Our Bug-Out-Bus

From 1994 – 2006, I lived on a barrier island on Florida’s Space Coast. A beautiful location to be, that had relatively few hurricanes.

There was a story around these parts that NASA specifically selected this area for their space port because of a meshing of conditions that repelled big hurricanes. So for much of my time, we just watched them hit other areas, endured a couple lightweight storms and sent our donations along.

I always followed the general advice of keeping a bug-out-bag, a bag with all your absolutely essential documents and things that you could grab on your way out the door in case of an evacuation. But I hardly ever used it.

Until 2004.

2004 was a pivotal point for me. Starting in early August through late September the area was impacted by 4 different hurricanes. Two fairly direct strikes.

One churned off shore with a prediction of a Category 4 direct hit bearing down on us. Up until about 12 hours before landfall, the predicted path was bullseyed right on my house. The Space Coast seemed to have lost its magical super repelling powers.

My partner at the time and I boarded up the house, loaded up the van with everything we thought essential and drove. And drove. And drove. We left our home behind not intending to have anything to come back to.

As my then-sweetie had a travel-heavy career, we had actually contemplated buying a RV to live and travel out of – I’d run my business from wherever he needed to be by satellite internet, and we’d travel around. But we didn’t for various reasons, and instead bought a house.

But during this particular evacuation, I redefined the concept of ‘home’ not being a stationary fixed object and my nomadic roots were seeded. I read back through my old journal entries in that time period and clearly see this now.

Ironically, for my friendly-ex, the experience lead to him seeking out local employment and becoming happily stationary. Our life paths were very divergent – I craved more mobility, and he a more settled traditional life. We did however contemplate how cool it might be to have a small RV trailer that we could pull into our driveway to live out if our house was demolished or unlivable. Oh, and we could have cheap weekend vacations in it too.

Hurricane Frances ended up last minute loosing a substantial amount of strength and striking about 60 miles south of us. Aside from a downed tree and wonky garage door that needed to be replaced anyway, we escaped damage. We returned to no power for 2 weeks, but life went on.

Until a couple weeks later, another storm brewed off shore and we evacuated again. This time not nearly as far and we endured it directly. We stayed up on all night bidding on a pop-up camper on eBay. (Bad idea, by the way – never buy a RV unseen, especially under duress! Bad, bad, bad.)

So the 2004 hurricane season very much mentally prepared me for what was to come when I met Chris two years later. I had mentally divorced myself from a concept of a fixed home. I was already pursuing a more mobile life and traveling lots personally while working. I had bought my first RV. And my partner and I clearly recognized we were on very different paths, and left the door open to pursue other relationships more aligned.

Hurricanes don’t always cause damage, but they sure can leave behind some winds of change!

Chris and I are now back on the Space Coast in our third shared RV-home together, and actually parked about a half mile from my old house on that same barrier island. When we pulled back into Florida in September, we clearly knew the risks being here in prime hurricane season.

As Sandy entered our consciousness, we were faced with the potential reality of the choice we made.

I have to say, it was a very interesting experience to ride out a tropical storm and juxtapose an impending hurricane in the very spot I used to live as a stationary dweller.

Everything that is home now is always with us.. on wheels. We have complete freedom to fire up the old 2-stroke and bug out of town, and still always feel at home. Before we plopped down, we made sure we had enough diesel in the tank to get to safer grounds.

As we’ve lived off-grid and without hook-ups for extended periods of time, the threat of no power or water was actually no threat at all.

And while we don’t yet have solar panels installed on the bus, we have a generator to thrive off of.

We have a pretty kick-butt lithium ion battery bank that can keep us happily bathing in electrons.

We have multiple digital pipelines onto the internet.

We have huge holding tanks.

And we are masters at being conservative with resources after now living on the road, often off-grid, for 6+ years.

The threats I used to feel while depending on a physical home with seemingly endless resources are gone. I have lived the reality of abundance through conscious scarcity for many years now.

So here’s what we did in preparation for our little encounter with Sandy:

• Filled the fresh water tank, dumped the gray & black. That easily bought us 10 days without even being conservative with water usage.
• Turned off all high power energy drains – such as the hot water heater, and air conditioners if we were away. As our battery & inverter is so substantial, we wouldn’t notice a loss of shore power until our batteries were depleted.
• Put all the lawn furniture into the bays to minimize flying projectiles.
• Made sure the fridge was stocked, and there was plenty of beer & wine.
• Took a walk to the beach to watch the amazing high waves pounding the shore.

Now granted, had there been a direct hurricane impact predicted – we would have just rolled out of town. That’s the beauty of having our home on wheels with plenty of warning. It’s very freeing to have everything you value so contained and easily mobile.

I no longer have a bug-out-bag.

I have a bug-out-bus.

Our hearts, our thoughts and our pocketbooks, go out to all those affected by the wrath of Sandy and the convergent storms afterwards.

Click here to make a donation to the Red Cross.