LC Thread 2020: What the PUNK? ROCK.

Nice. Think about a little one though. It’ll be so much easier to drive and park and less gas. And the conversion will be so much easier and less expensive. There’s still plenty of room.

I’ve kinda been idly looking into renting or buying one, because I can think of a lot of vacations/day trips where one of them would be great. But they seem… much more expensive than I’d think they should be. I’d be if you could keep your costs down and target the not wealthy/retired groups of people, you could make a killing. But I’d probably be wrong.

Man, I sold my 1974 Brazilian splitty 2 months ago, cos I’m always broke and never have the time/tools to do a proper resto (VW bus on the small side too imo).

Would return flights to South America and all the fresh organic fruit and veg you can eat = customise a camper here work??!

I had read that American women didn’t start shaving their underarms until sleeveless dresses came into style in the early part of the 20th century.

If expenses to and from S.America are included, feel free to open negotiations any time.

I usually send pics of an elephant dick.

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I have been cutting down there for twenty years, about two months ago I finally snipped my scrotum with the scissors. It was unpleasant, but after an initial few seconds not much more unpleasant than nicking your face.

What are the advantages of a Schoolie vs. just buying a used RV? In our area the latter would actually be quite bit cheaper (and less time-consuming) vs. renovating a bus. We’re pretty seriously looking into one or the other in the near-future.

It’s just image. Same reason people get excited about tiny houses and shipping containers but would never consider a mobile home.

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Aight. I’ll pay flights and put you up/feed you. If you need pocket/beer money there’s plenty of chores to do on the farm. You can use my ride to sightsee but gas aint cheap here ('bout 5.70usd/gallon).

Are there any suitable solar panels you can fit in your luggage? That will make this closer to +ev for me.

I assume we both need permission from the Mrs first? I know I do.

The advantage of building your own is that you get to customize the layout. The schoolie idea is for people who want to design their own space in something larger than a campervan. The idea of recycling an old vehicle appeals to the kind of people who want to live full-time in a renovated school bus.

I spend a decent amount of time watching RV youtube videos because I’ve been interested in the idea of traveling and playing live poker out of an RV. The build-your-own types have often gone through a few models of manufactured RVs before figuring out what they want and don’t want and deciding that modding an existing floorplan isn’t good enough. The ones who don’t are often doing so because they can’t afford to buy a used RV or because they really want to save money. There are people taking an old van and turning it into a living space for $3000-5000.

Nah man, it’s just image. RV’s are for frumpy retirees. School buses make you a Ken Kesey free spirit. It’s really that simple.

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I got married almost 21 years ago. I guess I just barely missed out on this trend.

Construction quality on old RVs is almost always terrible. Everything will either be broken or just about to break. And the roof will leak and ruin a lot of stuff.

Should I build my own table or should I buy some crap at IKEA?

Man, mobile homes are pieces of s*** and they are incredibly ugly. I can’t believe that you hate hippies so much that you’re talking about mobile homes. You. The Builder. The design guy. The Aesthetics guy.

There’s an argument that the interest in self-conversion of vehicles into mobile homes blew up due to the financial pressures of the Great Recession. A school bus conversion can be done for super-cheap. There are people who do it for under 20K, including buying the bus. The people in schoolies making Youtube videos often seem be people with families who need enough room to raise their kids.

Some in the vanlife trend are people who want to live a very instagrammable life, but some are people who have chosen to live out of a vehicle because houses are expensive and they didn’t want to go into debt to have a place to call their own. It’s appealing to people who can work remotely, want to save money, and like to go on vacation to outdoorsy places.

Yes, there is some element of people being attracted to a trendy aesthetic of minimalism, but some of this is driven by a rejection of boomer culture.

Bob Wells “no build” build.

Thanks, everyone. That’s mostly consistent with what we understood.

I think we are going to buy a mobile home, put some RV wheels on it, then weld on a metal frame so it looks like a bus.

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I freely admit to being a bundle of contradictions on this stuff. I am very passionate about design, aesthetics and architecture. I am also very aware of the colossal amount of additional time and resources it requires to get anything even remotely nice and well built instead of something generic and mass produced.

I have a lot of reasons to believe that owning well made, custom homes and products doesn’t actually improve peoples’ lives in any meaningful way. In fact, the pursuit of those things makes many people quite miserable. I have built more than one house that resulted in the owners getting divorced.

I have also seen far too many abandoned projects to believe that most people can derive any personal satisfaction from doing things themselves. The number of people who aspire to doing their own projects is vastly higher than the number who truly enjoy being in their shop making things. There are millions of well-outfitted basement and garage workshops out there rarely being used for anything at all. Work is work, and dirty work with loud tools that cover you in sawdust is actually not all that fulfilling.

I don’t know if you should make your own table or not. Do you want to? If so then you absolutely should. But there are important differences between wanting to build a table, wanting to be the sort of person who builds tables, and wanting to own a custom built table. If you just want somewhere to eat your Cornflakes Ikea is fine. So is a $49 folding table. Or something you get at Goodwill. Your life will likely be simpler and better with any of the latter options.

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