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A Job For Everyone – The Tiny House Chronicles

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When we left off last, the Cycle Source Mobile Command Center was headed north to the Donnie Smith Show and the temperature gauge was dropping. Leaving the Florida sunshine with the proposition of near freezing conditions was daunting but the warmth in my heart overcame that. You see, I have a long time brother up in Minnesota who I haven’t spent real time with in at least five years. In that time he has bought his own property and really started to live his dream, all the while I have never paid him a visit. The man I speak of is Kevin “Teach” Baas, of the legendary Kennedy High School Chopper class. I had made arrangements with him to park our tiny house at Baas Acres for the week instead of staying at some swanky hotel in Minneapolis. Now, this would mean a 40 minute commute back and forth to the show but it also meant that the time before and after the event would be left for catching up.

Ok, so lets fast forward to “Our Heroes” just having dropped the tiny house and starting to set up camp. First thing was power, got it, we’re good. Second, water… you guessed it… not so good. I could tell by the look on Heather’s face that another week without running water was gonna be the topic of many late night conversations. Never the less, we continued working. This is something you start to learn real fast in tiny house living. When you hit the ground everyone has a job and you have to get right to it to stay ahead of weather, nighttime and whatever other schedule you might be on. The dog’s duties included chasing the Baas Chickens, an animal she had never seen before this day and getting to know Brutus and Mack, The Baas Bulldogs. As you can imagine, they were quite pleased to meet a girl bulldog and promptly went into dog behavior and between rounds of attempted humping and snarling they ran down to the closest mud hole, promptly dropped her on her ass and made her familiar with country living.

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Now, there are things that you may be able to overcome during life in a small space, a wet, muddy dog is not one of them. Unfortunately, the status of the setup was mid stride and we couldn’t stop to fix poor Nugget up so she could find solace in the tiny house, so she got tied up at the door, where she would have to wait while we finished our task. This was the best thing ever for Brutus who had take quite a shine to her. Since she was a much fast runner than he was he had a hard time catching up until she was put in jail. So for the rest of our time finishing the camp we would take small breaks and try and pry Brutus off poor old muddy Nugget, who may have been faster but was not stronger. He was having his way with her, fortunately he was fixed although you couldn’t tell be his willingness to try.

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Once the house was set, my next job was to wash Nugget. This was gonna be a blast, no literally, because she was gonna get an old fashioned out side hose bath. Fifteen minutes later we both returned to the tiny house, soaked but clean, and she was ready to reenter our commune. Oh, did I mention that my band was traveling the 900 miles to Baas Acres to play that same night? With no time to rest, I changed my socks and went back to work setting up the sound system that had traveled with us since Daytona. The other guys would be sliding in just in time for the show so I had to make sure we were all ready to play for the Famous Donnie Smith Pre-Party at Baas Acres.

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From that point on, everything was everything, old friends, great times, the band had a blast and the crowed seemed to dig us. The Donnie Smith Show was off the hook as you can read in an upcoming issue, but the best part happened during the couple days after. We shared time with Kevin and his wife Amy. Not the kind we had ever had before. This time was of the ultra personal nature, we shared part of their lives. In all the time I have known Kevin and Amy, this short visit seemed somehow to draw us closer. We ate farm fresh eggs from their chickens, heard the stories of their day to day lives and just before we left for another leg of the journey, I even got to share some of Kevin’s professional life with a visit to Chopper Class to present a short talk on marketing yourself as a builder.

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As I sat on Kevin’s deck with my morning coffee, looking out over all the work he had done since buying this piece of land, I became immediately aware of the fact that my brother had made it, he had his little slice of heaven and from where I was sitting, it wasn’t bad!

As for yours truly and the fam, we hit the road again heading south. The temps would come back up, but not very much as we made our way to St. Louis for Cycle Showcase… Stay Tuned!

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