The Good - part one

I started writing this a few months ago but never got around to finishing it because I thought we hadn't lived in the bus long enough to give a valid opinion. Yesterday was our six month anniversary of living on the bus and I think that it's been long enough to give a fair comparison to living in a house. I'm dividing this into two parts, here is the first one:

Everyday now I realize something new that I really appreciate or am grateful for that I didn't pay attention to or even notice while I lived in a house.  It made me think about the comparisons or trade offs I've made to get where I am today.  A few years ago when I got back from thruhiking the Appalachian Trail I went through a rough transition going from living outside on a trail to living back in a house, going to work and living in a typical Canadian small town.  I clearly remember thinking that so many of the choices we make living in society were totally wasteful and needless an at the same time missing or yearning for the natural beauty and peacefulness and freedom that I thought came from trail life.  I wanted to figure out a way to make those two totally different worlds come together because let's face it I probable couldn't live the rest of my life on a trail.  Fast forward three years and here I am doing exactly that!  I'm finding a way to make the two worlds collide!  Here is a list of trade offs I've made and how I think it's worked out:  Traded a 1000 plus square foot house for an 80 square foot bus.  This trade alone has given me so much more free time than I had imagined.  It takes minutes to clean or tidy up the bus compared to the hours it takes to clean a whole house. It takes way less work! Half a months wages to pay for a house compared to half a weeks wages to live in a bus for a month! Imagine only having to work for half a week a month to pay for you bills! Traded mostly indoor living for mostly outdoor living.  Even while inside now I have a 360 degree view!  This trade off on its own is enough to change someone! I have noticed every sunrise and sunset since living on the bus!  I have sat in bed as deer walked right past my bed on the other side of the window panes! I notice the clouds and their shapes, the colour of the sky, the direction and feel of the wind!  I hear the howl of the coyotes, the sounds of the birds and the scampering of the squirrels on a daily basis. I have a love for creation, an appreciation of the beauty of nature and a gratitude that I am able to enjoy it and a joy that wells up in me for life everyday!  This is the difference for me between living inside versus outside.  I am so much happier now!  Traded my modern day appliances and conveniences for a slower way of life.  This doesn't sound like an advantage but it truly has been.  We take our time prepping and cooking our meals together now.  Our food and coffee tastes better (well not as good as in Spain but you know what I mean).  We seem to get more enjoyment out of everything! We can pick and choose our surroundings for each meal. Do we want to eat at the park, by the waterfront, or at a secluded spot? Our life isn't so stationary anymore!  We spend more time together now compared to both of us being at home but in different rooms of the house doing separate things. Living in a bus has also made us so aware of everything we use and how wasteful we were before.  We carry limited water on the bus and use it sparingly.  We use solar power and are very aware of how much power we use if we ever plug something extra in. We don't have space for garbage and recycling on the bus and find ourselves leaving the packaging behind at whatever store we happen to be at when we purchase something and we only purchase what we need as we need it.  We notice how needlessly wasteful our society has become.  We are still getting shedding possessions that we realize we don't need and learning just how little we actually need to have a healthy, happy life!

Another Upgrade

The weather has been so good! We haven't needed to keep the heater on all night yet but we were a bit nervous about the cold weather that is going to come. The other day while at Canadian Tire we decided to pick up a small electric smart heater just in case our propane heater doesn't cut it on the cold nights. Friends have already offered their homes to us in case it gets too cold but we'd really like to try to stay in the bus. We came up with the idea of the heater knowing that if it gets too cold we can park in a friend's driveway and plug in the bus. This way we will be able to use both heaters if needed. Michael took the console at the front of the van off (so we've lost our cup holders) to make the perfect spot to mount the electric heater. He did a great job and we got to try out the heater last night. It was actually too warm and I had to turn it off during the night! I think the bus is ready for winter!

Winter Upgrade

We have been using the small 1 lb propane canisters for the Coleman stove and our Mr. Heater. They work great and allow for us to move the stove outside whenever we feel like cooking outdoors. However, it's not very cost effective and the it's hard to find places to recycle the empty canisters. Today we are mounting a 20 lb propane tank to the back of the bus and installing permanent pipes and hoses to both the stove and the heater.  It's hard to watch as Michael drills multiple holes from the outside in so close to the back window that I'm afraid the window is going to shatter. No windrows were broken in this bus renovation and all of the holes in the bus have been filled with screws or the pipe for the propane.   We chose the easy route and bought a hose designed to go from a propane tank to a barbecue for outside the bus. Next we purchased two universal torch extension hoses that we used inside the bus and some teflon tape to make sure each attachment is sealed. I was nervous as we turned on the propane for the first time wondering if we were about to blow up our bus but Michael had added an extra shut off valve so he was able to let just a little bit of gas into the lines and test each connection safely. It was a good thing he did because we did have a leak that needed fixed! Everything is in working order now and we can keep the heater on all the time if we need to! We just need to remember to shut the tank off before we drive away!

Winterizing the bus!

Our friends are starting to get concerned about us. Not because we are living in a bus (well some of them might be) but because the temperatures are starting to drop and they are wondering how we are making out. We are so fortunate to have friends who care and have offered to share their homes if ever we get too cold or need a place to go. But it made me think that writing a blog about what we have done to winterized the bus might put our friends at ease. It's only November but so far this is what we have done to keep warm:

1. Insulate the floor.  I bought a couple packs of those foam mats that fit together like puzzle pieces and put them together covering our beautiful floor. To be honest I wasn't sure how Michael would feel about it but he loved it and couldn't believe the difference it made. That started a whole conversation about what else we could insulate. I suggested buying more foam mats and covering most of the windows but Michael thought that it would make the bus seem like a rubber room so that was out! 

2. Insulate as many of the windows as we were willing to give up. 

What we ended up doing was using   1" styrofoam (that was originally insulating the garage but was just insulating the storage unit) and covering the back three windows on both sides leaving a three inch gap on the back windows for air circulation. Then we bought a piece of the cheapest wood paneling we could find ($23 I think) and paid a few dollars for the cuts we needed so we could install it immediately. We covered the hideous styrofoam with the panelling blocking most of our windows. Surprisingly, it looked great and made the bus feel like a cabin! That week we couldn't believe how cozy the bus felt and decided that the following weekend we would insulate the remaining two windows on each side but leave the top halves open so that we could see out and still use those windows of we wanted to let fresh air in. It is unbelievable the difference this has made even on a nice weather day. 

3. Install a heater. We found the smallest Mr. Heater Buddy on sale ($99) bought it and installed it on the back door. It burns propane and therefore we have to keep the windows down a crack to make sure there is enough fresh air in the bus but it works great even with the window open. Right now we are still using it with a  1lb.  propane canister but have purchased a mount to install a 20 lb. tank outside on the the back which will be much more cost effective for both heating the bus and cooking our meals.    My bus living friends seem to all be using Mr. Heaters of varying sizes and have had no complaints about staying warm. If I had taken the time to do a little more research I think I would have purchased a propane furnace instead so that I wouldn't have to worry about keeping my window open a crack and also because I think the furnace would have exchanged the air better eliminating any condensation problems we might have in the future. For now the heater seems to work fine and can warm up a cold bus quickly!

4. Insulate the passenger door. During the summer we had taken the door closing mechanism off and installed a simple door handle. It worked okay but the door definitely didn't have a tight seal like it did before. We added a few more parts to each door and now we can open and lock each door individually. That made a huge difference but still wasn't good enough! Next we added a foam seal strip down one side of the door (where the doors meet when they are closed) and a seal across the top of the doors. This has entirely eliminated the draft but we may add an additional foam strip down the insides of the door for added protection. I had a few pieces of foam from mats left over and we had realized that we don't ever use the bottom windows on the door so we covered them with black foam for the winter. Lastly, (and I'm really not sure that this is going to make it warmer) we installed a black roller blind above the door so we can pull the blind down to cover the top windows. It also gives us a bit of privacy! :) 

5. Cover the windshield at night. We are making use of an emergency blanket (those thin silver sheets people use to stay alive in emergencies) to cover the front window at night. It reflects the heat back at us from the heater and acts as a insulating window covering. It also gives us privacy! 

6. -7 degree sleeping bags. The sleeping bags we use when we hike are on the bus and although we use sheets and a big comforter we have the sleeping bags handy if we need them.

Choose to do the things that make you happy!

I want you to be happy right now! This moment today and everyday forward. I don't want you to wait for happiness for some time in the future or think that when I have this or have accomplished that then I will be happy. That's not the way it works! Why do we compromise our happiness for anything? Why do we take jobs we don't love or stay at home and do nothing just to save money!  How many times have you not gone to visit an out of town friend or family member because we thought we couldn't afford it right now. Why do we value our pocketbooks over our friends, our family and our happiness? To some extent every single one of us is guilty of this in some way or form. It's like we've been trained from the time we were little to be little robots doing everything society wants us to do first before we can do the things that bring us joy and make us truly happy. This is wrong! I'm not suggesting that we stop doing things for other people but certainly we should stop doing things we truly don't want to do! Making others happy can bring you so much joy when it's genuine and not done out of obligation! This past week I have spent a lot of time visiting friends, some of whom I haven't seen for a very long time. It wasn't that I didn't want to visit sooner but I had piled my life up with obligations that I felt should come before my happiness. I am going to try not to do this anymore. It was so good for my soul to see my friends and while I was visiting I realized how good it was for them to be visited. Some things in life have more value than we think. Maybe it's time to stop and prioritize the things we do each day based on what we value most rather than what we think we ought to do. This is a picture of my good friends Paul and Debbie (and their dog Molly) who have always made time for friends and family. I wish I could say that I took the picture but I forgot to take any pictures of anyone I saw last week. This was taken on their recent trip to Manitoulin  Island to visit family.