Been posting around a few places here after finally finding and merging my original account from 2008 with the one i signed up for in 2020, while shopping for a bus then (I'll get back to that...).
Figured I really should kind of introduce myself, since otherwise I'll probably come off as arrogant or odd at times.
Here's the "short" version:
My name is Chase. I spent much of my childhood living in a 1972 bluebird, built by my dad, and had quite the obsession with all things "bus" for most of that time then became a bit of a gear-head for fun (also often of necessity) and a professional nerd (worked retail IT for about a decade along with plenty of varied technical work prior to that) as an adult. Even toyed with buying a bus (the 'bbkid' moniker was created at this time) in 2020 when we bought a larger parcel of land and i found myself needing a "hauler" for equipment, etc. Anyway, that was up until a little over a year ago, when I finally got away from that line of work, for not only my sanity, but the sake of my wife and our 2 young kids.
For the last year I've been trying to finish repairs on my family's current home to prep it for sale (hopefully not far from done... been a tough road given the state of the world and the general state of repair you end up with after several years of neglect due to working too long of hours for your job...) so we can put up something on our property and maybe bring an old farm back to life. This has morphed into me going back to work for a while wrenching on tractors (a job I truly hated to leave, as it was so much nicer than running IT systems...) to keep bills paid, then my wife taking travel work that could cover all our bills and expenses, allowing me to get back to work on the house and start homeschooling our daughter. Due to necessity, we ended up purchasing a 5th wheel camper for us all to move into (believe me, I wish I had the time and place to have built us something) and we plan on travelling for about a year, while hopefully banking enough to put up a building i can turn into a 'barndominium' of sorts, also hopefully large enough to fit the 5th wheel (and therefore later a bus, if things work out) inside.
My reason for coming back around is that there are obviously lots more folks into this than when I was a kid, and many don't have the hands-on experience it takes to avoid catastrophic costs while trying to live this kind of life. Since I'll be traveling and not working, other than handling our own maintenance/repair work and caring for/homeschooling the kids (yeah, I know that is lot on its own... you should try living in the house you're pretty much fully remodeling while doing all that and your wife/partner is away for over a week at a time... lol), I figure there might be a chance for me to help a person or 2 out in bigger ways than forum posts along the way if I can. IMO there have usually been plenty of knowledgeable and sane voices on forums that interest me, and often my attempts to help come off entirely wrong compared to diving in with my hands (mainly my tendency to "over-clarify" since i usually have no good clues to someone's prior experience level), so I've always tended to be more of a lurker.
For once I'd like to change that and maybe stick around somewhere more than a minute. We'll see how this goes.
Oh, and the internationals I mentioned I was looking at in 2020 were decent but went for too much money, but I did end up owning a 2003 40' with a reman t444e md3060 and rear air suspension for like 5 minutes not long after that... that ended when I realized the seller got the wrong title from the auction house when he bought it... [emoji20] [emoji20] (ALWAYS VERIFY THE TITLE YOURSELF WHEN BUYING SOMETHING!!!)
Ended up trading in our jeep for a diesel pickup to handle hauling duties out of convenience, but honestly I can't say I'd have been better off with a bus at this point... people can say what they want about a ram with the cummins in it, but there's a reason I jumped on one prior to used car prices going insane.
Anyway, to those that made it this far, I applaud you. I know, I'm long-winded... t'is what it is...
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