technomadia

Many congrats to you.. and well wishes for the adventures ahead of you!

As an add on to Chris' reply.. one of the things we do definitely use the power of the larger inverter for is our blender There's nothing like blending up a frozen margarita for friends on a hot desert day. But as far as our essential stuff, we mainly turn on the interverter to power our two Macbook Pro laptops, Mac Mini, back up drive and LCD monitor panel. But as Chris mentioned, we're about to switch a lot of that over to DC as well. We generally get enough sun to run both our laptops off solar during the day and into the night. And in the grand scheme of things, that's the most essential for us - Cherie

I too am looking for an easier way to tilt the panels... I may try to find a folding ladder that collapses small enough to fit in our tongue basket. But right now we have no easy way to get on the roof other than parking the Jeep next to the Oliver and climbing up that way. I am also looking for ways to run more and more stuff off of DC, so that we can save on needing to have the inverter on so much. I'll post an update soon on that project. Cheers! - Chris

We heard rumors of there being a 22' in Oakland, CA somewhere... someone who came by to see our trailer said they were going there next to see the 22'. So perhaps there are two out there now I'm very impressed with the pictures of the 22'.. bugz, your pictures capture it so much better than the brochure and website! Thank you for posting them. (And, we're leaving the Bay Area and heading towards Lake Havasu now.. should be there in a weekish, depending on how side tracked we get - Cherie

One thing to consider is your official domicile for state income taxes. We registered in South Dakota for our purposes. However, if you're already in a state without income taxes, that's a great start We also live and work out of our Oliver.. we definitely write off mileage, camp fees, equipment specific to our work (computers, etc) and other job related expenses. We haven't tried writing off office space, as there is no space in our Oliver that is dedicate just to work, so that would get tricky. And when we're living and working in a small space, so much of our stuff is dual purpose personal/business. But if you're camp hosting.. that's probably different - as you are there for work. If we get into publishing books on nomadism and/or making money off our blogging - we will likely look different at our living expenses and how they should be written off. - Cherie

No.. the red one was another one of their 17' show models - they did the gel coat in red, and hand painted all the exterior stuff to match (which proved to be a lot of work, and it faded a bit differently after a while.. so they don't do colors anymore). They had also done one in black at some point. The 22' didn't come out until just a couple months ago - Cherie

Oh cool.. you got the racing/vintage car themed one that they were prepping when we picked ours up! Here's a pic of your NestEgg getting hitched up for her first cross country trip .. to Hot August Nights, I believe. Congrats ... and hope you have many adventures ahead! - Cherie

Your innovation and handiness amazes me! Thank you for continuing to share your mods with us. Makes me wish we could rent you out for a couple days to come pimp out our house - Cherie

We'd love to do Alaska and Canada.. but probably not anytime real soon. Looking forward to all your updates and photos from your adventure up that way! - Cherie

While Thor may be in a better position financially than others.. it certainly wasn't our impression that they were on solid footing when we were trying to get customer service from them on the T@b back in July. We were told by several Thor employees that their hours had been drastically cut back due to the economy, and customer service lines only staffed a couple days of the week. It took us over 3 weeks to resolve what should have been a simple problem (getting a castle nut to reaffix the wheel to the axle), and that was only after a local RV repair shop went above and beyond to track down the part needed. Your mileage may vary, of course.. and we only hope that our experience was an isolated one. - Cherie

Welcome derangedhermit! As a couple full-timing in a 17' Oliver, I can't tell you how happy we have been with it and Oliver! We're anxious to see the new 22', but we're really quite happy with the 17' for our needs and doubt we'll be temped to upgrade anytime soon. (Of course, we're in our mid-30s and previously full timed in a 16' clamshell). Chris and I had also looked at the smaller Airstreams - and quite frankly, their quality just isn't what they used to be. And given the financial state of Thor Industries and the terrible customer service we received with our T@b (also owned by Thor), the newer Airstream became quite unappealing. (The older ones are so gosh-darn awesome !) Aside from the very high quality of the Oliver - it was the people at Oliver that made the decision obvious to us. Sure.. things have broken and gone wrong (I suspect they would have with any choice we made) - but the folks at Oliver have gone out of their way to help and make them right. For example, we had to have some repairs made at Camping World a few months back. The service rep there was astounded that Oliver paid for it over the phone themselves - instead of having us pay for it and be reimbursed (which is the norm for RV repairs). When you're full timing.. making sure your *house* is going to be taken care of becomes a very important decision point. It's not like a vacation camper, where if something is delayed getting fixed you put off a camping weekend. - Cherie

The cabinets are made up of the none-seen sides of the hull - which are coated with the insulation materials. I would imagine that painting that white could be difficult, add unnecessary weight and/or be difficult to keep from flaking off. Just my intuition, I don't know if that's actually the case or a reason why Oliver hadn't thought of making them white instead. In concept, it's a great idea! - Cherie

Welcome to the Oliver family! Yours was being built when we picked ours up at the factory back in July - and we got to camp next to it during a rainstorm! (We had a small leak, so they let us stay in the factory overnight until they could fix it in the morning.) We enjoyed touring yours being built during our overnight adventure in the factory on our own! Hopefully we'll see you out there on the road.. and ours can camp together again in other exotic locations! - Cherie

Wow.. thanks all! Looks like we're going to have quite an adventure across country with lots of opportunity meet up with folks! We aim to include it all in. We'll be in touch with folks as our plans firm up. Blessings, - Cherie

Chris and I are planning to leave the west coast and start trekking eastward in about a month. Here's our current very rough draft of the general route we're considering - as we have stops in Albuquerque and Austin to make before we hit St. Louis. (All subject to change due to nomadic whim.) Our estimated dates are: March 22 (few days) - Leave the SF Bay Area and head south towards Los Angeles March 27 (around a week) - Hang out in the LA area, visiting friends & family April 3 (around 3 weeks) - Head east, checking out Arizona and New Mexico April 21 (around 2 weeks) - Hang out in the Austin/San Antonio area May 4 (around 3 weeks) - Head north towards St. Louis and hang out in that area We have our eye on stopping in at 'The Rally' in Albuquerque, and perhaps the Bluebonnet Casita Rally, but unfortunately it does not look like we'll be able to make it out the Arkansas Oliver Rally, as we have commitments in Austin at the end of April and we're coming from the wrong coast to make that work. But, that doesn't mean we can't make a stop on our way anyway If you live in, or will be anywhere near, places on our map - let us know! One of the biggest joys of our adventure is meeting up with folks in our travels. Post May - we hope to adventure around the east before we head back to northern Nevada for Burning Man in late August. - Cherie

Very cool.. and congrats on your first outting!! Looks like you also did a TV/Monitor swing arm

Very cool.. seems like a much better solution than what Oliver was using for their LED upgrade package (which we bought on our own at their recommendation to save costs): http://www.ledlight.com/g4-ultra-bright ... ac-dc.aspx .. which are 9 LEDs, 110 Lumens and burn 3.3 watts for $18/piece. Great find!

The amplified ANT1550 is just the ANT1500 sold with a separate external amplifier that I expect I can just bypass when we don't want to spare the power for it. For only a few dollars more, it was worth it. Our ANT1550 should be arriving later this week. The ANT1400 I tried was very disappointing, and the reviews on Amazon.com seem to echo this. - Chris

The basic wiring harness is the same for almost every Oliver made, even one as custom as ours. I am hoping that the folks with Oliver will share the details with us - it will make after-the-factory upgrades a lot easier to not need to play guessing games. Cheers! - Chris

I am about to take on adding a Carnetix power supply to power our Mac Mini and our wireless router even when the inverter is turned off. I may also wire in a TV signal booster, and a few other 12v accessories while I am at it. It would be nice to know more about the wiring in the Oliver so that I have less reverse engineering to do. Have any of you managed to get (or put together on your own) a schematic or a wiring diagram of all the 12v wiring in the Oliver? I am probably going to run new wires to the switches by the door, but I do remember Daniel pointing out a few "spare" wires to me way back when we picked up our trailer, and I'd like to know more about what is wired where. Anyone have more info? Cheers, - Chris

Sherry & Paul also serve some of the areas finest beer. They make a visit to see their Oliver into a wonderful way to spend an entire day. Go see them! - Chris

I've been experimenting with TV antennas lately. I tried several, including the RCA ANT1400. It was particularly disappointing. The larger flat-like-a-pizza-box RCA ANT1500 worked significantly better, and it is easy to tuck away in one of the back corners of the storage cabinet. The ANT1500 was $60 at Best Buy, but I found the even better ANT1550 on Buy.com for just $39 with free shipping so I have ordered that one and I am waiting for it to come in. The ANT1550 is just the ANT1500 with an included amplifier, which should improve things even more. BTW - sitting between our TV antenna and our 24" Dell flat panel is now a Mac Mini media server, equipped with an El Gato EyeTV Hybrid USB HDTV tuner. This setup will let our Mac Mini act like a Tivo once we have all the parts in place. It also tunes in FM radio. Nice. - Chris

Tumbleweed... you rock! Where'd you get these beauties at?? I want! - Cherie

The pickings are kinda slim in the Bay Area for RV Parks. In Redwood City, there are some RV Parks along 101 in Menlo Park that looked pretty good, including Trailer Villa - http://www.gocampingamerica.com/Califor ... VPark.html . We stopped in there to use their dump tanks a couple of times after boondocking in the area at friend's places. They looked nice enough. We've been staying up in South San Francisco at Treasure Island Mobile Home & RV Park since we got here in December. It's two blocks from a BART station, which gives us very easy access to just about the entire Bay via public transit (easy enough to get down to Redwood City by hoping on BART and transferring to CalTrain at Millbrae). We're only paying $625/mo + electric - which is a great deal for the area. We've been really happy here, great people - but older facilities. The location really rocks, and gives such easy access to downtown San Francisco (which is where the company we're contracted with is out of.) As far as stuff to do.. the opportunities are endless. Fantastic museums (we really enjoyed the Science Academy in Golden Gate Park), hiking, riding cable cars and all the other typical tourist stuff. Or going a bit north up into the Redwoods and Napa Valley is beautiful. Head a bit south down to Monterrey. If you want advice on great dance clubs or nudist hot springs... We'll more than likely be back in the Bay Area in August sometime prior to Burning Man (week leading up to Labor Day). Who knows when we'll arrive - it might depend if our art grant is approved or not. So, a chance our paths may cross. We'll also likely be in Austin/San Antonio come April or May as well.. so an opportunity there as well. Plans past mid-March are quite nebulous for us right now. - Cherie

If only it weren't so far away The ETech conference is in San Jose, CA in mid-March. So, we're enjoying being still for a bit and enjoying the San Francisco Bay Area until then.