Bartender Quits Job to Live in a School Bus
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This is Jax Austin and his Dan the Adventure Bus. Jax used to be a bartender. He had a boss that was just always very negative which he got sick of after a while. He had a realization...why does he put effort into something that he doesn't like, when he could be putting some effort into something that he would love to do? He never went back to work. He had some savings, so a friend of his went on a road trip in Big Sur.
He didn't know why, but he decided he wanted to get a school bus and travel around. In what seemed like a moment of fate, right when they turned around this hairpin curve they saw some elses’ school bus conversion. He ran up to the bus, asked him all these questions and one of the most important things he learned was that you can stay on public land for two weeks for free. He’s been using that info so much on his trip. He flew all the way to Philadelphia to get Dan. The bus is named after his uncle Dan. Unfortunately, a couple years ago, he passed away. In his honor he named the bus after him.
It is a 2003 E450 Super Duty with a 7.3 litre power stroke which is the best engine to get for a diesel, and it's a dually so it's about as wide and as long as these little short buses get. Some people think that this is a paint job, but it’s actually a graphic sticker wrap, basically just a huge sticker. Above that is his number one favorite upgrade to the bus. He installed AstroTurf. He suggests that if anybody has a school bus and wants a rooftop deck but doesn't know how to build one, all they need is caulking and AstroTurf. It’s like a front lawn on top of your house.
Up top he has 320watts of AM solar panels. For the floor, he used reclaimed hardwoods from the Northeast. He mixed species and couldn't tell you what species, but he likes the variety regardless. Underneath this is half inch foam insulation and some MDO for the subfloor. He also has a lot of sound insulation, since diesels are super super noisy.
Another of his favorite upgrades is the lights. He installed LED lights so it's a pretty basic setup with some cedar that he torched a bit that he hid some wires underneath, with the LEDs on top. Under the bench is where all of the energy is. He has a 255 amp hour AGM battery, 2000 watt inverter, and a little charger that charges off the alternator as well because he’s always on the go.
All the wood is reclaimed. Even the drawer pulls are from the same store. These drawer fronts there have square nails in them, and he was told that they're from the 1890s. Locks on the side are just a simple dowel. It works well, but as Jax notes, stuff is always breaking on the road, like one of the cabinet doors that he stores in the back.He has a ton of storage under the bed that he keeps well organized. He has a bunch of plastic bins, as well as his Carver skateboard which he really loves.
A lot of people ask him, "Oh that's a great open layout, but where's the shower? Where's the toilet?" His solution? What he calls “The Dump Trunk.” It has a Porta Potty and everything else he needs in a bathroom, which cost him about $130. Originally he really wanted a composting toilet, but it cost a thousand bucks. There's no way he was gonna pay a thousand bucks to poop in a plastic box, so he came up with his own system.
He has a sink, but honestly he never really uses it, so he’s thinking about replacing it with a sink stove burner combo, because right now he’s just using a camping stove. Under the countertop he has storage for two seven gallon tanks, a few jackets, as well as his food pantry for now. If you do the van life or are thinking about it, just know that you'll be constantly upgrading and making changes to your house. It's just the way it is. There's no one right way and there's no one wrong way just whatever suits your needs. He has a little fridge, but for some reason it stopped working the other day. It's still not working so that is one of the things he needs to fix.
He also has a little water heater in the back corner he is going to use with the shower that he’s installing. Beside it he’ll have room for a water tank, but he still needs to figure out the layout, but when completed he’ll be able to take showers off the back of his rig.
He paid $5,500 for the bus, and all the materials and things like that as well as engine problems add up to about $10,000, and then he probably spent about four grand on labor so more or less about $20,000. If he did it over he would be cutting costs left and right. You learn so much when you do this. He thinks he could do one for about half the amount of money now. While there are definitely some obstacles: space being one of them, how you're gonna take a poop, how are you gonna shower, he still says it’s amazing. Once you start doing it, all those things become so trivial. What you give up is small compared to what you are given.
Worst case scenario you try it out for a little while and then maybe it's not for you. You can always go back to an apartment, but you still have a vehicle to drive around town. Maybe it's your weekend adventure mobile, but he would say to commit to it full-time as far as traveling full-time you need to figure out how to make some money, if not save money.
If you are a student and you're going to school, one of the best books he read ever, and he’s not a reader, was “Walden on Wheels.” Guy put himself through grad school and owed nothing by the time he graduated. Worked in the summers, lived in the van on the Penn State parking lot. He would say to those people who are going to school and don't have a lot of money that they are thinking about loans, don't do it. Go to school, but live in a van, or if you're out of school and you got a bunch of racked up money, great, live in a van. People work so hard and he just doesn't think it's fair the cost of having an apartment is so expensive compared to what people make.
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