So why did we do this? By “this” I mean embark on a journey to find a RV and live in it full time. I think I’ve always been a little restless staying in one place too long. During my career I’ve lived and worked in numerous states and a couple foreign countries. In the context of that rumbling, there were two events that proved to be the tipping point.
First were a couple harsh winters in the mid-Atlantic region of the US where I worked at the time. Now harsh is a relative term but we’re talking 3 feet of snow in a region that goes nuts with 3 inches. My thought was, “why am I putting up with this? I can make a living anywhere. I don’t need to be here!”
Second was a birthday getaway The Woman* gave me. We’re sitting on the deck of a boutique resort, watching the sun set over the Chesapeake Bay. I wondered out loud, “why can’t life be more like this every day instead of something we only “escape” to a few times a year?” (It’s telling that we call these “escapes” and “getaways”. It’s almost like trying to get away from something unpleasant. Of course, we are.)
So the journey began. First I dabbled with the notion of multiple timeshares that we could live in over the course of the year. Cost and logistics quickly ruled out that notion. Then I read the book “The Tiniest Mansion – How To Live In Luxury on the Side of the Road in an RV“. That sounded like something I could do! More importantly, for the purposes of this blog, it started to put constrains on the type of RV I wanted.
I wanted the smallest RV that one could reasonably live in full time. I wanted to be able to drive it anywhere and park it anywhere. I didn’t want a real “mansion on wheels” with the associated cost and difficulty getting around. I wanted to be able to negotiate urban streets or drive into the mountains, on the beach or into the desert. (Of course this meant that we needed to downsize dramatically and live a minimalist lifestyle. But that’s a story for another place and time.)
From a practical standpoint in the RV world, that meant I wanted a “Class B” RV. Basically this is an RV adapted from a van or other complete vehicle. When we started looking around for a suitable model, one problem became apparent -the sleeping arrangements. Many Class B RV’s have either twin beds or something that converts from a dining area to a sleeping area. Twin beds are a non-starter. Neither The Woman or I would find that acceptable. Further, having to convert something from dining to a bed and back every day would be a pain. That means I wanted a Class B that had a full time sleeping area with a double or queen size bed. I only found one model that fit the bill – the Airstream B190!
*The Woman is shy. She doesn’t want me to use her real name. So we’ll just go with this.
B190 Expedition 