Reality Bites

The euphoria lasted a couple of weeks.  Now the reality is setting in.  We don’t have a clue what were doing.  We’ve never owned an RV, we’ve never driven one, hell, we’ve never spent the night in one.  And somehow we thought it would be a good idea to go live in one.

When we decided to do this, we didn’t know a motor home from a fifth-wheel from a travel trailer.  Looking at the choices, makes, and models is all a little bit staggering.  Having never done this before, how do we decide between what we need and what is just excess?  If we make the wrong choice, it will be very expensive to fix, so we’re kind of stuck with it.  It’s hard not feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.

But our challenges run even deeper than just picking out a rig.  As it turns out, the fantasy of walking away from our life and actually walking away from our life are two completely different things.  In the fantasy, we simply fill an RV with groceries and our cat and set off on merry adventures.  In the real world, things are much more complicated.  Until now I never thought about the concept of “residence,” probably because I never had to.  My residence was wherever I lived.  But what happens if you live nowhere?  Or everywhere?

This may sound like semantics, but its not.  It’s important.  You need a driver’s license, you need insurance, you need a county in which to vote, you need someplace to get your mail, and if you enjoy your freedom, you need to pay taxes to someone.  All of that requires a physical address . . . and we plan not to have one.

Luckily we’re not the first people to do this and a lot has changed since Steinbeck set off with Charley.  Apparently you can get the equivalent of a P.O. box with a mail forwarding company that serves as your permanent fixed address.  Not all states allow this so we’ll have to do some research to figure out the particulars.  This is all going to be harder than we thought.

May fortune favor the foolish.