All About Us
The travelers:
- Egor - beast of burden; a 2006 Dodge Ram 2500 long bed, extended cab, 4x4 automatic transmission, 24-valve Cummins Turbo diesel; the new guy on the team.
- Gypsy - mobile home & office; 2004 Dutchmen Colorado 27RL fifth wheel trailer, equipped with 320 watts of solar power & satellite internet.
- Timmy - intrepid Löwchen watchdog & travel companion.
- Steph & Cleo - partner & retired Navy & ER nurse with her traveling companion
- Jerry - the river guy;
wanderer, photographer & narrator, born with itchy feet.
- eBoy - put out to pasture,
our first beast of burden; a '96 Dodge Ram 2500 long bed, extended
cab, 4x4 automatic transmission, Cummins Turbo diesel; procured on
eBay.
What is a Löwchen?
What is a river guy?
Did you really buy eBoy on eBay?
Egor??
Gypsy's story
Online in the outback
Power for the pilgrims
Other necessities
Who is John Daniel?
What is a Löwchen?
OK, for everything you might want to know about Löwchens, click
the link. Basically, Timmy is a descendent of European nobility. And
he does have a noble prance when he's in high spirits, which is most
of the time. He's a wonderful companion & is adapting to the traveler's
life. You want a great dog? Get a Löwchen.
What is a river guy?
Well, it just kind of evolved. It started with our move to the banks
of the beautiful McKenzie River.
It seemed inevitable that I would take up fly fishing there. Success
at this sport means understanding trout, which in turn means understanding
the rivers that support them. As I have traveled and hiked the mountains
of the West over much of my life, I have always been attracted to rivers.
Now I was coming to understand them and develop a reverence for them.
Then one day I needed to choose a Yahoo email name. With a name like Jerry Brown, you have to get creative to come up with a unique variation. After all, when I lived in St Louis ages ago, there were 14 of us in the phone book without middle initials! At any rate, the name jerryriverguy popped into my head & it was available. I liked it.
Did you really buy eBoy
on eBay?
Well, yes. Initially I did a lot of research: Dodge, Chevy, Ford; gas
or diesel; long bed, 4x, towing capacity, etc. Talked to some RV sales
guys. Read a lot in the online forums. Diesels get better mileage than
gassers for equivalent power; Dodge Cummins seemed to have the best
reputation among diesel engines; long bed best for 5th wheel towing;
need extended cab for extra passengers on occasion; 4 WD more expensive,
but in the boondocks, may be a lifesaver; need at least a 3/4 ton for
the size coach I was considering and so on. Basically I spec-ed out
what I thought I wanted & started shopping around, with a target
price of $10,000. The equivalent truck new would have been in the $40K
range.
In used lots & newspaper ads, I was finding my truck in about the '94 vintage, or for newer in the $15K & up range. Then, there it was, exactly what I was looking for on eBay and located in Corvallis, just down the road. It even had a couple of nice extras: a quality stereo & a winch. The seller had high marks in eBay feedback, the pictures looked fine. So I joined the bidding. In a few days the bid reached $10K. I decided to make a close of auction play for it & waited until there were just 2 minutes left. I placed my bid, $10,100 and I was told my session had expired & I had to log in again. Frantically I got back in & with just 20 seconds to go, bid again. Success! Three days later I got a ride to Corvallis, handed over a cashier's check & drove eBoy home.
I think I got a good deal. More truck for less money than I could have gotten elsewhere. eBoy had 160,000 miles, early in the life of a well-maintained diesel. But I had the transmission checked out & as a precaution, had it rebuilt before hitting the road. Not the kind of thing you want to have to deal with on an emergency basis.
Epilog - After a third significant transmission problem (can you say melt-down?) I finally decided that if I am committed to this lifestyle, I need a really reliable truck. And forking over more thousands for eBoy no longer made sense. So eBoy is probably going to reincarnate as someone's work truck & I wish them & him well.
Egor??
Egor doesn't have the distinction of being auctioned off on the Internet.
Just a normal transaction at a Dodge dealer, with eBoy in trade. I decided
to stay with Dodge because they have totally re-engineered their automatic
transmissions over recent years & they are now rock solid. Everything
else about why I went Dodge diesel still holds & the Cummins is
now the biggest & baddest of the bunch. Not to mention it's as quiet
as a gasser; no more diesel clatter. Egor is a workhorse.
The name? Well, I just played off of the name of eBoy, thought about the name HeBoy, but ultimately I liked Egor as the name of a big strong servant. Deep voice: "Yes, Master."
Gypsy's story
How do you decide what kind of RV to buy? Do a lot of research,
there are many options: motor homes, van conversions, campers, 5th wheels,
travel trailers, pop up trailers, with many variations in size, style
& amenities. Then think a lot about how you plan to travel and camp:
full time or part time, short stays or long stays, hookups or "dry"
camping, how many people. Then look at your budget.
I spent a lot of time perusing various online forums (RV.net Open Roads Forum was the most helpful), visited every RV lot in town & others as far away as Salem, talked to lots of sales guys. I got a good idea what was available, models, sizes, price ranges, options, etc. And I knew what I wanted to do: near full time, lots of dry camping, stay 1, 2 or 3 weeks at a time in one place, work on board, add solar power. It finally came down to either a good sized motor home with a tow vehicle for getting around while camped, or a 5th wheel trailer (5er in the jargon) with a pickup of adequate size & power. Even a decent used motor home was going to run close to $100K after adding in the extra vehicle & it would be more expensive to run, with less space than I could get in a 5er. My entire investment for the new 5er, solar power, eBoy (with new transmission) is less than $45K. It was an easy decision.
But it took a while to find the right 5er. It needed to have substantial
fresh & waste water storage, adequate carrying capacity, not too
heavy, and it had to feel good. I looked at about 6 makes in detail,
compared key features & it came down to the Colorado or the Jazz,
both made by divisions of Thor. The Colorado had a full size shower
vs the dinky half tub shower crammed in with the commode in the Jazz.
Now I like my showers, so that pretty much settled it.
I had read about RV negotiating strategies, knew the list price, &
had a target price I was willing to pay. I had the advantage of buying
at the end of the model year and at the end of a quarter. Still it took
a couple of hours to strike a deal, and I was prepared to walk away
if they didn't get down to my max. I ended up at 25% off list, &
I felt good about the deal. A couple of weeks later I bought eBoy, brought
him in to have the hitch installed & we drove away with Gypsy in
tow.
Online in the Outback
A brief discussion of how I manage to hold down a job while gallivanting
(my mother's word) around the country is probably in order. For starters,
I tele-commute and have for nearly 6 years now. Now once you are fully
in that mode, it really makes little difference where you tele-commute
from, provided that you have good & reliable connectivity to the
mother ship, I mean office. There are 2 requirements nowadays for tele-commuting:
1) access to the Internet & 2) electrical power.
Getting online from virtually anywhere got a lot easier a couple of years ago when Hughes introduced DirecWay 2-way satellite Internet service. From there it was a short hop to mounting the DirecWay satellite dish onto a tripod, & viola, you can get online from almost anywhere. One other note on this topic: I was a little concerned about security for the dish in some locations. It would be quite easy for someone to abscond with my tripod while I was, oh... out fishing. So I came up with a more secure means of putting up my dish, basically attaching a temporary mast to the ladder on the Gypsy's back end. It's only a little more work than setting up the tripod & I feel better about leaving it unattended.
Power for the pilgrims
OK, then there is the matter of power. I did a lot of research on that
& bought a complete (less batteries) photo-voltaic solar power system
from the people who wrote the book: 
RV Solar Electric.
I installed two 120 watt PV panels on top of Gypsy, with supports so
the panels can be tilted for winter use. After a year, I added swivel
mounts to the panels to extend our solar day. And I have a 3rd mobile
80 watt panel that I can move about to keep maximum solar exposure if
I need the extra watts. I went for 4 pretty much top-of-the-line sealed
AGM Lifeline batteries. With this setup, we generate enough power to
work & get by in winter months as long as the sun shines.
As a backup, we have an Air-X 400 watt wind turbine from Southwest Windpower. I built my own 18' tower for it (details here).
The last part of this proposition is a place to work. I felt like
I needed a real office, not just space at the kitchen table. It's a
lot easier for me to go to work when I have a place that is dedicated
to work. Some might say I need work vibes. Whatever... 
It played a part in the choice of RV floor plan & it works for me.
Other necessities
Obviously there's heat, our primary being the onboard gas furnace. But
its blower uses quite a bit of electricty, so when we're conserving
batteries we use our Wave 3 catalytic heater. It's small, but uses no
electrical power at all & just keeps putting out a steady glow. And if it gets hot in the summer, we need a backup for cooling if we're camping off the grid. That's where our little 12-volt evaporative cooler (swamper) comes in. We can run it for hours at low power usage. It's not quite as good as an air conditioner, but it makes a big difference.
Then there's the issue of fresh water in & used water (& used food) out. I use a potable water barrel to transfer filtered water to our camp site. Then I use a surplus 12-volt RV water pump to move it into our on board tank. As for the dark side of the water scene, I have a blue boy portable waste tank for hauling gray and/or black water to a dump location.
Who is John Daniel?
Oregon poet & author, John Daniel wrote the text & essays for Oregon
Rivers, with photography by Larry Olson. The prose/poem on our home
page comes from this book & it somehow captures my mystical connection
with rivers. Don't try to analyze it, just feel it. Daniel recently
published Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone, a memoir &
"zen journal" as one reviewer described it. I feel a kindred
connection with Daniel having recently completed my own winter alone
(on the road). Of course I had Timmy with me & I visited friends
& family along the way, so my solitude was nowhere near as total
as Daniel's. Anyway, if you enjoy writings about the natural world,
check out John Daniel.
