Two weeks into our first big journey, our skoolie broke down. It needed the engine rebuilt. I covered all of the highlights on my Instagram account, but today I want to talk about things we learned when our skoolie broke down. We were out of our home for over 6 weeks (we still aren’t back), so this is the short list.
10 Things We Learned When Our Skoolie Broke Down
This was Never about the Bus
The bus is wonderful and we need it to travel. It hasn’t exactly been on the majority of our travels this year and it hasn’t been as affordable as we hoped it would be. As much as we love our home, we love the other gifts it has given us. It gave our family a common goal work toward. It gave us more time together. It gave us time to figure out who we are and recognize some of the pains we hold onto as a foster/adoptive family. It gave us more moments like this. It took breaking down for me to. become even more aware of all of these truths.
You can wait or you can adventure
There were days when I woke up and felt like I was waiting for the bus to be done. There were other days when I woke up and I felt like I was just on an adventure. The choice was mine really. I could have spent this 6 week break down waiting for Big Booty Judy to be done. I could have pined over her and felt sorry for myself for being kind of homeless. I could have focused on how much money we were going over on our monthly budget…cutting more and more into our savings with each passing week. Nope. I refused to live in the space. The bus doesn’t determine whether or not we have a good day or an adventure. We do. We decided to adventure without Big Booty Judy. We did things we knew would be harder with her. We spent 2 weeks living with Chris’ Grammy in Pennsylvania. We drove loops around the state of Michigan and fell in love. It was so easy to stop at every tiny beach parking lot without that bus.
Skoolies and mechanics aren’t running on the same clock as the rest of the world
Seriously though. I won’t go into the whole story, but we found a mechanic who said he could rebuild our engine in 2 weeks. Two weeks later he hadn’t started the work. I’m not even mad about it. This seems to be the norm when you start talking to people.
You can blow through your budget really fast
Oh dear Lord…the budget. Neither one of us has added it up yet. We spent at least 2 of the 4 weeks in hotels so you can do the math. We planned on spending the majority of our nights boondocking, staying at Harvest Hosts, or WWOOfing. Instead…hotels, airbnbs, and gas money added up fast. Thank goodness for the weeks we spent with family!
Kids are so Resilient
I was so worried we had messed up. We ripped up every sense of normalcy and brought them on this journey only to end up sleeping in hotels and hopping from home to home. I really felt like a terrible parent. You know what…they were loving it. When I scored a free stay in a hotel suite, their eyes lit up. When we got to fish in a Michigan lake with their uncle and cousin, they made memories they won’t forget. We laughed together over the terrible hotel rooms and celebrated when we scored a place that wasn’t gross. This brought us closer together and they proved that they are so much more than what we give them credit for.
Our family works as a team during tragic moments, but we fall apart over the mundane
Why? Why can everything fall apart when we are trying to pick out clothes today, but suddenly everyone gets their act together when we are suddenly out of a home and terrified. I won’t bore you with the details, but we rocked this tragedy. I will admit, we started getting a little cranky after 6 weeks of waking up in different places and not knowing where we were when we woke up each day. You know that feeling when the vacation has ended and you just want to be home? We had a good 2 weeks of that and it started to wear everyone down. However, we were so solid and strong and unified during the initial breakdown.
So many people break down and it gets lost under pretty interiors
Holy wow! Skoolies are breaking down left and right. People are sharing these moments but they tend to get lost under a pile of really gorgeous interior photos because Instagram is a really visual place. The general rule is, “It isn’t if, but when…when will you break down?” It isn’t always worst case scenario (like us needing a total engine rebuild), but it often displaces families just like us.
Our Instagram tribe is mighty
Build a tribe, people! There are so many amazing people on Instagram who are just waiting to lift you up. There were some really tough days and it never failed that someone would come through with just the right words. To people outside the travel community, this probably looks like a giant fail on our end and they don’t know what to say. RV and skoolie folks get it though. They get it and they showed up to tell us they got it and now I’m crying again because feelings and amazing people and ugh.
We need a better breakdown plan
I don’t know exactly what this looks like yet, but I want a list of places I can stay when I don’t have a place to stay. $50 and up for a hotel and airbnb each night just isn’t going to cut it. We considered camping, but we were limited on the space we had in the back our Jeep. Camping would mean having the kids ride with a tent in their laps the entire time we were away and traveling from place to place. We simply weren’t equipped to breakdown for weeks on end. We will be though.
You Need a Safety Net
If we didn’t have money in savings, I’m not sure how we would have fixed our home. It was a lot of money. Rebuilding an engine isn’t cheap and I already mentioned the hotel and gas expenses adding up. SAVE MONEY FOR EMERGENCIES BEFORE YOU HIT THE ROAD, PEOPLE. It was hard to spend that money but it would have been harder if we didn’t have it.
Want to know where we are now? Get the latest news on our Instagram account. Want to see all the things we did to try and prevent something like this from happening? Check out our timeline starting here.
