I hit the road at 17, just kind of wanted to do my own thing. My mom calls me her
Gypsy Child. In order to live in these different places I've had to live very
economically and I found that living in RVs, sailboats, buses have all been very
cheap and affordable and made my gypsy life possible. I've lived in seven
sailboats, six RVs, and now one bus so total of fourteen mobile homes in my
lifetime so far. It's definitely a lifestyle that fits my, fits my life. I
mean I've always been mobile and to be able to bring my house with me
everywhere I go, it's kind of an amazing thing. It's not gonna end. I'm already
looking at my next sailboat so.
So this is Becky. She's a 2000 international school bus that we've
converted into our home/Airbnb. Bus is pretty plain right now, very white,
but we actually have a graffiti artist who's coming out and he's going to paint
an awesome mural that has our logo on it. We call ourselves the Long Haulers. Some
damage that we had apparently from a gunshot when it was in service in the
Bronx. Right now we're parked underneath the overpass of Riverside Drive in New
York City. We picked this spot because it's kind of incognito. We try and stay
as under the radar as possible and the parking was just great, fits us and our
vehicles. Some tips for finding parking in the city definitely would be try and
find something away from apartment buildings and residences. You tend to get
a lot of flack from people when they see you living in your house. I don't know if
it's jealousy because they're paying $1,400 a month for their small studio
and we're parked right out front on the same street for next to nothing. We
parked next to a construction site because there's absolutely nobody here
except for the construction workers during the day and also we have a little
bit of shelter under the bridge here for the snow, which when the snow piles on
the roof it gets pretty dang cold. Turns the bus into a freezer so that's
pretty much the outside why don't we go inside and take a look?
Right when you walk in, you see we kind of have like our storage closet, keeps
kind of all of our stuff. Also our two solar panels there that kind of keep the
batteries charged and keep us with power. We have the closet behind me. Mostly the
girls keep all their stuff in here, you see we've got a few things here and there
mixed in, but the girls keep all their stuff in here. The boys we share the
dresser and also some under storage under the sofa as well. We have what we
lovingly call The Perch. This is where either Jen or Cara normally sleep and
then under we have more storage, mainly the girls again, they like to have a lot
of stuff so there's a whole section here for storage for the girls and then also
all of the important things that run the bus. We call this the garage. It's got the
generator, it's got the gas tank. This runs all of our heat and everything for
the bus so it's a 30 pound propane tank it lasts us about a week depending on
how cold it is. And the hose just kind of runs under the carpet here over to
our heater. Like I've been saying we do have television, we have Roku, we have you
know everything that you kind of have at home. This is the heater which keeps the
bus warm. It's a simple gas heater that we bought at one of the hardware stores
here in town. Got our dishes for our cooking then of course I've got the
breakfast set up for our Airbnb guests. I've got cereals and oatmeals and teas
and coffees and hot chocolate and all that good stuff. This is generally the
bed that the Airbnb guests get. It generally is empty except for our guests
and we all kind of cram into the living area either on the floor, cram
onto the pullout. We've even slept two deep on The Perch
before as well. We just make room wherever we have to and and we can
accommodate our guests and keep them nice and comfortable even if we're not.
I've got my Wi-Fi set up here. It shows everybody the Wi-Fi code. My
favorite thing about the bus I found these little things on Amazon and I
thought they were just the greatest thing in the world. Each one of these has
their own battery and its own solar panel that we've mounted on the roof so
they keep themselves charged. They run well. Every now and then when it's a
cloudy day we also have the issue of keeping these charged, but for the most
part they do better than our regular solar panels so we like these a lot
these are amazing. Over here you see my brother/bus mate Ryan. He's
enjoying a nice lunch while we're doing the tour here. He stays with us. He's one
of the five permanent residents although he travels a lot so sometimes he's not
here at all, but you guys happened to come in. I actual get a hotel a lot.
He likes to rub it in our faces that he's sitting in nice warm hotel rooms with room service or
whatever. With a bath, a bottle of Rose, rose petals. It's always lovely wherever I go.
And Ryan is sitting on the pullout sofa. It's a little bit of a
process. We have to move our little blocks out because we've raised it up to
have more storage and it quickly drops down into a bed and like I said we've, we
fit up to four people on this bed just kind of criss cross back and forth
however we fit. We fit two in the small bed up in the top and there's never any
more than two people in that bed. We generally try to use the bathroom at our
gym or our local park or grocery or wherever we're parked by, but in the
event of an emergency we do have a toilet on the bus.
It's just a small Porta Potti. The girls tend to use it more than the guys do but
it is there in case we need it and for the guests in case they need it, you know,
you never know, when you got to go, you got to go. Other than that like I said we
shower at the gym. We use the gym bathrooms.
At first we had a lot of encounters with police. The bus is registered in South
Carolina as a bus. If it was a motor home they would be able to harass us, but
because we registered it as a bus we have the legal standing where we can
tell them, "no, this is, this is a bus", and they pretty much have to leave us alone.
I believe that the city is very against us being in this thing, but we know laws.
My brother was a criminal justice major and so when they came at us with some
crazy-ass stuff that wasn't true we went straight to the deputy inspector and
read them the Riot Act. Since then they've been very helpful. We do
occasionally get a road cop who wants to be a badass and still tells us that
there's been complaints or something on the bus which we know how to check so.
Every time they say that there's a complaint we call the deputy inspector
and see if indeed that was the case. Most times it was not. Now we are kind of
in talks with the deputy inspector. She's been helping us try and you know know
the laws that we have here in this general vicinity and make sure that we
adhere to them without breaking any laws. So they've been really helpful
in trying to keep us legal and not break the laws, but inevitably we do have to
because the law pretty much states that you can't sleep in your vehicle at
night despite that law we still are in the bus every night.