Hi Welcome to our RV Adventure web site! My name is Padraic and I am originally from Hong Kong and my wife is Willie (Wilhelmina) originally from Germany. We met in Lubbock Christian High School and both graduated from Texas Tech University majoring in Electrical Engineering. After graduating, we married in Lubbock Texas in 1981 and remained in Texas for 29 years. We both worked for Texas Instruments and also open a computer store and later a consulting business doing Lotus Notes and WAN / LAN for various companies.
We discovered our passion for adventure and freedom and determined the RV travel life style is perfect for us. Prior to Y2K, we sold our house in (Lewisville) Dallas Texas and relocated to Atlanta, GA where I gained contract consulting with IBM and later with Sprint. It had amused us that at midnight of Y2K, we were in an empty house in Texas without food and water while the electronic world was supposedly coming to an end due to date errors in computer program.
In 2001 a co-worker at Sprint (June Wallace) introduced us to "life on wheels". Considering we knew nothing about the RV lifestyle, Padraic and Willie spend a year in research from books and joined the RV Club of Escapees (http://www.escapees.com). In the fall of Escapade 2001, we rented a class C from Cruise America RV and went to Fall Escapade at Lewisburg, WV and learned from the experts.
For an entire year, we did research on the Internet and with a lot of creativity and planning we were ready for our RV. We purchased a Class 8 Volvo 610 truck of from Bennett Truck in Salt Lake City and a 40 ft Newmar Mountain Aire 5th wheel. It took 4-days to drive the truck back to Atlanta. With the help of Escapees Ch16 president (Mel), 10 days later, on April 22, 2002, we traveled to Indiana to pick up our new 5th rig. We were so exited and couldn’t believe what was happening!
We visited various campgrounds in the Atlanta area and finally decided on the Allatoona Landing Marina Campground in GA. In last, we become RV full timer, we moved into the 5th RV on April 27, 2002 and stored our belongings in Public Storage. We slowly garage sale most of our belonging in 2003. In 2004, we moved the reminder storage items to Padraic’s sister in California and we were ready as well as excited to hit the road on March 27th 2004.
On the road on the first year, we gained practical experience on the life style, created a lot of projects and add-on to our rig. They included our AC –DC power sources, water purification with reverse osmosis, new cabinets and music station. We had visited many cities and towns as you can see in this web site that we never thought that is possible before. Even more, we didn’t expect that we had make friends all over the country in many RV rallies. For most of the 1st year, we were traveling in the west. Visiting father, brother and sister and made the high cost California living possible. Best of all, our business continue to thrive and new ideas are developing.