A long and burning road that leads to Denton

Greetings from Denton, Texas….somewhere we never expected to find ourselves for an extended period of time – but here we are. So, where the heck is Denton, Texas, and why did you land there? Well, Denton is located just north of Dallas, TX, and it’s were Kristy and I both went to college, and it’s as good of place as any to park for a while, especially since we have friends here and family is close by.

This wasn’t OUR plan though. We had fought hard to roam free, to be in the mountains, to experience a new location every week or two, but that isn’t in the cards just yet. We aren’t ditching the RV life just yet, but one would wonder why when you hear what has gone down the past few months.

It all started with our trip to Colorado this past summer after we sold our previous company, Bearded Brothers (we are now in the midst of starting up a CBD oil company, Hemp Daddy’s Therapeutics). The trip was filled with problems: two tire blowouts, buying a new set of tires because the factory tires were cheap, and then dealing with stripped lug studs when changing out the tires. This was a costly, unexpected repair…it would have cost less had Good Sam not dropped our roadside assistance plan for, “frequent usage.”

Fast forward a couple months later, our RV toilet had been partially broke for some time, we delayed getting it fixed since it was still functional and we wanted to save the money, but one night we forgot to close the flusher pedal completely, and water poured out in the insulated portion of the RV underbelly, ALL NIGHT LONG.

Not that big of a deal right, insurance should take care of it..well here is where things got crazy. Our insurance lapsed the day before because they couldn’t charge our bank card…you see we had changed banks the month prior. The infuriating part of this was the notice about discontinuing our policy went to spam in my old work email account, which I didn’t even have access to. So we had no idea this was an issue.

So, despite not having insurance to cover the damages we put the RV into the shop – to the tune of $3,500, which also included some brake work from damaged brakes during the Colorado trip…..but the brake work was where things got even worse!!!!

After being without the RV for nearly a full week (staying with family) we picked up the RV. Happy to have our home back we were heading back to the RV park where we had been staying…and two miles down the road the wheels literally flew off the RV. We lost both wheels on the driver side of the rig, because the tech had put the wrong lug-nuts onto the hubs, and probably didn’t torque them properly either.

So, there we were, stranded on the side of the road….and then my phone rings. It was the RV tech calling to tell me he forgot to put a part onto the toilet and wanted me to circle back…but I had to tell them that was impossible and he needed to drive down the road to meet me immediately.

Thankfully the RV shop accepted full responsibility for the incident and put us up in a hotel while they got things fixed. It was a huge inconvenience, and completely nerve rattling. It started to make us question the whole RV life, but we stayed as positive as we could and kept plugging along with our plan to visit family for the holiday and then head out west after Christmas.

After a visit to my parents for Christmas we had one more stop before we went out west to the mountains, we had to stop by the RV shop again to get new axels. Since the RV had drug without tires for about 50 yards I had no idea if the axels were damaged, so insisted they put new ones on since we would be traveling the country, and wanted to ensure my family stayed safe.

The night we picked up the RV, we sat in the RV park wondering if we should head west. The past several months had brought nothing but problems, our savings was being drained because of all the issues, and we were feeling defeated. So, we took some time to pray, and asked God to make it clear to us if we should head out to the mountains…that very night at 11pm our daughter began crying out….she was sick!!! Our prayer was answered, even though it wasn’t the answer we wanted to hear.

So, we decided it was time to take a break from moving the RV, at least until we got our emergency fund built back up. There is no use being mobile, where the chances of problems are more likely, especially when we are focused on building up a new business. Being mobile also took away from time I could be investing in the business because of moving days.

So, here we are in Denton, Texas. We are here through the end of January for sure, possibly longer. We are at peace with staying still for a while so we can dream about the next big thing, focus on Hemp Daddy’s, and build our emergency fund back up.

Our goal is to be able to go wheels down by the time the Summer heat hits….we know without a doubt we don’t want to be in Texas when the heat hits. Even if we haven’t hit 100% of our financial goal, we might still move the rig to Colorado, we just won’t be changing locations on a regular basis.