How To Live Off Your Bike / 25 Year Motorcycle Road Trip

There are a lot of good things about having a home and you know all the stuff that goes with it. There's a lot of good things about living on the road as well. One of which is stuff like this. Bill. I spent my morning going through bills, paying bills. That was a big change for me coming off the road because when I was on the road I had a cell phone bill. I had to put fuel in my bike. That's not really a bill right? Yeah my bills were minimal. Not anymore but for some guys they've chosen to live that on the road life without the comforts but also without the bills. In today's video I'm going to introduce you to a guy who has been living on the road off of a motorcycle for uh well since 1995. Now as you all know I lived on the road. I spent five years living on the road. The last couple of I had a school bus but the first couple was just living off the back of my motorcycle with my dog Scooter. Now when I first left my plan was only to live on the road for one year but it went longer than that because my main reason for living on the road was charity. I was trying to raise money for veterans and we found a lot of success with it. Actually raised millions of dollars in money and gifts and vacations and all kinds of stuff for veterans over the last few years and that's why I really stayed out longer than my planned year. It was a it was a one year. I wanted to live one year on the road experiencing what life would be. It just just turned into a lot more because the mission became more important than getting home but I figured out a way to continue to give back even while I was home. So now I've got this campground. We do all kinds of charity events. We offer free camping for veterans all that kind of stuff. It's just uh it was a progress of my life. I also wanted to have a family and start a home and you know retirement and all that kind of thing too but some guys a few guys don't desire any of that. They just want to live comfortable, live simple and basically chase good weather and there's a legendary guy staying at my campground right now. He's drifting through on his way to the Baja Mexico but he thought to spend a couple days with us here. Waited out the rain and well today's the day to head back to the road to the next adventure if you will. It's something I can relate to and something even though it's not where I want to be today it's something that I absolutely still reminisce about and think about and dream about and sometimes struggle with and he happens to be over here right now loading up his bike. I'm sure plenty of you have heard of him. If you haven't you've got to look him up. What's going on man? It's scooter tramp Scotty. How you doing brother? Now I wish I would have caught that. What's that? Take a look at this guys. Look what just rode into my camp. So you're loading up the bike? How was your stay in the treehouse? Oh the treehouse is great. So tell everybody what you're riding as you're loading here. My bike you mean? Yeah. It's a 1991 electric glide. I ride these old bikes because yeah because as some people know I fix all my own stuff right? And it makes a big difference. And I don't know how to fix the new ones. I'm not that good of a mechanic. The old ones are pretty easy. I love the old style motorcycles. I love the fact that you're doing it on an old bike. My old trip I did on a 1996 electric glide. The old Evos man. I think they're great engines. A little slow but other than that they're good. Well they are a little slow. A little underpowered but there's some advantages that come with that. We were talking about it just the other night. Well there's a couple things. One is power makes heat. Evos don't really get hot. So in touring there's things that are just as important as power or even more so. So like if I get caught on a 100 degree day in heavy traffic in a city it's not really a problem. And I think the other thing is I don't think these things have enough power to break themselves. They tend to go a really long way before they wear out. It's really a perfect setup for a guy like you who's been living off his bike since 1995. That's a long time. My hair was dark when I started. Well you still look good. You still look healthy and I think some of that has got to do with your philosophies on living on the road. I think what I really want y'all to get out of this is just some insight as to what it's like to live on your motorcycle. A lot of you probably have a desire to do this. Maybe it's not your life plan. Maybe it's not where you want to go. Maybe there's other things you want in life than to live that long on a motorcycle. But almost all of us have that desire down in us to take that long road trip or even think about what it might be like to just get rid of all the bills. Get rid of everything. Get on the road and just live free. It's a dream. It's an American dream. I think Scotty here can give you all a lot of insight and a lot of things to think about on whether or not you want to live full-time or just take that trip. No matter which way you go, the things you may want to think about before you go. That's what I hope for y'all to get out of this today. Can you tell everybody your philosophy on living? The struggles and the successes? What should somebody know? Well, first off, let me say that living full-time on the road ain't for everybody. I mean, I don't think most people would really like it. I always tell guys when they get a hold of me and they want to hit the road for good, I tell them, look man, why don't you just situate yourself? Bring your bills down some or whatever so that you can take some time out here. You know, I think most guys would be happier with just a month or two a year. But for those guys who have it in their heart to just do this, it takes a certain kind of insanity. But for the guys who have that, they're not happy doing anything else. And once you really get good at this, I never see any of them stop. It takes a while to get good at it though. Yeah, for sure. So, what are the things? What are the stages? What kind of advice do you have for people? Well, I can only tell you for myself. For me, I think there's like four things. I mean, how I would take... I started by taking short trips and they got longer and longer. And I began to stay gone all summer. You know, I started staying gone all summers in 1991. And I started hating coming home and I started hating being home. But what I began to find out is that the methods that would work for me for a week or a month or even a summer just don't work full-time, long-time. Some things have to change. So, guys contact me that want to live on their bikes and I'm always like, uh-oh. I try to kind of deter them a little. I really do. Like I say for everybody. But for me, it's the best life I've ever had. So, I always tell them that the first part of it, at least for me, was, man, I was free and I was happy and I was seeing the world and I was going all these places and doing all these things. I was excited. I was a young man at the time. But there come a point when I started hitting the hard parts and I always tell them there's going to come a time when there's a hard learning curve. And a great adventure and then they do something else. But the guys who stay out here work out ways to get around these problems. Once you work them out in your own way, you can take some of my methods. I've taken some from other guys. Once you work these problems out, then you get what you're looking for. Then it becomes easy. People ask me once in a while if I ever want to settle down. I'm like, I've tried it a few times. And I'm going to tell you there's two things about it. One is it's too hard. It's a hard life. Comparatively speaking, it's a very hard life. And the other one is I get bored. I get bored of the routine. So I can relate a lot to that. You know, I get bored a lot too. And that's why when I was on the road, I thought, you know, what could I do that would give me a little bit more stability and still allow me to not get bored and to meet the different people and hang with the different people? And that's why I thought campground was such a great thing. Because it's a lot like the road life. You've got different people coming through. You've got, in that sense, you've got different people coming through. You've got different personalities. You've got, you know, different experiences, you know, different groups bring a whole different energy, you know. And that's why the campground, I think, was a good fit for me because of a lot of those same things. It's hard to go back to civilian life or normal life. I guess this is civilian life, but normal life after road life. It's a difficult thing to do. Well, for me, it is. Adam here is a type A personality. He's one of them guys who's always making ---- happen. I'm really kind of the opposite. I'm kind of lazy. I'll never be a big name, probably. But what I see around here is a lot of altruistic work. So I like that. You know, I didn't know what to expect. You do a lot of work for a lot of people and there's a lot of free stuff to help out a lot of people. Yeah. That's what I see here. And that's important to me because, like, you know, even just, you know, taking the guys like you that are doing this full time and being able to to put you up for a night and bring you in and, you know, take some knowledge back. To me, that's what makes my clock tick. You know what I mean? You got free stays for disabled, for vets. Yeah. Putting in the plates for disabled. I find all that kind of interesting. I like it. I like it. I have another friend that does a lot of work like that. Only she works with the homeless. I'm always impressed by that. But we want to talk more about you. Everybody knows when I first hit the road, I wasn't looking to ride an endurance ride of sleeping on picnic tables in a park where you had to be out. Sure. That's OK for so long. But as an everyday lifestyle, year after year, it just didn't work for me. I was looking to try to engineer a way that was comfortable enough, dare I say, to work as a long term lifestyle. And I've achieved that. I've achieved that really well. There's some hard parts with any life, but for the most part, it's pretty easy. And it's very enjoyable for me. So for me, there was four things. I think in about two years, I had out of here full time. I had to start making some real changes. And I'll tell you what, Adam, I was hungry. I would listen to any Boy Scout. I've learned stuff from homeless people that I use this day. I just wanted to learn anything I could from any. I tried working carnivals for a while. That was a flop. But I was trying to learn anything I could, everything I could. And eventually, I got it going pretty good. But for me, there's four things. One is a good home, a place to come home to. Not like it's 10 o'clock at night and you don't know where you're sleeping and you're in some city you don't know. Right. And so I had to change, begin to change my camps. I've had to make my camp comfortable. It's become a comfortable place to stay. It's got lighting, the motorcycle charges, everything. I got computer in there. I got Wi-Fi. You know what I mean? I even got Wi-Fi in there. And as long as I have a nice place and decent weather, and I follow the weather, I love my home. So a lot of times I'll stay there till two in the afternoon working on a computer or whatever. I'll go home early if I'm tired. So a good home. I had to engineer a good home, better equipment that suited me better. And by home, just in case y'all aren't clear, because it can be confusing, he's not talking about an address where you send your mail. He's talking about everything he has here on his bike. This tree house was his home for the last couple days, right? I mean this is... I forget about that. It's been so long I forget you guys think of home as being a house. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. I go home to where I'm going to be staying and relaxing. The beautiful thing about a tent is the inside of it is always the same. I've got down, you've seen down quilts, down sleeping bags, two down sleeping bags. I got a big feather bed, you know what I mean? Look at his load. Most of this stuff outside here is house. I had to improve my house, my home. That's what most of this is. I dig it. So a good home to come home to. I think I stayed in a lot of really bad places the first couple of years and then I would get a really good spot. I'd be in some woods I loved. I'd wake up, I'd go, man this is wonderful being here. And so I started looking for better places to stay. I think me and one other guy is the only ones who actually live in the woods all the time. The other guys have worked out different ways they do things. A good home. Be able to stay clean. A way to get clean all the time. Be able to get showers. I know probably every way there is to get showers and if anybody knows me I don't, I want to hear it. And you know not like hey it's been four days and I meet some guy on the street, brother can you get a shower? Not like that. It doesn't work long term. And a good social life. Those three things are really, I found those to be really important and I took stuff from some other guys to make that work especially early on. Because you try, I think one of the things guys don't realize is if you're thinking of course in the fantasy or in you know what, that's what you got to start with. That I'm going to see the world. I'm going to be going to all these outrageous places and all this great stuff you know. But really a lot of times man I'm coming into a town I don't know anybody. I come into Billings, Montana. People are in work mode. It's the middle of the week. I don't know anybody here. What am I going to do? Sit and twiddle my thumbs all day. You see what I'm saying? So but, so if you have, so try going to different towns all over the country and all over the place and being truly homeless, dirty and truly friendless. See how long you want to do that. There comes a time when just seeing the beauty wears off and it became more for me about the people that I'm going to meet and the adventures that are going to happen. That's cool. You see what I'm saying? Yeah man. And so if you could have, did I ever say this? If you could have, you can have a good home to come home to. Being able to stay clean and have a social life in these different towns. You never want to come home because you'd be having adventure all the time. If you're into adventure stuff and you know you're not wanting to raise a family that's what you want to do. And then the fourth thing I see is a routine. And most people, most guys that develops over time. For me that was kind of slow to happen. But it wasn't that long. But it takes guys time. And what I see is guys who are traveling, who are on the road all the time. They come to a town or a place. They have hours on their hand. They have time on their hands. They have hours. They have days. They have weeks. And they don't have nothing that they have to fill it with. And they're in a town where people are doing their normal lives. And what guys do is they're like, they come to a town. They're like ain't nothing going on here Mike. Let's go to the next town. And they go to the next town. And the next town. And the next one eventually is home because eventually that kind of wears off. So I have a routine. Now I spend time working because I make my little stuff with this video. But I used to do other things. Panhead Billy goes to events constantly. I used to do that when I was first started. Because if I go to an event, events are really important to you. Because if I come to a town, people are in work mode. They're doing their normal lives. But if I come to an event, people come there with a different attitude. They've come to socialize, let their hair down, make friends. Maybe they're looking for romance. You know what I mean? I mean it becomes more about meeting people. So if you can get them four things worked out, that's what I think. Then it's easy. This is where I'm going to tell y'all. You know, Scotty and I talked on a phone a year or so ago. And he says, hey man, he says, does social media, you know, I hear it can make life a little bit easier, this and that. You know, can you give me some pointers on social media? And I basically told him everything I do on social media. And you ended that conversation with, that sounds a lot like work, Adam. Yeah, I don't want to do all that work. I said, yeah, it is work. It's just, it's fulfilling work. And it's good, right? And now you've started a channel and you're putting out content and people can follow your, it's very organic, authentic, just off of his cell phone. He's, you know, recording me in, you know, restaurants as we're eating, just talking, you know, we're just having a conversation. He's pulling up his cell phone and recording it. And that's really cool. So I suggest y'all go follow this man online, Scooter Tramp Scotty, you can find him, just Google him, you'll find him. But he's putting out content now. And, you know, I have to say for some of you, I know this is, I know this is tough for some of you, but I'm not doing as much motorcycle road tripping as I used to. I do, I'm on the road about two weeks a month now. And then some of those are in side-by-sides or off-road Jeeps or things like that. So, you know, motorcycles have become maybe 70% of my content. And so for those guys that really want that old school content I used to put out of living on the road, boom, there's your guy, man. Go follow him, give him some love on there because you know what, that is the type of thing that makes all the difference. It can make things so much nicer when you're on the road and it lets them know all the work he's putting in to make these videos because it is work, it's paying off. Yeah, man, he's got a real different life from me, but I always tell guys contentment, happiness is where you find it, brother. Hell yeah. In the end, you know, if I ever make it to my deathbed, I think, and I'm looking back and I have time to look back at my life, I think there's only one thing that matters, man. And that is, did you enjoy your life more often than you didn't? If a person can answer yes to that, they lived a rich life. Amen, brother. You know what I mean? Regardless of what they did, who cares what you did? If you can answer yes to that, whether you were a family guy or this or what he's doing, who cares? And if you can't answer yes to that, it might be time to try some doing some other things. You see what I'm saying? Amen. One of the things you're going to want to ask me about, Adam, because people do all the time, is one of their main concerns is money. Because nowadays I'm making a living off of YouTube, really, but it doesn't take a lot for me to live on, right? But that's only recent. For all these years, that's not what I've done. And so people always ask me about money. Of course, it's a major growing concern. And early on, for me, it was too. There's two things about that. A friend of mine told me a long time ago, she said, do what you love to do. It's a little philosophy. She said, do what you love to do because you truly love to do it and the money will come. And I found that to be true. I took off from California one time. I used to travel in the summers, go back in the winters and work. I took off one year with $500 going to Florida, not enough money to get back. And I took off on blind faith, traveled nine months through Canada and all. And all these things happened and things came when I needed it. And I'm not saying I didn't get low. And I got back into California with $550, nine months later. That was a changing point for me. But the thing about money that I want to say is, because we don't have bills, because there's no bills, I have this phone that's it. And it's like a cheap phone, a cheap carrier. And that's it. And because they don't own much, we just don't have to work that often. And so for many years, I worked the motorcycle rallies. A lot of the other guys are doing that now. And I only had to work about a month a year, six weeks maybe, was enough to carry me through. Only back when I had my big house and everything, I had to work all the time. So it's kind of a trade-off. It just doesn't take as much money, that's all. You make a chunk and then you live on it for as long as you can stretch it. You can work the rallies, work all over the country. And then behind the scenes, all the action. Y'all, I have truly enjoyed spending some time talking to Scotty here. And I took some nuggets away, including the one that he just shared with y'all. And that is do what you love, the money will come. And that is so true, man. It's been true for me and it's worked for you. And hopefully it can work for y'all. I love to inspire people on this channel to do what's in their heart, to do what is their passion. And not to let anybody tell them they can't do it. And I'm telling you, there are a lot of people I've probably told you, especially in the beginning, that you can't live this lifestyle. And look, how old are you now? How old are you? They don't, I'm 60. 60. And happy. I mean, the man's happy. And that's, like he said, man, when you're on your deathbed, nobody's happy all the time. Of course not. But you're living a happy life. You're living the life you want to live. I love this life. Best life I've ever known. Look how I just packed up in just a few minutes and I'm heading for Arizona and then into Mexico. It's how easy that is. That easy. Well, that's great. You got a final word you want to leave anybody with, Scotty? I can't think of nothing, Adam. That's okay, buddy. You don't have to. Maybe I'll see you out here. If anybody, you guys got me on Scooter Tramp. Scotty's my old pen name. I used to do work for magazines. I've had it for many years. You can find me on the internet or whatever. And anybody, guys who really want to hit the road, sometimes get a hold of me and I'll talk to anybody that does. I'm always available for guys who share the same kind of passion. You be careful with that, Lowell, because what's going to happen is, is before long, you're going to have half a million, a million, three million, four million. And then what? Then how are you going to talk to everybody? Then how are you going to talk? Dude, I've got to go get where you are. All right, y'all. This is where I'm going to cut this video short. Scooter Tramp, Scotty's going to take off from the Kay River campground here and head south to the warmer weather, living a life that is his and that he's happy about. And that's what it's all about, y'all. You got to do what's in your heart. You got to follow your dreams. And don't let anybody else tell you what you can or can't do or what you should or shouldn't do. What you should do is what makes you feel right. Do you agree with that, Scotty? Oh, yeah. Early on, I heard a lot of that. You can't do this. Then once I became successful, everybody was like, wow, that's so cool. Yeah, exactly. At first, they were trying to shoot me down. I used to be in the fight business. And I would tell the younger fighters when it was their first time to step in a cage and say, listen, it don't matter if it's a doctor or a lawyer or who's out in that crowd. No matter how successful they've been in life, there's a piece of them, no doubt, a piece of them in the bottom of their belly that wishes they had the cojones to step inside that cage and to throw some hands. And I think the same goes true for what Scotty's doing here, man. Even though it may not be our future path, there's a piece of all of us bikers that wish we could just pack everything. Look at the back of his bike there. Wish we could pack everything up like that and just chase that good weather and that free life and that easy living. And I'm proud that you're doing it, Scotty. Proud to support you. And I hope all my friends out there, I hope you all go give him a follow and follow along on his journey because he can use the support online. He's putting in the work now. It is work. And he's putting it in. And hopefully it inspires one of you one day. Until the next video, listen, y'all, I'm going to remind you of something that I always say, and that is dream until your dreams come true. Okay, y'all, I'm going to close out the video. Got a little cold. We got a cold snap here. I'm going to close up the video with my boy Scooter here and tell y'all that I wish Scotty a good journey. I hope you all do go ahead and give him a follow. You know, that is what I love most about this campground is the ways that we can give back. Um, and when you got guys that are still out there living that drifter lifestyle, um, you know, I love it when they swing by here and stop in and I try to help them any way I can, because I remember what it was like. I remember what it was like to be out there on the road. Uh, his is much different. He sets up camps and he stays places for a while. Kind of like I was saying earlier, um, where I had to move every day and I didn't have time to find or connect with that local community. Um, so it was the people who reached out to me and brought me into their homes and took care of me when I was on the road that make me want to do it so much now, you know, to give it back to somebody else because all of you out there watching, uh, that helped me and stood beside me, even if it was just watching my videos or sharing my videos, uh, y'all helped me and y'all made me and got me where I am today. And that's why I will always try to use any success I have to try to give back. And while Scotty may not need it, he may not be broken and he may live on less than what he brings in right now. And especially now that he's doing some social media, it doesn't matter if he needs it or not. I just want to give back. I want to give him a little place to stay, give him a little refuge from a storm that does my heart good, man. I follow my heart. I do what, how do I say this? I do, I do what makes me feel good and it all just works out in the end. It just really does. I, I follow a life of my passion. I do what I truly love. Like he said, and everything else just comes. Well, I guess this has been enough talking in one video. We'll catch you all in the next video. Listen, dream until your dreams come true, chase the life that you want, whatever it is, whether it's a family work harder than you could possibly imagine for that family. If it's to be a drifter, get out there and just do it. Um, if it's just to take more vacations, put together a plan, focus on it and stay stubborn.