Meet Type1Detour — Who We Are

First and foremost, hello. My name is Chris and along with my wife Amanda and our two daughters, we are Type1Detour. We have been traveling full-time in an RV since July 2021. Myself and our oldest daughter both live with Type 1 Diabetes and our core message is to encourage you to Create Your Own Detour.

Before we get into that, I think I should take some time to introduce the family!

Table of Contents

Chris’ Story
Amanda’s Story
Life Before RV Living
The Year Everything Changed
Crazy Idea That Became a Lifestyle
What Does Type1Detour Mean
Mission and Message
Create Your Own Detour

Introductions to the Family

Chris’ Story

Let’s start with myself!

As I mentioned, my name is Chris and I am born and raised in Easton, PA. I spent the first 20 years of my life living in my small, little town playing sports and doing things most kids did back in the 90s. I spent majority of my time playing football and basketball and ended up playing football in college.

That is when my life took a turn.

On April 3, 2004, I went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. This was a complete shock to myself and my entire family, but it was something that I had to face head on. Shortly after a near death scare, I decided that life was too short and that I wanted to do more with my life, so I packed up and moved to Florida to attend Florida Atlantic University.

Just two weeks later, I met a girl named Amanda and the rest was history.

I spent 15 years in the marketing industry owning a digital marketing agency. In 2018, I decided that I want to venture into Real Estate, so I became a Realtor for 2.5 years. Once we decided that we want to hit the road, I needed to switch up careers, so I became a mortgage officer and stayed in the real estate industry. In 2023, I went back to running a digital marketing company.

Amanda’s Story

Now, let me introduce you to Amanda.

Amanda was born and raised in Palm Beach County Florida (Deerfield Beach and Delray Beach). She spent her time growing up playing sports, going to the beach and traveled to different places like Las Vegas and Argentina.

She went on to attend Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL after deciding to stay close to home for college.

That is when she met the man of her dreams……oh wait, I’m writing this article, so I can add these things!

We dated for about 8 years before getting married and eventually have two children.

Amanda was a teacher in the elementary grades for about 6 years before deciding to stay at home with our first child. This means that she is very structured and likes routine.

Growing the Family & Life Before RVing

We lived in Florida until 2018, when I somehow was able to convince Amanda to leave Florida and move to PA, back to where I was born and raised. This was the greatest sales pitch of my life….so I thought.

In 2019, while Amanda was pregnant with our second child, our oldest daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Since I have Type 1 Diabetes, this didn’t come as a huge shock because it is hereditary and the possibilities are higher when one of the parents has Type 1 Diabetes.

Our second daughter was then born a few months later and that’s when our life as a family 4 officially started.

We can skip the long nights, diaper changes and no sleep and skip forward to April 2020.

The Year that Changed Everything

I don’t think I have to explain what happened in April 2020, but just like many other families, we were stuck at home and with two people having Type 1 Diabetes, we weren’t really out and exploring much.

The idea came to me to rent an RV for a few weeks and drive it to Florida to visit Amanda’s family. I then started looking into what it would cost to do so and quickly realized for the amount of time I wanted to rent it, I could put a down payment on an RV to buy one!

Later that night, I was up until about 3AM watching YouTube video after video of families who…get this….were crazy enough to live and travel full-time in an RV with their kids!!

I couldn’t sleep.

This was awesome. This was everything I always wanted to do.

“When I retire I want to travel the country in an RV!”

And this is why I couldn’t sleep.

What if I didn’t make it to retirement. What if my health wasn’t good enough when I retire to do this. Why can’t we do this when other people are doing it?

The Crazy Idea That Became a Lifestyle

The second Amanda woke up in the morning, I was staring her in the face and said… “I have a crazy idea, just hear me out.”

“What if we just bought an RV and traveled the country full-time?”

Amanda’s response changed our lives.

She responded with, “Ok, sure….but how do we do that?”

That was all I needed to get the go ahead to start putting real research into this idea.

This research took about a year from beginning to end before we finally launched. Throughout our weekly blog series here at Bishs RV, we will cover a lot of these questions that we had about RVing, how to see doctors, where to get our diabetes and other medical supplies, how to spend time with family, what type of RV is best, etc.

For now, let’s move on with the story.

What Does Type1Detour Mean?

What is Type1Detour and what does it mean?

Type1Detour is not just a gimmicky name that we came up with. Yes, we wanted a social media brand that had T1D in it to match Type 1 Diabetes, but we didn’t just come up with the first thing we thought of.

Everybody has their own path in life. Majority of the time, we are always taught and told from a young age that we have to follow a specific path in life.

But, what if you don’t want to?

What if you are thrown obstacles in this road of life and you need to overcome them?

That’s where the Detour part came from.

Whether it is diabetes, a physical health issue, a mental health issue, a family problem, whatever it is, we all have our own detours that we can take. So, no matter what, keep pushing forward and Create Your Own Detour.

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Life on the Road — Our Mission & Message

That is what our message is to families who want to spend more time with their children. During the 2020 timeframe, we realized truly how valuable life and time is and we were tired of wasting it, doing what we were “supposed” to do.

We have been able to show our girls that life is what you make it to be and if you want to go see or do something… go do it. Don’t let anything stop you.

The Invitation — Create Your Own Detour

We fully understand that not everyone can or wants to live and travel full-time in an RV and that is totally fine. But, everyone has that one trip they want to take. Everyone would love to spend more time with their family….so, that is what your detour can look like. Take the weekend trip, buy the RV and spend a few weekends a year around the campfire.

That is what we hope to do in this weekly blog series. We want to answer all of your questions about anything RV related and encourage you to….

Create Your Own Detour.