By Rebecca Drew
THESE TEEENAGE sweethearts with more than 158K followers on Instagram ditched their post-grad jobs in LA for a 100K-mile life on the road in their 42-year-old bus called Sunshine that has been their home for six years.
Incredible pictures and video show Kit Whistler (30) and J.R. Switchgrass (31) from Florida, USA, relaxing on top of their VW camper, making music around the campfire and enjoying a dip in crystal clear open waters. Other idyllic shots show the pair working hard on the farm and J.R. attending to Sunshineâs engine.

The couple who met at school have been living life on the road since 2012 and in this time have been across America eight times, crossed over into Mexico and into Canada and have visited 50 of Americaâs 58 National Parks. Kit discussed where the idea to go travelling and their Instagram handle @IdleTheoryBus came from.
âWhen we graduated from college, we spent a year traveling in the bus and working on farms. Then, thinking weâd need to grow up and âget a real jobâ, we moved back to L.A. and spent two years working in the city. But we felt trapped doing that, and eventually it became obvious that it was time to head back out,â she said.

âWe havenât modified the bus much, so all of the interior functions are standard. We just put a two-burner camp cook stove on the counter and a solar panel on the roof. The pop-top, bed, cabinets, all came in the bus, so she transitioned easily from our car to our home.
âOur first year living fulltime on the road, in 2012, we set out with the intent of purposefully doing nothing. So, we decided weâd travel, live on the money we had till it ran out, and figured weâd settle down somewhere and get a job. But, until then, we figured weâd allow ourselves to simply be.

âIdleness is the word we use for doing nothing, and our idle theory is to spend a fair amount of time idling. Now, by idling, or doing nothing, I donât necessarily mean sitting there physically doing nothing. What I do mean by idling is wandering without a purpose.
âI wanted to experiment with how weâd begin to define ourselves if we werenât chasing a career path. So, we called our blog Idle Theory Bus, and shared our experiments in travelling while simply being.

âEight months after we left, our savings ran out and we had to find jobs. Somehow, weâve managed to scrape together work as weâve travelled, and weâve been working hard at finding a balance between work, leisure, and idleness ever since.
âAs we travel, we stick to forests and deserts where we can spread out and camp and write and create undisturbed. That or weâre in small farming communities, counties where there are more cows than people. Thatâs where we get odd jobs and work harvests. We move around with the seasons, south in the winter and north by summer.

âWe follow agricultural crops and do seasonal farm work as we travel, and so we refer to ourselves as modern-day hobos as well as artists. Weâve worked on goat dairies, weâve butchered chickens, weâve harvested wine grapes and peaches and apples and chestnuts. We like that we can work a job, save our money, and travel for a bit with what weâve saved up.â
For the couple, life on the road can be turbulent at times with its own unique ups and downs but as Kit explained they work through each issue that might arise together.

âOur lives are, in turn exhilarating and devastating, with cranium-cracking highs, and chin-scraping lows. There is no middle ground in our lives, because we live with relatively little security. Everything is always changing. We have each other,â she added.
âA lot of people assume weâre on some sort of luxury permanent vacation, which honestly we probably perpetuate because we share J.R.âs photos and theyâre colourful and full of wonderfully wild places. But this is no vacation. This is our life. We work, we play, we laugh, we cry. We fight badly and one of us sleeps outside in the tent. We make up and we go for a hike and that afternoon we see a bald eagle and life seems so grand, like weâll never grow old and weâll never die.

âWe think our lives are incredibly glamorous, because I guess we love the dirt and the expanses of space and that we wake up to a different view every day. Itâs about our values, and I really value beauty and change. I guess if thereâs anything I despise, itâs apathy and boredom. I can say without hesitation that our lives have not been boring, not in the last five years they havenât.
âBut to most people, weâre living the dirtiest, coarsest life you could, given we live in the developed world. We live without heat, without A/C, without running water. We pee on the ground most days. Sometimes in a jar. Everything we own is in the bus. There is no storage unit or house somewhere, no garage full of stuff. J.R. owns four t-shirts. Weâve gone six weeks without a shower.

âWeâve learned to be happy without needing a lot. Itâs a backwards approach to happiness…instead of wanting more, weâve adjusted to expecting less. There is a modesty in that approach that works well for us, an anecdote to todayâs fast paced, overworked, more-is-more culture.
âOn a more pragmatic note, I think weâre incredibly grateful that we were able to escape a debt, consume, repeat cycle that exists in the modern developed world. Though we donât own anything, Iâm honestly not sure we would even if we lived a more âconventionalâ life. At the very least, weâre not paying into someone elseâs dream at the expense of our own.â

Both Kit and J.R. work as seasonal farm workers wherever they go but Kit is also a writer and J.R., a photographer. Kit discussed reactions from the public and shared her advice to others.
âI mean, look, we share what weâre passionate about and what speaks to us, and if that touches someone else or ignites a passion in them, if it makes them cry or laugh or changes their life, well, all the better. We create to share because itâs what we love to do, but if someone else can glean insight from that, even better,â she said.

âWe get a variety of reactions to how we live. Some people are envious and wish they could do what weâve been doing. Theyâre inspired and excited and want to take a photo with us or the bus, âIâve always dreamt of doing that,â they say. Or âI wish I was brave enough.â To which I say be brave! You must leap to live!
âSome people say, âDo it while youâre young,â which I find somewhat cynical, because I think youâre never too young to change your life and that some of the youngest people I know are old.

âOthers are appalled when they see all the stuff in the bus and hear our story. They assume weâre societal parasites, that we donât contribute, that weâre selfish. Weâve had people say horrible things to us once a lady told me âitâs people like you freeloaders who are ruining America.â I said: âMaybe weâre just breaking down the false illusion of the American Dream.â She didnât know quite what to say after that.
âThatâs one reason why we donât have many things on the outside of our bus…with such a varied reaction, weâve found that staying stealth is good. It just looks like weâre driving around an old rusty bus. Then, when we get pulled over by the cops, we can just say weâre on a road trip.
âTo people who want to live this way, Iâd say do it. Just check your expectations, and allow yourself to do it your own way. There are a million ways to create a life thatâs beautiful, so many diverse paths to the same lovely end.â
For more information see www.instagram.com/idletheorybus/?hl=en