Stories from the Road

So as we travel, we meet a lot of interesting people, in this thread, I will tell some stories of these people.

One of the more common groups of people are homeschoolers (or as we call it in the full-time RV world, roadschoolers). This means that the kids don't go to traditional schools, but are taught by their parents, through a combination of online tools/platforms and real world experiences.

It's actually quite effective, assuming the parents actually take the time to do it, as the education can be catered to the needs and interests of the child. Of course, it does require a lot of more parental involvement than sending you kid off a traditional school.

Anyway, this demographic, very often, is interlinked with conservative religious folk, whose desire to homeschool is largely about getting away from "the liberal gay agenda" in public schools. The words in quotes have been said to me many times in the last 8 months. Many believe that sending kids to public schools is tantamount to sending to be indoctrinated to become gay (or at least to accept gayness as normal, instead of an abomination).

In one case, my wife and I were talking to a couple and my wife mentioned that she quit being a teacher. Elaborating, she mentioned getting pressured to quit by the school over her social media posts criticizing the administration's decisions regarding the pandemic.

In response, the lady said something along the lines of: "Public schools suck."

I said, "Actually, she worked at a private charter." Indeed, this was a conservative charter school that demanded they call the students "scholars" and tasked her to read a "biography" of one of the Founding Fathers which claimed to "correct the errors" of historians (you can read between the lines as to what that means) and graded their students on their "citizenship."

The lady blinked a few times and didn't have a response and thus the conversation abruptly ended there.

 

So while on the road, my wife has been repairing people's RVs as a mobile RV tech.

(The demand for this type of work is huge, and it pays extremely well so if you are handy... you might consider this. I can provide for details if you would like.)

One of the things about RVs is that demand was rising before the pandemic, and exploded during the pandemic it, and manufacturers couldn't keep up.

The consequence of this, along with the supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, is that many newer rigs are made very badly - they may look shiny, but a shortage of supplies, workers and time means that a lot more corners are cut than usual.

In one case, my wife repaired the window of a rig that had... no seals. Literally - water would just come right in.

Even before this, many people would recommend you to buy a used RV anyway - as it means that the kinks have been worked out, but it's even more true now!

Of course, used has its problems too, and you really need someone knowledgeable to inspect it, especially if you intend on travelling with it (the issues are often more "manageable" if you intend to stay stationary).

 

One thing I had forgotten since moving away big cities was how expensive they can be to visit/do things in (of course, living there too).
Hotels, parking, food, everything costs a ton of money.

One of the interesting things I learned about the CityPass system though was pretty useful. For those unaware, CityPass exists in many cities and gives you a discounted entry fee to a group of places within the city.

If you do the math for the basic admission for these compared to the Pass, it's not an amazing deal but it does pay for itself if you use most of it.

But what I realized was that the Pass' tickets are often the best version of the admission ticket. Many of these places are now doing "DLC"s essentially where you pay admission and then pay extra access to certain things, like limited time exhibits.

While one might not normally pay for all of that, it's nice that we didn't have to worry about it.
Another thing is they are also basically fast passes, either by virtue of the venue having a special kiosk for CityPass holders, or the tickets themselves being an "expedited" version.

For example, at the Willis Tower (formerly known as Sears Tower), we were able to do skip the entire line to do "the Ledge" (where you step onto a glass box hanging over the edge of the building) MULTIPLE TIMES before other people got through the other line even once.
And when you have 2 young children full of energy, that's quite good.

 

Early in our travels, it was still winter, and we were in the mountains in California doing snow stuff.

On the way up the mountain, we picked up a man walking with a gas can - he was going into town to get fuel.

This was an area that had been without power for about 8 days and power was not being restored any time soon due to the inclement weather. Residents were running generators and often had to go into town to get more fuel, but many of their vehicles were buried in snow (or lacked fuel).

This is one of those cases that demonstrates the urban/rural divide, and why things like blanket bans on portable combustion motors that California has proposed doing doesn't make sense from the perspective of many people. It's one of the reasons why many of the Democrat's policies don't resonate well with more rural people whose needs are often quite different.

For what it's worth, while I sympathize with the problem of climate change, I don't think banning engines and non-EV cars makes much sense from both a human/liberty perspective as well as logistically (given that many of the materials for use in electric tools/batteries/cars are limited , expensive and environmentally problematic in of themselves). Better to help these technologies improve, invest in infrastructure that reduce reliance on fossil fuels instead of just telling people they can't buy certain things anymore (really, when has that ever worked?).

 

This is the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park in Texas.

You can literally be standing both in the US and Mexico at the same time here by standing in this river, the cliff on the left is Mexico, the cliff on the right is United States.

When Trump wanted a border wall along the entire border, this is part of the area that made no sense. You are going to build a wall in a river surrounded by canyons?

 

RV toilets use a foot pedal to flush. And when you use one for months, sometimes your brain is on autopilot when you use a different toilet and tries to press the pedal!

While funny, this also illustrates the concept that many things you do are by this part of your brain - the part that is not actively thinking. It's an evolutionary advantage that we have this, as we save a lot of energy that way, and it is also faster, so for predators and other dangers, it allows us to react faster.

The problem is when we let this part of the brain be in charge when we ought to slow down and think about things.

One of my favorite books: Thinking Fast and Slow, is about these 2 brains we have, and how sometimes make bad decisions because we are using this intuitive part of our brains handle things, and when we take a moment to think about it, we might come to a different conclusion.

A good example in the book is how the US Air Force looked at the damage patterns on their planes that returned, and planned to reinforce the places that had sustained damage.

Sounds good in theory, but this is actually very wrong.

These planes SURVIVED. They didn't get taken down - what you need is the damage patterns from the planes that were shot down! Or, absent that, reinforce the parts of the surviving planes that didn't take damage - because it's reasonable to conclude that if every plane that came back wasn't shot in a particular spot that that spot might be the key to it staying in the air long enough to come home.

This is known as Survivorship Bias, and it manifests in many ways.

 

One of the things that people often ask when they find out what we are doing is, "How do your kids socialize?"

The truth is... easily.

They make friends everywhere. Campgrounds and RV parks are full of other children - and our kids spend the majority of their time outdoors and meeting people. They interact with kids their age, older kids, and adults from various walks of life.

I'd argue that they socialize BETTER than kids who go to traditional classrooms, filled with kids their own age only, etc.

I am sure at some point, my kids will desire more stable relationships, but we already have made some friends that they still talk to via online tools and some that we plan on meeting up with again in the future.

Also, I would note that almost without exception, the kids we have met have all been extremely well behaved and play very well with kids of various age groups - I have been very impressed with older kids especially, who include and watch over the younger kids at the playground, etc.

 

Sometimes while on the road, we have to get gas (shocking!) or just stop for a break. In our case, we have a Diesel, and we over 40 feet long, so sometimes, we have to go to the truck side of these places.

We prefer not to, but most of the "car" side of gas stations are quite small.

The thing is, some truck drivers don't like RVers. It's understandable - they are trying to work and we are in the way (and many are older folk, who drive slow or don't really know how to drive their rigs).

In one case, we were at a very busy truck stop, and noticed 2 ladies struggling with something on their rig. We found a spot near them to stop and helped them.

My wife spent a good 2 hours resolving their issue so they could get on the road again (I had the arguably harder job of keeping my 2 littles entertained and out of danger in a parking lot), and as we were packing up to leave, a trucker honked at us and flipped us off as he drove by. My wife went inside the store area to wash up, she heard from the manager that the same guy had been inside the store ranting and raving about us being in the way the whole time... except we weren't really in the way, he had space, and he demonstrated it by driving past us easily.

We thought that was pretty shameful - here we are, at a busy truckstop full of people, and no one was helping these poor ladies, and this guy could only think of himself. But maybe he had had a bad day, or maybe was actually blocked earlier by an RV so we were just another inconsiderate RVer parked in the truck area.

 

It's still indoctrination. That's the fallacy the "anti-indoctrination" crowd often don't realize. They just don't like the specifics the kids are allegedly "indoctrinated" with. Often, this group will happily indoctrinate their own children through their church/religion and other views not supported by science or facts.

Note that I am not suggesting they don't have a right to indoc- I mean, "educate," their kids as they see fit, but I just find it funny they then turn around and indoctrinate their kids themselves while under the delusion they aren't.

Very little of that with the roadschool crowd, to be honest, since these things usually require you to be stationary in a spot for some time to be worthwhile.

 

My kids are pretty little still, so they aren't going to be doing anything that advanced in a club setting.

Mostly we can do stuff like touring a farm/factory, 1-day painting classes, etc. which is fine for now.

They looooove museums and anything they can get hands on with stuff.

We would also do 4H if we weren't roadschooling.

 

Technically my oldest would be starting Grade 1 this fall, and my youngest would be starting preschool.

But I consider them homeschooled already.

 

China Bombs

China Bombs is a term that many people in the RV community use to refer to cheap Chinese tires that have a high rate of blowouts.

Most recommend you replace tires on your new RV with American made ones to prevent this.

~

So, let's talk about the Chinese tires. While it's reasonable to assume they are probably cheaply made and that's why RV manufacturers put them on. But there is no data on the issue.

But what about the people who say their tires blew? Doesn't that mean something?

Yes, but there's a few problems with that information.

First, it's important to note that RVs often sit out, in the sun, for many years, and these tires, even before they get out on an RV, may already be old. In other words, by the time someone picks up a new RV, the tires are often a few years old already, with many months of sitting out in the elements, undriven. This is being compared to brand new tires from American manufacturers.

Second, since most RV manufacturers are putting Chinese tires on their rigs... the number of RVs on the road with these tires is high - so, even if the rate of failure is equal to new tires people put on, you will hear more about the tires that are more likely to be on the road.

Third, this preconception about the tires also means that when someone's tires fail, they immediately blame "China Bombs" and don't consider their own lack of maintenance, road conditions, etc. and immediately post on social media about cheap Chinese junk. But when an American tire fails, they may write it off as a fluke, and be less likely to think it was a systemic issue.

All in all, I don't know what the numbers will actually show, if we had them, but I do know that Goodyear is recalling 170k tires from RVs with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration citing "high rate of failure" so... perhaps the reputation of these American tires are not fully merited.

If I had to bet money, I'd think that the China tires do have a slightly higher failure rate after you control for other factors (less so because "China" but more so because RV manufacturers are well documented to cheap out at every opportunity), but that the difference is significantly less than what people think it is.