van life

I’ve often thought about outfitting a van and traveling around, living in it, sleeping in it, self contained like a turtle. Living the nomad life, no address, following the seasons and the currents of life.

I’ve watched van life videos on YouTube (of which there are hundreds). For example, meet Frank and his cat Sunny:

I’ve reviewed different designs, dreamed of owning a Mercedes high roof diesel extended van and how I would rig it up with everything I needed: shower, toilet, kitchen, bed, work and dining areas, mobile internet connection, solar power. Or buy one already built if I had $125,000.

Well, meet ‘Loaf’. Not meatloaf, but meet ‘Loaf’. Loaf is the name of my van because she looks like a loaf of bread. Sort of. I got her for $8000 which was pretty good and now I’m building her out, trying to figure out how to make her into a mobile living space. Van life. Plus she’s a Chevy Astro van and the Jetson’s dog was named Astro, so I think that’s a good sign.

She’s a sweet machine, a bit of a gas hog but I had to do something, my VW Jetta with 200,000 miles was breaking down literally every other week.

So far I’ve built a bed out of 2x4’s and plywood with storage underneath. Space for a refrigerator and boxes of stuff necessary for life on the road. Like what would it be like if I condensed my whole house into a small van? How can I arrange everything that I do in my large house so I can do it in my small house. If I want to. That’s the project.

Figuring out what I need entails reviewing everything I do in a typical day and deciding what’s essential. Separate need from want, then simplify need by 10 times. See if that fits in the van.

One thing I’ve learned is that everyone has a different way of designing their living space in a van. Like the bathroom. The kinds of bathrooms that people have varies widely. We’re talking about a basic biological function that happens every day and requires facilitation. I mean you can stop at truck stops and convenience stores or duck behind the trees in a forested area but that’s not very practical. I went with the TRIPTIPS Portable Folding Camping Toilet for Car/Camping/Boat/Hiking/Long Trips/Beach from Amazon, $39.99. Basically pooing into a wastebasket with a plastic bag inside. I can probably get used to that. Peeing in a bottle. I’m already pretty good at that. Ok. Let’s move on to the kitchen.

So far I have a very rudimentary kitchen. Actually I don’t have a kitchen at all, just a 5 gallon jug of water with a tap and a table. It’s a start. I can imagine a kitchen though, a place to prepare yummy food. I do have a two burner camp stove that runs on propane. I somehow managed to salvage this as kind of a family heirloom and kept it for years. I remember it from my childhood. It still works. So there’s that. And the 5 gallon jug of water. The small table can be pulled out from underneath the bed and used as a work space, set up outside under the awning, open up the two portable collapsible camping chairs and cook something. Or just eat granola. Sometimes I just like to eat granola.

Let’s see there’s reheating the rice and beans, that’s yummy. Toss some scallions in there, some secret herbs and spices, cover it with Baby Spring Mix. That’s what they call it. It comes in a plastic tub. All kinds of green things, douse that with some sesame dressing and you’re done. Pasta with various types of sauces concocted out of whatever you’ve got, or out of the bottle. Bean and cheese tacos with guacamole. I know how to make those. With hot corn tortillas. I’ve been making those for years, many, many years. The cheese is vegan now but they’re still bean and cheese tacos with guacamole and I can do them in under 5 minutes. Well that’s in my house with a four burner stove and a standing refrigerator and a chopping block work table and a shelf full of secret herbs and spices.

So that’s three menu items. Oh, granola, four. I can live with that. There’s always variation on a theme. There’s always doing something with the leftovers.

My bed is like a monks cell, narrow and rigid. A couple of camping mats on a sheet of 3/8” plywood screwed onto a 2x4 frame. Pretty firm as far as mattresses go. Two pillows and a sheet complete the ensemble. I slept on it last night. Most of the night. It worked.

My neo-simplistic primitive tendencies permit me to accept conditions that others might find unacceptable. I’m aware of that, but I might find it unacceptable too after awhile. So I figure if I build it out slowly and test it with short trips along the way, I’ll atleast make small mistakes, learn how to improve on the design without making giant expensive mistakes. That’s kind of my plan. To see if I like van life. Take it on the road and see if can I do it.

So what is the van life phenomenon all about anyways? Why are people choosing to live in their vans? There must be thousands or hundreds of thousands of people doing it these days (Type #VanLife into Instagram and more than 10m posts appear). The number is increasing all the time. The movie Nomadland with Frances McDormand provides one answer. We are nomads. In times of stress we instinctively migrate.

And of course some are into the personal freedom of being able to go where they want, when they want. Freedom to spend more time doing what they really love to do whether that’s snowboarding or rock climbing or bicycling or visiting National Parks and experiencing nature under a great big sky while floating down a pristine river in a canoe, watching the Milky Way blazing overhead at night, greeting the morning sun in the company of giant trees, or whatever personal freedom means to you.

Some may be rebelling against the commodification of housing. Why does it take half (or more) of my earnings to pay for an apartment so that the owner of the apartment complex can get even richer than they already are? Shouldn’t housing be a human right like food, water and air? And health care? Case in point, Amanda.

Or just to escape the zombie apocalypse like Frank in the first video. Valid point Frank.

My reasons would include all of those. Besides I think vans are cool. Why have a house stuck in the ground if you can be mobile? This is the way ancient people lived, by the way: flow with the weather patterns, go where the food is in season. This is actually how we colonized the entire world. From our home in Africa we spread out over the entire planet chasing megafauna and the perfect peach. It’s been 100˚ plus for the last two months here in San Antonio with no rain. Oppressive. If I was van life enabled I would have been out of here long ago.

So my design is still evolving. I need electricity to power the refrigerator (a must) and my computer (also a must). That means a battery and some way to charge it. I could go solar power, I could charge it off the car’s alternator or plug into the grid at a friend’s house or at a campsite equipped with electricity, or all of the above. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.

Oh yeah, my bike sits on a bike rack connected to the trailer hitch coming off the back of the van. Important feature and primary purpose for me to go travelling. Check out the awesome trails of the Great Pacific Northwest, explore the urban trails of Portland, Eugene, Ashland, ride the coastal road, the forest paths, the mountain trails . . . well maybe not the mountains.

That would be my personal expression of freedom. Hit the cafes and barter with the baristas. How about a latte for a poem?

somebody shut down facebook
and all of amazon’s delivery vans
were hijacked by hippies to
house the homeless and make them
mobile which is what they wanted
in the first place

to move around
and find new friends
when the old ones get too
old and brittle

somebody brought down microsoft
and all the servers stopped whirring
the browsers couldn’t browse anymore
because they had a worm hole
in their virus protection the password
was lost and video games ran out of batteries

nobody could fly in airplanes anymore
because their electronics were jammed
but they made great EDM music dance halls
with big speakers set up just behind the captain’s chairs
blasting all the way down the now seatless fuselage
into the rear bathrooms and the emergency exit doors

somebody broke the internet
somebody stepped on the cord
somebody dropped the mic
get up on your bike

and say hi to mike and all the trees along the way
on the long road home

“I’ll have a matcha latte with oat milk and for the picture, a witch’s hut in the forest with smoke coming out of the chimney.”

music 20:20-37:27