‘Tips and Tricks’

Since owning a bus I’ve covered a lot of miles and picked up a few tricks along the way as well. There is nothing technical in this section, it is simply camping tips and different tricks for living in the “Back of the Bus.” Please feel free to email me with some of your own suggestions. I’d be happy to post them.

When you’re on the road one of things that you’re going to have to do is keep in touch with family back home. Your friends will want to know where you are and your family will want to know that you’re safe. It’s one thing to setup a travel blog or send out mass emails to people but it’s quite another to kick it old school and send a postcard.

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This one is really important to me as I do a lot of my work online and need to access the internet frequently. I ended up buying an external wifi adapter even though I have one inside my laptop. I wanted something I could put outside of the bus for better reception. The Linksys WUSB200 is a good deal as it has a range booster in it as well.

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It’s not a shower or a bath but it’s the next best thing…the bird bath. I fill up one of my smaller totes with warm water and put it beside the sink and then bathe from the top down. I’ve got hardwood floors and vinyl seat covers so I’m not worried about splashing water all over the place. Another nifty purchase for warmer weather is a portable shower. Tie it to the top of the bus and over the course of the day the water will warm up and before you know it, you have a shower. For water I keep my bathing water in the bus tank and bring along a 5 gallon container of clean water for drinking.

Sometimes you just can’t find a laundromat to get your clothes clean and the socks just can’t be worn again. I picked up a tip on a backpacker site that works really well. Boil up a few pots of hot water and throw that with some biodegradable detergent into a tote with lid or a dry bag along with your clothes. Shake the shit out of it and then let it sit in the sun for an hour or two. When done fill up the bag or tote with some clean water, rinse and hang up your clothes to dry. All done.

The frisbee is probably the most useful camping utensil on the planet. They’re plastic so they can be used as a cutting board. They’re flat so they can be used as a plate. They have a lip so they can also be used as a bowl. If the fire is giving you a hard time then you can use the Frisbee to fan it. If you’re rolling a “cigarette” then a Frisbee is a good place to cut up that cheap “tobacco” and hold it in place while you’re getting your rolling papers out. The lip stops the tobacco from blowing all over the place. Finally, when we’re finished smoking our cheap “cigarette” a Frisbee can be thrown around for entertainment. Read the rest of this entry »

In the back of my bus I have one huge tote that carries my stove and BBQ and a lot of little things like cooking utensils, lighters, cables and cords. When I’m offloading the bus there are about 5 or 6 things that I have to pull out of the back and I’m done. If it’s a quick overnight somewhere then it takes me two seconds to offload the bus and get my bed arranged. Another note on this subject. It took me until the end of my trip to realize that my z-bed can still fold down even if there are things in the back of the bus!! Now it’s not a full sized bed but it does allow me to stretch out and have a kip at rest stops, truck stops, parking lots, Walmarts etc. without having to offload anything. For those with the interior configuration that has the jump seat behind the drivers seat this works great.

No matter where you go or what you do there is almost always music somewhere in the picture. I made sure that my stereo could play MP3 CDs. This allowed me to pack over 100 songs onto one CD and then just label them by theme; metal, heavy metal, hard core metal, death metal and country. The stereo also allowed for another input so I ran a cable from the front of the bus to the back and can now plug in an minidisc player, Ipod and, most importantly, my laptop. When I’m camped out somewhere and it’s pouring rain then I’ll just hop in the bus and plug in a movie and I’m off. The speakers in my bus mount nicely on the outside of the bus as well so boxing your speakers so that they can be moved is also an idea that has really worked out well for me.

I wrote up an article on the speaker setup here.

Ice is the topic of many conversations and one of the most important items in your camping arsenal. It keeps the food fresh and the beer cold. It’s also an awful mess sometimes when it starts to melt. I overcame my problems of soggy food and wet bread by double bagging cubed ice in ziploc freezer bags. It takes a few minutes to just distribute the ice into 3 or 4 individual bags but make sure you double bag it to ensure there are no leaks. Now there is no water filling up the bottom of your cooler. You can pack the bags around important items like beer, your extra beer and your reserve of beer so that its always cold. If you have a preference for mixed drinks then you just have to open your nice clean bag of ice and pull out a few cubes and, when all is said and done and it’s melted, well then you have water for your coffee in the morning providing you bought purified cubes. Read the rest of this entry »