Did you wake up and take a nice, hot, long shower this morning before work? Or maybe, you showered last night right before jumping into your clean sheets?
Well, I haven't showered today. Or yesterday. Or the day before. In fact, tomorrow we have a job assignment and we are sitting in bed trying to figure out how and where to squeeze in a shower so we don't smell like we live in our car.
We've been home in San Diego about 2 months now and received the usual questions from all our friends; where's your favorite place, is it hard, how do you make money, and what do you miss most? This post is about what we miss most, SHOWERS!!
Long. Hot. Pressurized. Large. Showers.
We live in a Class C, 24 foot, Coachman Leprechaun. Our shower is approximately 2 feet by 3 feet. Yeah, slightly larger than the size of a poster board. I'm 5'7" and Brandon is 6'3". Its ROUGH.
An RV shower is about 6 minutes. No, not 6 minutes of hot water running, 6 minutes of on and off water.
{ON get wet -OFF soap and shampoo -ON Rinse -OFF condition -ON rinse -OFF face wash -ON rinse -OFF DONE.}
And before your 6 minutes, there's a 12 minute wait to heat the water. Luke warm is the goal. If you don't start showering by the 15 minute mark you're doomed because by 20 minutes the water is scalding hot and now you have to play with the cold and the hot and you're just wasting water and heat.

I've gotten pretty good with the shower. It's more of a chore than something enjoyable, but it doesn't really bother me, except shaving my legs, which has been a rarity on the road, if I'm being completely honest. I actually showered one day on the freeway from Kansas City to St. Louis while Brandon was driving. Definitely not the smartest decision, but there was traffic, we weren't going to have time when we got there and it had been 9 days, you do what you gotta do when it gets to 9 days. It was by far one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.
Brandon on the other hard, HATES the shower. I would guess if you asked Brandon the one thing he hates most in life it would be the RV shower. When we first hit the road we both used the shower and by Brandon's 4th or 5th shower he proclaimed, "I am NEVER showering in that thing again!" And he hasn't. Like I said, its pretty small, if he drops the shampoo, first you will hear, FUCK! then he has to do the knees together squat girls do when wearing a tight dress while pulling circus body contouring tricks to reach the bottle. He also is pretty new to long hair. It's not a fashion statement, he's just too lazy to cut it. That has been a whole new learning experience on its own.

So where do we shower? Mostly friends houses or campsites. When we first got to the farm in Kansas City, they offered us to use their shower and washer/dryer, I thought showering at their house was weird but Brandon jumped at the opportunity. I've since gotten over my showering at other peoples houses awkwardness and am so grateful when someone extends their unlimited hot water for our use. We've looked into joining a gym for the shower benefit, but can't get ourselves to spend $40 a month to shower, because obviously we're not working out! If all gyms has a jacuzzi we might be into it, but they don't, so for now, no gyms. We've also researched public pools. Right now we're in San Diego and there are about 7 public pools with $4 day passes, so thats always an option and one we are going to look at more as we leave Southern California. There is also the truck stop option, which is surprisingly high on the list. Truck stop showers are some of the cleanest showers you'll find on the road. They run fro $9-$12 for about 20 minutes of glorious hot water, just be sure to bring your shower shoes. We stopped at a Flying J in Texas to shower once but it was too long of a wait, so we skipped it for another 2 days. And finally campgrounds. As you know from reading our other posts, we rarely stay at campgrounds, but when we do, we make sure to use the heck out of their showers!
Time for the whole truth: we aim for 2 showers a week, if we get 1 its a success, if we get 3 its a miracle. Don't worry, we're going to The Debster's tomorrow. so we'll get a good shower in before we leave San Diego in 2 days. I'll be sure to update, as we hit the road and try out some new showering options.
Lucky for us we're not smelly people, at least we don't think. No has mentioned anything yet, so either we have really nice friends who don't say anything or they really don't notice. We're hoping its the latter.