How We Live
The Vagabond world is a magical place filled with adventure. Not really but we’re having a good time. I won’t bore you with details on every place and haven’t thought to take many pictures.
So far we’ve stayed in an overpriced crap hotel in Fullerton, a nice log cabin in Yorba Linda, a Best Western in Orange, a great pool house in Santa Ana (twice), an old apartment over a storefront in downtown Santa Ana, and pictured below, the Sky Palm Motel in Orange. The Sky Palm would be great on Route 66, it’s clean, friendly, and conveniently located next to Arthur’s, Genovese, and Taqueria Dé Anda. Three of our favorite places to eat in Orange.
Stoopit Craigslist
Lori was driving us back from Two Crows and I was looking for trailers on Craigslist and searched “Model-T Race Car” and this appeared. It’s a 1922 “banger” Model-T racer. The body’s rough, but it drives nice and it’s California plated. Speed parts include, Rocky Mountain brakes, a Ruckstell two-speed rear end, a cam, and bigger valves. The intake manifold is stock and the header is cracked so we’ll go back to a higher performance set-up. It needs a new interior and we’ll probably remove the paint. The body’s aluminum and we’ll give it a little love when we get the paint off.
Another Craigslist score, it has a motor too!
DTLA
Perhaps the ultimate Vagabond destination, Downtown L.A. We spent a week at the ACE Hotel while checking out the 2018 Harley-Davidson models (BTW they’re great). The ride was short but the food, weather, and company were good.
2001 XL1200S
Ron Stratman, a Vagabond and good company.
I guess they’re good for you now.
2018 Fat Boy
2018 Fat Bob
New Milwaukee Eight
View from the ACE
Winslow News
Good news/bad news. Good news is there’s quite a bit of quarter sawn oak office furniture in the Emporium and the place only needs cosmetic and fine tuning. The bad news is we lost a year of work on the Motor Palace while Joe restored the Masonic Lodge and he’s ready to retire (he’s earned it) and our building permit expired. The building permit is easy but finding someone to replace Joe is a challenge. He’s helping with the transition and we hope for a soft landing.
Finishing the Motor Palace is now our priority in Winslow, all resources will support it until we have it signed off and fully functional. The other good news is the Emporium Building freed space in the Palace for more interesting fixtures. (See the black and white a couple of pics below.)
Joey found a counter and wall like this for the Motor Palace.
How we roll #vanlife
Why We’re Vagabonds
Not because of the burning Kia. We’re vagabonds because we sold our condo in Orange. The fire was two days before escrow closed and we’d already packed the fire extinguishers. No one was hurt but UBER and LYFT are down one.
We bought the place thinking we’d stay a couple of years and move on, seventeen years later it was time. Things went faster than planned and we never got around to finding a place to live so it’s motels and AirBnB. We miss The Professor but that’s about it. Oh, and finding anything when your stuff’s scattered in five places and two states. We’ll probably look for a place pretty soon but we haven’t figured out where we want to live.
SOLD, thanks to our friend and Realtor Darren Scott!
The Professor
Last one Out
We got evacuation notices but didn’t live here anymore. The new owners were safe.
The Professor
The neighbor’s cat hung out at our place so much the rest of our neighbors thought he/she was ours. He lives in the sketchy house, the one with the car fire. They like him and he’s well-fed, but their new large dog bit him pretty good. He has the dog figured out but it was quieter at our place. Luckily he was our official host while the condo was for sale and the new owners like him.
Natural Born Vagabond
Two Crows Vagabond Homestead
A big reason the vagabond life is fun and affordable is we spend weekends at Two Crows. We’re able to do laundry, cook, and take care of normal household business here. It is out official residence but the hundred mile commute is a deal breaker.
A Moonlight drive through Joshua Tree. I love this car, thank you Larry & Floan.
Moving firewood
Babes Ride Out (look at the Stance Socks) Here’s a link to Lori’s BRO5 experience.
Then this
We had an idea. We’d buy the Vagabond dream machine, an old Airstream trailer. We would stay at different campgrounds or parks, we could even park it in the shop! So instead of looking for houses, we looked at Airstreams.
It turns out many Airstreams are in really bad shape and the “restored” ones seem the worst. In fact, “restored” in the Airstream world means anything the seller chooses. Restored in one example was “I opened some of the windows to air it out” but every surface, latch, hinge, drawer, and cupboard were damaged. In another, they removed whatever or whoever died in it but didn’t think to open the windows. For the most part they do a hack exterior polish, re-cover the rotting subfloor, and spray a can of air freshener. The funniest thing is when you ask if the refrigerator works they always say, “I never tried it, I just put a block of ice in it and use it like a cooler.” These are small refrigerators and a block of ice would fill them and I want to know where the water goes when the ice melts.
Airstream shopping would make a great reality/freak show.
Anyway, we found this beauty, it’s a 1966 17′ Caravel. The appliances other than the water heater are original and they all work. The original wood is in great shape and the sub-floor is solid. The cloth upholstery is new and it body isn’t polished. We haven’t picked it up yet but the plate and registration are now in our names. It turns out RV parks are rare here in So-Cal and we filled our shop up with condo stuff so we probably won’t “live” in it much but we wanted one anyway.
Bonus Random Things
Thanks for reading, we look forward to sharing progress on the Motor Palace soon…and Thanksgiving dinner somewhere…
SaveSave
Great blog love the pictures ..so glad you both are having fun ! sounds like a very interesting life but you two are always doing interesting things !