When you step back and think about it, a little stress and pressure probably makes life interesting, right? You could imagine that without those, one might find themselves in the drudgery of life, unable to fully appreciate the good times because there’s nothing to contrast against—or, perhaps this is simply highlighting the fact that I’m no philosopher. But in any case, we had set ourselves a momentous task to begin with, seemingly pushing the proverbial shit uphill from the start but, apparently, it’s all coming together.
How and why did we get to this point, and where does it look like things are heading? Having felt trapped in a cycle of the 9 to 5 grind, and after much consideration and deliberation, we decided to put our family home on the market to fund the purchase of a caravan—we weren’t, and still aren’t, in a position to keep our home and borrow money for a caravan. We have a contract on our house and settlement has been pushed out longer than we’d hoped, only for the fact that the longer it gets dragged out, the less certain it all becomes—a buyer can pull out any time for any number of reasons and a long settlement means things can be drawn out for months only to find you have to start all over again. On the flip side, it means that there is less time between being homeless and the handover date of the caravan. A major hurdle for us has been that, without family or friends nearby to rely on for help, how do we secure accommodation for around 3 months without it costing a small fortune. Moreover, what of all of our belongings? It looks like we’ll be moving from place to place for a while and there’s no way the balance of all the stuff we’re keeping will fit in 2 cars, and so, we’re going to need a short-term storage solution. Adding to the difficulty, we’ll also need to sell a car at the last minute because I’ll be continuing to work for as long as I can and will need a vehicle to call on clients. We also need to consider that I need to be able to provide my employer with 4-weeks’ notice, commit to a resignation date, and try and line all that up as close to the van handover date as we can—this is simply an effort to save ourselves as much money as we can. So too with selling the car—we need to hang onto it for as long as we can, but we also need to have time to sell it for a reasonable amount. We could probably get rid of it at the very last minute, but we’d be practically giving it away. Likewise, with the fridge and washing machine.
It might be a fair to point out that, if we’re scrimping and saving to that extent, can we really afford to travel. Well it’s just a simple matter of the old cliché, every dollar counts—if we have few more thousand dollars by the end of selling off all of our stuff, along with saving a couple of grand on Airbnb’s, then that’s another couple of months, or even a few months, of travel up our sleeves before we need to consider finding some work. So, yes, for us it matters. And as it turns out we have done well to save ourselves a great deal of money with regard to accommodation pre-van handover. We have locked in a 12-day house-sit starting the day of house settlement, followed by a 2 week Airbnb which will see us through to a second house-sit, being for 10-days, and then we will Airbnb for, hopefully, only 2 weeks by which time our new Rembrandt caravan should be ready. Never did we imagine we’d be able to line everything up so seamlessly, particularly landing a house-sit the very day our house settles and we’re homeless.
While this is all happening, we’ve been on the hunt for a vehicle to tow the caravan. Unfortunately, we don’t have the financial capacity for a Landcruiser, Patrol, or a Ram for that matter, so we’ve had our hearts set on a Land Rover Discovery 4. Yeah look, if you know, you know, and I can therefore hear what you’re putting down. But the Disco’s, on paper, are the perfect vehicle, with a 6.7tn GCM (the total legal weight of loaded vehicle and caravan), air bag suspension, plenty of torque to pull a heavy van, and enough comfort to keep us grinning from ear to ear. But I am worried the grins may not last very long if the Land Rover reliability is to be taken seriously. But hey, you can get a bad car in whatever brand happens to take your fancy, so we’ll keep an open mind, keep our eyes open, and see what’s out there.
Despite the stressors and headaches, we’re very fortunate to be in a position to choose the direction we’re headed. Of course, I do worry about where our choices will lead us, but rarely is the future certain so we’ve decided that challenging our own norms and expectations is the right choice. And there you have it, the fog of uncertainty sure is beginning to clear fast, and all that we imagined has begun to manifest. Well, it’s been manifesting for a while now, but I have to keep it dramatic—and of course, I wanted something to link to the post photo.
