Everyday realities.

The time has come to talk about the realities of life on the road concerning our day to day operations. The first one being water. Now we need two types of water on board : the drinking and cooking water and the washing dishes and cleaning water. For our drinking water we have been using regular 5 gallon plastic jugs the kind you see at office water dispensers. We have two 5 gallon jugs and one 3 gallon. Usually we can make these last about a week. Most times we find a grocery store or Walmart or health food store and re-fill the jugs at their dispenser. Lately the cost is around 50 cents a gallon. If we can find the “high octane “ water we will get that at about a dollar a gallon. This water is alkaline and charged and purified in some cool way that is better to drink and tastes better. However, our first choice is spring water when we can find it. When we left our 4 acre homestead in BC we had been drinking natural un- treated spring water for years. I had it piped down the mountain right into the house and it flowed year round. We got used to the taste and purity of that precious water and miss it fondly. So on the road i’m always on the look out for a spring source. Luckily there is an app for the phone , “Find a Spring”. This app has a map of lots of natural springs flowing out of the ground all around the country. We have had good luck with lots of them but they are not always easy to access or on our route.

For our washing and cleaning water we have about 75 gallons of storage under the bus in tanks. This water is usually free to fill up at some gas stations, Loves travel centers and campgrounds. We usually fill these tanks every 3 days or so depending if Aura is with us. She likes to use lots of water when she cleans and hasnt yet taken to the 3 minute “navy shower”. We have to make sure the water is “potable” because we found that if its not then the dish water does not get soapy and there is always a waxy film left on the dishes. Some places use “recycled water” and it does not seem to work for cleaning dishes.

The next reality to our nomad life is pooping. Back on the homestead we used a composting toilet. When the bucket was full I would take it out to one of the covered composting bays and dump it and cover it with straw. This bay when full would sit quiet for a year or so then be shoveled out and used around the farm. Mostly on blueberry bushes and trees. Basically back into the natural system. On the bus we use a similar water free composting system however we need to buy peat moss for the cover material and the bucket gets dumped not into a pile to decompose but into the nearest garbage can we can find. Most times, parks, city cans or dumpsters. Not ideal but to the landfill somewhere. Inanna bags up the poop in a nice green kitchen compostable bag usually every 4 days . We buy a bail of peat moss at HomeDepot for about 30 dollars and it will last as our cover material about a month.

The third reality that we deal with constantly is recycling. Up in BC we had a town dump that recycled most all plastics, glass, tin and aluminium. So we would go once a week down the hill to take garbage and recycling. However, we finding a lot of places in this country still do not recycle the way were used to. Most places take pop cans and plastic bottles. Most other plastics we have to dump. It really depends on what part of the country we are in . Most times we end up throwing plastics and glass into the garbage with our regular garbage which we do at least once a week in a city street can or Walmart can or sometimes an unlocked dumpster. Not a nice feeling to throw that stuff out so were trying not to buy as much packaging when we shop. There are sometimes places we can drive our recycling and drop it off but it adds up quick and takes up considerable space in an already tight place. Also we have kitchen compst which is food scrap that we seperate from our regular garbage. This goes into a small bucket with a lid that gets dumped once a week as well into a street can or forest . One other chore we need to plan around is our grrey water. This is the water that comes down the drains of our sinks. It goes inro a seperate tank under the bus and can hold around 30 gallons. Usually dish water, brushing teeth water and hand washing. When this tank is full the sinks can back up. We can’t just empty this tank in a parking lot or on a street . So every 2 or 3 days we look for a spot to empty this tank when were on the road. I find places with gravel shoulders or grassy spots that the hose can reach. The water is fine to release into the envirnment but it stinks and some people can get funny if were not carefull where we dump it. Back up on the land we had a spot that we ran our greywater into filled with wood chips and a cover. Its great for watering plants and trees especially if your using bio-digradable soaps.

So we will keep adjusting and adapting to this lifestyle and letting go of the way it was up north for us, not always easy but necessary for this life. The challenge becomes how to keep our values that we hold dear and adjust our actions accordingly…