PHILADELPHIA — Trainer Anthony Tumbarello didn’t know if Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Gardner Minshew was serious at first when he told Tumbarello he wanted to live in a bus outside of Tumbarello’s gym in Bonita Springs, Florida, this offseason.
But sure enough, on Feb. 20 following a few weeks of cross-country travel, Tumbarello said he heard the “beep, beep, beep” sound coming from the back of the industrial building where his gym is as Minshew pulled the beast into a spot near the garage. And there it remained for the better part of five months before Minshew reported to training camp this week, where he’ll look to build on a successful first year in Philadelphia.
“Hey, I don’t know any trainer in the country that can say their professional athlete pulled up in a bus and was eating, sleeping and living in the gym 24/7 getting ready for the season,” Tumbarello said.
Bus living is something Minshew has wanted to do since high school, he said in an Instagram video detailing his long, strange trip this summer. “I just love the freedom that it affords me. It affords me a place to come and focus,” he said. “I’m living at the gym, eat, sleep, shower here. Everything. It’s kind of my own little island here. I love it.”
To fulfill the dream, he bought an old inmate transport vehicle and gave the interior a hippie makeover, complete with a bright orange couch accented with white shag throw pillows, a flowery ’70s-style bed skirt, a trove of album covers lining the walls (Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Janis Joplin, Black Sabbath — the works), candles, and of course, a lava lamp. He learned to play guitar.
With the property backing up to a preserve, Minshew made a gravel pit and set up a hammock nearby, where he’d read from a collection of books that included Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and George Mumford’s “The Mindful Athlete” during his downtime. With a brewery featuring live music nearby, the bus was often a gathering spot for trainers and athletes, Tumbarello said, to mellow out on a nice summer night.
Minshew hooked the bus up to the gym’s electric to power his fridge, the (semi-effective) air conditioning unit and his cooking station. He showered outside in the open — don’t worry, he wore compression shorts — using the gym’s water supply and his own rinse kit. He had to rely on the gym to use the bathroom, too, as the bus wasn’t equipped with one.
His personal quarterbacks coach, Denny Thompson, said he had “initial concerns” about Minshew’s decision to live on a bus, wondering if it was the best thing for a pro athlete physically. But those close to the QB have come to expect the unexpected from Minshew, one of the truly unique personalities in sports who likes to stretch in only a jock strap in the locker room before games, wrestles large fish, and once tried to break his own hand with a hammer to gain another year of eligibility at East Carolina University — tales that have fed into “Minshew Mania” since he entered the league as a sixth-round pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2019.
“If somebody calls you who is a professional athlete and says, ‘I’m gonna live on a bus in the offseason,’ your assumption is it is going to be this big RV that’s probably nicer than my house, right? I never really thought that about Gardner because I know that’s not the kind of guy he is. But when I saw the bus, it was even more like, ‘Whoa, wow, this really doesn’t even classify as a bus. It’s just not that big.’ But I saw that he was handling it well and was actually thriving with it,” Thompson said. “I think it ended up being one of the better things for him to just disconnect.”
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