Last weekend.
I went to the first official bus fair down in Oregon where I met a ton of
amazing people and so many incredible schoolies and this week's video I'm
featuring one couple,
they're adorable schooly and the story of how bus life has changed their lives.
I'm Tyler, I'm Lexi and our bus is one wild ride.
Well,
we decided to build a bus because we were paying outrageous amounts of rent in
Southern California.
I think we both never really saw a lot of this country or most countries,
but definitely a lot of our own country and wanted to get out and explore what
we were still young enough to want to do it. I guess
Tyler actually found this whole community of people that had renovated old
school buses and turned them into homes and we kind of got obsessed.
We were both bartending in LA.
We lived in a one bedroom apartment that had one window and probably the same
size as our bus and we were paying 1850 a month.
We were just spending our money in LA like we weren't able to save.
You constantly get cash,
but then at the same time you're constantly spending it in LA.
So we've actually saved more money doing this lifestyle.
We bought our bus for 10,000, which is a lot.
You can get them on for a lot cheaper. Um, but our bus was already painted gray.
He had it registered as an RV, did a lot of engine work,
but it was still school bus inside. So we had to do all the demo and stuff.
And then we put about 15 into it.
So we're about 25 to 30,000 now with some of the repairs we've had to do on it.
So we sold everything and we kind of budgeted out a year and we've gotten over
that.
So now we've done little things here and there like odd jobs on Craigslist,
like Tyler has done flooring. Um,
he recently like re painted a deck or something and like random stuff.
The community of just tiny homes in general, like, or nomads on the road,
like it's so amazing.
You really connect with everyone and get to hear other people's stories.
This festival that we're at now,
it's like you meet so many other people that are going through the same exact
thing and they just wanted to get out of their dead end job or corporate America
or whatever and go out and actually see some stuff. So, um,
it's really cool to meet all the likeminded bus lifers.
Welcome to the inside of One wild ride.
We have a seven foot couch custom couch cushions.
The colors were
not really picked by me, I guess it's more like mostly Lexi.
We both agreed on burnt orange and didn't want it like too girly but also wanted
a lot of bright colors.
So orange was kind of like the perfect compromise I think outside beings gray
and dull, like looking like a prison bus.
It kind of like brightens it up in here.
You can move the pillows if someone did want to sleep on it cause we didn't do a
like a guest that or a pullout couch or anything like that.
But it's pretty much twin size. It's not the best to sleep on.
But um, we don't really have guests over ever.
So we have storage underneath.
A lot of people do the layout like dinette, then couch, then some other seating.
I mean we don't host it that often, but when we do have people in here,
it's kind of like a cool little gathering area,
so we have batteries under there and then this side has our inverter
Flooring we did home Depot laminate,
it was I think 72 cents a square foot or something.
We bought a bunch of boxes, ended up using a lot of it for trim,
so in places like this and eventually in the bedroom you'll see the whole back
wall is all flooring. Also,
it's a handicap bus so it's a little bit taller,
so we didn't need to do a roof raise. We're both pretty tall.
I'm 6'2 she's 5'11 and I still fit
Into our kitchen. We went really deep and wide with the counters.
We got all this old bamboo,
a buddy of ours found it for 80 bucks or something from an old job site.
We did pretty good size sink from Ikea. It was on the cheap side.
We have regular RV oven. This is all propane.
We keep a 20 gallon tank for this.
And then another 20 gallon tank for our hot water heater.
We do 50 gallons of fresh water under the bed and then a 45 gallon gray water
tank under the bus.
So 50 gallons for us will last like quite a bit cause we try not to take too
many showers in here either.
All of our kitchen storage is just these cabinets like we didn't build shelves
either. Um, over on the other side we have our trash,
a hot water heater, all the plumbing, that kind of stuff.
We've found these in the trash, I think. Um,
they were like dirty Brown with rusty gold knobs and we just sanded and painted
them and bought new knobs and they weren't super good
for the skylight. We actually only have one, which is really rare.
Also we found it cause we've been in a bunch of friends buses now and they have
at least two. But yeah, we left this,
it's super cool to get like good airflow and we'll put this side down. Uh,
and it's kind of scoops in here while we're driving.
All right
guys, I'm gonna show you the back of the bus. I'm back here we have our shower.
I really wanted a wood shower. I know that sounds crazy.
A lot of people ask us if it's going to get moldy,
but we've been in the bus for a year and a half and it's been fine.
We just did Thompson's water seal on it. We barely shower in the bus.
So like a lot of times we'll stop at like truck stops cause water's limited.
We ended up going with a Lowe's accordion door,
and we ended up cutting them to size. So we just cut the bottom off and
just closed like that.
And we put a shower curtain too to help with water and then we just have bungees
to hook them in place. And then for the bathroom.
And we actually, these ones go together with magnets for privacy,
with the rug and the police. So they'll just close like that.
We work really well and they're very light. So we do have a nature's head,
which we love. Um, we haven't had any issues with it in the year and a half
we've been using it so highly recommend that.
I think one thing we really wanted to do was connect the liquids to our gray
water tank. So that might be in our future sometime. But yeah,
so far really good.
I just have this little mirror and I sit in front and get ready that way.
Before we started bus life, I was very high maintenance. Living in LA,
always getting my nails done, my hair done.
Being conservative on water was hard to get used to and especially like the
compost toilet I was a little freaked out about in the beginning,
but now I feel like I'm more relaxed and this lifestyle's taught me to really
just enjoy and be in the moment. Definitely in the moment. Yeah,
just live life and not have to worry about like the superficial things.
The bus life is just way better. I don't even know how to like describe it.
It's just, yeah, it's, I don't ever want to be like stationary in one spot.
I feel like anymore,
if you could do this and make something that seems like your house and not feel
like you're on vacation but still kind of feel like you're on vacation all the
time. It's like the perfect balance.
We have an apartment size fridge. Um, it's an energy star. We got it off Amazon,
I believe it was like 300 bucks.
And we use this to close it. It's a baby lock.
So when we're driving it won't open.
So that's the one thing that we're drawing power all the time.
I think it's like 68 Watts. So, um,
eventually we'll want to get some more batteries to run it cause sometimes we do
get low from the fridge. And then back here I insisted on having a closet.
It's mostly my clothes. Um, but yeah,
so we did a full closet almost.
And I got this Hanging thing from Ikea to store more clothes.
I think I have about like four pairs of shoes.
I feel like Tyler might have more than me now. Um, but yeah,
I did have to downsize a lot, but I also brought a lot of clothes too.
So these are wheel wells right here.
And at first we didn't know what to do with them. We were kind of stuck on that.
And um, we decided one, let's do the closet for sure.
And then after getting the nature's head and placing it around and we thought it
was the perfect place for the toilet on the other side.
So we got an RV rooftop AC draws a lot of power.
We can't even run it with our generator,
so we have to be plugged into shore power. So we have 30 amp outside.
So if we're wanting to run the AC, if it's really hot,
we have to go to an RV park or a state park to plug in.
We have our cat she's actually adjusted to bus life really well.
The first day she got really car sick and was like drooling and throwing up
everywhere. And I was like,
I don't know if she's going to be able to make this lifestyle work the next day.
She was totally fine roaming around the bus while we were driving.
And now she's, we're kind of letting her outside and she's loving it.
She always comes back to the bus and she's a full wild bus cat now.
We don't have much lighting in the bus, so we kept our original lights, um,
our original bus lights and then back here we just have Christmas lights for at
night, which makes the ambience like a lot better I think.
And then we also have a 32 inch TV back here.
And Tyler's PlayStation, he brought
We actually left everything up here original except for putting in a new
switches and a backup camera.
Original seat and super uncomfortable. But it's cool. Uh,
I don't have an arm rest, which was also kind of annoying.
That's kinda one thing I wanted to leave. Like, OG
bus related up here was just keep it all open and know a lot of people do the,
um, like an RV door or actually like a house door. Uh,
but the whole fun part for me and getting a bus was like the handle and the
windows.
And so we wanted it to look super authentic,
especially from the front and from outside.
Our cat box goes up here when we uh, are parked.
Normally it'll sit in the shower when we're driving so that it doesn't move all
around. But uh, we try to get it as far away from the bed area as possible.
And we're actually like stationary for a bit.
Well the bus is a 34 foot international.
It's a DT 466 E motor top speed is like 60 so it's pretty slow.
And actually we got that adjusted up.
Like we took it to a place that they plugged into the computer and bumped the
governor up to 60 but we were doing 52 for the first,
like seven months of our journey.
I do pretty much 99% of the driving.
Lexi's driven it a couple of times,
but it's definitely scary when you're not used to driving something that's 34
feet long.
So this is our custom motorcycle rack.
We were going to do a motorcycle in the bus on the side door,
but it just didn't work out with space. So, uh,
I had a friend build this for us and then we have a garage back here.
This is what's behind our bed.
So have that generator, uh,
extra water for if we're really going out for a long time. Um, I'll fill up,
that's another 12 gallons I could dump into the bus and then have a bike.
So the handicap door now that we didn't use this whole part of the garage for
the motorcycle, we ended up uh,
loving that we didn't do that because we have pretty much like an awesome
bedroom door now. So whenever we're parked somewhere cool,
we can open it up and get a cool view from bed.
And now it's like our favorite part.
I couldn't imagine not having the bedroom door because every time we're on like
a cool beach or especially when we did all of Baja,
like pull it up right next to the beach and opening that was like super awesome.
After a year and a half, we still love the bus life. I think we can do smaller,
like eventually we'll probably do something smaller.
I think once you do the lifestyle for a few months,
you realize that you really don't need a lot,
and it's just super refreshing to downsize all of your old clothes and things.
We don't have anything back home except for family, so everything's just,
it's all on the table for the bus life. I think.