On the road, off the grid
GREEN RV | Suburban man sees country in custom camper
In the past year, Brian Brawdy has logged more than 60,000 miles on his RV while traveling through 48 states, all for the sake of exploration -- and conservation.
The Oswego man decided to take his wanderlust on the road after a close call with skin cancer.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
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Green RVing
"At 46, it was time for me to start doing the things I've wanted to do since I was a little boy," said Brawdy, now 47. That meant embarking on one hell of a road trip.
His adventure has found him trekking through Death Valley in 140-degree heat and kayaking next to alligators in the Everglades.
"People who don't know me probably think I'm crazy," said Brawdy, who recently dropped by the Sun-Times office en route to Colorado. "My friends already know I'm crazy."
Brawdy's home on wheels consists of a 2008 Ford F-350 Super Duty 4x4 topped off with a Lance 1181 Camper. The interior is straight up bachelor pad, with a TV, a few beers in the fridge and a disheveled bed.
This "mobile base camp," as he calls it, let's him travel North America's highways and byways while spreading the word about environmental conservation.
Huh, you say? Gas-guzzling RVs aren't exactly the poster child of the green movement.
Brawdy wants to show that it's possible to RV in an environmentally sensitive way. He customized his rig with half a dozen rooftop solar panels that, along with a wind turbine, generate enough electricity to power his air-conditioner, kitchen gadgets, computer and other equipment he uses to document his journey on his Web site, brianbrawdy.com.
He spent about $130,000 on the truck and customized camper.
Rooftop gutters and a water filtration system let him capture rainwater for drinking and washing.
He originally hoped to run the RV on used vegetable oil from restaurants, but Ford's warranty on the truck's engine said that was a no-no. So he settled on biodiesel fuel instead.
"Nothing has been as formidable a challenge as finding biodiesel for this trip," Brawdy said. "Not enough gas stations carry it."
Brawdy, a former outdoors reporter for WBBM-Channel 2, has made dozens of TV and radio appearances during his cross-country odyssey, which was supposed to last one year. But he's decided to keep on truckin' in 2009.
He talks at RV trade shows about how to travel in a greener way. He also blogs about his outdoor experiences to get people more attached to nature and, as a result, more likely to preserve it.
"Conservation Thru Exploration" is emblazoned on the doors of the RV, which also displays a few references to Brawdy's former life as a police officer in upstate New York. He quit that job in 1987, not long after his father committed suicide. That tragedy sent Brawdy on a soul-searching mission. He moved to the Chicago area in 1989, but these days, his home is the open road.
You would think that all that time behind the wheel would make a guy lonely. He says he has no problem meeting people along the way. And it's clear that this outwardly social man, who talks with boundless gusto about philosophy and comparative religion, is most at peace when his only travel partner is Mother Nature.
"Some of the greatest moments in science, the classics -- they come when man is alone in nature," he said. "And there's something about waking up in a different place every morning ... it's something I just can't shake. It's addictive."
Brawdy admits he misses his kids, Parker, 8, and Paige, 5, who live with their mother in Oswego.
He occasionally takes them with him for a few days, and he said he drives or flies home every couple of weeks for visits.
Frequent air travel adds a size or two to your carbon footprint, but Brawdy said being green is about much more than minimizing your greenhouse gas emissions. It's about being independent and self-reliant, too -- qualities he'd like to pass along, by example, to his children, who seem to have inherited his thirst for nomadic adventure.
"Parker's teacher asked him what he wants to be when he grows up," Brawdy said. "He said he wants to be an explorer, like his dad."