The Adventure Nickel

By Eric Gaden

Have you ever just wanted to leave it all behind?

We did. In 2010, we gathered up our kids and dog, sold our comfortable home in the suburbs along with most of our belongings, and hit the road in an RV. I worked as a travel nurse and Sarah stayed home to keep the wheels of our family turning. This book is about the first few years of our adventures and many of the lessons we learned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Gaden
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781386265306

Eric Gaden

Husband first, father, nurse, writer.  I stay busy.  Always be doing or planning something you will remember for the rest of your life.

Book preview

ACT ONE

Launch

Prologue

T-Minus

Why do you always have to do things the hard way?

My father in law asked us that question more than once.  It's a good question.  I hope this book provides an answer of sorts.  The short version is that we don't do it the hard way; we do it our way. 

The easy way, it seems to us, was paved by other people, for their own reasons.

Being led down the 'normal' path is certainly easier, even comfortable.

But what great thing has easy and comfortable ever accomplished? Is the goal of life to make things easy and comfortable?

Not for us.

Let me ask you something.  What happens when you're comfortable?

Nothing. 

Nothing happens.  Why? Because it's comfortable.  Why change anything? I mean, there's a soft, comfy couch, a big TV with fast, reliable internet, and easy access to all the tasty food and beverages anyone could ever want.  Who on earth would ever want to change that? Comfort is a siren song.

We decided to do something different.  We took steady aim and fired our shot against the culture of comfort. 

And this is what happened.

Chapter One

The Way We Were

Our story starts with trying to have kids.  That's what you do, right?  We had the house in the suburbs, no picket fence though. We were TWINKS. Two Income, No Kids.  The next step in the progression was getting a dog. So we did. 

Satchel showed up and immediately started violating expectations.  He was a cute little eight week old puppy with too-long legs, floppy ears, and huge paws. The shelter said he would grow to be between forty and sixty pounds. I knew that was a little low, but didn't know he would develop into the one hundred and fifteen pound leviathan he became. But he is the sweetest half-Labrador, half-Shetland Pony you would ever want to meet. Unfortunately, he also came with ringworm, kennel cough and distemper.  The vet said to just make him as comfortable as we could. My sister Michelle, down for a visit, didn't like that idea and started playing with him instead of coddling him.  He got better and kept growing. We had a dog.

Next up is kids, right? That's what is supposed to happen. Not so much. Eventually we decided it was okay that we couldn't have kids because, after four years or so with no results, despite trying every fifteen minutes or so, we figured it just wasn't happening.  Instead, we decided to use the money and time to travel the world and buy whatever we wanted.  The extra money would pay for Satchel's travel expenses.

I think it was the next day – I'm not sure, everything gets hazy around that time – when Sarah got pregnant. Travel and luxury automobiles (two-seaters of course) went out the window.  This turned out to be the beginning of a theme. 

Instead of these things, in 2006, we brought Michael into the world and he was awesome, totally better than a sports car.  We still had the itch to travel, though. To scratch it, we made a plan. When he was old enough, we would buy a boat and sail around the world. A quick internet search took us to Bumfuzzle.com where we learned of a couple who were doing just that. They went out one night and, over beer and pizza (lots of beer), they decided to sell everything, buy a boat, and circumnavigate the globe. The next day they woke up hung over and decided to just go ahead and do it. What a concept. I think that is where I learned the secret to getting things done. Don't tell anyone, but the secret is...do stuff. Yeah, even the crazy stuff. Hell, maybe especially the crazy stuff.

In the evenings we would read Bumfuzzle adventures while Sarah fed Michael. Instead of relieving the itch though, it made it worse. There was much talk and a loose, ten-year pipe dream hatched. Ten years old would be old enough for a boy to sail a boat, right? He could stand a night watch, right? In ten years we could surely save up enough money and if I started teaching the boy now... 

So we read, and we fantasized and watched Michael grow. It didn't take long for him to show his personality. By eighteen months, he was correcting us when we read alphabet books. Of course, being our first kid, we thought his behavior was normal. We bought him a little inflatable container the size of a laptop that we filled with sand. He would sit at the kitchen table, playing in the sand, and never spill it. That's totally normal for a kid, right? If not, we must be genius parents.

I got laid off from my tech support job and needed to do something to keep us in diapers and we still had to start that pesky boat fund. Dogs can swim. This can work.

I decided to become a nurse. Sarah continued her corporate job as a travel manager to put me through nursing school and Michael spent a lot of time with Papa and Grandma. With only Sarah bringing in a real paycheck, we weren't saving money, but with my money waiting tables part time, we didn't fall too far behind. It would all work out when we were both working anyway. Our money troubles were soon to be a thing of the past.

Along came Max. When he was born, in 2008, I was one month into my first job as an ER nurse. A week later Hurricane Ike hit and we went without power for two weeks.  The roof needed replacing, the fence was damaged and we couldn't even afford the deductible. Sarah was laid off three days after returning from maternity leave. The boat sank before she launched. 

Our genius parent status was put into question pretty early with Max. He was a natural born athlete, and in constant motion. Max had quite a bit higher energy level than Michael, enough so that the sand box in the kitchen looked like it exploded. We didn't need baby-proofing for Michael. If you told him not to touch something, he would ask why. As long as you explained it, he wouldn't touch it. Max, on the other hand, would immediately check to see if you were telling the truth. Turned out we still had some learning to do.

We should have been content. We had a bright and healthy two-year old and a brand new baby boy. We had a support system in place with Sarah's whole family nearby and my brother an hour's drive away. We lived in a nice house in a good neighborhood. We were living paycheck to paycheck, but with unemployment we weren't falling deeper into debt. It was a good life. It was the American Dream.

But we both felt like something was missing; we were just spinning our wheels. Mostly, I think, it felt like we were living for someone else. We worked for someone else and then took the money they paid and gave it to someone else. If Sarah was going to go back to work so we could make financial progress we would have to spend a big chunk of that money to someone else to watch our kids. That didn't seem right for some reason. We did what everyone said we should and ended up feeling like there was no time left for us as a family. It was time to wake up from the American Dream. 

Chapter Two

The Adventure Nickel

We lurched along for another year and something interesting happened – interesting in a train wreck sort of way. New management came in to the hospital and started getting rid of anyone who smelled of the old manager. Things were going to be done the new way, by new people if necessary. It isn't very much fun working someplace where management is actively searching for reasons to fire you. Luckily I was deemed a new nurse and therefore untainted by the old way. The cool part of all of the chaos was that we became so understaffed, they had to bring in travel nurses.

When the travel nurses started showing up at work, I asked a lot of questions. Mostly because I noticed they were all smiling. Very few of the staff nurses were smiling, but all of the travelers were. I asked about that one day. One of the nurses, Klyda, explained it to me. Well, when I'm at a good place, why not smile? And, when I'm at a bad place, I only have to be there for three months. One day Klyda gave me an email printout. The printout was from a travel agency offering a job. The job was a one-year contract to be a nurse on flights taking deported convicts back to their home countries. In order to apply, I had to sign up with the travel company. It was an offer to be a nurse on Con Air. Of course, I applied.

I didn't get signed up fast enough and my name never got submitted. But I did get done with all the paperwork to get signed up with the company. A week or two later they called me with a travel offer to Boulder, Colorado for thirteen weeks over the summer. The money was much better; new nurses don't always get paid much, and Boulder is a beautiful city. We wanted to do it, but we weren't quite sure. Boulder would be awesome, but there was so much to do. What would we do with the house? How would we deal with kids on the road? Would we have to change apartments every three months? What about all our stuff? Is this even something we should do? The indecision was killing us so Sarah and I thought about putting it up to the Adventure Nickel. What exactly is the Adventure Nickel? Glad you asked.

The Story of the Adventure Nickel.

Way back when, in 2004 B.C. (before children) Sarah was a travel agent. These were the heady days when free airline tickets and cheap/free hotels were expected perks of the job. She somehow managed to wrangle two free tickets to anywhere. How awesome is that? On a previous trip, she had befriended a tour guide from Greece who agreed to put us up for a week if we could make it over. Suddenly, we could make it over.

Since he still had to work, we spent a lot of time at his apartment. Subsequently Sarah and I learned his neighborhood pretty well. He did get a day or two off and took us out to see Delphi and some other sites, but as the week wore on, we grew tired of sitting on his balcony or goofing off at the park across the street and decided to get out and see the city even if we didn't have a guide. After all, there are only so many, It's all Greek to me jokes you can make while in an apartment; or at least, there are only so many Sarah would tolerate. We decided to go see the Parthenon on the Acropolis.

When in Athens, getting to the Acropolis is easy. Flag down a taxi and say 'Parthenon' or 'Acropolis'. They know right where to go. Sarah and I had a lovely day exploring the sights. We wandered around the ruins and saw ancient artifacts. We even went down to the old Roman Agora. It was a full, and long, day of exploring one of the great ancient cities. The trouble started when we tried to get back to the apartment. You see, we had a map of Athens, but our friend's house was just off the bottom border and the name of his street is apparently pretty common. We went through several taxis trying to explain ourselves. Some tried to understand. Some left as soon as they realized we didn't speak Greek. We were left with trying to catch a bus.

We walked until we found a bus stop. It didn't take long to realize that, because of the level of detail, our map and the bus map didn't really correlate well. We couldn't figure out which bus to get on.  We tried a bus driver or two before we considered walking. Now, we were going from one side of Athens to a place off the map on the other side. But, there was a distinct radio tower on a hill we could see from the balcony of the apartment and we knew where the ocean was. I figured that if we could just keep moving until those two objects were in their correct relative places we would be fine.

Sarah wasn't buying it. She was pretty sure, though, that she knew which bus to get on. I didn't trust the bus because it could potentially take us to Sparta or something. We eventually found a grocery store and someone who could speak enough English to tell us which bus she thought would take us to where she thought we needed to go. We went to the nearest bus stop and waited. And waited. Four or five buses came and went without being the one we wanted. By this time we had been wandering for about two hours across an unfamiliar city where we didn't speak the language. As we sat, I tried to convince her we could make the walk. It was full dark by this time. I can't recall which one of us came up with the idea to flip a coin, but we did. We pulled out a Greek Nickel (5 Drachma) and decided to let it make the call. The coin landed and we were walking. 

As we left the bus stop shelter it started to rain. The absurdity of our situation started us laughing. Since we had obviously already lost our minds, why not abandon all pretense of sanity and skip? There we were, holding hands and skipping in the dark, in the rain, in Athens and laughing like idiots. The ordeal became a lot more fun when we let go of the uncertainty about what we were doing.  We could just get on without questioning if it was the right thing. The coin had flipped and to hell with the outcome.

It didn't take long before we recognized the neighborhood surrounding our friend's apartment.  We walked there like we had lived there our whole lives. When we told him what we had done he looked at us in amazement, "you can't walk from the Acropolis!' He also told us that it would not have mattered which bus we took. They all stopped across the street from his apartment. Either way would have gotten us there, the important thing was to decide on one and do it. Wow, what a concept.

Ever since, when faced with a difficult situation we aren't sure what to do with, we put it to the Adventure Nickel. Something cool happens when you are about to put it to a coin flip. You start to imagine how you will react if the flip goes against you. Wait, against you? I thought you didn't know what you wanted.

It's like magic.

Before the coin is tossed, you can stop the whole process and talk about it. But if it gets to the coin flip, it's final. There is no questioning the path once the coin has decided. After that, it's over.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled story.

There we were. Heads was safety. Heads was a steady job, family support, and a comfortable routine. Tails was risky. We would have to find a new job every three months at best. There would be no family in the area to help if anything went wrong. There was no assurance that any of this would work, but it would be an adventure. We didn't flip the coin. We weren't willing to risk it being heads.

Chapter Three

Can We Do This?

There was a lot to learn about being a travel nurse. The whole idea was foreign. Even the name sounded like a non sequitur.  Travel nurse.  It's like ‘gyrating physician’. The words didn't even make sense together. A travel nurse takes short-term contracts at different hospitals around the country. The standard contract is thirteen weeks, but there is some variation. Most of the people working as travelers at my hospital were single, but there were a few couples. We looked on the Internet and saw a few examples on blogs of singles and couples, but no families. Was this even possible for a full family?  How can we make this work?

Many travel nurses use housing provided by their travel company. They are set up in a furnished corporate apartment. Usually they are one bedroom, but sometimes they will ask two travelers to house together in a two bedroom. We didn't think that would be a good idea. We had a one-year old and a three-year old. Getting their stuff together, packed, moved and unpacked was almost more than we could handle for a trip to the grocery store. Changing residences every three months seemed a teensy bit ambitious. What would that do to the kids? I've heard they need stability. Their whole world would constantly be changing. The idea was there, but not good enough. We had to find another way. 

Klyda again came to the rescue. She and her husband, a retired airline pilot, lived in their fifth wheel RV. A trailer? Do we really want to move out of our comfortable, three-bedroom, suburban house to live in a tiny travel trailer? Sounds unlikely. We decided to take a look though, just to be sure. The idea worked in theory. I mean, the house stays the same, but the view out the window changes. The kids would get to keep their room and their stuff the way they like it. This needed more research. To the Internet!

Turns out the Internet, as awesome as it is, fell a little short. Every person giving RV buying advice said you had to actually go stand inside the RV and stuff. Fine. We started by driving to one of Houston's many shark pits – er,RV dealerships. This wasn't always fun. Combine the fun of car salesmen with the pressure of buying a new house and you get an idea. The first few trips were good for one important thing though. There, for the first time, we realized we could do this.

For the unaware, you can spend as much money as you want on an RV. The options are limitless. They run the gamut from little tiny places where the only beds are converted tables, all the way up to marble floors and stripper poles. For our needs, we found floor plans that included bunk beds and separate rooms for the kids. It became clear after the second or third visit that there were some criteria we would need met in order to pull this off. 

First, separate bedrooms. This ruled out pretty much every motor home. The only ones we saw with bunk beds for the kids had the kids’ bunks within five feet of the master bedroom bed. No door between them, no way. Aside from some other... ahem...personal considerations, I might have to work nights or late evening shifts; there was no way that would work. We needed bedrooms at opposite ends of the RV. Second, the beds for the kids couldn't be dual purpose. It would be too much to change their beds into tables or couches every day. Third, we couldn't have the bathroom in the bedroom. Many RVs have the main bathroom with shower either in the bedroom or separated only by a vinyl curtain. Who wants a bathroom in their bedroom. Besides, I might work odd hours and have to take a shower when I get home. You do not want to bring emergency room funk into your home, and I didn't want to wake up Sarah or the kids. We had a one-year old; we weren't getting enough sleep as it was. 

The first few trips ruled out a motorhome. None of the floor plans fit our circumstances. We also didn't like the idea of having to take the whole house in for an oil change or engine work. And, as if that weren't enough, a motorhome would limit us to one car. That meant either Sarah and the boys would be stuck at home while I was at work, or she would have to roust the boys and come get me at whatever time I got off work. Travel trailers seemed a little less sturdy when compared to a fifth-wheel.  And, I heard they were harder to tow. So, it was going to be a fifth-wheel or nothing. We would need a truck. Armed with some new knowledge and inspiration, we went home and began dealing with another huge problem.

One of the hardest parts of the transition to the new lifestyle is 'stuff'. You can acquire an amazing amount of totally useless stuff in a short period of time. When we moved from an apartment to the house, we had more space than we ever had. The house looked so empty. We had to get 'stuff' in there. We couldn't just have an empty room. We had to buy something so it didn't look so bare. So we got some furniture. Then, we had lonely furniture. What good is a china cabinet without china in it?  Couldn't have that, it looked like we just shoved it in there for no reason. We needed stuff on it to make it look homey. Now we had a room full of crap we really didn't need, really didn't want, and really had to get rid of. 

What to do with it all fell mostly on Sarah. I will confess that much of this time is a blur to me.  My job was simple. I worked in the emergency room from three in the afternoon to three in the morning three or four days a week. In my home time I researched trucks and RVs. Sarah, on the other hand, had the Sisyphean task of winnowing down our stuff. We started looking at RVs right before Christmas when we, of course, got a lot more stuff. It took six months’ worth of garage sales and donations and throwing away our previously cherished belongings to get it down to a manageable size.  We had a garage sale every weekend, all weekend, for two months. Even after that we were left with boxes to store in the attic and at Sarah's parents. 

While Sarah worked and took care of the kids, I sat in front of the computer looking at pictures of trucks and reading RV forums. Yeah, seemed fair. I checked the owner's group forums and websites for all of the diesel dually quad cab truck manufacturers. I spent time doing Google searches for complaints about different RV manufacturers. One by one I sorted through which ones had good long term records and which didn't, which ones had a history of the company standing behind their products and which didn't. 

I discovered an easy test that became a starting point while doing the research. I went to the owner's group forum for the vehicle or RV in question and took a quick look. If there were more posts about how to fix problems than how to customize different things, there was a problem.  If they spent more time fixing it than fixing it up, that told me something. 

All of this research was interesting, but it was time for action. We needed to start taking some steps.

Chapter Four

Flo

I had to decide what truck to get. We figured we should do that before we got the RV. No sense in getting a trailer and then realizing that we couldn't afford a truck large enough to pull it. Several questions needed answering. First and easiest, did we want gas or diesel? Diesel for sure. The conventional wisdom at the time said diesel engines provided more torque and power than gas. You don't see gas-powered big rigs out there. Single rear wheel or dual? We decided that the added stability of dual rear wheels was worth the reduction in weight capacity and additional expense. After those decisions, it came down to model. Here is where it becomes more preference than anything.  Without getting too deep into why I chose what I did, I decided the ideal truck would be a quad cab dually diesel GMC Sierra or Chevrolet Silverado made in the first half of 2007. It didn't take long to discover there weren't just a ton of those lying around waiting for us. We realized that we might have to get something other than