THE VEHICLE
THE
CONVERSION VAN
Now, THIS option needed no introduction. I have had SEVEN of
these already, spanning 40 years, and they have carried me
more than 700,000 miles, through 48 states, 9 Canadian
provinces, and more than 50 National Parks/Monuments/Etc.
As a high school teacher in one of my former lives, I had summers off, so away I did go, for weeks at a time. Gas was less than a buck a gallon, and I had friends to share expenses with. After several years, my usual companions gave in to mature things like careers and marriage and parenthood, and they no longer could justify a roadtrip with that crazy van guy. So, I set out solo. I was a tad apprehensive at first about having no one to converse with, no one to share the driving with, and no one to split gas cost with. But, you know what? I freaking LOVED IT! I could sing along with the tunes. I could take whatever random turnoff I liked without any consent. And as my friend Brian so eloquently put it, “you can fart with reckless abandon and scratch your balls with impunity.” Very well said indeed, B! My Noble Steeds -- 41
Years of CV's
Yeah, these things
are tremendous ... for roadtrips.
I did live in my final conversion
van, ZDog, for a total of seven months in 2017-18, after
Hurricane Irma ravaged the Keys and I suddenly found myself
out of the cottage that had been my abode for 15 years.
In the wake of the storm, absolutely nothing was
available, so I shrugged, got the middle seats and sofa/bed
unit out of the van, put my XL Twin bed in there with a
folding beach chair, built a small cabinet over the wheel
well, and slid a few large storage tubs under the bed.
Voila! New
bedroom! New home! Battery operated fans kept me cool, battery operated lanterns lit my nocturnal doings, and a very small power pack gave me a couple of hours of laptop time every night. My gym membership provided me bathroom and shower (plus pool, hot tub, steam room, ha), and the legitimate residential sticker on my windshield allowed me to park overnight just about anywhere in town. I was still working full-time-plus (i.e., 50-60 hours per week), so there were not many days of leisure spent lounging in the Belly O’ Th’ Whale, as I like to call it. The few that there were really exposed the shortcomings of conversion van living: it was only a bedroom. No electricity, no water, no comfy chair (the comfy chair? the comfy chair!), no desk, no dresser, no TV, and no fridge. For what it was, it served the purpose: I had a roof over my head every night. Not very far over my head, though – I couldn’t quite stand up in that van. For consolation, I also had almost no bills to pay! The bank account just grew and grew. I was LOVING that aspect. BUT, when I got a chance to move into my current shack, I pounced at it. ZDog got me through, and I got a legitimate taste of Van Life -- albeit without the leisurely meandering that makes it so appealing in the first place -- but I also learned that The Big Roadtrip was going to require a bigger vehicle, with a lot more appliances and gizmos that comprise the comfortable “home” life. The market had plenty of conversion vans decked out as RV’s. They were all grand, with price tags to match. Some were well over $100K. Such a one from 2011, with over 120,000 miles on it, had an asking price of $54,000. For a van that I couldn’t even stand tall in. Nuh-uh. Not gonna work. Not for my full-time home. So, no, no, Nanette, that left one way to go... |