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New to Trippin’ With StanleyNew to Trippin’ With Stanley Who is Stanley? Well, Stanley is our RV! He takes us all around the U.S. to taste delicious craft beers and meet new friends along the way. We work from the road, Brian is a graphic designer and I am a...

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Austin = hashtag epic, hashtag awesomeAustin = hashtag epic, hashtag awesome As I type this I sit on a beautiful outside patio on S Congress at a coffee bar called Jo's. I am surrounded by Mac Book Pros and I can almost see all the tweets swarming around my head. I am sure...

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Sedona I'm glad I got to knowya!Sedona I'm glad I got to knowya! Here are some pics from our time in Sedona. We stayed with our good friend Brenden and his girlfriend, Britta, in Cottonwood, about 20 minutes from Sedona and Jerome. They were the most excellent...

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Golfing and Hashing in PhoenixGolfing and Hashing in Phoenix We had plans to meet up with our Nu friends Bill and Debbie in Phoenix after we left our troubles in Tucson. Maria was able to convince Debbie that it would be a good idea for all of us to go golfing...

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B-C-YessB-C-Yess In between our stops in Quartzsite we made a detour to Tempe to visit my friend Kevin and enjoy a long weekend of sports. The main reason we wanted to be in the Phoenix area was that the BCS National Championship...

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What did you do with all your stuff?

Posted by Brian | Posted in You trippin! | Posted on 14-10-2010

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One of the questions the always seems to come up when we tell people about our trip is “What did you do with all your stuff?”. This can actually be answered in four stages.

  1. We packed everything we needed for the trip in Stanley. We made a point to try and distill this down to the absolute essentials.
  2. Sell everything possible. This took a bit a leap to admit that most of the stuff we have collected over the last 10 years is not really important. We figured anything that you can easily buy later was not important and sold quite a bit of our stuff through garage sales, eBay, and Craigslist. What we couldn’t sell that we didn;t need was donated to Goodwill or the corner for trash day.
  3. Some things we couldn’t part with were left with friends in Lawrence including our 47″ TV and the bed. Thank you Scott, Ann, Mike, and Andi.
  4. Everything else was loaded up in a U-Haul and stored in Overland Park at Ma and Pa Devine’s Storage Center (the basement).

So far we have actually dropped a couple items that we realized were not important and plan to send some clothes back home soon to free up some space. It has been nice to reduce the amount of “stuff” we have around us and I can say we both don’t feel we have lost any level in quality of living.

Old and Ugly!

Posted by msdesign21 | Posted in You trippin! | Posted on 29-07-2010

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Some people ask, what made you decide to go on this RV adventure? Well, the story goes like this…

The idea was born the last night KU played basketball in the March Madness tournament, March 19, 2010. I was so disappointed in what was a huge upset by Northern Iowa and that night a friend, Johny Arkin, was watching the game with us. (Check out his cool video blog at nevernorm.com) He was talking about his plans to purchase an RV over the summer and ride around for a few months. Well, I just thought that sounds like the coolest idea ever and so it was, come August when our lease was up, it was time to make the road our new home. Needless to say that was the only thing that could have made me feel better about that night. I redirected my attention from our poor performance to how in the hell do I find, afford, purchase and work a RV?!?!

The story gets a little better from here. I spent the following month researching all kinds of RVs on Craigslist. I learned about the A Class (big ASS motorhomes) B Class are the vans and C Class are the slightly larger ones with a van chassis (van in the front, house in the back) with a bed above the cab. I knew there was no way in hell I could call home and say, I bought a van and we are going to live in it for the next 6 months, and the big ass motorhomes kind of intimidated me, so I figured C Class was the way to go. Well, I looked and I looked, from Craigslist Topeka to Wichita to Omaha all the way to San Francisco. I pretty much scoured every large city west and every small city in the midwest. I got a really good idea of exactly what I wanted. There are many different layouts, some with couches, some with double beds in the back, even some with the toilet in the back with no door!! I also got a good idea of price range and knew I could look past a crappy interior if the mechanics were sound.

FF two more weeks… One day Brian and I were driving to softball practice and I was complaining that I couldn’t find anything in the area for us to just go look at to get a better idea of size. Then we literally came to a detour in the road, had to take a right and there it was, just sitting on the corner in a parking lot with a for sale sign and all. We called on it and it was pretty much go time from there. We had the mechanics all checked out and two-toothed Gary had told us about a known fix for the generator. Gare-Gare as i like to call him bought the 1999 Jayco three years prior for $27,000 and was originally asking for $14,000, which takes me back to the crappy interior comment. It sure was a mess! He was a smoker, everything was yellowed and covered in ugly laminate. We sure got what we asked for, something to flip with sound mechanics. I talked him down to $10,000 and the rest will be in the following posts.

For now, here are some ugly yellow glimpses of what we were dealing with…


The one nice thing in the RV are those two side chairs. They are super comfy and were surprisingly in good condition.


Here is an up-close look at the lovely pattern that was vomited all over the RV. First things first, that has GOT to go!


Dinette on the left…


Dinette on the right…


At some point there was a leak on the roof. But before we purchased and after we starting talking to Gare-Gare we had some pretty torrential storms with no new leaks. I think they were able to seal it up a long time ago but since Gare just let it sit for so long it stained the walls and blinds up pretty good.


Here is a little before and after for you on the blinds. I never knew smoking could make something so disgusting. Just think what your lungs must look like! Thank god for OxyClean and the many RV blogs I scoured to find that it cleans ANYTHING!


Here is a glimpse of the kitchen, and yes that is Gare-Gare hiding in the back there. Isn’t the laminate just to die for! Yeah, I about died thinking of staring at it for the next 6+ months.


Back in the bedroom, where (I’d like to think with Gare-Gare) NO magic happened.


Probably one of my favorite old shots of Stanley. I love the tiny baby jail above the blinds. I mean REALLY?! what the hell is that for and who the heck thought they should put that on a wall. GOT TO GO!


Fridge with an ice maker! And yes, one more shot of the lovely Gary.

Thanks for following!

That’s an RV!

Posted by Brian | Posted in You trippin! | Posted on 26-07-2010

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I’m sure we’ll met a couple Cousin Edie’s on our trip from here to wherever we end up.

Meet the Crew

Posted by Brian | Posted in You trippin! | Posted on 26-07-2010

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Crew

Brian Devine – Self proclaimed foosball master and serial hypothesizer, Brian provides the random thoughts

Maria Scarpello – A wild soul cursed with the organizational skills of a retired librarian, Maria keeps everyone in line and on time.

Ernie – A master of self- control Ernie is an 80 year old trapped in the body of a 3 year old Lawrence terrier.

Buddha – A slobbering mound of skin and flatulence, Buddha supplies the comic relief on our journey.