For the past couple of weeks we’ve been in transition from our boating season back to returning to the bus for a bit. After the holidays with family we actually brought our Mini Cooper back to Miami to make this next phase a lot easier.
Before leaving the area, we arranged some social visits with dear friends – Nina & Paul of WheelingIt (who are soon moving to Europe – sorry, totally spaced on getting photos) and Sean & Louise of Our Odyssey (who switched from bus to boat some years ago and were attending to maintenance in the area).
And then after a lot of preps for the final ‘splitting up’ of our nomadic homes (we did a YouTube live cast talking about the process) – almost two weeks ago we left the boat stored in Miami with friends regularly keeping an eye on things for us.
We first headed back to Spring Hill to pick Kiki up from grandmeows – where we had left her during the holidays.
But along the way we stopped for a visit with more dear friends, Ben & Karen of Creative Cruiser – who just finally got their sweet 1963 Flxible Starliner bus conversion out of the shop! This amazing creation has been a work in progress since before we got our own bus, and we’re absolutely thrilled for them. We did a live video tour if you’d like to check it out on YouTube.
And then it was off to Melbourne to be re-united with Zephyr – our own vintage bus.
But not before another social meet-up hosted by some of our Patreon’s in the Orlando area. Thanks Greg & Kamala for inviting us all to invade your spot at Ft. Wilderness! It was a wonderful evening full of so much laughter and it was particularly good to catch up with our dear friends Forrest & Mary.
We took several days in Melbourne, staying with my Mom, to get Zephyr ready for the road.
During our hurricane evacuation back in September we had problems with our Vitrofrigo compressor fridge and had diagnosed the problem to a fan. With a new fan in hand, we wiggled the big box out into the living room and affected a repair. Hooray.. working fridge again!
We had a lot of provisioning to do to replace items we left on the boat, stocking the pantry & fridge and getting some more winter-suitable clothing.
And then on Monday morning we pulled out of Melbourne starting our road trip to Texas!
We have until February 19th to make it to Fredicksburg, TX where The RV Entrepreneur Summit is being held at. We have three presentations there – which I believe will be live cast. I’ll follow up with details later on that.
It’ll be a bit of a quick trip, but we’ll make the best of it and try to find some nice stops along the way. We’ll also be testing some new mobile internet gear and trying to find some more remote locations with poor signal.
We’ll likely take a bit more of northern route than I-10. We have a potential rendezvous outside of Shreveport and this will also steer us clear of Mardis Gras – we’ve already found that campgrounds between Mobile and New Orleans are pretty booked.
Speaking of Mobile Internet. Amongst all the transition & socializing, we also completed 6 weeks of re-writting (all done on our boat, RV, train and cruise ship) and officially launched the 5th Edition of our book – The Mobile Internet Handbook – earlier this week. 
It’s now available in PDF, Kindle and iBooks (the print version will be coming soon).
I’m writing this from the panhandle of Florida where we’re already on our 3rd stop of this repositioning. If the past week has been any indication, it’s GOOD to be back on the road and our social life is back in full swing!!
I’ll catch you up with the road trip a bit later. But we will be hosting a live cast tomorrow afternoon giving a tour of the bus and talking about the transition back.
We came through Shreveport on the way to Lockhart TX in October. We took a route that went through Crocket TX then LaGrange before Lockhart. From Lockhart it is only a couple of hours drive to Fredicksburg. This route avoids San Antonio and only glances off of Austin. Great BBQ in Lockhart BTW.
Cool.. we ended up not heading that far north this time around.
Just wanted to drop in and say hi. we just watched y’all pull – we’re parked one row over. Hope Kiki iz enjoying being back in the bus and y’all have a good trip to Fredricksburg. (We’re from Austin, so we’re currently comforting ourselves with breakfast tacos from Los Tacos until we are back in Texas!)
How cool.. Topsail seems to attract a lot of like minds, we met up with so many folks there. Hope you enjoy(ed) your stay!
Thanks for the update. We are grateful for all the information you provide as well as interesting stories you share. Why? We are approx 5 days from heading out on our Full Timing adventure. It’s been a long wait to get there but with the help of good folks like yourselves we found it much easier to prepare, let alone help reduce the fears of the unknown. Travel safe and hope to run into you some time in the future.
PS: website http://www.namasteinmyRV.com will be our move forward web site but currently it is under construction till we get a little more travel under our belt and things settle down.
Peace,
Exciting time for you… congrats on your new adventure (if my calendar is right.. today is the day??)
Looks like making the transition has afforded you some fun meet ups with family and friends! The frig looks like a big job, glad it was a successful fix. Safe travels to Texas – avoiding I-10 through LA is always a good plan no matter the time of year :-))
It’s amazing how quickly social life ramped as soon as we started making way back to the bus.
So cool to see you back in the bus again! And congrats on the new edition of the book too. That’s such a valuable resource. Wish we were traveling with you!
Nina
So wish the Beast and Zephyr could have one last adventure together!