with 4 people in a small RV. After pondering the purchase of an RV, we realize that even the best of them, which is far far too expensive for us to afford, are still going to be a tight fit. The ones we could afford are pretty darn intimidating due to their size. The thought of the chaos that are called children that I see in the house today squeezing inot that small space is frightening. We thought, we need more room if we can get it, but how.

When we were discussing how we would accomplish this, a really cool and fun thought came into my mind. “What if we were to have a double decker bus converted into an RV. I figured if people convert school buses into an RV, it must certainly be possible with a double decker. In fact, I wondered if anybody had done it before and how much it costs. It was a passing thought that I entertained for a second, but did not actually consider a possibility. I scanned around the net and read about people who wanted to do this, but found only two families that actually did. I was amazed that there weren’t more. I do not remember how it happened, but in the process we found a bus in our area. We decided, why not take a look at it. So we did. To make a long story short, the guy was trying to sell it for $6,000. Too much for my blood considering the work needing to be done. So I decided to wait several months and hit him up again. So I did and he offered it for $1,000. I thought about it for a few weeks and did all the research to figure out if it was really fixable and what it would require. I was ready to take it and tried to contact the individual to find that his phone was disconnected and he was not replying via email. BUMMER!

So, we were ready to completely drop the Bus idea and get an RV. We decided to search around one last time and my wife stumbled upon a website archive from over 2 years ago with a guy advertising buses in our area. So we sent him and email and as it turns out, he did in fact have the EXACT SAME BUS, stored (LITTERALLY) 5 miles away from where we live. WOW! So we rushed down in excitement to see it. This bus actually runs but also needs some work. After talking to the owner, he basically said that if we don’t have around $20,000 to buy it, don’t even bother trying. BUMM-ER!

Now, we are at a bit of a crossroads trying to determine rather or not we should wait on our dream, so that we can fullfill the vision of doing it in a double decker bus. Our Dream sooner, or our Dream and vision later. Hmmm! It would be sooo much more fun in a double decker though, BUT, Do I really want to wait and how long before we come up with the money. We will see!

On another note, these buses run on diesel, so we would like to convert them to run on used vegetable oil.

The purple bus is the bus where we lost contact with the owner who was going to sell it for $1,000

The white and green one is the one that is going to cost some serious money.