Check Out Flora & Sam Brodowski’s Story

We also discussed whether being weekend warriors and taking one-week vacations a couple of times a year was really allowing us to see and experience the “great outdoors.” Manhattan and the rest of NYC had changed dramatically over the years we’d lived there – just as we had – and the allure just wasn’t there for us anymore. But where else would we want to live?

We knew that if we left NYC, we would miss it and always remember it fondly, but in order to leave we wanted to find somewhere else that offered something different and enriched us in other ways. But how should we set about the task of identifying our new home? We settled on the idea that we really needed to figure out a way to explore the country and learn more about ourselves and what about different locations makes us happy.

Deciding to set out on a domestic Airstream adventure was ultimately the result of many years of contemplation over what probably amounted to hundreds of cups of coffee at numerous diners in NYC. Not to mention endless hours of discussions with friends and older family members about traveling the United States… and doing it before having kids and before you were too old to do all of the hiking and climbing required to really do it right.

We also wanted to show our French Bulldog, Bodhi, a great life and at the very least give him more sunspots to lay in and more fields and rivers to explore. We wanted to spend more time with him aside from just a couple of hours a day. Being alone in our studio apartment – one without a sunspot – for most of the day was just not something he enjoyed – we could tell. We dedicated our adventure, at least in part, to Bodhi – hence our travel name: Bodhi’s Roadies. (@BodhisRoadies)

So, we developed a plan that would allow us to find answers to many of our questions. We started saving up some money until the summer of 2019. Then, we bought a big ol’ pickup truck and a lightly used 25-foot Airstream trailer, resigned from our desk jobs, moved out of the city, and set off indefinitely to explore the U.S. (and occasionally Canada) with Bodhi. It wasn’t comfortable; it wasn’t easy, but we know it was the best thing we ever could have done

A month or so in, while you’re parked in a cold, muddy, sketchy RV campground in the middle of nowhere, you start to question whether you’ve made the right choice. You miss your friends. You miss the ease of city life in being able to get whatever you want, whenever you want. But then you learn how to appreciate the new life you’ve chosen. You go on a hike. You sit by the campfire. You talk to other travelers. You FaceTime your friends and family. It’s not easy at first, and it’s stressful at times, but it gets better and easier as time goes on.

And then there’s the part about spending all of your indoor time with your spouse and dog in under 200 square feet. You can love each other dearly, but that small of a space can test any relationship. It’s all about communication, letting each other have your own space, and making use of the outdoors to add as much square footage as you can to your lives.

You also realize that you’re better able to handle situations than you thought you were. A broken pipe in your RV and water is spurting everywhere? It’s time to Google how to be a plumber. You’ve got some rattling noises coming from underneath the hood of your truck? Time to hit up YouTube and become a mechanic to try to solve the problem.

As for what we do for work, Flora now works remotely for a retail clothing company. Sam has his own business as a voiceover artist (@sambrodowskivo), and travels with the equipment needed to record and produce voiceovers remotely.

The goal of our social media posts are two-fold: 1) We want to share our adventures with our friends and family, and 2) we try to give “pro-tips” to educate our followers about the places we’ve been and the things that we’ve seen, and not just give the appearance that traveling the country is all rainbows and puppy dogs. Although sometimes – we’ll admit – it is.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
We always say that we’re the worst tourists, mainly because we’re trying not to look like tourists. Living in a popular tourist city for so long, you learn how to not to look like a tourist – making it hard to actually be a tourist when the time is right. Now that we live full time on the road, we are always tourists and never “locals,” and making the switch hasn’t been easy. We still don’t stop enough to take pictures; we get to touristy spots and try to get through them as quickly as possible. We still walk too fast, we still talk too fast, and we still want to eat dinner too late for small-town restaurant hours. We still call NYC “home” when asked where we’re from. Oh, and we still wear a lot of black – Flora doesn’t think that’s ever going to change.