November 28, 2023 • 49 mins
RVing from the infamous Llama Lot on Fremont Street in Old Las Vegas, Sherri & Russ take you on an unforgettable urban boondocking adventure with Xscapers RV Club for Halloween Convergence: Our first time! Yep, Xscapers Halloween ConVirgins! Here we go—
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- 11-28-2023 - EPISODE 13 - (00:49:00)
- Title: Xscapers Halloween Las Vegas Convergence
- - - - - HIGHLIGHTS - - - - -
- (00:01:05) - Released From Podcast Jail!
- (00:04:00) - All About Fremont Street - Old Las Vegas
- (00:08:30) - Xscapers / Escapees Halloween Convergence
- (00:15:10) - Arrival of the ConVirgins & Urban Boondocking
- (00:22:35) - Xscapers of all ages: 15 - 70!
- (00:24:00) - Vampires come out to play at night (Working RVers)
- (00:30:00) - Halloween on Fremont Street... 👻
- (00:34:25) - Best Treats for RV Lot Crawl & Scary Costumes for RVs
- (00:43:10) - Xscapers Halloween & RV Work Life Balance
- (00:47:40) - Don't miss an episode! - P.S. SUBSCRIBE! 😘
XSCAPERS HALLOWEEN EPISODE SUMMARY:
What happens in Vegas… goes on the podcast!!! Join us for a thrilling RV Halloween Adventure to the OG underbelly (literally!) of Sin City: Urban boondocking for a week on the infamous Llama Lot on Fremont Street in Old Las Vegas!
Xscapers Halloween Convergence?!?! And… Who/What are Xscapers???We didn’t know what to expect when we signed up for the Xscapers Halloween Convergence Event in June. It sounded like an adventure:
October 29th, 2023 - November 4th, 2023
We’re conjuring up a Halloween Convergence you won’t soon forget. Prepare to be haunted by frightfully delicious meals, flowing spirits (Get it? Spirits?! Because it means booze and ghosts?!), and spook-tacular parties with your friends. Dust off your broom sticks, put on your costume party pants and get ready to have a wickedly good time at the Xscapers Las Vegas Halloween Convergence.
⚠️Warning: This convergence may not be for everyone! ⚠️We didn’t know much about Xscapers, which is an active, younger, working-age RV Community within the more well-known Escapee's RV Club. More scoop about both Xscapers and Escapees in the podcast!
In fact, as you'll hear, fear and apprehension of the scary unknown nearly derailed the whole thing for us. Fortunately, a not-too-evil guiding spirit materialized just in time to answer all our crazy FAQs, getting us Back On The Road Of Adventure (Thanks, Anne!) to Xscapers Halloween Convergence 2023.
And now, since we survived, it’s our turn to divulge all the spine-tingling details, spook-tacular events & devilishly-fun activities!
Don’t be afraid!
Settle in, click PLAY — don’t forget to Like & SUBSCRIBE to avoid The Curse of The Out-Of-Touch! — and join us for a haunting tale of RV Work Life Balance & Halloween high-jinks, boondocking with a whole new tribe and community of people just like us: Chasing the dream of RV living, traveling, and working remote full time!
(AND it was Sherri’s birthday! 🥳 What could go wrong?!)
Join us for RVing Xscapers Halloween Convergence!~~~~~~~~~~
→ Be sure FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE 🔔 on your favorite podcast platform! Thank you! 😉
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FEATURED LINKS & RESOURCES:- Coming Soon!
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SPONSORS & AFFILIATESSome of the links below are affiliate links, which means we will earn a commission on the products or services you purchase using the links. There is no ad
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
They call this the Las Vegas,Halloween convergence, right?
Getting people back together but whatthey yelled out, they were like, you know,
Hey, convergence, at least that's what Ithought they said they were cheering to me
as they were handing me paperwork and theywere honking horns and stuff out there.
So I started honking my horn.
I'm like, Woo Hoo!, we're here.
and yelling and yelling this is likereally cool and then we park drop the
(00:21):
paper that they handed me in the windowhad our name on it but below it it didn't
say convergence what did it say it's
con virgins.
We were virgins.
It was our first time.
Yeah.
So
they were cheering that we were virginsto this event, which was hilarious.
(01:07):
Welcome back again.
This is pretty exciting.
Cheers.
Cheers, everybody.
I'm, super excited because if youlisten to our last podcast, the, uh
issue of why I was on parole has beenoverturned and my court case is cleared.
I'm in good shape.
It's a long story.
You want to hear the story.
(01:27):
You have to go back and listen.
You got to go back and listen.
Yeah.
Okay.
Just to let you know, I'min the free and clear.
So let's pack up and drive awaybefore they catch me again.
So, that's the great thingabout your house movie.
How to Catch Me.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
Hmm.
So anyways, thanks for joining useveryone,, excited to be back again.
I'm very excited fromwhat I just told you.
(01:47):
To be out of podcast jail.
Out of podcast jail.
So anyways, uh, so what are we doing now?
It's a little crazy right
now.
Well usually you ask, you know, where weare, what we're doing and all that blah
blah.
This!
Jail time's been hard on me, so I...
This, tonight, is the special event...
(02:09):
episode.
I know, right?
Because It's Halloweenon Fremont Street, baby!
Ooh!
In Las Vegas with
Xscapers.
That is so cool.
Okay, you're gonna have tobreak it all down for us then.
There's a lot there, isn't it?
(02:29):
Okay.
So I'll, I know wherethis all starts though.
This is your favorite time of year.
Right?
This is around your birthday.
Yay!
And, as we like to say, we celebratethe octave of your birthday.
Which is like, the way I do it is,it's the week before, it is the
birthday, and it's the week after.
It's like, you get whatever you want.
It's your birthday.
(02:49):
I love it.
It's an octave.
It's a win.
What day is my birthday, for all the
listeners?
So, if you're sending gifts, andthis is, she's trying to get me
in trouble here, October 27th?
Yay!
Woohoo!
Woohoo, I got that right.
Yeah!
When you celebrate Octavethough, there's a whole bunch of
(03:10):
dates, I'm so, so, you know, but
I do remember.
And it's, it's the Halloween.
Yeah!
Halloween baby.
Scorpio!
To be honest, like, You were planningyour own birthday celebration long
before because you thought aboutwhat this Opportunity might be and
you put it on the calendar and wewere kind of tentatively going down
(03:30):
the navigator Well, and this wasbeing in Las Vegas on my birthday
for Halloween in Las Vegas onFremont Street, which is Amazing.
(03:50):
So, oh, I'm jumping around a bit,but okay, there's a bunch of Facebook
posts on Books and Travel USAfrom Halloween on Fremont Street.
We'll put the links and theshow notes and all that.
But maybe we should step back just a secand, and tell them what Fremont Street
Yeah, I mean, I don't knowhow many people know this.
(04:13):
Maybe everybody except us.
I did not.
Well, okay, yeah.
And I have gone to Vegasfor business reasons.
We have a conference there every year.
So I've been there manytimes for business.
But you're on the new strip, as they say.
The new hotels and new casinos.
Yeah.
And that's a different partof where the Fremont Street.
(04:35):
Fremont Street is actually theoriginal Vegas, the old Vegas.
Things like the GoldenNugget, those old casinos.
But what it is, is they've kind ofrebooted it in a very cool way, right?
It's been revitalized as this, whatdo we say, I'd say like an immersive
entertainment like experience.
And like, that's amazing.
(04:56):
Yeah.
That's not like overselling it.
Like, no, they've taken this area thatcould have just been decrepit and broken.
Yeah.
Again.
And they've rebooted it so that it's Anoutdoor theme park that's also brought the
outdoors indoor, if I could say, like theybuilt a, a roof over multiple streets.
So they're all lit up and
it's an LED screen.
(05:18):
I believe it's 1500 feet ofa tunnel over the street.
That's obviously closedoff to cars and traffic.
It's a pedestrian experience.
And there's all these bars andshops and the old, , casinos.
And then.
Up on that tunnel, on the inside,it's like a huge LED screen, and
(05:41):
they, over the whole street,
over the whole street, and theyhave this amazing light show, and
there's always, it's just amazing.
And then,
The zip liners, she's making special
effects that I'm tryingto do hand signals.
Yeah.
There's so many things to talk about.
I was going to talk about the bands, but,but the zip lines, which she's talking
(06:03):
about there is you can zip line acrossmultiple blocks up by that screen.
And actually up until the recentlaunch of the sphere, it was one of
the coolest outdoor lighting things.
It's still awesome.
But, you know, the spheres kindof, you know, taking all the.
You know, the air out of the, out ofthe room for how cool that thing is.
But it's, it's really cool place.
(06:25):
It's not like the regular strip.
Like you, when you go down to the oldVegas and you go to this experience, it's
a, it's immersive in the, in the sensethat you're getting to like, everyone's
there to be a part of something.
It's not, you're not going from,you know, show to show or going
to like what you do on the mainstrip is very different on Fremont.
(06:46):
Yeah.
And it's.
It's a group experience, everyone there.
You're part of it.
It's all around you.
It's crazy sometimes.
Just embrace it.
Right.
Yeah.
And we should mention it's, it.
It is kind of an adult experience, right?
Yeah,
there
were some kids there, butit's not really made for kids.
But the thing I started to mentiona minute ago was actually cool is,
(07:07):
in addition to the zip lines andall the people and the shows going
on, there are bands strategicallyplaced across each block.
So as you walk from place toplace, there's a different live
band playing, different kindsof music and shows running.
While you're walking, you're goingfrom one live music experience to the
next, which is also like powers youthrough to keep going to see what's
(07:31):
the next band and what's the next show.
And then strategically placed whileyou're walking are entertainers,
street performers, street
performers, showgirls,Chippendales, boys, magicians.
Yeah.
Impersonators.
And, uh, they're all in these littleblack circles on the, on the street.
(07:53):
They paint a circle to
keep them in there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're not allowed togo outside their circle.
They must rent the circle space.
And they
move.
We notice that they stay in one spot fora certain amount of time and then they all
shift so that they get a chance to, youknow, participate in different parts of.
It's really crazy.
It's just
crazy.
Yeah.
But so much fun.
Yeah.
And a few years ago , I had a group whenI was here for a conference and oh, let's
(08:15):
go down there and they took me there.
And it was amazing.
I came back and told youabout this, this experience.
And the first time we camehere, I said, we've got to go.
And we've been going every time we'vecome here, but this was different.
This was different than whenyou and I came in the past.
This was Halloween, andthis is with XScapers.
So it was an even biggerexperience than normal.
(08:36):
Yep.
And so, Xscapers, that wementioned, is an active RV
community within Escapee's RV Club.
And the Escapee's RV Club, it was...
It started in 1978.
And it's basically anRV support community.
(08:57):
All kinds of support, education, services,events, and community on the road.
They do these different types ofevents, like FMCA and like AIM
club that we've mentioned before.
But these are, these are different.
And particularly with Xscapers,the Xscapers group was created
(09:19):
for working aged RVers.
Younger people, recognizing thatmore and more people are working
on the road, working remote.
So the schedule for these events andactivities tend to be later in the
afternoon and in the evening , so thatwe can participate and everybody goes and
you camp and, people work during the day.
(09:45):
Yeah, so it's just so thatyou could do work and then you
could actually, still attend.
So we would go to some of the otherplaces like you talked about and
I would work throughout the day.
Like even in Albuquerque, you wentand did some stuff and I, I stayed
back the first couple of days andI had to take time off to go do it.
But ,escapers is cool becauseI didn't have to take time off.
I had time to do the work andthen the events were primarily
(10:05):
afternoon in the evening.
But I can ask you a question.
Even before we got there, Iwas like questioning like,
does everybody work there?
Cause you know, we're working fulltime and, and I know my job's unique.
I think it's unique in the sense thatI have a schedule and I'm on zoom.
It's, it's very regimented to the.
(10:26):
The time of day and things like that,but other, other jobs can be much more
flexible and because creatives canwrite and create it at different times.
And so my question was, am I goingto be the only one in the RV and
everyone else is doing stuff?
And that was an openquestion when I got there.
Cause it felt like early on, I wasthe only one, you know, stuck inside.
We were asking ourselves, wereother people actually working?
(10:50):
But, uh, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
So.
We ended up on Fremont Street in LasVegas for Halloween with this group.
And I had found this opportunity.
Didn't know much about escapeesor the Xscapers group, but had
heard little things this and that.
Well, anyway, I happened to seethe advertisement for this event,
(11:15):
Xscapers Las Vegas Halloween.
Convergence.
And I registered and that was in June.
So then for six months, almostsix months, we were so nervous.
And I was just panicking because I wasn'treally sure what I'd signed us up for.
(11:36):
And in august, I think, wasthe cancellation date, the
dead end cancellation date,where, okay, we're going.
We had a chance to back out beforethen, but, then about a week, just
a week before the event, I happenedto find out that Um, good RV friends
of ours, Anne and Brian, they are onsocial media on the road of adventure.
(11:59):
We'll put a link in the show notes.
They also are Integra Coach Ambassadors.
So they're good friends and I foundout that they're part of this Xscapers.
Yeah.
And you said they had actually attendedthis event a pretty, you know, in a
previous year, which is good to know.
Cause yeah, they're a
lot like us.
Yeah, exactly.
(12:20):
So you had a lot of questions forthem and that made me feel good.
I actually didn't panic about thisthe whole time cause I was, well.
I did when we got closer.
Cause there's sometimes we plan eventsand then it gets changed at the end.
So I'm like, I'm not going toworry till we get close soon
as we start getting close.
I'm like, okay, now this could be a real
problem.
Yeah.
Then all the questions that I'm like, arewe going to be the oldest people there?
(12:43):
Are we going to be the onlyone in a big class, a diesel, a
motor home running our generator?
Cause it's.
boondocking, straight boondocking.
Yeah, no hookups at all.
Yeah.
Uh, usually when we're at FMCA orwith, the AIM club, we have power.
If we're roughing it, we at least havepower, but this is straight boondocking.
(13:07):
Yeah.
I was worried about like.
Since we were working the whole time,noise was a little concern of mine, but
our rig's pretty quiet, even with noisy.
On Fremont Street.
Yeah, you know, I usually complain aboutlike the people that are mowing the lawns
at the campgrounds and stuff like that.
There was none of that.
No, there was.
When you're in a parking lot indowntown Vegas, there's no mowers.
(13:27):
So, but, you know, we did have helicoptersand, uh, police cars going by and.
You know, stuff like that.
But, my bigger concern wasn't that mybiggest concern was really basic stuff.
It was about, you know, the, the tanksand water and stuff, but we'll get into
that because I was, that was my concern.
And I, I hadn't voiced how concernedI was till we got closer to it.
(13:48):
Okay.
I was like, you know, are wegoing to have enough water?
So,
yeah, it was.
It was urban boondocking.
We all parked on a parking lot.
It's called the Llama Lot.
Downtown.
Three blocks from the very heart of theFremont Street experience, experience.
(14:09):
So there was hotels, bars, lounges,all kinds of people going by.
So noise and security and allthose things were very legit
fears or, you know, unknowns.
Yeah, and and gettingthere was a challenge too.
We were worried about that.
(14:29):
So when we were gonna how we gonnaarrive and park That was a challenge.
We actually had to plan it out aswe were driving into Vegas We which
actually turned out be more complicatedthan the actual parking to get into the
place We stopped a few Uh, maybe a mileoutside of where we're supposed to be.
We went and found a big, Home Depot.
It has a big parking lot.
(14:50):
Disconnected the Jeep and thennavigated two vehicles there
instead of towing the Jeep.
Because you can't back up when you'retowing the Jeep with four wheels down.
Right.
And we didn't know exactlywhat we were going into.
We just kind of had the Googledirections and a picture of
what we were supposed to do.
Yeah.
So we disconnected the vehiclesand used our radios and got there.
(15:11):
And then it was actuallypretty interesting.
We had a little tough timegetting through the small gate.
The gate was small for ourrig, but we got through.
And then they pulled up toget the information, and they
started handing me paperwork.
And then all of a sudden,they started cheering.
I was in the car behind him.
I parked so that I could help himget through those gates, but I
wasn't with him when he pulled upto the registration welcome thing.
(15:34):
They, you know, they, Sherry justsaid, they call this the Las Vegas,
Halloween convergence, right?
Getting people back together.
But what they yelled out, they werelike, you know, Hey, convergence,
at least that's what I thought.
They said they were cheering to me asthey were handing me paperwork and they
were honking horns and stuff out there.
So I started honking my horn.
I'm like, Woo Hoo we're here.
and yelling and yelling this is likereally cool and then we park which
(15:56):
was actually pretty easy they dida great job of lining us up over
there they did drop the paper thatthey handed me in the window had our
name on it but below it it didn'tsay convergence what did it say it's
con virgins.
We were virgins.
It was our first time.
Yeah.
So
they were cheering that we were virginsto this event, which was hilarious.
So, you know,
(16:17):
YEah, it was, it was so much fun.
And so we arrived, had the celebration,started meeting people immediately.
Set up, but there really wasn'ta lot of set up for boondocking.
Yeah.
Nothing to hook up or plugin or anything like that.
No,
but we had done a goodjob preparing, right?
(16:39):
Like my biggest fear was the tanks.
Like, can we last six or seven dayson the water was one concern, but
I knew we could go get more water.
It was the gray and the black tanks thatyou can't go get more space in those.
So I was like, can we like do this?
Cause we had never gone more than like.
four days, I think was the max.
So this was six days, six nights.
(17:00):
Yeah.
And, and it sounds like a minorshift, but I was like, you don't want
to run out of either one of those.
Right.
It's hard to understand that you onlyhave so much room in the black tank,
which is everything from the toilet.
Right.
And the gray tank, which is everythingthat goes down the drains, the sink,
the Not the toilet, but the sinks.
(17:22):
And the shower, yeah.
Um, if we use the shower, yeah.
Um, so, So we
had to be very good at conservation there.
Going in empty.
Having the full fresh water withan extra jug, water jug, and
a suitcase of drinking water.
You like to have all the extra water.
That plastic suitcase thing.
Yep.
Yeah.
So, it was all about conservingwater and use of the tanks.
(17:48):
Yeah.
Um.
Which we actually did way betterthan I thought we were going to do.
We did.
We went
stinky for a week because we.
I would never say that, but.
We were too
afraid to take a full on shower.
There's other ways.
We've had wipeys, sink showers.
Yeah, yeah.
So, we made it!
Woo!
And actually, we still hadhalf of all our capabilities.
(18:10):
We could have doubled it.
We did.
Which means we didn't haveto go as stinky as you said.
But we actually did really good.
And I was very pleased with thatbecause that was a great test.
I did panic for the first time.
The two weeks prior, I was like, Idon't know if we're going to make it.
Yeah, we did well.
And, uh, yeah, so we went in, we wereparked between a newer Newmar Dutch Star.
(18:34):
Nice rig.
Yeah.
Very nice.
And then on the other side,we had a Sprinter van.
Yeah, Van Life.
Van Life, baby.
Yeah.
It was a nice van.
Oh, it was beautiful.
And they towed a Jeep.
Yeah.
Behind their
van.
Yeah, they were pros.
Well, they were actually new to it.
But they had, like, pro equipment.
They, like, made good choices.
Yeah.
Of what they were doing there, yeah.
(18:54):
There was just every kindof RV on this parking lot.
Class A's like us, Class Bvans, Class C with the cabin
on top of the over cab, okay?
And, even some reallyinteresting truck campers.
Yeah, they were cool.
And, uh, custom conversions.
That was some of the neatest stuff.
We haven't got to this yet, butwe did, got to tour a lot of
(19:16):
these rigs while we were there.
And, one was an ambulance thatthey had actually taken the roof off
of an ambulance and lifted it up.
So it was even taller insideand they totally did the inside.
It was so cool.
So it was really neat.
Custom trailers that people had built.
Neat stuff.
So interesting.
Yeah.
And then as, as part of this, like, it'sreally hard for us to explain not only
(19:39):
just where we were and what this waslike, but while we were there, it was
like a couple of nights we were sittingaround with, with some of the friends
there and, , we noticed a person in an F.
, AA, vest on, and they were flying adrone, downtown, which is a big drone.
It's illegal.
You're most of the drones won'tfly in, most, urban areas.
(20:01):
It won't let you in.
It's illegal.
And the police, uh, will come over.
This person had a vest on and would seemto be obviously, you know, had approvals.
We thought it was police.
We did.
We wanted to know what they were doing.
So the second day, the van life buddyand I walked over to meet him and,
chatted it up, and we met Cameron Grant,and he is a professional photographer.
(20:21):
More importantly, he does it forart, and he has some of the coolest
shots, and he was taking lots ofphotography, of the downtown Fremont
area, and we introduced who wewere and the Xscapers and this whole
experience, and he was intrigued by that.
He was actually, he was a roadiein his past where he did try to
travel with shows and music stuff.
So he was familiar with travel,but not the same kind of travel
(20:44):
as what we were all doing.
So he was very intrigued.
So when we, we spent a little timetalking to him while he was flying,
we just simply asked the, Hey, if, isit possible, can you share a shot of.
Our area here is convergent, and he did,and we'll put that in the show notes.
It is a stunning photo.
You'll see this is not just normaldrone shot, but you'll see the photo.
And, uh, my wife, Sherry isactually marked out our rig
(21:07):
where we are on that in the show.
We'll put that in theshow notes, but it's cool.
You'll get an idea of.
What it's like on the lot.
We were on, you'll see the number of rigs.
Uh, you'll see howclose we are to Fremont.
You'll see the background.
It's a great shot, but it'll kindof put in context everything we've
been kind of telling you right now.
So it's been great.
We met Cameron and we're keeping upwith him and we'll put some of his info.
(21:27):
We'll, we'll link tohis stuff there as well.
Yeah, he actually has a showand exhibition in, uh, just down
the street in this kind of mall.
Open mall area called thecontainer park container.
Yeah So he has these drone shotson these big pieces of metal.
Are they printed on metal?
(21:47):
Yeah Just Incredible.
Yeah.
So this was really somethingthat he did for us by taking
a picture of the whole group.
Yeah.
And he said he doesn't give the,he never gives out his artwork.
It's art.
It's not just taking photography.
And he does some cool stuff.
So he did us a solid by sharingit and we shared it with our group
because he thought that was cool.
And we'll, we'll put thatlink up there and share.
(22:08):
But you're right.
We did go see his.
Show in the, in the container park there.
Really cool.
So if you're ever there, gocheck out container park.
First off, it's a lot of cool, barsand shops there and occasionally
have bands and there's a big, uh,praying mantis that has fire coming
out of it right there on the street.
So.
It's to music too, so it's, it's awesome.
So you can't miss the place.
(22:30):
All part of that Fremont streetexperience, but, uh, just the whole thing.
So then, from the minute we rolled throughthe gate, we started meeting people
full on, and it's such an interestingexperience for people who are normally.
Out in the wild, parking in campgrounds,and yeah, we talk, we're friendly and
all that, but this was just, uh, well,it was 50 RVs, so about 100 people.
(22:59):
It felt like 200 dogs on the parking
lot.
It was not 200 dogs.
It was like maybe 20
dogs.
It was all, it was fun.
They were adorable.
Um, people of all ages, I don't knowabout the dogs, but we had people
from as young as 15 years old.
One girl came with her parents becauseshe was actually in a competition in Las
(23:21):
Vegas that At the start of this thing.
Yeah for a Rubik's Cube.
Yeah, it's like a freaking genius Yeah,yeah, but 15 to 70 plus So we were not
the oldest There were full timers and parttimers on some timers as Russ says But
(23:42):
it did seem like A whole bunchof those people were not working.
I made this comment earlier.
I was the first couple of days.
I was like, why am I the only one walkingout at three o'clock in the afternoon?
And everyone else is like, it feelslike they're all three sheets to the
wind and back slapping each other.
And I'm like.
What the?
How did I not end up out here already?
(24:02):
Well, there were quite afew people who were retired.
Yep.
And, lots of people who are onflexible schedules, whether they're self
employed or they're working freelance.
I mean, I'm kind of flexible that way.
Yes, yes.
Out playing all day, just to get...
Riding trolleys and bringing back the
info.
And, uh, by the end of it, wemet the other working people
(24:25):
who emerged from their...
We did.
That actually made me feel so much better.
In fact, it was like the last twodays we seemed to meet all the other
working people, which was reallycool because it's hard to meet
everybody in the, you know, every day.
It's like you're meeting newpeople every day because there's
so many people in the, in the lot.
And, yeah, that was neat.
It was a lot of people aroundin, in tech like me and software
(24:46):
and IT and things like that.
And then there was a.
It was a range of people doingmarketing and sales kind of work.
Mm-Hmm.
whether it was, you know, web work,kind of marketing or working, doing
marketing for their companies and stuff.
So that was actually veryexciting for me to hear.
'cause and I told them all that too.
I was like, oh, I'm so gladto hear you're working too
. It's good meeting of the vampires.
Yeah.
(25:07):
Uh, there were a lot of content creators.
Yep.
And, social media influencers in the RVspace and travel writers and, YouTube.
Even the, , Convergence director,I mean, she was working.
She works for Xscapers, escapees, andputs on these events all year long.
(25:30):
I don't know how she
does that.
Different things going on.
It's exhausting.
Yeah.
They run a pretty tight ship there.
Yeah.
In that, like she managed allthe rigs getting in there.
She, made sure every scheduleof what was happening every day.
She kept everybody, youknow, together on track.
Uh, if there was issues, theyall had to bubble up to her.
Yep.
So
yeah.
Managed arranging therestaurants and the.
(25:52):
Dinners and the happy hours, which I
know a lot of that's done inadvance But you know, you still
have the day of problems that occur.
So And
her hubs her husband is also a softwaredeveloper, but he took the week off
Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
I did that wrong.
(26:12):
Oh
and we met other podcastersIt was so exciting.
That was really cool.
Yeah.
So we met Chris and Rachel whopodcast the Archeology Show.
Now they're
professionals.
They are.
They've been at it a while.
Yeah.
In fact, they run a whole channel ornetwork of podcasts around archeology.
(26:34):
Strange, huh?
But we listened to several ofthem and they're fascinating.
They're really good at it.
And they're, it's like, they clearlyknow what they're talking about.
They're not winging it.
And I even like when we werelistening to their Halloween.
About Dracula.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vampires and stuff.
So even , archeologyabout, vampires and stuff.
So it was really, reallycool, , to meet them.
(26:56):
And that was neat.
Cause you know, this is not our first.
first job that we're doing.
We do this as part of this experienceon the road and to see that it
is a main job for them, right?
And they have a, a greatexperience to share.
And so we're going to be able to keepup with them and connect with them
and hopefully be able to learn fromthem, learn from them as we go forward.
So that was really cool.
(27:17):
And then, then the other kind of, uh,group that I was excited to hear was
that it wasn't just people working,that There were also people that
were looking for other kind of remotework and we'd heard this already.
This is the part that I waswondering about this group.
Was everybody already employed or is ittruly a connection for you as you're doing
(27:40):
work and looking for other kind of work?
Because sometimes we all know your jobscan change and roles can change like that.
And so we met as the transitions of,to RV life for a lot of people was the
kind of work they're looking to do.
In fact, some of them werelooking to, , avoid the, we
mentioned the return to office.
They were asked to return to office andthey had been doing traveling and they
(28:01):
really didn't want to do that anymore.
Our young software developerfriends said, no, I'll just
go find something else to do.
Yeah.
And then, you know, wesaw a elementary school
teacher, his wife was an elementaryschool teacher and after one
year, post COVID walked away.
So the two of them are out inthe van, living their life.
(28:25):
They're young, they'rein their twenties still.
Yeah.
They just got married.
So they're looking for new opportunities.
Yeah.
And, and that, that's the funny thing islike when you actually go and experience
traveling and meeting people and going,you know, cross country, it is really
hard to try to think to go back to anoffice life if you've been doing that.
And so it is, it was interestingto talk to them, . You know, they
(28:47):
saw what they wanted to do andthey didn't want to give that up.
And they were, they knew therewere more roles out there and
they were looking for those.
And so that was interesting for us tomeet, , people in that stage of their
life of transitioning to doing this.
So that was really cool.
And then there was like , vanlifers thatwere basically just starting out and, and
basically using savings and there wereworking through the plan to figure it out.
(29:08):
So they were at the beginningof their journey, right?
Some of these people have been doingthis a long time, and so it was neat.
We saw a wide variety ofpeople in different roles and.
It, it really kind of completed thepuzzle for me of the kinds of people
we meet on, on the road or at differentstages and want different things.
But what they all have incommon is this love of being
(29:28):
able to be remote and travel.
And they, they shared, like, welove to travel a lot to like week to
week or every two weeks sometimes.
But some of these people that go parkout in the desert and work and they'll
be there for months at a time, andthat's what they're looking to do is be.
In, in theory, off grid, quote, quote,because they're still, you know, star
linking to the internet or whatever.
(29:49):
Yeah.
But they're not in a house orin a neighborhood kind of thing.
Yeah.
So it was, it was really cool.
They're
out there.
These are all new subscribers to RVWork Life Balance, which is so cool.
We just had a great time meetingso many different people and
making those connections.
So it was a Halloween experience.
(30:12):
We had an event app on theiPhone with a full schedule, mostly
later afternoon activities, someearlier, but we didn't really get
To do those that was okay though.
Yeah, well you could have butwe were actually both working
on multiple projects Yeah,
and so overwhelmed at the whole thing.
(30:33):
Yes, but so we arrived Sunday we hada catered dinner at the Golden Spike
on Fremont Street, which was so cool.
They have this interior bar where theyhave the dinner and everything, but then
you walk out and a lot of these placeshave a whole backyard kind of thing.
(30:55):
And it was lights and thesecouches and space heaters and a
stage and they were putting up.
They were
setting up, yeah, to do wrestling.
Yeah, they were building, theywere building the wrestling stage.
They had nothing there, and thenthey started putting it together.
And we were all takingbets, and I got it right.
I was like, that's goingto be a wrestling stage.
(31:15):
And sure enough, we walkedover and asked, yes.
They were setting up to do wrestling,which was going to be so cool.
Yeah.
Neat place.
And
we wandered, all wandered as agroup down to the, a piano bar.
Yep.
Um, with live entertainment,just off the cuff.
That was so much fun.
Yeah, even after all of that, there wasmusic and partying all night on the Llama
(31:37):
lot, which in our area, which is calledCenter Camp, the RVs were all kind of
parked in a big rectangle around the lot.
And then we had the center.
open, which is where we'd gettogether to go do things and
go down to the activities.
And then, you know, at the endof the night, blare the music and
(32:00):
sit around and talk and dance.
And there was a, like a serious DJ setup for one of them brought in massive
speakers and a DJ set up and theycranked music late into the night.
So, well, we couldn't actually
be there.
We could still hear it.
We could, we could hear it
well.
So, yeah.
(32:20):
I remember when Iregistered . It has a warning.
This convergence mightnot be for everyone.
Yeah, if you like to sleep and want quiet.
It was a lot of partying and
fun.
But you know when you're sleepingin a parking lot in downtown
Vegas, come on, it's already goingto be difficult because of that.
But then, yeah, it was fun.
(32:41):
That was the first
night, Sunday night.
And then Monday, that'swhen it got interesting.
So there was a work day and then afterthe end of the day, I got to come out
and it was set up to be a RV lot crawl.
So we got to go from rig to rig and therewas going to be a, you were, you were able
to wear costumes, which we had plannedout three different kinds of costumes.
(33:04):
We were cows that night, right?
Cowboy cows.
We were, yeah, that's right.
We were.
Cowboy and cowgirl cows.
So we had, I had a vest, a cowboy vestover my cow outfit and we had cowbells
and we had light up cool glasses.
Yeah, we really did that.
We went a little over, but it was fun.
Made you proud.
Yeah, it was embarrassing, but it was fun.
(33:26):
Um, and It
wasn't just us.
No, no.
Everybody decorated the RVs.
Yeah.
So we had planned out our decorationsas well, but everybody had cool
decorations on their RVs and, youwere supposed to provide,, some sort
of snacks and a drink of some sort.
That was the plan.
So you would, we would travel as agroup from, from, walk from rig to
(33:46):
rig and you get to, if you wanted to,if, if they allowed you, you could go
inside and see, the rigs because youcould go see how people had decorated.
You know, decked out their stuff.
Uh, we let people come in and see ours.
, and then you were gonna havesnacks and drinks out front too.
And so there's lots of different stuff.
What did we have?
We had
jello shooters, orange and greenand purple, Halloween colors.
(34:08):
And, uh, oh, and we hadcheese and crackers and fruit.
Which
turned out to be good because therewas a lot of sweet things for those and
people appreciated that we had Yeah,the the cheese and crackers there,
but we definitely saw some some evencooler ideas This is our first one.
We were learning from it.
The jello shooters was a hit.
That was great We did well on that.
(34:29):
Yes, and the cheeseand crackers were fine.
They were fine, but note to self.
Yeah Next time I would go fullout with chili and the fixins.
Yeah.
You know how you have cheese and crackers?
Yeah.
And all the good things toput on top of the chili.
That's like the bomb in a thing like this.
Yeah.
And we've always donethat for Halloween anyway.
Maybe big chili pot.
(34:50):
A
couple of the rigs didn't andthey did different kinds of chili.
Yeah.
And it was, each one of 'em was awesome.
Yeah.
We were like, dang, thatwas a really good idea.
Yeah.
'cause
after snacks and alcoholic.
Drinks and goodies.
Oh, it was so nice tohave something to eat.
So yeah, so that was neat.
And we had decorated, Charlie, the RV,the unicorn, we had a couple of things,
(35:11):
like some, you had some cool, scaryteeth along the front and some eyeballs.
But the thing we spent the mosttime we had planned out weeks
in advance, we'd actually Testedthis with our son in Mississippi.
Yeah.
So we had already practicedwith this in Mississippi before
we came all the way to Vegas.
And we had put up a see throughscreen, where you project through
it, , along the inside of the windshield.
So it covered the entire big windshield.
(35:34):
And we set up our, we havea small projector, which we
then, had, uploaded some.
Videos of zombies that aretrying to get out of the rig.
So we were projecting in thesemassive zombie hands and faces
were trying to go out, get out.
And I had a small speaker, Bluetoothspeaker out there so you could
hear them groaning and moaning.
(35:54):
So many people.
First off, we got the most people lovedit the most and so many people were like.
Wait, there's people in your rig andthey would all go look inside like
there was a bunch of people in there.
It was that, it was that goodthat they all had to come look.
So,
, and then we'd say, yes, and you'll be our next victim.
You're next.
So go on in.
Come on in.
So, so that, and thatone worked out great.
(36:16):
It was a, that was a home run in mymind and it was super simple, you know,
super simple and just so fun.
Yeah.
And then we all ended up with all theextra food and beverages in center camp.
Yeah.
With the music and the dancing
and the...
This is after you've had a drink at like50 other rigs and food, and then the music
starts pumping again from the DJ, andwe bring all the extra stuff back to the
(36:39):
center, so there's like, there's no excusefor not having food and drinks there.
It was, yeah, it was quite the party.
Yeah, that was only exceeded byTuesday, which was Halloween.
Oh, Halloween was so cool.
I don't know how Russ workedbecause the rest of us were getting
(37:00):
ready for Halloween after the lotcall and everything Monday night.
Um, so Halloween, we startedwith a happy hour at a club.
on Fremont Street and then from there,oh, and the costume contest, so everybody
was in their finest Halloween attire.
We did not win.
(37:21):
What were we
wearing then?
You were a cowboy and you mademe wear the inflatable horse.
I didn't make
you wear it.
Yeah.
You
wanted to.
You decided not to.
I decided not to.
Which worked out because then youwere able to take the pictures.
Yeah,
so I was an actual cowboy, not a cowdressed up and stuff that time and,
uh, she was riding an inflatable horse.
Yeah.
(37:41):
So yeah, you'll
see the pictures.
Yeah, we'll put
all the thing We'll put all thevideo of Charlie in the in all
these pictures in the show notes.
So we did
not win.
No And then after the happy
hour,
there were, I mean, full on body paint.
Yeah, they were, it was, it must havetaken them all day to get ready, you know.
So I was like, 15 minutes,I was like, done, you know.
(38:03):
But, then
the other part of that, we didthe dinner, and that was fun.
And then we got sent out todo a group scavenger hunt.
So we had three months.
Yeah.
Three months.
We've already talked about Fremont.
So it was packed on Halloween.
It's like 10 times more crowded.
And I guess I'd say 70 percent of thepeople, maybe at least 70 percent of the
(38:25):
people are now all in outfits to either.
Not everybody did, but.
Massive number of people are in costumesand that was really fun too, because
part of some of the stuff we had togo find involved other characters.
And so we would go meet somebody like,Oh, we want to take your picture with you.
And you know, because we need X,Y, Z in this scavenger hunt, photo
scavenger hunt.
(38:45):
So we had 85 scenes or people or costumesor situations that we were supposed to
go out and find and take a picture of.
So that was fun.
Put all those in for the contest.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, examples.
Uh, I think we got about 65 of the 85.
(39:05):
Wow, that's actually pretty
good.
And then, so what was some ofthe stuff, like, do you remember
some of the stuff we had to
take pictures of?
Uh, one of my favoriteswas a picture of your team.
In costume, of course,doing human pyramid.
Oh,
we did that even beforewe left for dinner.
So that was just funwith our two teammates.
Looking at the list
like, which ones canwe knock out right now?
(39:27):
And then, yeah, I remember there wasone we had to find, you know, we had to
go stage a fight with someone dressedin some kind of fighting outfit.
And so we found a guydressed as a karate guy.
And so we told him, hey, we needto fight you in this picture.
And that was awesome too.
And you're on your horse, yourinflatable horse fighting the karate guy.
So that was cool.
Oh,
the costumes and the situations and thesigns and we had to go into some of the
(39:51):
places to get the photo we went into.
The Golden Nugget, which is one of those,famous places down there on Fremont and
they actually have a big chunk of gold inthere and you could go see that nugget.
You had to take a picture with it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Several scenes in there.
The guard people weren'ttoo happy about that.
Yeah, well you take pictures and run.
It's like, yep, yep, yep, yep.
(40:12):
It's
Halloween people.
So those pictures, a lot of those picturesare on the Books and Travel Facebook page.
Yep.
And we will include the linksand pictures in the show notes.
Not all
85.
As usual?
No, you'll just getsome of the highlights.
Yeah.
So after that, I mean, thatwas a big start to the week.
So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,the schedule went on, there were
(40:36):
different events and activities.
Uh, there was some downtime.
Eventually we dragged our fire pit out.
Yeah.
We have a propane fire pit, which wedon't get to use all the time, but it
was great because you know, you can't.
Build a real fire on the parking lot,but our, our propane fireplace was great.
We brought it out and, all of a suddenit brought all the boys to the yard.
(40:57):
Everybody came around and we sataround with our chairs and drinks and
we actually finished the jello shots.
We had so many jello shots tofinish off and, got to chat with
people for hours on end that night.
So it was fun, so
much fun.
And then, uh, Saturday.
By noon, it was GTFO, asthey said on the schedule.
(41:18):
Get the F out.
Get the F out, and we were off.
Yeah, which was non trivial because...
The getting in was one thing we got inthere, probably in the first 30 percent
of the rigs, but now everybody's in andthey had to tell the smaller people,
the smaller vans to leave first ifpossible, so that us bigger rigs could
get out because we were jammed in there.
(41:39):
So that was fun to watch everybody kindof slowly move out and then navigate.
And we didn't hook up the rig.
The car right there.
We actually drove separately tillwe got outside of Vegas and then we
pulled off and connected it up again.
But yeah, it was, itwasn't too bad leaving.
It was, it was pretty easy.
We had no hookups, right?
I didn't want to unhook water.
Nothing to hook up.
Didn't have to do anything.
I lifted the jacks up and wepulled the slides in and...
(42:01):
Pulled that
fire pit in the, in the basement.
We were out of there.
Yeah.
And uh, of course we were exhausted.
We're still exhausted.
Like the, the recovery from that was...
It's amazing because it was justlike, it was exciting and everything.
I think it was the adrenaline andthe activities that kept you going.
And then when you leave, you'relike, Oh my goodness, I don't
(42:21):
know how I'm going to survive.
Like two days straight ofsleep to get out of this thing.
It was incredible.
Uh,
and catching up on laundry and showers and
that was nice hookups with hotshowers as much water as we wanted,
not worry about the generator comingon when we turn the coffee pot on.
Like there was things wehad to worry about people
(42:42):
after an event like that, boondocking.
We go like an, we, we, we drove anhour and a half just outside of Las
Vegas to this really cool place.
We'll talk about later and nexttime, just an hour and a half.
So that we could park, hook up, catchup on everything, and just relax.
(43:04):
Know that we had infinite power andinfinite water, and it was like, great.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was nice.
So.
Like I think we've done a good job here.
This is like a lot.
That is a lot Yeah, ifyou're still there we're
gonna try to wrap this up and relate itback to obviously the work life balance
which I think we've Brought up everystep along the way like, you know people
(43:25):
working and meeting those other peopleBut I'm gonna pick the top three things
and then you know At least some of mymind and you cut in on it if you think
you got others number one, I think Itgets down to the people we got to meet
and this remote work on the road andhaving events like this Gives another
one of those communities where people canas you like to say come out of the wild.
(43:47):
Yeah, come back together and Experiencesomething and we've done that with FMCA.
We've done that with aim Very differentorganizations fun in their own ways.
This was Super unique though.
I mean, we had never been in adowntown city, urban environment,
definitely nothing like there's cityand then there's Las Vegas people.
(44:07):
Okay, so very different.
And Fremont Street takes it another level.
So that was really neat.
And these people were havebeen doing this a lot.
We met people that go to many ofthese events like four times a year.
Like this was our first first,and I'm like exhausted still,
and they're not all like this.
They said they're, you know, Halloween is
very different, but it's
(44:30):
the people we meet and knowingthe kind of work they're getting
to do and how they're doing this onthe, on the road and remote work.
I thought that was actually areally, neat thing to take away
from this.
Well, and it was so cool becausemost of the other events, all of
the other events we go to, mostof the other people are retired.
That's right.
They're not working.
(44:51):
And it's a very different experience.
And more than 50 percent of the people atthe Halloween Convergence were working.
And so it was just really coolto be in that tribe and see that,
you know, we weren't the youngest.
We weren't the, the onesthat hid out all day.
(45:13):
Well, lots of people hit out all dayto get their work done, and then we
came out at night, and it was great.
Like vampires again.
Yeah.
Yeah, and so the second thing relatingto work life balance, I think we'd, we'd
mention Xscapers and the Escapees RVClub, and we'll put a link in the show
notes, that just supporting this remoteworking, nomadic workers existence,
(45:38):
supporting that lifestyle in so manyways, which is just really cool to feel
like, Hey, we're not out here on our own.
There's a lot of other peopleworking to just taking the time
out of their lives to do this now.
Yeah.
Versus waiting until you're retiredand have the time and the money and,
yeah.
(45:58):
Well, and, and it, it is adifferent experience at different
ages of your, your life there.
And if you're a, you know,a senior citizen, you barely
get a chance to go out.
That's one thing.
These are people living the highlife in, in early and mid life.
I couldn't keep up with most of them.
Like it was incredible what, uh, thestuff they said they'd been doing.
And this was just one event we ran.
We're like, wow.
(46:19):
So the third.
The third thing I guess would come back tooverall, the actual thing is the RV work
life balance and these job connections.
We've mentioned that we meta lot of people that were
working very different jobs.
Some were just like mine in tech andthings like that makes a lot of sense.
And the idea of these connectionsof either understanding
how what those jobs are or.
(46:40):
Or helping some of the otherpeople that want to do those jobs
that was really, really cool.
And so we're, as we had mentioned inprevious podcasts, we are collecting
a lot of this information, articles,lists, information about these kinds
of roles and jobs that are available.
And we're going to be putting this online.
So if you haven't already signed upon our, website, take a look at that.
, you'll notice there's an jobslink . on the RV work life balance,
(47:04):
website and that jobs section therewill have a lot of this information.
And this is where we saw that.
That was kind of one of thereasons I was excited about it.
Xscapers was, it seemed like a good.
overlap for what we were trying to do.
They were serving the same community.
People like us.
Yeah.
Cooler than us.
(47:24):
But still, you know, there's someneat people that we met there.
But, cooler than us, but theyhad that same drive and goal.
Like, they liked the remote work,and they loved the free lifestyle
that their RV allowed them to do.
Yeah,
getting out there.
So our goal with RV Work LifeBalance podcast is to share what
we're learning to help anyoneinterested in this crazy adventure.
(47:48):
And I want to thank the listenersfor listening to this podcast.
If you haven't heard me say itthree or four times already,
please check out the show notes.
Like there's going to be lots of the,the photography that we've mentioned,
everything from the professional stuffwe mentioned from the drone as well as
some of our pictures that we've taken.
So you get an idea of this experienceand other links to, the other
(48:09):
content creators we met and stuff.
There's really great stuff.
We'll share down andplease take a look at that.
The info.
Yeah.
And if you are new.
Please take a moment and subscribe.
We really want a chance to follow upwith you and learn about what you're
doing and we want to share whatwe're learning on the RV experience.
And we really want to thank you.
And
to our existing subscribers, we love you.
(48:29):
Please be in touch, email or Facebook.
We just appreciate you so much for,for joining us on this adventure.
And the most important thing.
is to plan your escape and get out here.
Yeah.
So are you ready?
I am ready.
Let's go.
Okay.
Bye.
They call this the Las Vegas,Halloween convergence, right?
Getting people back together but whatthey yelled out, they were like, you know,
Hey, convergence, at least that's what Ithought they said they were cheering to me
as they were handing me paperwork and theywere honking horns and stuff out there.
So I started honking my horn.
I'm like, Woo Hoo!, we're here.
and yelling and yelling this is likereally cool and then we park drop the
(00:21):
paper that they handed me in the windowhad our name on it but below it it didn't
say convergence what did it say it's
con virgins.
We were virgins.
It was our first time.
Yeah.
So
they were cheering that we were virginsto this event, which was hilarious.
(01:07):
Welcome back again.
This is pretty exciting.
Cheers.
Cheers, everybody.
I'm, super excited because if youlisten to our last podcast, the, uh
issue of why I was on parole has beenoverturned and my court case is cleared.
I'm in good shape.
It's a long story.
You want to hear the story.
(01:27):
You have to go back and listen.
You got to go back and listen.
Yeah.
Okay.
Just to let you know, I'min the free and clear.
So let's pack up and drive awaybefore they catch me again.
So, that's the great thingabout your house movie.
How to Catch Me.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
Hmm.
So anyways, thanks for joining useveryone,, excited to be back again.
I'm very excited fromwhat I just told you.
(01:47):
To be out of podcast jail.
Out of podcast jail.
So anyways, uh, so what are we doing now?
It's a little crazy right
now.
Well usually you ask, you know, where weare, what we're doing and all that blah
blah.
This!
Jail time's been hard on me, so I...
This, tonight, is the special event...
(02:09):
episode.
I know, right?
Because It's Halloweenon Fremont Street, baby!
Ooh!
In Las Vegas with
Xscapers.
That is so cool.
Okay, you're gonna have tobreak it all down for us then.
There's a lot there, isn't it?
(02:29):
Okay.
So I'll, I know wherethis all starts though.
This is your favorite time of year.
Right?
This is around your birthday.
Yay!
And, as we like to say, we celebratethe octave of your birthday.
Which is like, the way I do it is,it's the week before, it is the
birthday, and it's the week after.
It's like, you get whatever you want.
It's your birthday.
(02:49):
I love it.
It's an octave.
It's a win.
What day is my birthday, for all the
listeners?
So, if you're sending gifts, andthis is, she's trying to get me
in trouble here, October 27th?
Yay!
Woohoo!
Woohoo, I got that right.
Yeah!
When you celebrate Octavethough, there's a whole bunch of
(03:10):
dates, I'm so, so, you know, but
I do remember.
And it's, it's the Halloween.
Yeah!
Halloween baby.
Scorpio!
To be honest, like, You were planningyour own birthday celebration long
before because you thought aboutwhat this Opportunity might be and
you put it on the calendar and wewere kind of tentatively going down
(03:30):
the navigator Well, and this wasbeing in Las Vegas on my birthday
for Halloween in Las Vegas onFremont Street, which is Amazing.
(03:50):
So, oh, I'm jumping around a bit,but okay, there's a bunch of Facebook
posts on Books and Travel USAfrom Halloween on Fremont Street.
We'll put the links and theshow notes and all that.
But maybe we should step back just a secand, and tell them what Fremont Street
Yeah, I mean, I don't knowhow many people know this.
(04:13):
Maybe everybody except us.
I did not.
Well, okay, yeah.
And I have gone to Vegasfor business reasons.
We have a conference there every year.
So I've been there manytimes for business.
But you're on the new strip, as they say.
The new hotels and new casinos.
Yeah.
And that's a different partof where the Fremont Street.
(04:35):
Fremont Street is actually theoriginal Vegas, the old Vegas.
Things like the GoldenNugget, those old casinos.
But what it is, is they've kind ofrebooted it in a very cool way, right?
It's been revitalized as this, whatdo we say, I'd say like an immersive
entertainment like experience.
And like, that's amazing.
(04:56):
Yeah.
That's not like overselling it.
Like, no, they've taken this area thatcould have just been decrepit and broken.
Yeah.
Again.
And they've rebooted it so that it's Anoutdoor theme park that's also brought the
outdoors indoor, if I could say, like theybuilt a, a roof over multiple streets.
So they're all lit up and
it's an LED screen.
(05:18):
I believe it's 1500 feet ofa tunnel over the street.
That's obviously closedoff to cars and traffic.
It's a pedestrian experience.
And there's all these bars andshops and the old, , casinos.
And then.
Up on that tunnel, on the inside,it's like a huge LED screen, and
(05:41):
they, over the whole street,
over the whole street, and theyhave this amazing light show, and
there's always, it's just amazing.
And then,
The zip liners, she's making special
effects that I'm tryingto do hand signals.
Yeah.
There's so many things to talk about.
I was going to talk about the bands, but,but the zip lines, which she's talking
(06:03):
about there is you can zip line acrossmultiple blocks up by that screen.
And actually up until the recentlaunch of the sphere, it was one of
the coolest outdoor lighting things.
It's still awesome.
But, you know, the spheres kindof, you know, taking all the.
You know, the air out of the, out ofthe room for how cool that thing is.
But it's, it's really cool place.
(06:25):
It's not like the regular strip.
Like you, when you go down to the oldVegas and you go to this experience, it's
a, it's immersive in the, in the sensethat you're getting to like, everyone's
there to be a part of something.
It's not, you're not going from,you know, show to show or going
to like what you do on the mainstrip is very different on Fremont.
(06:46):
Yeah.
And it's.
It's a group experience, everyone there.
You're part of it.
It's all around you.
It's crazy sometimes.
Just embrace it.
Right.
Yeah.
And we should mention it's, it.
It is kind of an adult experience, right?
Yeah,
there
were some kids there, butit's not really made for kids.
But the thing I started to mentiona minute ago was actually cool is,
(07:07):
in addition to the zip lines andall the people and the shows going
on, there are bands strategicallyplaced across each block.
So as you walk from place toplace, there's a different live
band playing, different kindsof music and shows running.
While you're walking, you're goingfrom one live music experience to the
next, which is also like powers youthrough to keep going to see what's
(07:31):
the next band and what's the next show.
And then strategically placed whileyou're walking are entertainers,
street performers, street
performers, showgirls,Chippendales, boys, magicians.
Yeah.
Impersonators.
And, uh, they're all in these littleblack circles on the, on the street.
(07:53):
They paint a circle to
keep them in there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're not allowed togo outside their circle.
They must rent the circle space.
And they
move.
We notice that they stay in one spot fora certain amount of time and then they all
shift so that they get a chance to, youknow, participate in different parts of.
It's really crazy.
It's just
crazy.
Yeah.
But so much fun.
Yeah.
And a few years ago , I had a group whenI was here for a conference and oh, let's
(08:15):
go down there and they took me there.
And it was amazing.
I came back and told youabout this, this experience.
And the first time we camehere, I said, we've got to go.
And we've been going every time we'vecome here, but this was different.
This was different than whenyou and I came in the past.
This was Halloween, andthis is with XScapers.
So it was an even biggerexperience than normal.
(08:36):
Yep.
And so, Xscapers, that wementioned, is an active RV
community within Escapee's RV Club.
And the Escapee's RV Club, it was...
It started in 1978.
And it's basically anRV support community.
(08:57):
All kinds of support, education, services,events, and community on the road.
They do these different types ofevents, like FMCA and like AIM
club that we've mentioned before.
But these are, these are different.
And particularly with Xscapers,the Xscapers group was created
(09:19):
for working aged RVers.
Younger people, recognizing thatmore and more people are working
on the road, working remote.
So the schedule for these events andactivities tend to be later in the
afternoon and in the evening , so thatwe can participate and everybody goes and
you camp and, people work during the day.
(09:45):
Yeah, so it's just so thatyou could do work and then you
could actually, still attend.
So we would go to some of the otherplaces like you talked about and
I would work throughout the day.
Like even in Albuquerque, you wentand did some stuff and I, I stayed
back the first couple of days andI had to take time off to go do it.
But ,escapers is cool becauseI didn't have to take time off.
I had time to do the work andthen the events were primarily
(10:05):
afternoon in the evening.
But I can ask you a question.
Even before we got there, Iwas like questioning like,
does everybody work there?
Cause you know, we're working fulltime and, and I know my job's unique.
I think it's unique in the sense thatI have a schedule and I'm on zoom.
It's, it's very regimented to the.
(10:26):
The time of day and things like that,but other, other jobs can be much more
flexible and because creatives canwrite and create it at different times.
And so my question was, am I goingto be the only one in the RV and
everyone else is doing stuff?
And that was an openquestion when I got there.
Cause it felt like early on, I wasthe only one, you know, stuck inside.
We were asking ourselves, wereother people actually working?
(10:50):
But, uh, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
So.
We ended up on Fremont Street in LasVegas for Halloween with this group.
And I had found this opportunity.
Didn't know much about escapeesor the Xscapers group, but had
heard little things this and that.
Well, anyway, I happened to seethe advertisement for this event,
(11:15):
Xscapers Las Vegas Halloween.
Convergence.
And I registered and that was in June.
So then for six months, almostsix months, we were so nervous.
And I was just panicking because I wasn'treally sure what I'd signed us up for.
(11:36):
And in august, I think, wasthe cancellation date, the
dead end cancellation date,where, okay, we're going.
We had a chance to back out beforethen, but, then about a week, just
a week before the event, I happenedto find out that Um, good RV friends
of ours, Anne and Brian, they are onsocial media on the road of adventure.
(11:59):
We'll put a link in the show notes.
They also are Integra Coach Ambassadors.
So they're good friends and I foundout that they're part of this Xscapers.
Yeah.
And you said they had actually attendedthis event a pretty, you know, in a
previous year, which is good to know.
Cause yeah, they're a
lot like us.
Yeah, exactly.
(12:20):
So you had a lot of questions forthem and that made me feel good.
I actually didn't panic about thisthe whole time cause I was, well.
I did when we got closer.
Cause there's sometimes we plan eventsand then it gets changed at the end.
So I'm like, I'm not going toworry till we get close soon
as we start getting close.
I'm like, okay, now this could be a real
problem.
Yeah.
Then all the questions that I'm like, arewe going to be the oldest people there?
(12:43):
Are we going to be the onlyone in a big class, a diesel, a
motor home running our generator?
Cause it's.
boondocking, straight boondocking.
Yeah, no hookups at all.
Yeah.
Uh, usually when we're at FMCA orwith, the AIM club, we have power.
If we're roughing it, we at least havepower, but this is straight boondocking.
(13:07):
Yeah.
I was worried about like.
Since we were working the whole time,noise was a little concern of mine, but
our rig's pretty quiet, even with noisy.
On Fremont Street.
Yeah, you know, I usually complain aboutlike the people that are mowing the lawns
at the campgrounds and stuff like that.
There was none of that.
No, there was.
When you're in a parking lot indowntown Vegas, there's no mowers.
(13:27):
So, but, you know, we did have helicoptersand, uh, police cars going by and.
You know, stuff like that.
But, my bigger concern wasn't that mybiggest concern was really basic stuff.
It was about, you know, the, the tanksand water and stuff, but we'll get into
that because I was, that was my concern.
And I, I hadn't voiced how concernedI was till we got closer to it.
(13:48):
Okay.
I was like, you know, are wegoing to have enough water?
So,
yeah, it was.
It was urban boondocking.
We all parked on a parking lot.
It's called the Llama Lot.
Downtown.
Three blocks from the very heart of theFremont Street experience, experience.
(14:09):
So there was hotels, bars, lounges,all kinds of people going by.
So noise and security and allthose things were very legit
fears or, you know, unknowns.
Yeah, and and gettingthere was a challenge too.
We were worried about that.
(14:29):
So when we were gonna how we gonnaarrive and park That was a challenge.
We actually had to plan it out aswe were driving into Vegas We which
actually turned out be more complicatedthan the actual parking to get into the
place We stopped a few Uh, maybe a mileoutside of where we're supposed to be.
We went and found a big, Home Depot.
It has a big parking lot.
(14:50):
Disconnected the Jeep and thennavigated two vehicles there
instead of towing the Jeep.
Because you can't back up when you'retowing the Jeep with four wheels down.
Right.
And we didn't know exactlywhat we were going into.
We just kind of had the Googledirections and a picture of
what we were supposed to do.
Yeah.
So we disconnected the vehiclesand used our radios and got there.
(15:11):
And then it was actuallypretty interesting.
We had a little tough timegetting through the small gate.
The gate was small for ourrig, but we got through.
And then they pulled up toget the information, and they
started handing me paperwork.
And then all of a sudden,they started cheering.
I was in the car behind him.
I parked so that I could help himget through those gates, but I
wasn't with him when he pulled upto the registration welcome thing.
(15:34):
They, you know, they, Sherry justsaid, they call this the Las Vegas,
Halloween convergence, right?
Getting people back together.
But what they yelled out, they werelike, you know, Hey, convergence,
at least that's what I thought.
They said they were cheering to me asthey were handing me paperwork and they
were honking horns and stuff out there.
So I started honking my horn.
I'm like, Woo Hoo we're here.
and yelling and yelling this is likereally cool and then we park which
(15:56):
was actually pretty easy they dida great job of lining us up over
there they did drop the paper thatthey handed me in the window had our
name on it but below it it didn'tsay convergence what did it say it's
con virgins.
We were virgins.
It was our first time.
Yeah.
So
they were cheering that we were virginsto this event, which was hilarious.
So, you know,
(16:17):
YEah, it was, it was so much fun.
And so we arrived, had the celebration,started meeting people immediately.
Set up, but there really wasn'ta lot of set up for boondocking.
Yeah.
Nothing to hook up or plugin or anything like that.
No,
but we had done a goodjob preparing, right?
(16:39):
Like my biggest fear was the tanks.
Like, can we last six or seven dayson the water was one concern, but
I knew we could go get more water.
It was the gray and the black tanks thatyou can't go get more space in those.
So I was like, can we like do this?
Cause we had never gone more than like.
four days, I think was the max.
So this was six days, six nights.
(17:00):
Yeah.
And, and it sounds like a minorshift, but I was like, you don't want
to run out of either one of those.
Right.
It's hard to understand that you onlyhave so much room in the black tank,
which is everything from the toilet.
Right.
And the gray tank, which is everythingthat goes down the drains, the sink,
the Not the toilet, but the sinks.
(17:22):
And the shower, yeah.
Um, if we use the shower, yeah.
Um, so, So we
had to be very good at conservation there.
Going in empty.
Having the full fresh water withan extra jug, water jug, and
a suitcase of drinking water.
You like to have all the extra water.
That plastic suitcase thing.
Yep.
Yeah.
So, it was all about conservingwater and use of the tanks.
(17:48):
Yeah.
Um.
Which we actually did way betterthan I thought we were going to do.
We did.
We went
stinky for a week because we.
I would never say that, but.
We were too
afraid to take a full on shower.
There's other ways.
We've had wipeys, sink showers.
Yeah, yeah.
So, we made it!
Woo!
And actually, we still hadhalf of all our capabilities.
(18:10):
We could have doubled it.
We did.
Which means we didn't haveto go as stinky as you said.
But we actually did really good.
And I was very pleased with thatbecause that was a great test.
I did panic for the first time.
The two weeks prior, I was like, Idon't know if we're going to make it.
Yeah, we did well.
And, uh, yeah, so we went in, we wereparked between a newer Newmar Dutch Star.
(18:34):
Nice rig.
Yeah.
Very nice.
And then on the other side,we had a Sprinter van.
Yeah, Van Life.
Van Life, baby.
Yeah.
It was a nice van.
Oh, it was beautiful.
And they towed a Jeep.
Yeah.
Behind their
van.
Yeah, they were pros.
Well, they were actually new to it.
But they had, like, pro equipment.
They, like, made good choices.
Yeah.
Of what they were doing there, yeah.
(18:54):
There was just every kindof RV on this parking lot.
Class A's like us, Class Bvans, Class C with the cabin
on top of the over cab, okay?
And, even some reallyinteresting truck campers.
Yeah, they were cool.
And, uh, custom conversions.
That was some of the neatest stuff.
We haven't got to this yet, butwe did, got to tour a lot of
(19:16):
these rigs while we were there.
And, one was an ambulance thatthey had actually taken the roof off
of an ambulance and lifted it up.
So it was even taller insideand they totally did the inside.
It was so cool.
So it was really neat.
Custom trailers that people had built.
Neat stuff.
So interesting.
Yeah.
And then as, as part of this, like, it'sreally hard for us to explain not only
(19:39):
just where we were and what this waslike, but while we were there, it was
like a couple of nights we were sittingaround with, with some of the friends
there and, , we noticed a person in an F.
, AA, vest on, and they were flying adrone, downtown, which is a big drone.
It's illegal.
You're most of the drones won'tfly in, most, urban areas.
(20:01):
It won't let you in.
It's illegal.
And the police, uh, will come over.
This person had a vest on and would seemto be obviously, you know, had approvals.
We thought it was police.
We did.
We wanted to know what they were doing.
So the second day, the van life buddyand I walked over to meet him and,
chatted it up, and we met Cameron Grant,and he is a professional photographer.
(20:21):
More importantly, he does it forart, and he has some of the coolest
shots, and he was taking lots ofphotography, of the downtown Fremont
area, and we introduced who wewere and the Xscapers and this whole
experience, and he was intrigued by that.
He was actually, he was a roadiein his past where he did try to
travel with shows and music stuff.
So he was familiar with travel,but not the same kind of travel
(20:44):
as what we were all doing.
So he was very intrigued.
So when we, we spent a little timetalking to him while he was flying,
we just simply asked the, Hey, if, isit possible, can you share a shot of.
Our area here is convergent, and he did,and we'll put that in the show notes.
It is a stunning photo.
You'll see this is not just normaldrone shot, but you'll see the photo.
And, uh, my wife, Sherry isactually marked out our rig
(21:07):
where we are on that in the show.
We'll put that in theshow notes, but it's cool.
You'll get an idea of.
What it's like on the lot.
We were on, you'll see the number of rigs.
Uh, you'll see howclose we are to Fremont.
You'll see the background.
It's a great shot, but it'll kindof put in context everything we've
been kind of telling you right now.
So it's been great.
We met Cameron and we're keeping upwith him and we'll put some of his info.
(21:27):
We'll, we'll link tohis stuff there as well.
Yeah, he actually has a showand exhibition in, uh, just down
the street in this kind of mall.
Open mall area called thecontainer park container.
Yeah So he has these drone shotson these big pieces of metal.
Are they printed on metal?
(21:47):
Yeah Just Incredible.
Yeah.
So this was really somethingthat he did for us by taking
a picture of the whole group.
Yeah.
And he said he doesn't give the,he never gives out his artwork.
It's art.
It's not just taking photography.
And he does some cool stuff.
So he did us a solid by sharingit and we shared it with our group
because he thought that was cool.
And we'll, we'll put thatlink up there and share.
(22:08):
But you're right.
We did go see his.
Show in the, in the container park there.
Really cool.
So if you're ever there, gocheck out container park.
First off, it's a lot of cool, barsand shops there and occasionally
have bands and there's a big, uh,praying mantis that has fire coming
out of it right there on the street.
So.
It's to music too, so it's, it's awesome.
So you can't miss the place.
(22:30):
All part of that Fremont streetexperience, but, uh, just the whole thing.
So then, from the minute we rolled throughthe gate, we started meeting people
full on, and it's such an interestingexperience for people who are normally.
Out in the wild, parking in campgrounds,and yeah, we talk, we're friendly and
all that, but this was just, uh, well,it was 50 RVs, so about 100 people.
(22:59):
It felt like 200 dogs on the parking
lot.
It was not 200 dogs.
It was like maybe 20
dogs.
It was all, it was fun.
They were adorable.
Um, people of all ages, I don't knowabout the dogs, but we had people
from as young as 15 years old.
One girl came with her parents becauseshe was actually in a competition in Las
(23:21):
Vegas that At the start of this thing.
Yeah for a Rubik's Cube.
Yeah, it's like a freaking genius Yeah,yeah, but 15 to 70 plus So we were not
the oldest There were full timers and parttimers on some timers as Russ says But
(23:42):
it did seem like A whole bunchof those people were not working.
I made this comment earlier.
I was the first couple of days.
I was like, why am I the only one walkingout at three o'clock in the afternoon?
And everyone else is like, it feelslike they're all three sheets to the
wind and back slapping each other.
And I'm like.
What the?
How did I not end up out here already?
(24:02):
Well, there were quite afew people who were retired.
Yep.
And, lots of people who are onflexible schedules, whether they're self
employed or they're working freelance.
I mean, I'm kind of flexible that way.
Yes, yes.
Out playing all day, just to get...
Riding trolleys and bringing back the
info.
And, uh, by the end of it, wemet the other working people
(24:25):
who emerged from their...
We did.
That actually made me feel so much better.
In fact, it was like the last twodays we seemed to meet all the other
working people, which was reallycool because it's hard to meet
everybody in the, you know, every day.
It's like you're meeting newpeople every day because there's
so many people in the, in the lot.
And, yeah, that was neat.
It was a lot of people aroundin, in tech like me and software
(24:46):
and IT and things like that.
And then there was a.
It was a range of people doingmarketing and sales kind of work.
Mm-Hmm.
whether it was, you know, web work,kind of marketing or working, doing
marketing for their companies and stuff.
So that was actually veryexciting for me to hear.
'cause and I told them all that too.
I was like, oh, I'm so gladto hear you're working too
. It's good meeting of the vampires.
Yeah.
(25:07):
Uh, there were a lot of content creators.
Yep.
And, social media influencers in the RVspace and travel writers and, YouTube.
Even the, , Convergence director,I mean, she was working.
She works for Xscapers, escapees, andputs on these events all year long.
(25:30):
I don't know how she
does that.
Different things going on.
It's exhausting.
Yeah.
They run a pretty tight ship there.
Yeah.
In that, like she managed allthe rigs getting in there.
She, made sure every scheduleof what was happening every day.
She kept everybody, youknow, together on track.
Uh, if there was issues, theyall had to bubble up to her.
Yep.
So
yeah.
Managed arranging therestaurants and the.
(25:52):
Dinners and the happy hours, which I
know a lot of that's done inadvance But you know, you still
have the day of problems that occur.
So And
her hubs her husband is also a softwaredeveloper, but he took the week off
Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
I did that wrong.
(26:12):
Oh
and we met other podcastersIt was so exciting.
That was really cool.
Yeah.
So we met Chris and Rachel whopodcast the Archeology Show.
Now they're
professionals.
They are.
They've been at it a while.
Yeah.
In fact, they run a whole channel ornetwork of podcasts around archeology.
(26:34):
Strange, huh?
But we listened to several ofthem and they're fascinating.
They're really good at it.
And they're, it's like, they clearlyknow what they're talking about.
They're not winging it.
And I even like when we werelistening to their Halloween.
About Dracula.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vampires and stuff.
So even , archeologyabout, vampires and stuff.
So it was really, reallycool, , to meet them.
(26:56):
And that was neat.
Cause you know, this is not our first.
first job that we're doing.
We do this as part of this experienceon the road and to see that it
is a main job for them, right?
And they have a, a greatexperience to share.
And so we're going to be able to keepup with them and connect with them
and hopefully be able to learn fromthem, learn from them as we go forward.
So that was really cool.
(27:17):
And then, then the other kind of, uh,group that I was excited to hear was
that it wasn't just people working,that There were also people that
were looking for other kind of remotework and we'd heard this already.
This is the part that I waswondering about this group.
Was everybody already employed or is ittruly a connection for you as you're doing
(27:40):
work and looking for other kind of work?
Because sometimes we all know your jobscan change and roles can change like that.
And so we met as the transitions of,to RV life for a lot of people was the
kind of work they're looking to do.
In fact, some of them werelooking to, , avoid the, we
mentioned the return to office.
They were asked to return to office andthey had been doing traveling and they
(28:01):
really didn't want to do that anymore.
Our young software developerfriends said, no, I'll just
go find something else to do.
Yeah.
And then, you know, wesaw a elementary school
teacher, his wife was an elementaryschool teacher and after one
year, post COVID walked away.
So the two of them are out inthe van, living their life.
(28:25):
They're young, they'rein their twenties still.
Yeah.
They just got married.
So they're looking for new opportunities.
Yeah.
And, and that, that's the funny thing islike when you actually go and experience
traveling and meeting people and going,you know, cross country, it is really
hard to try to think to go back to anoffice life if you've been doing that.
And so it is, it was interestingto talk to them, . You know, they
(28:47):
saw what they wanted to do andthey didn't want to give that up.
And they were, they knew therewere more roles out there and
they were looking for those.
And so that was interesting for us tomeet, , people in that stage of their
life of transitioning to doing this.
So that was really cool.
And then there was like , vanlifers thatwere basically just starting out and, and
basically using savings and there wereworking through the plan to figure it out.
(29:08):
So they were at the beginningof their journey, right?
Some of these people have been doingthis a long time, and so it was neat.
We saw a wide variety ofpeople in different roles and.
It, it really kind of completed thepuzzle for me of the kinds of people
we meet on, on the road or at differentstages and want different things.
But what they all have incommon is this love of being
(29:28):
able to be remote and travel.
And they, they shared, like, welove to travel a lot to like week to
week or every two weeks sometimes.
But some of these people that go parkout in the desert and work and they'll
be there for months at a time, andthat's what they're looking to do is be.
In, in theory, off grid, quote, quote,because they're still, you know, star
linking to the internet or whatever.
(29:49):
Yeah.
But they're not in a house orin a neighborhood kind of thing.
Yeah.
So it was, it was really cool.
They're
out there.
These are all new subscribers to RVWork Life Balance, which is so cool.
We just had a great time meetingso many different people and
making those connections.
So it was a Halloween experience.
(30:12):
We had an event app on theiPhone with a full schedule, mostly
later afternoon activities, someearlier, but we didn't really get
To do those that was okay though.
Yeah, well you could have butwe were actually both working
on multiple projects Yeah,
and so overwhelmed at the whole thing.
(30:33):
Yes, but so we arrived Sunday we hada catered dinner at the Golden Spike
on Fremont Street, which was so cool.
They have this interior bar where theyhave the dinner and everything, but then
you walk out and a lot of these placeshave a whole backyard kind of thing.
(30:55):
And it was lights and thesecouches and space heaters and a
stage and they were putting up.
They were
setting up, yeah, to do wrestling.
Yeah, they were building, theywere building the wrestling stage.
They had nothing there, and thenthey started putting it together.
And we were all takingbets, and I got it right.
I was like, that's goingto be a wrestling stage.
(31:15):
And sure enough, we walkedover and asked, yes.
They were setting up to do wrestling,which was going to be so cool.
Yeah.
Neat place.
And
we wandered, all wandered as agroup down to the, a piano bar.
Yep.
Um, with live entertainment,just off the cuff.
That was so much fun.
Yeah, even after all of that, there wasmusic and partying all night on the Llama
(31:37):
lot, which in our area, which is calledCenter Camp, the RVs were all kind of
parked in a big rectangle around the lot.
And then we had the center.
open, which is where we'd gettogether to go do things and
go down to the activities.
And then, you know, at the endof the night, blare the music and
(32:00):
sit around and talk and dance.
And there was a, like a serious DJ setup for one of them brought in massive
speakers and a DJ set up and theycranked music late into the night.
So, well, we couldn't actually
be there.
We could still hear it.
We could, we could hear it
well.
So, yeah.
(32:20):
I remember when Iregistered . It has a warning.
This convergence mightnot be for everyone.
Yeah, if you like to sleep and want quiet.
It was a lot of partying and
fun.
But you know when you're sleepingin a parking lot in downtown
Vegas, come on, it's already goingto be difficult because of that.
But then, yeah, it was fun.
(32:41):
That was the first
night, Sunday night.
And then Monday, that'swhen it got interesting.
So there was a work day and then afterthe end of the day, I got to come out
and it was set up to be a RV lot crawl.
So we got to go from rig to rig and therewas going to be a, you were, you were able
to wear costumes, which we had plannedout three different kinds of costumes.
(33:04):
We were cows that night, right?
Cowboy cows.
We were, yeah, that's right.
We were.
Cowboy and cowgirl cows.
So we had, I had a vest, a cowboy vestover my cow outfit and we had cowbells
and we had light up cool glasses.
Yeah, we really did that.
We went a little over, but it was fun.
Made you proud.
Yeah, it was embarrassing, but it was fun.
(33:26):
Um, and It
wasn't just us.
No, no.
Everybody decorated the RVs.
Yeah.
So we had planned out our decorationsas well, but everybody had cool
decorations on their RVs and, youwere supposed to provide,, some sort
of snacks and a drink of some sort.
That was the plan.
So you would, we would travel as agroup from, from, walk from rig to
(33:46):
rig and you get to, if you wanted to,if, if they allowed you, you could go
inside and see, the rigs because youcould go see how people had decorated.
You know, decked out their stuff.
Uh, we let people come in and see ours.
, and then you were gonna havesnacks and drinks out front too.
And so there's lots of different stuff.
What did we have?
We had
jello shooters, orange and greenand purple, Halloween colors.
(34:08):
And, uh, oh, and we hadcheese and crackers and fruit.
Which
turned out to be good because therewas a lot of sweet things for those and
people appreciated that we had Yeah,the the cheese and crackers there,
but we definitely saw some some evencooler ideas This is our first one.
We were learning from it.
The jello shooters was a hit.
That was great We did well on that.
(34:29):
Yes, and the cheeseand crackers were fine.
They were fine, but note to self.
Yeah Next time I would go fullout with chili and the fixins.
Yeah.
You know how you have cheese and crackers?
Yeah.
And all the good things toput on top of the chili.
That's like the bomb in a thing like this.
Yeah.
And we've always donethat for Halloween anyway.
Maybe big chili pot.
(34:50):
A
couple of the rigs didn't andthey did different kinds of chili.
Yeah.
And it was, each one of 'em was awesome.
Yeah.
We were like, dang, thatwas a really good idea.
Yeah.
'cause
after snacks and alcoholic.
Drinks and goodies.
Oh, it was so nice tohave something to eat.
So yeah, so that was neat.
And we had decorated, Charlie, the RV,the unicorn, we had a couple of things,
(35:11):
like some, you had some cool, scaryteeth along the front and some eyeballs.
But the thing we spent the mosttime we had planned out weeks
in advance, we'd actually Testedthis with our son in Mississippi.
Yeah.
So we had already practicedwith this in Mississippi before
we came all the way to Vegas.
And we had put up a see throughscreen, where you project through
it, , along the inside of the windshield.
So it covered the entire big windshield.
(35:34):
And we set up our, we havea small projector, which we
then, had, uploaded some.
Videos of zombies that aretrying to get out of the rig.
So we were projecting in thesemassive zombie hands and faces
were trying to go out, get out.
And I had a small speaker, Bluetoothspeaker out there so you could
hear them groaning and moaning.
(35:54):
So many people.
First off, we got the most people lovedit the most and so many people were like.
Wait, there's people in your rig andthey would all go look inside like
there was a bunch of people in there.
It was that, it was that goodthat they all had to come look.
So,
, and then we'd say, yes, and you'll be our next victim.
You're next.
So go on in.
Come on in.
So, so that, and thatone worked out great.
(36:16):
It was a, that was a home run in mymind and it was super simple, you know,
super simple and just so fun.
Yeah.
And then we all ended up with all theextra food and beverages in center camp.
Yeah.
With the music and the dancing
and the...
This is after you've had a drink at like50 other rigs and food, and then the music
starts pumping again from the DJ, andwe bring all the extra stuff back to the
(36:39):
center, so there's like, there's no excusefor not having food and drinks there.
It was, yeah, it was quite the party.
Yeah, that was only exceeded byTuesday, which was Halloween.
Oh, Halloween was so cool.
I don't know how Russ workedbecause the rest of us were getting
(37:00):
ready for Halloween after the lotcall and everything Monday night.
Um, so Halloween, we startedwith a happy hour at a club.
on Fremont Street and then from there,oh, and the costume contest, so everybody
was in their finest Halloween attire.
We did not win.
(37:21):
What were we
wearing then?
You were a cowboy and you mademe wear the inflatable horse.
I didn't make
you wear it.
Yeah.
You
wanted to.
You decided not to.
I decided not to.
Which worked out because then youwere able to take the pictures.
Yeah,
so I was an actual cowboy, not a cowdressed up and stuff that time and,
uh, she was riding an inflatable horse.
Yeah.
(37:41):
So yeah, you'll
see the pictures.
Yeah, we'll put
all the thing We'll put all thevideo of Charlie in the in all
these pictures in the show notes.
So we did
not win.
No And then after the happy
hour,
there were, I mean, full on body paint.
Yeah, they were, it was, it must havetaken them all day to get ready, you know.
So I was like, 15 minutes,I was like, done, you know.
(38:03):
But, then
the other part of that, we didthe dinner, and that was fun.
And then we got sent out todo a group scavenger hunt.
So we had three months.
Yeah.
Three months.
We've already talked about Fremont.
So it was packed on Halloween.
It's like 10 times more crowded.
And I guess I'd say 70 percent of thepeople, maybe at least 70 percent of the
(38:25):
people are now all in outfits to either.
Not everybody did, but.
Massive number of people are in costumesand that was really fun too, because
part of some of the stuff we had togo find involved other characters.
And so we would go meet somebody like,Oh, we want to take your picture with you.
And you know, because we need X,Y, Z in this scavenger hunt, photo
scavenger hunt.
(38:45):
So we had 85 scenes or people or costumesor situations that we were supposed to
go out and find and take a picture of.
So that was fun.
Put all those in for the contest.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, examples.
Uh, I think we got about 65 of the 85.
(39:05):
Wow, that's actually pretty
good.
And then, so what was some ofthe stuff, like, do you remember
some of the stuff we had to
take pictures of?
Uh, one of my favoriteswas a picture of your team.
In costume, of course,doing human pyramid.
Oh,
we did that even beforewe left for dinner.
So that was just funwith our two teammates.
Looking at the list
like, which ones canwe knock out right now?
(39:27):
And then, yeah, I remember there wasone we had to find, you know, we had to
go stage a fight with someone dressedin some kind of fighting outfit.
And so we found a guydressed as a karate guy.
And so we told him, hey, we needto fight you in this picture.
And that was awesome too.
And you're on your horse, yourinflatable horse fighting the karate guy.
So that was cool.
Oh,
the costumes and the situations and thesigns and we had to go into some of the
(39:51):
places to get the photo we went into.
The Golden Nugget, which is one of those,famous places down there on Fremont and
they actually have a big chunk of gold inthere and you could go see that nugget.
You had to take a picture with it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Several scenes in there.
The guard people weren'ttoo happy about that.
Yeah, well you take pictures and run.
It's like, yep, yep, yep, yep.
(40:12):
It's
Halloween people.
So those pictures, a lot of those picturesare on the Books and Travel Facebook page.
Yep.
And we will include the linksand pictures in the show notes.
Not all
85.
As usual?
No, you'll just getsome of the highlights.
Yeah.
So after that, I mean, thatwas a big start to the week.
So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,the schedule went on, there were
(40:36):
different events and activities.
Uh, there was some downtime.
Eventually we dragged our fire pit out.
Yeah.
We have a propane fire pit, which wedon't get to use all the time, but it
was great because you know, you can't.
Build a real fire on the parking lot,but our, our propane fireplace was great.
We brought it out and, all of a suddenit brought all the boys to the yard.
(40:57):
Everybody came around and we sataround with our chairs and drinks and
we actually finished the jello shots.
We had so many jello shots tofinish off and, got to chat with
people for hours on end that night.
So it was fun, so
much fun.
And then, uh, Saturday.
By noon, it was GTFO, asthey said on the schedule.
(41:18):
Get the F out.
Get the F out, and we were off.
Yeah, which was non trivial because...
The getting in was one thing we got inthere, probably in the first 30 percent
of the rigs, but now everybody's in andthey had to tell the smaller people,
the smaller vans to leave first ifpossible, so that us bigger rigs could
get out because we were jammed in there.
(41:39):
So that was fun to watch everybody kindof slowly move out and then navigate.
And we didn't hook up the rig.
The car right there.
We actually drove separately tillwe got outside of Vegas and then we
pulled off and connected it up again.
But yeah, it was, itwasn't too bad leaving.
It was, it was pretty easy.
We had no hookups, right?
I didn't want to unhook water.
Nothing to hook up.
Didn't have to do anything.
I lifted the jacks up and wepulled the slides in and...
(42:01):
Pulled that
fire pit in the, in the basement.
We were out of there.
Yeah.
And uh, of course we were exhausted.
We're still exhausted.
Like the, the recovery from that was...
It's amazing because it was justlike, it was exciting and everything.
I think it was the adrenaline andthe activities that kept you going.
And then when you leave, you'relike, Oh my goodness, I don't
(42:21):
know how I'm going to survive.
Like two days straight ofsleep to get out of this thing.
It was incredible.
Uh,
and catching up on laundry and showers and
that was nice hookups with hotshowers as much water as we wanted,
not worry about the generator comingon when we turn the coffee pot on.
Like there was things wehad to worry about people
(42:42):
after an event like that, boondocking.
We go like an, we, we, we drove anhour and a half just outside of Las
Vegas to this really cool place.
We'll talk about later and nexttime, just an hour and a half.
So that we could park, hook up, catchup on everything, and just relax.
(43:04):
Know that we had infinite power andinfinite water, and it was like, great.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was nice.
So.
Like I think we've done a good job here.
This is like a lot.
That is a lot Yeah, ifyou're still there we're
gonna try to wrap this up and relate itback to obviously the work life balance
which I think we've Brought up everystep along the way like, you know people
(43:25):
working and meeting those other peopleBut I'm gonna pick the top three things
and then you know At least some of mymind and you cut in on it if you think
you got others number one, I think Itgets down to the people we got to meet
and this remote work on the road andhaving events like this Gives another
one of those communities where people canas you like to say come out of the wild.
(43:47):
Yeah, come back together and Experiencesomething and we've done that with FMCA.
We've done that with aim Very differentorganizations fun in their own ways.
This was Super unique though.
I mean, we had never been in adowntown city, urban environment,
definitely nothing like there's cityand then there's Las Vegas people.
(44:07):
Okay, so very different.
And Fremont Street takes it another level.
So that was really neat.
And these people were havebeen doing this a lot.
We met people that go to many ofthese events like four times a year.
Like this was our first first,and I'm like exhausted still,
and they're not all like this.
They said they're, you know, Halloween is
very different, but it's
(44:30):
the people we meet and knowingthe kind of work they're getting
to do and how they're doing this onthe, on the road and remote work.
I thought that was actually areally, neat thing to take away
from this.
Well, and it was so cool becausemost of the other events, all of
the other events we go to, mostof the other people are retired.
That's right.
They're not working.
(44:51):
And it's a very different experience.
And more than 50 percent of the people atthe Halloween Convergence were working.
And so it was just really coolto be in that tribe and see that,
you know, we weren't the youngest.
We weren't the, the onesthat hid out all day.
(45:13):
Well, lots of people hit out all dayto get their work done, and then we
came out at night, and it was great.
Like vampires again.
Yeah.
Yeah, and so the second thing relatingto work life balance, I think we'd, we'd
mention Xscapers and the Escapees RVClub, and we'll put a link in the show
notes, that just supporting this remoteworking, nomadic workers existence,
(45:38):
supporting that lifestyle in so manyways, which is just really cool to feel
like, Hey, we're not out here on our own.
There's a lot of other peopleworking to just taking the time
out of their lives to do this now.
Yeah.
Versus waiting until you're retiredand have the time and the money and,
yeah.
(45:58):
Well, and, and it, it is adifferent experience at different
ages of your, your life there.
And if you're a, you know,a senior citizen, you barely
get a chance to go out.
That's one thing.
These are people living the highlife in, in early and mid life.
I couldn't keep up with most of them.
Like it was incredible what, uh, thestuff they said they'd been doing.
And this was just one event we ran.
We're like, wow.
(46:19):
So the third.
The third thing I guess would come back tooverall, the actual thing is the RV work
life balance and these job connections.
We've mentioned that we meta lot of people that were
working very different jobs.
Some were just like mine in tech andthings like that makes a lot of sense.
And the idea of these connectionsof either understanding
how what those jobs are or.
(46:40):
Or helping some of the otherpeople that want to do those jobs
that was really, really cool.
And so we're, as we had mentioned inprevious podcasts, we are collecting
a lot of this information, articles,lists, information about these kinds
of roles and jobs that are available.
And we're going to be putting this online.
So if you haven't already signed upon our, website, take a look at that.
, you'll notice there's an jobslink . on the RV work life balance,
(47:04):
website and that jobs section therewill have a lot of this information.
And this is where we saw that.
That was kind of one of thereasons I was excited about it.
Xscapers was, it seemed like a good.
overlap for what we were trying to do.
They were serving the same community.
People like us.
Yeah.
Cooler than us.
(47:24):
But still, you know, there's someneat people that we met there.
But, cooler than us, but theyhad that same drive and goal.
Like, they liked the remote work,and they loved the free lifestyle
that their RV allowed them to do.
Yeah,
getting out there.
So our goal with RV Work LifeBalance podcast is to share what
we're learning to help anyoneinterested in this crazy adventure.
(47:48):
And I want to thank the listenersfor listening to this podcast.
If you haven't heard me say itthree or four times already,
please check out the show notes.
Like there's going to be lots of the,the photography that we've mentioned,
everything from the professional stuffwe mentioned from the drone as well as
some of our pictures that we've taken.
So you get an idea of this experienceand other links to, the other
(48:09):
content creators we met and stuff.
There's really great stuff.
We'll share down andplease take a look at that.
The info.
Yeah.
And if you are new.
Please take a moment and subscribe.
We really want a chance to follow upwith you and learn about what you're
doing and we want to share whatwe're learning on the RV experience.
And we really want to thank you.
And
to our existing subscribers, we love you.
(48:29):
Please be in touch, email or Facebook.
We just appreciate you so much for,for joining us on this adventure.
And the most important thing.
is to plan your escape and get out here.
Yeah.
So are you ready?
I am ready.
Let's go.
Okay.
Bye.
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