What did you do with all the stuff from your house?
Where are you now?
What’s your plan for travelling?
How do you make money?
These are the most commonly asked questions from people we meet and from our friends and family, sometimes on a daily basis. So lets get these out of the way.
What did you do with all the stuff?: Well it took us 6 months to declutter, purge and decide what to keep. So we gave quite a few truckloads of stuff to the goodwill, we sold some large items on Kijiji and we kept just enough stuff to fit into a 1 bedroom apartment/house – in the event that we decide we need to move into a house or apartment. Lucky for us, we also have a Sea-can out on the family land where we store our stuff. This leads me into ….
Where are you now?: About 6 years ago, Todd’s mom bought 40 acres of land about an hour NW of Calgary. There is a cabin, a barn, the Sea-Can and some other trailers (5th wheel, motorhome and couple other travel and utility trailers from family members) that are all out there. So, we store all our stuff that we don’t need in one of the many available places to store things. We would never have been able to do all the renovations on Ruby or organize and re-organize if we didn’t have this family land to squat on to do it. Also, this is our transition year, out of the house into Ruby. Most of the transition has been squatting here. Which is where we are now! But not for long.
What’s your plan for travelling?: Our master plan for this year, is to stay in and around the Calgary area, until after Christmas. As soon as we are done celebrations and the weather is clear, we are heading south of the border(s). We have never been to Baja area, so we thought the first year, we would head down that way, to the bottom of the peninsula, and then work our way back up north as the weather gets better. From what we have googled and read, there are a lot of RV parks along the water on both sides, many run by ex-pats. So we are going to give that a try. We plan on being gone until the end of March; however, if the weather sucks, we won’t be back until we decide too. Jill has the luxury of working remotely AND she also has a US work visa. So, if we are stuck in Cali/Texas/Arizona for a while, at least Jill can work there. That brings me too….
How do you make money?: During this entire transition year, Todd has been renovating the bus almost full-time. He was laid off in Dec 2018 and at the time, seemed terrible, but in hindsight, has been awesome since he’s been on gov money. So he will ride that out until we leave to go south. Jill has her own food safety consulting company (with a partner – you can find us here: www.foodsafetysolutions.ca) – and lucky for her, her business partner is amazing and also loves to travel, so she’s going to be taking the brunt while we are gone. Jill can do remote work over email / phone and if she needs too, can schedule work in the US, while coming back up to Canada.
So, next spring when we get back, Todd plans to work (maybe farm hand or driving hydrovac), Jill will continue with her food safety business. We may go back to squatting on family land or we may rove around a bit more – since Ruby will be in tip/top shape! And in the late fall / winter, we will plan another major 3-month south trip. You will have to stay tuned to see where we end up.
That’s the in’s and out’s today. Tomorrow, it might change!