 On
the outside it looked like we had everything we could want:
a cool apartment in San Francisco, good jobs and salaries.
But on the inside the grind was getting to us. We got up at
6 a.m. to be out of the house by 6:30 so that I could work
out at the gym before I went to work by 9 a.m. Wally would
drop me at the gym in the morning, and then commute for forty-five
minutes to an hour to Silicon Valley. We’d get home
sometime after six or seven p.m., eat dinner, watch some TV
and fall asleep by ten o’clock.
The time was ripe for a change.  The
change started with a walk down the Embarcadero in San Francisco
on a beautiful sunny day in October 2002. My husband, Wally,
and I were talking about what we wanted our lives to look
like. I talked about how I felt as if I was treading water
professionally, working as director of press relations for
a large retail company. Wally had recently left a directors
position at a Silicon Valley technology firm to start a
consulting firm called Voice Partners, but he'd had enough
of San Francisco.
We started
talking about where we wanted to live. We ’d both
been in the Bay area for over ten years, and had witnessed
the rise and fall of the local economy first hand. Purchasing
a property in San Francisco was out of reach -- even with
our good salaries. Plus, the constant chill and fog was
getting to us. But we couldn't agree on where to relocate.
While I was thinking one place, Wally would be thinking
of another.
We were
at a crossroads. We didn’t know which way to go. We
had to get a direction. We needed to get moving. Then, I
had a brainwave. Why not turn all those metaphors into actions?
Wally had always dreamt of traveling around the country,
living and working in a mobile home. During our eight years
together we had actually gone to a few RV shows to see what
was out there, and, honestly, it was like looking at hundreds
of badly decorated one-bedroom and studio apartments. I
never came out of those shows feeling thrilled, to say the
least.
But,
I guess the idea of traveling in our home appealed to me
on some level, because as we were walking on this beautiful
October day, I was the one who suggested that maybe we should
try this RV idea. It would give us a chance to travel for
a while until we found the place where we wanted to live.
Wally immediately jumped on the idea. He’d spent most
of his work career being self-employed, so the idea of being
able to go where we wanted, when we wanted to, was highly
appealing, to say the least. He pointed out that our expenses
would come way down, which would allow me to leave my job
and take some time off to explore other work options.
But
was this the right thing to do? I had to decide if this
great idea I had was really such a great idea. It was a
big decision to leave a very secure job in an insecure economy.
Plus, wasn't this the right time in our lives to be thinking
about security and stability, and not putting everything
in storage to drive around the country in an RV?
But then, neither of us has ever done things the “right”
way.
We started
researching the possibilities. Every weekend we would go to
RV dealers and check out the different makes and models. At
first we thought about getting something really small to double
as a living space / run-around vehicle. But that fantasy ended
when we actually saw one. No room and no way. We would have
killed each other in a week. The dealer suggested that we
should look for the biggest RV that we felt comfortable driving
and did we want to test-drive a 28’ motorhome?  We
looked at each other and shrugged. “Well, at some point
we’ll have to drive one,” I said. I mean, you
have to understand that we had already decided we were going
to do this and neither one of us had ever even had a ride
in an RV. Talk about jumping into things. So,
we test drove the rig. And we were fine. But it wasn’t
“the one,” although it was 28' and felt comfortable.
So, we said, maybe we could look for something… a
little… bit… bigger.
Wally talked to his business partner about the plan, and
she enthusiastically told him to go for it. We figured that
between the cell phone and wireless Internet access at Starbuck's
he’d easily be able to keep up his end of the business.
This idea of being on the road, living and working wherever
we wanted to be, was beginning to seem like a reality.
Then
we found out that a recreational vehicle can count as your
primary residence and therefore, we could take out a loan
and get the benefits of a mortgage. A home was an unattainable
dream for us in San Francisco -- not only were real estate
prices still sky high, but we just couldn’t bring
ourselves to pay $850,000 for a one and a half bedroom apt.
Once
our accountant told us it was a good idea, we got serious.
And
then, everything seemed to fall into place. We started talking
about this idea in October. By mid-November, we had made
the purchase of a 35’ Monarch SE by Monaco. We took
delivery on March 1, 2003 and began “full-timin'”
two weeks later. |
