Hello Kansas
The RV has been our home for a week now. We got to Kansas City last Sunday to visit our friend Chad and stayed in his driveway until Friday night. Our arrival was just in time to help him pack and move from one house to another.
We had his driveway to ourselves the first night there, but his storage pod was delivered to next morning so our RV had company the rest of the week.
The week was spent with us working on the trailer and truck during the day while Chad was at work and then helping him pack and hanging out during the evenings. We still had several things we had to finish on the trailer: complete the final installation on our Air Head toilet - which was hooking it up to the fan and putting peat moss into the solid tank; we also had to complete the construction and painting of the step in the main room to the bedroom; and rearrange how we had our gear stored in the trailer – still trying to figure it out.
The truck was a bigger issue. Right before we left Asheville our waste veggie oil system (WVO) had a glitch in it and we weren’t able to run the truck on WVO without having diesel returned into the WVO tank, which caused problems. Dejectedly, we left Asheville running our truck on diesel, but with 50 gallons of WVO in the bed of the truck ready to be used. The solution to this problem was to install an electrical fuel pump instead of using the mechanical fuel pump that was in the truck. We did this once we got to Kansas City. Jerud also went ahead and changed the belts in the engine and the radiator hose (since it started to leak).
While in Kansas we met Eliza, Chad’s girlfriend, who is a charismatic and upbeat entrepreneur. She started her own business, Simplicana, 5 years ago. Eliza is a certified professional organizer and is all about minimalizing your life. We expressed mutual respect and fascination with one another’s life/job. The first night at Chad’s, I casually mentioned to her how I was thinking about maybe contacting some news stations to share our story. Eliza was on it! Within a couple of hours she told me that she already contacted two local news stations about us! The next day I heard from Samantha with Fox 4 Kansas City and Laurel with Better Kansas City. Vefore I knew it, we had two TV interviews set up!
Thursday morning we pulled out of Chad’s driveway, with slight hesitation about how easy it'd be to get the RV back into the driveway with storage pod already there, and headed to the news stations. Neither Jerud nor I have ever done anything TV related so this was a new experience. Our first interview was with Better Kansas City and it was a taped interview since they were on hiatus this week and the segment would air next Thursday. They only had one extra microphone available so only one of us could be interviewed. We decided I would do this one. Dave, the news reporter, went over some of the questions he would ask, what I would highlight in our trailer that’s unique, and we did a quick walk through the RV to see where things were and how Andy, the cameraman, would get those shots. With the large camera inside the RV, it made the space feel a lot tighter. It was a challenge for Andy to figure out how to film some of the space inside the RV, for example: to get a shot of the toilet since there’s not enough space inside the bathroom or right outside it to fit the camera. Then we started to film. A few shots were re-done, Andy got some footage for B-roll, and we were done.
Afterwards we drove over to Fox 4 Kansas City where Nick interviewed Jerud. Fox 4 was going to show the interview the next day during their regular time slot so this interview was done as a “like live” interview, meaning it would be taped all in one shot.
You can watch Fox 4 Kansas City's interview with Jerud here.
We were very surprised when we got Facebook posts and an email from people who watched the show the next day! People were all very positive and excited about what we are doing. Yay! While Jerud was working on the truck, two older ladies walked by and told him they saw him on TV that morning. They said they live behind Chad and had seen our RV, so that morning they changed their morning walking route so they could walk pass our rig!
I helped Chad move while Jerud worked on the truck. Chad had closed on his new house that morning and had to be out of his old house by 4 PM.
Eliza went out and got food from Bonito Michoacan, a Mexican restaurant that sold $1 tacos on Tuesdays and Fridays, for lunch. She came back with tons of tacos, tamales, Mexican baked goods, grilled onions and pablanos, guva juice and horchata. Delicious food! I highly recommend it if you’re in Kansas City.
While our visit to Kansas City was busy working on the truck and trailer, it was still a great visit because we were able to catch up with Chad and Eliza. We hope to swing by Kansas again to actually do some stuff outdoors.
