Waynesburg native travels across America in working adventure
Waynesburg native Allyson Fordyce, center, smiles with chakrabus members Nick Camyre and Victoria Voigt, who are traveling across the country together. In August, the group stopped in Greene County to help renovate the historic Amos Piatt house.
Members of the chakrabus crew, along with friends they made in Iowa, stand on top of their colorfully decorated school bus they call home.
The “chakra” bus spent three weeks in Greene County last month while the crew worked on the Amos Piatt house in Waynesburg.
WAYNESBURG – The idea of getting into a vehicle and taking off with no exact destination is a fantasy for many kids leaving high school.
But for many, it never becomes anything more than a late-night dream when reality hits.
Allyson Fordyce, a Waynesburg native, can’t help but roll her eyes at the idea.
“Life can be more than that,” Fordyce said. “It is an option. It’s not that scary of a leap to take.”
She would know. Fordyce, 21, along with seven friends, are living out their dream of traveling America through a spiritual journey of freedom.
They started their journey in Benecia, Calif., and have been traveling the last 24 weeks in a make-shift school bus transformed into a motor home dubbed the “chakrabus.”
The point of the journey is different for every member of the group. They all wanted to see America and seek adventure, but Fordyce said each one is taking time to find who they are and to discover themselves.
“The decision was easy to make because we wanted to do it, and that’s all it took,” Fordyce said.
They saw an ad on Craigslist for a school bus that was emptied on the inside except for a wood burner and thought, why not? After a couple of weeks of painting the outside of the bus to fit their style, repairing the engine and renovating the inside to sustain eight people, their parents threw the group, all between the ages of 19 and 22, a farewell party.
“All our parents were very supportive,” Fordyce said. “A lot of people tell us all the time how they wish they could do what we are doing.”
The group has been from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, and a bunch of places in between. They recently found themselves in Fordyce’s hometown in August when they helped to restore Greene County President Judge Farley Toothman’s historic Amos Piatt house along Franklin Street.
Their brightly colored bus with a motorcycle hitched to the back could be seen throughout the county during that time as they worked many jobs to build up their cash. Fordyce knew she could find work through people she knows in the county.
“I know we are a bit of a culture shock for people around here,” Fordyce joked about her barefooted, self-proclaimed hippie group. “But we are learning to be comfortable with that.”
The group finances its trip through an online crowd-sourcing account, but mostly through odd jobs that they do in whatever town they find themselves in when they run out of money.
“Sometimes we stop in a town just because we run out of money or the bus breaks down,” Fordyce said. “We have found some pretty cool stuff from stops like those.”
One of her favorite memories was randomly stumbling upon a huge drum circle at a beach in Tampa Bay, Fla., where some of the members of the bus joined in the festivities.
“Music is a huge part of all of us. So it was really cool to just randomly get involved in this huge event,” Fordyce said.
Throughout their travels, they have had many people stare and sometimes even offer negative comments about their lifestyle. Fordyce just shrugs.
“This is working for us,” she said. “I have already learned so much about myself and what really is important to me which I don’t think I would have found out if it wasn’t for this trip.”
The group left Greene County recently and traveled to West Virginia, where they plan to camp for a while. After that, who knows?
Fordyce said the group plans to stick together for at least a couple of more months. After that, she knows what she wants to do when she makes her way back home.
“I used to struggle with my weight a lot,” Fordyce said. “I want to be a nutritionist and help people learn how to take care of their bodies.”
The group also has discussed creating a commune in Oregon some time in the future.
“A lot of people want to do what we are doing. Just living simply and doing whatever we want every single day,” Fordyce said. “You just got to let go of that normal lifestyle of working 9-to-5 and having security, and just live.”