A couple nights ago we parked the bus in a relatively affluent residential area. John was concerned that one of the locals would call the police and report a “suspicious vehicle.” It didn’t happen, though. I was unsurprised; roadtrippers who have experienced this in the past have usually been sleeping in regular campers or vans. If you see a black van just chilling on your block, then it could be practically anything, and there’s a chance that the person there could be trying to lay low. Travelers seem to draw more attention to themselves by attempting inconspicuousnes than hanging out in an obvious way.

We’re definitely obvious. The bus is simply too damn ostentatious to be the least bit suspicious. What home invader in his right mind would use a vehicle this unwieldy and conspicuous as his getaway ride? Besides, we’ve got the “juanway.org” spray-painted on the back bumper, and most thieves don’t give out contact info. For now, it keeps people from calling the cops on us. It also leads us to some opportunities we may not have gotten otherwise. When the others were filling up the tank of veggie oil in a restaurant parking lot, a guy named David who had been biking around the area came up to me and asked me about the bus. I gave him a little tour of the inside and explained what we were doing. By the end of it he was calling his sister in Charleston, South Carolina to see if she would be willing to put us up for the night some time when we were in that area.