Listen to the episode
Driving Profile: Richard Matthews
(sneak peek)
RICHARD: [00:00:00] Moved all the stuff out of the trunk and the dog into the
RV. And then we drove it off the lot only for me to get it high centered and
stuck in the driveway of the spot where I bought the RV.
I’ve
owned the thing for like 10 minutes. Now I have to go back into the owner of
the shop and be like, Hey, I got the RV that you just sold me, that I just
signed the paperwork and had the cash over for like, not even 10 minutes ago, I
got stuck in your driveway and I can’t move.
And
we’re literally the front bumpers on one on the road and the back bumper is on
their driveway and the wheels are just dangling. And he comes out and he’s
like, Oh, we can fix that. I got a forklift. We’ll just lift the back tires
with the forklift and it’ll roll back and we’ll be good.
So
he comes out there, he attaches a strap to the back bumper and lifts the back
of it up, rolls the front tires into the little dip. And takes it back tires
back, and then you hear a crunch crunch crunch.
(intro music)
BHAVNEET:
Happy Easter to those who celebrate and welcome back to Drive
With Us Podcast. A podcast where we explore driving cultures around the world
by bringing on a new guest each episode to talk about the crazy things they’ve
experienced on the road, who they are as drivers [00:01:00] and how they
became the driver they are today. I’m Bhavneet.
TARANJIT:
And I’m Taranjit. And Happy National Siblings Day, which is on
the 10th. So not yet, but almost there.
BHAVNEET:
Happy almost National Siblings Day! Woo.
TARANJIT:
Woo. I didn’t know that this was actually a thing, but I sure
got the best sibling in the world.
BHAVNEET:
This one. She means this one.
TARANJIT:
Yeah, that one.
BHAVNEET:
This one that one.
TARANJIT:
This one that one. Yeah this sibling over here. Which you can’t
see me pointing, but yeah.
BHAVNEET:
I vocally confirmed.
TARANJIT:
I thought you were going to say oh me, too, but I guess not. I
guess I am not your favorite sibling.
BHAVNEET:
Oh. Me, too. You’re welcome. Oh. Me, too.
TARANJIT:
Oh. I’m my own favorite sibling, too.
BHAVNEET:
Yeah. Thanks. And as a reminder for those of you that are interested
in getting a thank you card. You have one more week to fill out your information in the Google form below.
TARANJIT:
[00:02:00] But before we get into who today’s guest is
which you could probably already tell by the title, another I guess. Plug.
Plug. Plug. Charge. Charge. Charge. Or whatever word we fuel. Fuel. Fuel. I’ll
use all of them.
Feel free to forward past this small update if you are like just give me the stories. But we always aim to be honest with you guys and we are trying to be more transparent so you can see more into our lives and the behind the scenes of creating this podcast.
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Let’s
get into today’s driver. Today’s driver is Richard Matthews a full-time
husband, father of 4, road traveler and founder of pushbuttonpodcast.com.
He has been an RVer for 3 ½ years and has had his fair share of ups and downs
while on the road. Like the time he high-centered his new RV, put forklift size
holes in it, lost the air conditioner and broke the poop tank. Let’s meet
today’s driver Richard Matthews.
(transition music)
BHAVNEET: [00:04:15] Welcome Richard. Thanks so much for joining us today.
RICHARD: Thank you for having us or having me, I guess I’m not an us. You
guys are the us.
TARANJIT: I mean, the more, the more the merrier, right?
RICHARD: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my, my wife and kids are in the other room
cooking dinner, so there’s sort of an us.
TARANJIT: So since you are an RVer, I’m super excited to hear all
your stories, because I’m sure you have so many travel stories and driving
stories in the RV. So let’s start with what you would say is one of the most
craziest driving experiences you have had?
RICHARD: As you mentioned,
my wife and I travel, full-time in an RV. We’ve been in an RV, of various sizes
and lengths for three and a half years. So we, you know, we drive all the time,
every couple of weeks. We got lots of fun stories over the last three and
a half years and more over the course of my life, but probably the craziest one
since we’ve gotten in the RV was a parking job I had to do in Southern
California.
I had a, uh, friend of
mine who owns a small little winery in Camarillo and we were going up and stay
there with them for a week. They’re going to teach us how to do wine tasting a
bunch of other things. It was super fun. But [00:04:00] we pulled into their
house and they were like, Hey, we’re going to have you back up our driveway.
so for context I’m in a
40 foot RV that is about 108 inches wide, which is the legal width of a road.
And their little driveway is about 108 inches wide, which. It’s about the same
width as our RV and goes up a slope that is about a hundred feet straight up
and there’s cliffs on either side.
They’re, they’re not
huge cliffs, but if you miss the tire off of them, your RV would go tumbling
down the side. There’s trees all up along one side of it and there’s just
a big open hole on the other side. And I had to back the RV, up that. So turn
it all around. So it was going backwards at the thing.
And then back it up
this driveway about a hundred feet into their, up into their, uh, their
driveway. It took us probably two hours to go a hundred feet cause we had to
have someone like on all four sides of the RV watching as we’re, slowly backing
and turning and going up this thing to get up in there.
We did finally manage
to get it all the way up into, into the driveway. We didn’t damage
anything or kill [00:05:00] anyone or fall off of the sides of the coach or off
the sides of the cliff, but it was definitely a heart raising heart rate,
raising experience. and, at the, at the end of it, I was, I was impressed that
we were, we were able to do that.
Once you’ve done that,
something like that, in a giant RV, pretty much anything else you have to do
with it, it’s super easy or seems like it anyways.
BHAVNEET: You’re
like invincible now. You’re like, I can do anything.
RICHARD: Yeah, just the other day when we pulled into this park, real
tight spots to a back-in and we’ve been here several times over the course of
our travels. We know a lot of the people and they saw me pull in and they were
all standing around, watching me pull in, just cause they were waiting to see
my family and whatnot and it was really tight, but I, pulled it back in and got
it all in, in one, in one shot.
And I had a standing
ovation, the whole people are like, wow, you’re, we’ve gotten really good at
this. You could back my RV. And I was like, well, you know, we do it full
times. We have to back this beast every, uh, every couple of weeks.
TARANJIT: Yeah. Experience. I
can’t imagine in that moment in California, when you’re backing that up, what
it must have felt like. Especially because I feel like [00:06:00] the mirrors
are probably not as helpful when you’re backing that big RV up.
RICHARD: Yeah, you can’t see you can’t see everything. You have a backup
camera. but you can’t see the back right side of the coach, and you can’t
generally see the front, the bottom front, like where the front of the, the
coach tires are touching. So you have to guess on where all those things are.
and when, you know,
when you’re driving a 40 foot bus, the road, it’s not a big deal, but
when you’re in really tight spots, you’re like, Oh man, I’ve got so much, I’ve
got so much vehicle around me. it will be quite tough.
TARANJIT: So after having to back
that up, do you prefer forward parking or do you prefer a reverse parking?
RICHARD: I prefer, well, it’s easier to pull forward, but I enjoy the
challenge of backing up. So I, I never, I never shy away from it.
TARANJIT: That’s hilarious. Because we, both of us reverse park
every time. And some of the guests we’ve talked to, they’re like what you are
guys are like some different types of people because everyone usually pulls
right in. But I’m if you think about it, if you reverse into a spot, you can
[00:07:00] just get out easily when you’re trying to leave.
RICHARD: Yeah. Yeah. We Def, I definitely back into a lot of spots. I
like parallel parking too. cause you get the math down, right. And you can
parallel park pretty much anything. I compare a little park, this 40 foot RV
with a trailer on the back of it. That’s always fun, but the, the same math and
angles apply to the big RV as they do a little car.
TARANJIT: Now that’s some skill.
So what actually inspired you into doing RV full time?
RICHARD: Well, it’s something my wife and I have been talking about for a
number of years. I think five years actually, before we actually did it. And
the, the stuff that happens in, in life had kept us from doing it right. You
know, you’ve got a lease and you’ve got kids in gymnastics and you’ve got
school and you’ve got a job that’s local and all these things that are that
keep you in one spot.
Same as everyone else,
but we were like, we wanted to do this, so we’ve talked about it. And we had an
idea of like, what kind of RV we wanted and what we were looking to do. and it
was just like a back-burner discussion that, sometime in our life we’ll
eventually do that.
And then, we had our
third child and we were talking to our landlord about renewing our lease for
the next year. And he was like, [00:08:00] yeah, we can renew your lease. I’ll
bring the paperwork over next week. Well, next week comes around and he calls
me up about the paperwork and he’s like, so remember that paperwork I was
supposed to bring you this week.
Well, it turns out the
guy who owns your property doesn’t want to renew it. He wants to sell it. You
have 28 days to leave.
BHAVNEET: Oh my
god.
TARANJIT: 28 days?
RICHARD: Yeah. I don’t think technically that’s legal. I think they’re
supposed to give you like 60 days, but either way we were like, Oh, well I
guess we’ll figure out what to do.
And he was like, we can
help you look for another place with you their network of homes that they
managed. so we started looking for a house for us and then my wife and I that
evening, we started chatting about, well, You know, I’ve got my business to a
point where we can, we can, move if we wanted to.
And the kids are, we
don’t have anyone. like my oldest son was homeschooling and the youngest
younger two weren’t in school yet. So, we, we could do schooling on the road
with our oldest one. There was just like all these things where we’re like,
without the lease, there’s nothing holding us here.
There’s nothing
specific saying that we have to stay here. So maybe now’s a good time to take
that chance, to, to talk about going in the [00:09:00] RV. So over the next,
and this is a fun driving experience over the next, the next day, my wife and I
decided we’ll just throw all three of the kids in the car and our new dog and
enough clothes and stuff to, make it for a couple of weeks and we’re going to
drive halfway across the country from California to Illinois, and the excuse
was we’re going to go and visit her family.
But what we were doing
was there was three of the RVs that we were looking at, that we wanted to see.
One was in Kansas and one was in Texas and one was in Arizona. And we figured
we could use use the trip to go look at those three RVs. And if none of them
worked out, we at least got to see her family out of it. And it was just a cool
road trip. Even though it took two weeks of our, four weeks, we had to move
out. and if it worked out, we would have an RV when we got back and we can move
into that and do our travels.
So anyways, we piled
everyone into the car and then we drove 26 hours, I think straight from
California to Salinas, Kansas. And there’s a couple of things that are super
fun about that. When we got in the car to leave, we did not have the cash in
the bank to buy the RV. When we got to Salinas, Kansas, I had enough cash in
the [00:10:00] bank to buy the RV. We were looking there out there, we managed
to make it there.
My youngest child
screamed pretty much the entire time. It was the worst thing ever. But we
managed to get there. We took a look at the RV and the guy that, had it and
said it was in great condition. All these things lied completely, and it was
just a horrible pile of garbage that smelled like a rolling can of well poop.
But we still test drove
it anyways. And it was my first time in a 36 foot RV and we drove it around
town. and I brought it back and I parked it right in the spot that it was in.
(REMOVE)
And, it’s like, I parked it straighter that he did. He
was like, wow, you’ve been driving these a lot.
And I was like, no, that was my first
time. And a big RV. He’s like, well, you got the parking down.
But anyways, we did
ended up buying that. We went on to see her family in Illinois. Because of all
of the stress of driving and it’s one of the things I didn’t, I didn’t know,
but there’s a lot of physiological stress that goes along with driving everything
from road noise, to just the normal stresses of driving.
And I had had
chickenpox as a kid and road stress can cause flare ups of shingles. So. I
managed to get shingles from our trip, in Illinois that went all down
[00:11:00] the left side of my neck. and it basically felt like I was, burning
and dying from my ear down to my shoulder on the left side. We had to
still continue our trip because while we’re halfway over there, My
grandmother’s funeral got planned for Las Vegas, and we had to make it back to
Las Vegas because I was the one who was preaching at her funeral.
So, we still had two
more RVs to look at it. So we booked it down to Texas to look at the second
one. And we actually ended up really liking that coach. and it costs a few
thousand dollars more.
So we bought it cash.
Moved all the stuff out of the trunk and the dog into the RV. And then we drove
it off the lot only for me to get it high centered and stuck. on I don’t know
if you’ve ever seen those little, like the dips they have in Texas, between the
road and, and the thing to let all the water run through.
Well, I didn’t know
anything about driving long vehicles over those things. So I went straight over
it and high centered to the RV in the driveway of the spot where I bought the
RV. so we got stuck there I’ve owned the thing for like 10 minutes. Now I
have to go back into the owner of the shop and be like, Hey, I got the RV that
you just sold me, that I just signed the paperwork and had the cash over for
like, not [00:12:00] even 10 minutes ago, I got stuck in your driveway and I
can’t move.
And we’re literally the
front bumpers on one on the road and the back bumper is on their driveway and
the wheels are just dangling over the little dip.
BHAVNEET: Oh my
God.
RICHARD: Yeah. So this is the, uh, the start of our RV trip. Right. And
he comes out and he’s like, Oh, we can fix that. I got a forklift. We’ll just
lift the back tires with the forklift and it’ll roll back and we’ll be good.
So he comes out there,
he attaches a strap to the back bumper and lifts the back of it up. And it does
exactly what he says it was going to do. It rolls the front tires into the
little dip. And takes it back tires back, and then you hear a crunch crunch
crunch because it was on a, on a, one of those chord things.
And the backend of the
RV swung into the forklift and put six forklift shaped holes in the back of our
brand new to us RV. So that was the start of our RV trip was putting six holes
in the fiber glass, But that was the first like 20 minutes of our RV trip.
And then he did
actually teach me how to drive over those dips. You’re supposed to go over them
sideways, at a 45 degree angle from the thing. And you can, you can get over
those steps even in big 40 foot coaches and not get stuck. We had to book it
from Texas all the way [00:13:00] back to Las Vegas and on the way to Las
Vegas, because we bought a 1986 coach.
It was like a million
dollar coach when it was made. so it had all high-end stuff like, teak, teak,
cabinetry and high-end appliances and all that, but it was 30 years old, so it
needed a lot of work to, bring it back up to its former glory. But as we’re
like driving down the road in New Mexico, My wife is behind me in the car.
We got little radios.
We picked up at radio shack and she radios me up and she goes, honey, the air
conditioner just flew off the top of the RV. And I’m like, wait, what? It just
doesn’t look like it flew off. Cause I’m sitting there under the, you know, in
the coach and I can see that the air conditioner there and I was like, it’s
still there.
And she was like, no,
you don’t understand. It just flew off of the top of the RV and is on the side
of the road. so we have to stop, pull off the side of the road and we’re
looking over there and it’s the shroud, like the thing that goes over top of
the RV to keep the rain out of it, the rain cover, it had sun rotted because it
had been sitting for, many years, and the, uh, bolts around it.
Just, popped it right.
Pop right off in the. Hot in Nevada or wherever we were in New Mexico sun and
ended up on the side of the road. So we had to go pick that up [00:14:00]
and then I had to at our next stop, had to go and get a new shroud and put it
up on the top of the RV. only to get back in the RV and start driving
again.
And we go and get gas
somewhere in Arizona and the coach won’t start at the gas station after we
filled it up. Luckily the gas station there had a shop and we went over there.
They had a big truck shop and they drove us over there and take a look at it.
The starter was bad and the starting battery was bad.
They both died at the
same time. So I had to replace the starting battery and the starter. I had to
drive into town to buy those things. We put them in there and then we finally,
couple of days later we made it into Las Vegas. And I was able to, do my
grandmother’s funeral and do a really good, good service there. And we made it
back to California with 14 or 15 days left to finish up, moving out of our
house. We basically got everything ready to go in 14 days. And with one day left
to spare, we got everything moved into the RV, had the house completely cleared
out. Moved into it and drove it up to my dad’s house. who could help me work on
some [00:15:00] electrical stuff I needed to update only to, uh, back it,
onto a, a stone thing that they had for RVs up at his, the place where he
lived. and the, uh, Pipe that the, the, the poop drain stuff came out of was
hanging down just a little lower than it should have been.
And we caught it on the
concrete and snapped it all off. So I got to fix all of our, our poo tank
stuff. as like the first debt. And that’s like the first 30 days of our RV trip
was driving halfway across the country, getting the shingles, blowing off the
AC, getting it stuck, putting holes in the back of it.
fixing the starter in
the batteries and getting home and breaking the tank. And this is day 31,
this is where we’re at. now three and a half years later, we’re pros at
it. But our first, our first month was quite hectic.
BHAVNEET: What a
whirlwind of a trip. Oh my gosh, this sounds exactly like a movie. It’s like
day one, day two. I got shingles, you know, day three. I ran into a ditch.
RICHARD: Yup. Yup. It was, it was insane. It’s funny cause you like, you
think that It would change and get better, but really when [00:16:00] you, have
of, an alternate alternative lifestyle, like living full-time on the road like
we do those kinds of things are, they’re just like normal life now, Where you
break something or run over something. Or if something doesn’t work the way you
want, you just learn to deal with it and move on. But when you’re literally
driving your house down the road, all of the things that go wrong, you have all
the things that go wrong with the house and all the things that go wrong with a
car, combined and then made worse because things that are designed to be houses
aren’t generally designed to be driven down a road.
TARANJIT: As you were explaining this experience from like going
across the country and getting this RV and all the stuff that went wrong
I thought it would end in a happy ending soon, but then it’s like, no, this is
what wrong I’m going to just like, okay, now what to expect.
RICHARD: Oh, well, the happy
ending is my wife and I are three and a half years into traveling. We love it.
We’ve been having a great time. Our kids love it. We had another baby on the
road.
We’ve done
everything from, sliding off of waterfalls and Yosemite to, going to tipest is
point of Texas and all the way down to the lowest point in the continental U.
S. on the Florida [00:17:00] keys and everywhere in between, we’ve got friends
all over the country.
It’s been, it’s been a
blast. We’ve really loved it. We’ve put, well probably 50 or 60,000 miles
across the U S. in, a couple of coaches over the last couple of years, and,
we’ve only seen like 27 of the States. We were supposed to go up the East coast
this summer.
But you know, the COVID
crisis stopped us from doing that. So we sort of got stuck in Florida, cause
they canceled us. We got, we got stuck in one spot for six months, but
everyone’s dealing with that. So that’s not unique to us. But yeah, we
are living our happy ending, so to speak.
TARANJIT: Yeah. That is really
great to hear that you’re enjoying what you’re doing right now. I do have
a couple of RV related questions. So I was looking online and it looks like you
don’t need any special license to drive an RV. Right?
RICHARD: That is correct. For
the most part, there are certain sizes. Like if you get over a certain size,
you have to get a CDL. And I don’t remember exactly what that is. Cause mine is
not that big, so I don’t care. And I think it’s generally the RV plus the
trailer. If they get over 65 feet, you have to have the CDL.
and mine’s only like
with our car behind us, it’s only, like 58 feet. [00:18:00] so we, we are under
that limit and don’t need to have the special license. You can, however,
because the bigger RV we have now is a diesel engine with the air brakes. You
can go get a special, I don’t know what they call it.
It’s like an, a license
addendum. I don’t know. You guys probably know better than I do where you can
get, you can get a certification for air brakes.
TARANJIT: Interesting. Well, it’s great that with your regular
license, you can drive an RV if you want to. So anyone who’s interested in
doing it can do it based on the size. That’s the limiting factor. So do
you typically drive or do you and your wife alternate?
RICHARD: I generally drive the
RV. My wife will drive the RV on straight roads she’s like, once you get onto
the freeway and it’s straight for the next a hundred miles she’ll drive. But
other than that, she’s like, if I’ve turned or get off or change lanes not
happening. She grew up in a small town in Illinois and I grew up in
Southern California.
So like her, her
driving experience versus mine are like, I’m I’m used to LA traffic, which, I
think you’re as worth worse than New York, but you know, I’ve never been to New
York, my wife grew up with, a single stop sign [00:19:00] and that’s how
she learned to drive. And some of my first driving experiences in California
are, they make you confident on the road when you learn to drive in a, in a
place like Southern California.
BHAVNEET: Yeah.
We’ve had a couple of guests come on and talk about how crazy California
driving is. So I can imagine we haven’t been on LA roads, but it sounds like.
It’s a little bit worse than here and Maryland and DC traffic, which is a whole
different world of its own.
RICHARD: So there’s, there’s a freeway. The 91 15, interstate interchange
in Southern California is known as the deadliest interchange in the States.
BHAVNEET: Well, that’s fun.
RICHARD: Yeah. That’s the claim to fame, right?
TARANJIT: So I’m curious to know,
because an RV is such a big vehicle, how much gas does it take and what does it
typically cost?
RICHARD: That changes dramatically depending on where you are in the
country. So if you’re in California, it’s going to cost you twice as much as it
costs you pretty much anywhere else in the country. because the, the taxes
there in California on fuel [00:20:00] are generally about 50% of the fuel
cost. Today I bought gas for, unleaded fuel here in in Florida, it was like a
dollar and 87. And the last time I bought fuel in California, it was like, Four
25. we, we pay a lot to the man in California for, uh, for the privilege of
using fuel in the state. and that a lot of that is supposedly because it’s
helping with the emissions out there and they’ve done a good job at getting the
emissions under control.
So if it’s working,
it’s working, but either way, it’s a, it depends a lot on where you’re at. And
my understanding is there’s some places up in like the Northeast that are more
expensive as well. But our average over our last three and a half years, we
generally average about. Eight to nine miles per gallon in the diesel RV.
our last RV was gas and
about had a big 454 in it. And that one averaged about six miles to the gallon.
And what I found actually is that miles to the gallon is not nearly as useful a
number as the cost per mile. because if you have your cost per mile down, then
you can judge how much it’s going to cost this leg of your [00:21:00] trip.
A lot easier. If that
makes sense. so, my cost per mile in my gas coach was 47 cents a mile. And my
cost per mile in this coach while towing the car, is only about, 39 cents per
mile. And with the other coach, it wasn’t big enough to tow our car. So we had
to drive it alongside. So we paid another 20 cents a mile for the car.
So the big diesel
engine being able to tow the car, getting the eight miles to the gallon, gives
us a really good cost per mile. It costs us on average to do a hundred mile
trip. we, we can generally say it costs about half that in fuel. So if we’re
doing a hundred miles, if it costs us about 50 bucks in gas to, to go,
TARANJIT: That’s an interesting
way to think of it. I never thought to think of it cost per mile instead of
miles per gallon.
RICHARD: Yeah. When you’re traveling, you’re always looking at where next
destination is and the information you get from there is how many miles away it
is. You don’t get how many gallons it’s going to take to get there. So you have
to do all this math to figure out what it’s going to cost to get there.
If you would just know
your miles per gallon, but if [00:22:00] you track your. Usage. I use a little
app called fuelly. I think, what it does is as you continue to use it, it
starts giving you a really accurate cost per mile for your driving. And then we
use that cost per mile, to guesstimate our fuel costs as we’re going places.
BHAVNEET: Little
insider tips for all you aspiring RVers out there.
RICHARD: Yeah, absolutely.
BHAVNEET: Since you mentioned that you’ve been to, I think you said 27
States, I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of crazy drivers all around. Have you
noticed any particular types of drivers in different areas? I don’t like using,
I don’t want to use the word stereotype, but you know, have you seen that
certain areas have certain types of drivers?
RICHARD: There are, the
difference primarily I’ve noticed is in your rule rural versus your, your city
drivers. it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re in San Diego or LA or Dallas,
Texas, or Orlando, Florida, or Seattle or even Salt Lake City, Utah. if you’re
in one of the big cities, people drive completely differently in cities than
they [00:23:00] do, and pretty much everywhere else in the country.
And I would describe
the differences being aggressive. Driving versus what you call like the classic
defensive driving, where pretty much everywhere else in the country, outside of
your big cities, if you’re sitting at a stoplight or a stop sign and there’s a
car, that’s way off, down the road, they’ll like, wait for that car to go.
Even if there’s plenty
of space for you to go in front of them. But if you’re in a big city, they’re
going to, take every, every advantage to, to go as quickly as possible. So I
see that all the time. And then the other thing that I’ve noticed is it seems
to me. That the overwhelming majority of drivers who are not in RVs or semi
trucks, do not understand how long it takes for a semi-truck or an RV to stop.
A lot of times I’ve got
enough space between me and the car in front of me when we’re driving to, to
brake if something happens and we need to stop suddenly. Cause I’ve got. 30,000
pounds of stuff, House and a car and everything inside of it. So I, have to
have a couple lengths of my RV to stop safely.
And you’ll have people
all the time that like, I’m leaving that buffer cause I need it. And other
people will [00:24:00] come in front of you. And I’m like, I know. We’re half
the size or half the weight of like the big semi-trucks. And I see people cut
semi trucks off all the time, and I’m like, man, you’re taking your life into
your own hands when you do that now that I’ve actually driven a big, a
big vehicle like this, and I know what it takes to stop it. I give, I give
every RV and every semi-truck a nice big wide berth in the, in, in the front of
them because, it takes a long time for them to stop. That’s my encouragement to
anyone who’s out there driving pay attention to those big vehicles, make sure
you give them the room.
They need to stop.
Cause otherwise if they crash into you, you don’t win that battle.
TARANJIT: Yeah, you almost never will win that battle.
RICHARD: Lugnut rules. He who has the biggest lug nuts makes the rules.
BHAVNEET: Yeah.
Every time I see someone like cutting off as on my truck driver, I’m just like,
Oh my God. Don’t do that. I’m scared for them.
RICHARD: Yeah.
TARANJIT: So how would you
describe your driving? And would you say that your family and friends would
describe your driving in the same way?
RICHARD: I would probably describe my driving as [00:25:00] Conservative
experienced driver that I don’t know if that would make sense or not, but yeah,
I think my, my family and friends would probably describe me a little bit differently.
My wife, for instance, thinks that I’m like a driving God. and I’m not sure
exactly why, but because she’s, doesn’t like driving.
TARANJIT: Well, I mean, she has you to drive the RV, so then why
she’s probably like, I’m good. He’s driving.
RICHARD: She doesn’t, she doesn’t like to drive. And so like even when
we’re driving around town, that’s actually one of the reasons why we bought the
RV versus buying a big truck in the fifth wheel, is because with the RV, you
can tow a regular vehicle and drive a regular vehicle around town. If you buy
the truck and the fifth wheel, you have to have one of those really big trucks,
The F one, 200. What is it? The 250s or the 350s? or the Chevy 1500 or 2,500 or
whatever, which are big Dooley trucks. And she’s, she doesn’t like driving
enough to even want to drive them. And that’s what your driver would be when
you get there. But when you have a class, a like we have, you can tow a regular
vehicle behind it.
So we just have a,
seven seater SUV that, we have all of our [00:26:00] kids in, and my wife
drives that around for groceries. Or when we go to, explore the area that we’re
in. and it doesn’t make her nearly as nervous to drive that as it would to
drive a big truck or to drive the RV.
BHAVNEET: Speaking of like all the crazy drivers that you’ve seen on the
road, what would you say is your biggest driving pet peeve?
RICHARD: My biggest driving pet
peeve is. It’s people who are not paying attention to the road. So the people
who are on their cell phones or texting or doing things that are, not driving.
And the reason that it’s a big pet peeve for me is because they’re not just
putting themselves in danger.
They’re putting me and
my wife and my kids in danger when they do that. It’s, it’s funny cause
we’re in an RV. We can see a lot more than other people can see cause we’re up
high and we’ve made it a game sometimes on the highway to count the number of
cars where the person’s playing on their cell phone instead of driving.
And you would be
astonished to know how large the percentage of people is, who are not actually
driving, they’re playing on their phones. and I wish I wish more people would
just. you’re going to drive, drive, [00:27:00] driving is fun.
Driving is a fun
experience. I enjoy driving. You can enjoy driving. and I know it’s cliche, but
arrive alive, Your life, the text can wait. The, YouTube video can wait.
TARANJIT: Yeah driving is a
privilege, you’re given this ability to. Do something that not everyone can do.
You should take it seriously because you’re not just endangering yourself, but
other lives at the same time. So, yeah, I agree. That’s a big problem. We see
that a lot here in Maryland, too, where I feel like everyone I see is on their
phone.
I worry for them. And I
back up and I’m like, okay. At least if I stay away and I can keep myself safe,
but then it’s like, they’re going to hit that person. I’m worried for that
person. So staying on this topic of other drivers, have you ever
experienced road rage whether it was like towards you or if you had it yourself?
RICHARD: I’ve experienced it
twice against me. I don’t get road rage cause I’m like. the happiest person
you’ll ever meet. It takes a long time. A lot of effort *beep*
me off. so I’ve never really experienced road rage from that standpoint. but
[00:28:00] on the other side I have, and one of them was, one of my first
driving experiences.
So I’m 16 and I have a
truck that I bought from my grandfather. It is a one wheel drive Isuzu S 10.
It’s got one power to one back wheel in the back and it’s got a, what do they
call it? The five-speed in the floor, that you’re you’re driving. And my dad
took me around the old part of town where there’s nobody around and we spent
weeks and weeks driving around this one, stupid little loop, learning how to
shift gears and those kinds of things.
And he made me stop on
this little Hill. Every single time we went around the loop. I need to make me
stop in the middle of the Hill and start on the, on the Hill, on the incline.
and so I got, I got pretty confident getting there and finally, you know, I’ve
got my learner’s permit, I’ve got all the hours you need to officially be able
to drive by myself.
And my dad is like, I
need milk for dinner. Do you want to take your first, by yourself, driving and
go across the street to Walmart, and get milk? And I was like, Yes, I do. I’m
super excited about that, but also super nervous about that. Cause you know, 16
first time in [00:29:00] the car and the Walmart is literally across the street
from us.
But the street is a
very big street and we’re living on the rural side of the street and Walmart’s
on the other side of the developed side of the street. It’s one of those
streets that it is, three lanes on one side. Going one direction and three
lanes on the other side. And a big concrete slab in the middle.
So you can’t go into
the middle of it. You have to go all the way across. And because we’re on the
rural side of it, we have a stop sign that goes to go across the street. And I
have to go, straight across, which is crossing six lanes of traffic, coming
from both directions.
And I can’t stop in the
middle. There’s no room for it. the stop sign is on an incline. it’s like a 45%
incline it’s one car length that you’re sitting on this incline at a
stoplight or a stop sign to go across they’ve they’ve since changed this, it’s
now a stoplight and it’s actually much easier to do this but I get over there
and I’m stopped at the stoplight.
And if you guys have
ever driven a clutch before, or if you remember being first-time drivers, but I
was super nervous about having to start on [00:30:00] this Hill at the stop
sign. And it’s like the busiest street in our town. I was waiting for
like a really, really wide berth.
So if I, If I F’ed it
up, I wouldn’t die in the middle of the road. So I’m sitting there at the stop
sign and probably 10 minutes into me waiting there and like sweating bullets
going, there’s never going to be a break in the traffic and I’m going to have to
go for it.
Eventually, a lady
pulls up behind me, and she’s in a white car And she is two minutes of even
being there, she’s already like *beep* and she’s honking at me she’s leaning out
the window and screaming at me and she’s only been there for two minutes
at this point and I’m like freaking out, there’s still not out of a space for
me to go.
Least not be
comfortable going. And she finally, three minutes into me trying to like, have
a space to go and now I’ve got this car. That’s revving her engine behind me,
like rolling up. towards my bumper and being really, really aggressive. and I’m
sitting like if I, if I mess up this, letting off the clutch, I’m going to hit
her car and she’s already mad.
She finally, she puts
on her. Parking brake and she hops out of the car and she starts, huffing
up [00:31:00] towards me, yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs that I
need to go or she’s going to kill me.
And so I freaked out,
and I just I, slammed on the gas and, booked it out across the thing and made
it across all six lanes of traffic and, made it over to a Walmart and didn’t
die. But I was convinced that if I didn’t actually go that this, lady behind me
was going to come over and pull me out of the car and beat me senseless.
BHAVNEET: Oh my
God. A lot of firsts in one. Wow. That’s crazy. Your first RV, very crazy
experience. Your first time driving by yourself, someone threatened to kill
you. Like, Oh my God. I’m glad you made the cross.
RICHARD: Glad I made it across too. So that’s just a, a thing in my life.
My wife and I are talking about buying a sailboat and learning how to travel
that next to maybe our first driving experience. And that’s not going to go so
well either. It’s like a, theme.
TARANJIT: Well, I’m glad to hear
that these experiences did not deter you from driving that you still enjoy it,
but yeah, hopefully your first time on the boat is not as bad as your other
experiences. [00:32:00]
RICHARD: Another first time,
well, it’s sort of a first time I was, Driving back from St. Louis to my wife’s
house. For the first time after we had gotten married, we were going to visit
her parents. we had driven in the car before together but this is the
first time after we’d gotten married, that we were going to, go somewhere
together and we’re driving in my, I had a little orange Suzuki.
Reno or something like
that. I remember what it was a little tiny car. It was great. and we were
driving on the 61 North in Missouri going up to Quincy. It is middle of
November it is snowing there is, there’s nothing for probably 50 miles in any
direction from where we’re at.
in the middle of
nowhere. a deer, I swear. Teleported out of the sky and landed on top of
our engine Bay, and muffin tinned. you know how muffin tin is like, Indented
into the pan. That’s what the hood of my car looked like. The deer knocked the
engine straight out of my vehicle onto the ground, and flopped off into the
distance, which I had never hit a deer before.
And everyone talks
about, hitting deer in the Midwest. And I always [00:33:00] imagined in my head
that hitting a deer. meant that a deer ran out in front of you and you hit it.
I was not aware could fall from the sky onto your vehicle. Which is apparently
a normal thing because the deer tried to jump over the roads and they don’t
generally make it so hitting a deer can oftentimes mean that a deer landed on
top of you.
So that’s what happened
at 70 miles an hour on the freeway, a deer dropped on top of our vehicle. We’re
actually lucky to be alive for that one. Cause it’d be a dropped another five
feet behind you and landed on top of us and knocked us through the car. But he
landed on the engine and just knocked it out.
But here we are, again,
middle of November, it’s snowing. We’re all alone. There’s no cell service. so
we ended up having to pull the little emergency blanket out of the trunk of the
car and a wrap up in that and lay in the back seat of the car with the flashers
on, until someone stopped, and could help us and we could get a tow truck
coming. That was a fun experience.
BHAVNEET: Those
Midwest deer must be a whole different species of deer. Cause I’ve never heard
of a deer trying to jump over the road.
RICHARD: they have really big [00:34:00] deer.
Yeah. They look
like small horses.
BHAVNEET: Okay.
Hey. Wow. Cause here deer is a big problem. Taranjit can tell you all
about her experiences with deer. So fun, but I’ve never seen them try to jump
over. It’s definitely what you would think of. They run in front of you and hit
you.
RICHARD: Yeah. That’s what, like, that’s what I thought would happen.
TARANJIT: Wow. First of all, it
makes me not want to drive there because I attract deer like crazy. So I don’t
want to encounter those.
RICHARD: You’re a deer magent?
TARANJIT: I am.
One of my worst deer
experiences was I was going 60 miles an hour. And the deer came out of nowhere
and destroyed my brand new car. I haven’t even had it for a month and just
destroyed the whole left side and the deer, most in all the accidents I’ve had
with deer, they always just get up and just run away and it’s like, nothing
happens to them, but your car is done.
RICHARD: Yeah. It’s quite sad.
BHAVNEET: You kind of talked about your first driving experiences, how
would you describe your driving test experience? Were you [00:35:00] able to
pass it on your first try?
RICHARD: I was able to pass it on my first try. And then, in Southern
California, we lived in a little town called Temecula and, Temecula is a,
tourist area. It’s the second wine country.
So if you’re familiar
with Napa Valley, the other Napa Valley and in California is Temecula. Every
Saturday and Sunday, people come in from all over the world to go to the
wineries. So there’s always tourists and it’s very, very busy. And the driver’s
test area, the DMV is right in the downtown area where all the tourists are.
So we have to do our
driver’s test. Through downtown and I’m doing it on a Saturday. So there is a
ton of people they made us do a whole bunch of things. like, we had to pull up
next to a curb and back all the way up along the curb and keep it straight.
and it all, it was all going well until I got to downtown. And as we’re
driving between three of the stop signs I had entire groups of people run
out in front of me and I had to slam the brakes on [00:36:00] so hard that I
threw the test teacher almost into the dashboard, three times.
And I’m like, Oh God,
I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I’m over here. Like. Slamming him around in the
vehicle and he’s like, don’t worry about it. That’s what you’re supposed to do.
You don’t hit the pedestrians. If you hit the pedestrians, you would fail the
driving test. so I’m like freaking out.
This is not helping my
nerves at all, And by like the third time that I had to slam on my brakes for a
group of people running out in front of the vehicle, I, I was convinced I had
failed this test. We get all the way back to the thing. And at this point, I’m
like nervous and shaking and sweating the whole bit.
And we pull back into
the DMV and they have that center, the center yellow lines, that you can pull
into this, like the turn lane. I had pulled into the center lane, The back
tires had gone over the double yellow line before to get in before they got to
the little T the opening for the turn I get back And I was like, how did I do I
feel like I failed? I just mess everything up. He’s like, you did everything
perfect by the book. Except for the last second there you had your back tires
run over the double yellow line. So you [00:37:00] lost three points for that.
That was the only three points he lost on the whole driver’s test. I was
like, what, how did that happen?
BHAVNEET: Don’t
worry about your passenger, throwing them around. You didn’t hit anyone.
RICHARD: I didn’t hit any people, which is, the primary goal of driving
is not to kill the pedestrians.
TARANJIT: It doesn’t matter if
you throw it around your passengers. No big deal.
BHAVNEET: So did
you have to parallel park on your test? Because a lot of people we talked to
have said that they didn’t have to, which is really surprising.
RICHARD: We did not have to parallel park, between vehicles. We had to
parallel park between cones. But we did have to with vehicles and traffic, we
had to, pull up next to the curb and we had to be able to back up along the
curb for a hundred yards. which is different, I guess. But it’s the other
thing that they had us do is they had us park on the Hill, which is apparently
a thing that doesn’t happen across the country either.
But in California,
there’s lots of Hills and you park on Hills a lot. So they make you park up on
a Hill. next to the curb and you have to remember [00:38:00] to turn your tire
into the curb so that if your parking brake fails, the tire will stop the car from
going, and that was a very specific thing I remember we had to do on our
tests that is not typical across the country and then the other thing that is
also not common, is, we had to do. entry and exit on to interstates. And we had
to do lane change on the interstate and come back off of the interstate on our
driver’s test, because most of the roads in California are interstates,
BHAVNEET: Yeah. I
definitely can see how parking on a Hill is a California thing, because we
don’t have that over here at all. In the level that I think like San Francisco
is like extreme.
RICHARD: they’re famous for it, but all over California, like the whole
city is, or the whole city, the whole state is mountainous. So if you park on
the road there, you have to do the same thing. And it’s the whole, the whole
state is like that. If you, you get out into the desert, maybe it not so much,
but most of the rest of the state is all hilly.
TARANJIT: That makes sense to
have specific parts of the test for your state. Do you think that parallel
parking should be a requirement on the test or is it up [00:39:00] to the state
like state by state basis?
RICHARD: I don’t know. I can say that, you know, I’ve been driving for 20
years now. And I can count the number of times that I’ve had to parallel park.
And I drive a lot, on like, two and a half hands. My hands, my hands and my
toes.
There’s just, it’s just
not that common of an occurrence. I don’t know that I can see a reason to make
it a requirement. I do think that you should teach you how to do it and driving
school. cause a lot of people don’t know how to do it. I think you should know
how to do it, but I don’t know that it’s a requirement for testing.
TARANJIT: Yeah, that’s an
interesting point. We’ve had mixed responses for the summer. Like yeah,
everyone should know how to do it, but yeah, if they teach it in driver’s ed. I
guess that could count as at least teach it, but I feel like a lot of
people in driver’s ed don’t really learn the skills as much as opposed to
probably doing it on the test or actually doing it in life after getting your
license.
RICHARD: Yeah. My, my dad taught me how to do it. And there’s this whole
thing where, you pull up next to the car and you pull back. So your front tire
is aligned with their back tire and you turn your wheel a certain [00:40:00]
degree. And pull it in, you turn the wheel another degree and you can nail it
perfectly every time.
If, you know, if you
know where you’re supposed to turn the wheel and it, it doesn’t even matter how
long your vehicle is. It’s all, it’s all pretty much the same. so it’s, it’s,
it’s probably one of the most formulaic. Parts of driving is parallel parking.
also pulling into a parking space at the same way and know a lot of people
parked crooked, but you can park a big truck or a big, big RV perfectly into a,
into a spot, even in a tight space, if you know how you’re supposed to pull the
car in at the right angles.
And when you’re
supposed to turn the wheel, which is something they don’t teach.
TARANJIT: Yeah, I guess it comes
down to having the right teacher.
RICHARD: Absolutely.
TARANJIT: So thinking into the
future of cars and with the possibility of having self-driving cars and maybe
there’ll be self-driving RVs, who knows, would you be comfortable in getting in
this car and what are your thoughts
RICHARD: A couple of years ago, I was in Southern California and a famous
speaker I wanted to go see was coming in to Las Vegas and we only had one car,
my wife and I, and she needed the car for something she was doing. So I needed
to get a [00:41:00] ride out to Vegas.
And, I had thought
about just taking a plane over there, cause it’s only a couple hundred bucks to
get a plane ticket. but a new service had popped up. That was, you could take
Tesla. there was a Tesla. Taxi service between where we lived and they would
come pick you up at your house and drive you to Vegas, and then they’d come
pick you up and Vegas and drive you back.
Which was super cool.
And, it was really inexpensive, It’s only like 85 bucks because it doesn’t cost
them anything in gas they get free charging because that’s the way Tesla does
it. So they have, the costs to get in and take the Tesla taxi was.
It was $85, one
direction, $85, the other direction, which was just so cheap compared to buying
a plane or renting a car or any other options I had. So I went ahead and did
it. The coolest thing ever is they come and pick me up in Vegas and on the way
back, the guy who picks me up is like, you want to try the auto driving.
And I was like, sure,
why not? And he turns on the auto driving and the car just takes over and
drives us basically from Vegas, all the way to Southern California he has to
sit in the driver’s seat and he has to look at the [00:42:00] screen every
couple of minutes, otherwise it’ll turn off the auto driving and beep at him.
sS it it, it checks
that you’re paying attention, but we spent the entire time driving back, just
him and I chatting and looking at photos and talking about stuff so from that
standpoint, it is really, really cool technology. Now the other side of that is
that I’ve worked in technology. so there’s things I know about machine learning
that not a lot of people know, like for instance, Google and their
self-driving car initiatives, they have not yet figured out how to get their
auto driving system to be able to tell whether or not a stop sign has been
tampered with.
So if you have a stop
sign and you take a one inch square of duct tape and you put that one in square
of duct tape on the stop sign, Google’s auto-drive can’t figure that out. and
that’s, that’s just one thing of many, Cause you’re talking about computers who
are trying to learn how to do what humans can do instinctually.
We are, we are so far
away on the machine learning to actually having, the neural linguistic,
capabilities, Or the neural processing capabilities that we have [00:43:00] as
humans in the vehicles that I think it’s going to be a long time before we
actually have self-driving vehicles, that are legitimately self-driving and
autonomous where they’re not on a closed system. I think you could do some
closed system stuff with the auto driving technology that’s out now. but as
long as you have an open system of roads and where they have to be able to
interact with the environment around them, I think self-driving is a long ways
off, However, that being said, the auto-driving stuff where you still have a
human being there as backup is really cool.
TARANJIT: So how would you feel
about having these features or technology in an RV?
RICHARD: I think that I would totally buy Tesla’s RV cause they already
came out with their semi-trucks. So if they take that same platform and stick
an RV on the back instead of a big, semi-truck I would, I would be in line.
BHAVNEET: Bonus question time. Are you ready?
RICHARD: I am.
BHAVNEET: If you
could make one new driving law, what would it be?
RICHARD: One new driving law. That’s an interesting question. I think it
probably have to go back to my pet peeve on that with the cell phone use while
[00:44:00] driving. I would tend to want him to make the penalties harsher than
they currently are. just because harsher penalties tend to dissuade behavior
better than other things.
But, I don’t know
exactly how that would impact things cause it’s difficult to enforce. But if we
could figure out a way to. Use our legal system to get people, to actually pay
attention on the road and, not put my family in danger because they’re not
paying attention.
I’d be down for that.
TARANJIT: Maybe they can come out
with some kind of like, you know how their speed cameras, maybe there can be
like a, if you’re using your phone camera.
RICHARD: Yeah, something like that. And I know like, there’s there,
they’ve tried some things like, I know Apple has this feature where you can
have it driving where like, it knows if you’ve connected to your Bluetooth and
it won’t let it’ll discourage you from using certain pieces of your phone while
you’re driving.
And if someone texts
you it’ll send them to. It won’t notify you until you stopped driving. But not
a lot of people use them and they’re still not implemented. Well, I like them
and I still don’t like to use them because there’s stuff that’s you need to
know about sometimes.
especially if you’ve
got a wife and four kids, and you have an emergency situation I was two
hours later than I should have been because I [00:45:00] didn’t see those, see
those things cause I was driving, when I should have turned around and come
back.
Those kinds of
things. There’s companies that are working on the issue. and I know that
we’ll get there eventually. We’re just not there yet.
TARANJIT: Yeah. In our state, at
least when the law first came out on cell phone users started off as a
secondary offense. So like you would have to get pulled over for something else
before he get a ticket for that. I guess it will take some time to get to more
stricter laws, against cell phone use, but it is equally as dangerous as drunk
driving or any of those types of distracted driving.
RICHARD: I was reading some statistics the other day that, they did, a
comparison of drunk driving versus looking at your cell phone and texting, with
drivers on a closed course. and they had flags up. I believe that they were,
they were trying to see, if they saw the flags, if they’d hit the flags, to
move out of the way of them.
and someone who had the
blood alcohol level right. Which is like 0.8. they hit less of the flags than
someone who was texting and driving. by like 25%, it was astonishing. How much
more distracted you are on your phone than [00:46:00] even if you’re drunk and,
drunk driving is like, you lose your license.
TARANJIT: Yeah, that’s really
scary to think about, especially for the number of people who do do it. Do you
have any final tips or advice that you’d like to give other drivers or to
anyone who’s considering getting an RV?
RICHARD: if you’re considering getting an RV, my primary suggestion is
get one with a. Big enough engine to pull however much your RV weighs. My first
RV did not have a big enough engine for how much it weighed. So it struggled
everywhere, which makes driving no fun. the new coach that we got has a massive
diesel engine and it is so much nicer to drive a vehicle that is
overpowered than it is to drive one that is underpowered. So. my advice, if
you’re buying an RV is to test drive it and make them, let you take it to a big
Hill and drive that thing fully loaded up a big Hill. And if it can’t go up the
big Hill fully loaded, don’t buy the RV, get one with a bigger engine.
And if you’re
wanting to drive my advice to other drivers is relax. [00:47:00] Driving is a,
at least I think it is. It can be a very. Relaxing fun experience. if I ever
get stressed out, I’ll go get in the car and drive around for a couple of hours
and listen to some music.
I think if you
can just learn to become one with the machine and learn how to handle the roads
and all those things and, Get yourself into crazy situations in your car and
your vehicle and spin your car around on ice.
A couple of times
driving the dirt, all these kinds of things. You learn how to really handle the
extremes of your vehicles. Driving can be a very fun experience.
TARANJIT: Being a relaxed driver helps you be a better driver, not
only for yourself, but then also you’re keeping others around you safe because
you’re not in that anxious state of mind.
RICHARD: it’s powerful for a lot of things in life, when you’re relaxed,
you have space in your mind between. Stimulus and your response, So when things
happen on the road, you have the space in your mind to think about your choices
and how to respond and how to respond.
Well, instead of being
a reactionary driver where you’re just freaking out and tensing up over
things, [00:48:00] And the more you do that, the faster you get at making
really good choices when you’re driving. Which is why, when you get to be a
really experienced driver, that way things like really heavy traffic and,
having a drunk driver swerving around you and, driving in ice storms don’t they
don’t stress you out.
It makes you a
lot more comfortable driver. It makes you a safer driver. And then driving
becomes something that’s fun instead of being a chore.
TARANJIT: That’s really well
said. Yeah. I tried to try out different. Types of vehicle will help you get a
better understanding of how it is to drive that, especially the difference
between an RV and a regular car and how long it takes to stop it’d be important
for people to know the differences of those vehicles.
So before we let you
go, I know you have a. business that helps with marketing podcasts. Do you want
to tell us a little about it and where can everyone find you?
RICHARD: Yeah. the, the business that allows us to travel full-time is a
full-service podcasting agency called push button podcasts. And we work with
small businesses, and sometimes podcasters, If they’re just running podcasts
and they want help [00:49:00] with it, where we do, we do everything for you.
Except the actual recording of the podcast.
we do everything from
helping you book and schedule your guests to helping you come up with topics
for your show to helping you get your studio set up to helping you get your
podcasts websites set up to every single episode. When you hit that stop record
button, it automatically gets uploaded to our servers and our team takes over.
And does the audio
editing and the video editing. And the written assets for it. We
literally do all of the creation of assets that you need to actually go out and
publish your podcast.
And then we handle all
the publishing for you. And because we do that at scale, with teams from all
over the world, we can do that for a significantly smaller price than you could
to hire that.
In-house. And it
is a pushbuttonpodcasts.com. And my, my staff over there set you guys up with a coupon code
that gives, anyone who listens to this show and wants to hit us up and get that
set up.
And you use the [00:50:00] coupon
code drive with us you will get a discount. And hopefully helping
support your show.
BHAVNEET: Wow.
That’s really cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It was really
interesting to hear your perspectives as a full time RV. We are and all your
experiences on the road, around the country.
RICHARD: Thank you very much for having me. It’s been fun.
(transition music)
TARANJIT:
I have a question for you. I know we both love driving and our
listeners probably know this because mention this all the time, but would you
ever consider driving an RV or becoming an RVer?
BHAVNEET:
So driving as in just one time driving it versus living in an
RV.
TARANJIT:
Sure whichever way you want to take it.
BHAVNEET:
Well, if those are the options. I’d rather just drive and I
don’t think I would want to live full-time in an RV. Like I love driving but
I’d like a home to come home to that stationary.
TARANJIT:
Yeah. I agree. There’s always this like I don’t know if it’s
like a joke or just like this. I guess it’s kind of a joke where people are
non-white people are like camping is a white people thing. You know?
BHAVNEET:
[00:51:00] Like why would I do that?
TARANJIT:
Yeah. Exactly. Especially like speaking from an Indian
perspective since we’re Indian and we know that perspective. It’s just like a
lot of like our family and relatives come from India from like living in I
guess I’m more not as luxurious lifestyle. So then coming here they like we’re
not going to camp like that is like we could have done back home.
BHAVNEET:
That’s called sleeping on the farm. Like, what are you talking
about?
TARANJIT:
Exactly. So I feel like that is like a part of RV life is like being
able to also camp or like pull out wherever and just be on like a campsite and
I don’t think I don’t think I would enjoy that. Because to me it’s like no, I
don’t think you’ll like it.
BHAVNEET:
Kudos to everyone who does it. Like you can probably see some
really amazing stuff always be on the road and that part I am envious of. But
yeah, I don’t think camping is for me.
TARANJIT:
I would much rather get in a car, do the road trip and then [00:52:00] get
like an AirBnB or hotel or something.
BHAVNEET:
Stationery room.
TARANJIT:
Yeah. Instead of lugging my house around everywhere. Like I
don’t know. I mean, we kind of lugged our house to Georgia.
BHAVNEET:
You know how stressed I get just driving. And then you have the
tension of driving your house with you the whole time, uh huh.
TARANJIT:
Yeah.
BHAVNEET:
But yes we did lug our house to Georgia. You can hear
about that in our previous episode…
TARANJIT:
I don’t remember the number.
BHAVNEET:
Season 1. Just be warned our quality audio quality was
not at the level that it is now. It’s a little subpar. We were still learning.
TARANJIT:
Yeah. We still are learning but I’m curious to know are you, the
listeners fellow drivers, whatever name we decided that we still haven’t
haven’t figured out what to give to our fandom. Like not fandom. You guys. I
don’t know.
But
are you guys interested in RVing or have you already gotten into the RV Life? [00:53:00] Share the stories with us in the comments below or come be a part of our live conversations over on Stereo. You can find us @Taranjit and @Bhavneet. And Stereo is basically a live podcast, but you can join in on the conversation. So while we are talking about different topics, mostly driving related topics over there, too, you can actually submit voice clips and be a part of the conversation. We have a lot of fun over there and we hope you will join us.
BHAVNEET:
And if you or anyone you know has any crazy, interesting, weird,
funny driving experiences and would like to come on the show fill out the
interest form on our website at DriveWithUsPodcast.com
TARANJIT:
And be sure to stay tuned until the end of this episode for a
sneak peek of next week’s episode. And if you didn’t know we have a Discord,
so come hang with us over there and talk all things driving. Thanks for
driving with us.
(outro music)
AMY: [00:55:00] I drove through what was a construction zone. But I did not see was that the speed limit was dropped 10 miles an hour.
And so in my head, I’m obeying all the rules and being awesome. So this policeman waves at me and I waved back and keep driving, cause like, Oh, have a nice day. You know? And I see in my rear view mirror, it’s like, it’s like cinematic.
He looks at me. I keep going. And he like double takes. So he like runs to his car, which was. You know, hilarious and like jumps in it. And so he pulls me over and he’s like, why did you flee.