This one hurt a little. We said goodbye to Serenity, buttoned up our Brinkley Model Z 3515 for storage, and started a long travel day to Chicago to catch flights to Brazil. The reason is a good one: Fabiola graduated with her degree in Business Administration, and there was no version of this where we watched that on a phone screen. This is the reality of being an international couple. Family lives in two countries, and sometimes the house with wheels has to wait in a field while we go be humans in the other one.
Watch the full video on YouTube.
How we prep the rig for weeks of storage
Leaving a fifth wheel unattended for six weeks takes more than locking the door, and we walk through our whole process in the video. The pantry got purged of anything a mouse would consider an invitation, and everything that stayed went into sealed containers. We set out critter prevention, spread dehumidifier packs through the rig to keep moisture down, and left the fridge running on solar so we wouldn't come home to a science experiment. Cameras let us check in from Brazil, which is less about security and more about the peace of mind of seeing your house still standing from 5,000 miles away. (Spoiler for a later video: the mice found a loophole anyway. Prep improves your odds; it doesn't sign a treaty.)
Why Chicago?
Flying to Brazil from the Upper Midwest is an exercise in tradeoffs, and Chicago won on the math: better routes, better prices, worth the long drive. It made for a big travel day, but "drive to the cheap airport" is a very RV-life solution to an international problem.
The tour of our other home
Once we landed, we filmed something people have asked about for a while: a casual tour of our place in Brazil. It starts at the gated street entrance and garage, which is standard here and one of the first differences visitors notice. Then the garden and compost setup, Fabiola's office, the living and dining rooms, and the kitchen, which deserves its own paragraph.
Brazilian kitchens run differently. There's no hot water tap at the sink; dishes get done cold, and the squeegee-everything cleaning style takes some adjusting if you grew up with American kitchens. Cooking gas arrives as a bottle delivered to your door. And hot water for the shower comes from the famous Brazilian electric shower head, which heats the water at the point of use with a device that looks, to every North American who sees one, like it should not be allowed. It works fine. Millions of them work fine every day. Nathan still eyes it suspiciously.
Upstairs there's a rooftop area with a hammock and a barbecue spot, which is where Brazil really wins the housing comparison. And the bathroom is a reminder of what we gave up going full-time: a real brick-and-mortar bathroom feels enormous after years of showering with your elbows tucked in.
Bolt and Belinha
The real welcome committee was Bolt and Belinha, our two rescue pups who live the good life here. If you watch the video for nothing else, watch it for them.
We'll be here for a few weeks of family, graduation celebration, and "welcome to Brazil" moments before heading back to the rig. Living across two countries means always missing one of your homes. We've decided that's a better problem than only having one.
Watch the storage prep, the flight, and the full house tour on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.