By special request - a tour of the bus

Freshly painted - an operation which absorbed almost 10% of the budget.
You can see the roll-out awning roof over the door and the auto-tracking
satellite on the roof. There are also five skylights and three solar
panels up there.

 



Looking forward from the door. The captain's chairs swivel so they are the driver's
and passenger's seats while travelling and part of the lounge the rest of the time.
The 'jelly bean' couches were designed to stop the area looking like a doctor's
waiting room. We have two removable tables - one large one to go between the
chairs to make that area our dining room, and a smaller one that can mount
next to the passenger chair to take my laptop.

   


I love the kitchen. The bench tops are very deep so I have plenty of work
space. The drawers are soft-close and there are three large ones you can't see
on the right which are the pantry. Under the bench on the right is the 210
litre fridge/freezer, and the cooks among you might spot the Thermomix on
that same bench. Past the kitchen on the left is the toilet and handbasin. The
shower is opposite. There is a privacy door to separate these rooms and the
bedroom from the rest of the bus.

 



Impossible to photograph this room, but this does at least
show the glass sculpture our entire colour scheme was
based around.

 



In the bus on our wedding day.

  

The things we do in carparks

There are some odd things about our travelling lifestyle - and one of those is what we do in carparks.

It takes a bit of getting used to, sitting in a carpark and cooking a meal or doing a couple of hours work on the computer. Occasionally we even sleep in carparks, at places like golf clubs and RSAs.

But it's even more strange to come back from a run and have a shower in a carpark by the beach. Even though the windows are heavily tinted and the bus is completely private, I often feel like someone is going to say "You can't do that there".

And of course using the toilet is stranger still. But at least we don't have to put up with queues for public toilets. And we can 'go' any time we like.

The queue outside the only toilet open in Tirau on Christmas Day.
Photo taken from the toilet window in the bus.

Six month check-up

We've been on the road for just over six months now.

Has it been what we expected? Well, no.

Has it been amazing anyway? Absolutely.

Of course, it didn't start out quite the way we planned - the late delivery and unfinished state of the bus saw to that. We thought we'd be all relaxed and in the swing of things before we started our first job; instead we turned up at Treasure Island late on Christmas Day and started work at 7am on Boxing Day.

We've done all sorts of different work since then, and travelled a fair bit of the North Island. Financially, it would have been good to have more work, but we made a conscious decision to not work February and March so we could get some of the major issues with the bus finished/repaired. A lot of Craig's spare time is still filled with working on the bus; finishing, fixing, tweaking.

This has, in some perverse way, helped us become more relaxed. There's no point in ranting and raving about things we can't change, we just have to sort them out as best we can. This lifestyle isn't orderly and predictable, but that's not a bad thing.

It may not be what we expected, but we are loving our life. We are, indeed, On Happy Ground.