Aloha !
I'm not counting time off the road. I'm counting from the moment the band played their last show up to the first point Richie was involved in writing for a subsequent album.
The Bounce tour ended in july 2003. The band had a couple of months off, worked on This Left Feels Right for a few weeks, did a promo show for the album and then did nothing until writing for HAND started in the summer of 2004. That's more than half a year off.
The first leg of the HAND tour started in november 2005, lasted for 3 months, then 3,5 weeks off, then 2,5 months of touring, 3,5 weeks off, 2 weeks of touring, a month off, 1 month of touring, 1 month off, half a month of touring and then the band were off again.
Here's Richie's "grueling" HAND tour:
Travel was usually done on the day of the show, not on seperate days, meaning for most of the days off, the days off are really days off.
In the span of nearly a year he claimed to be on the road he had nearly 4 months off. And no, there was no work done in between those legs. No rehearsing, all of that happened during soundchecks before the show.
Richie subsequently went to Nashville in september for a few weeks to work on the record and then recorded the first batch of songs somewhere from october to november. From november to early march Sambora had little to do with the recordings.
That's a month off, 2 months of work, then 3 more months off. Jon did most the work for Lost Highway in regards to promo, mixing and producing.
Also, "taking care of everyday life stuff"... like what? His entire life is run when he's away. From the moment he gets out of that plane and drives home all he needs to do is adjust to the right timezone again.
Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan