As it turns out, working on the road is tricky. I didn’t have internet access the first couple days and was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by all that I had to do. Thanks to iHop, Denny’s, Starbucks, Peet’s, and their wireless internet I’ve been able sort of get caught up now.  It will take some getting used to but I think I’m finding the flow of working on the road.  Once class starts up again in April it might be another situation, but hopefully by then I’ll have things sorted out for the classes I’ll be teaching at the Shuttlebirds tatting conference.

Looks like during the next couple months I’ll be nursing lots of tea and pancakes just for the chance to use the internet for a couple hours at a time.

Renting a car makes it real easy to make friends at a hostel, and after I moved out I hung out with J and D, two guys who were sightseeing in Hawaii after J’s brother’s wedding.

We did some picnicking on the beach, drove around West Maui (which I think is a better drive than the Road to Hana), biked down the volcano, hung at the pool and topped it off by watching and making fun of a couple of westerns. Actually, come to think of it, we made fun of a lot of things. Exactly my type of company.

Lack of planning (partly our fault for constantly distracting him) left D without a place to stay the night before he took the ferry to Honolulu so I had my first overnight guest while living in a car. I wish it’d been in an area I knew better. We had a couple false starts (or stops, rather) trying to pick out a place to stay, but in the end D found a nice residential area and we slept pretty well until about 6am. Or at least I did. D is 6’1″ so I doubt he was quite as comfortable in the passenger seat as I was in the driver’s seat. I was happy to introduce the whole sleeping in a car thing to someone new. I was quite amused by the whole thing.

Then again, I’m quite amused by many things.

For J: Why does the moon rise 50 minutes LATER each day. Trust the astrophysicist.

A little while back, someone who I don’t know really well, but who I see on a fairly regular basis made reference to my “situation.” It took me a minute to figure out what this person meant. At first I thought they were referring to the fact that I keep coming and going. Spending a month or so in LA and then two months on the road. Then it dawned on me that “my situation” is just that I live my car. As if it’s something too horrible to actually name; it must be hidden behind the phrase “your situation” like it’s the 1950′s and I’m unwed and pregnant.

On the whole, I get mostly positive reactions when I tell people I live in my car. (Many are very amused, but they’re willing to accept it.) This comment made me wonder if perhaps I’m just seeing what I want to see, or people are smiling and humoring me on the outside, but inside are thinking: “That poor, poor girl. How sad it is that she must suffer the horrors of having to shower at the gym. If only there were something I could do so that she could experience the joys of outrageous rent and a 90 minute commute.”

Maybe I haven’t actually been doing a very good job at getting across the point that this is exactly the situation I WANT to be in.

This got me wondering why it is that vandwelling might even need to be defended? When I tell someone with a big smile on my face that I live in a car why might they ever consider that I’m actually miserable and just trying to put a good spin on it?

I want to make it clear that 95% of the people I talk to about vandwelling think it’s awesome even if it’s something they’d never consider doing themselves. In this post though I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in the minds of the other 5%.

Earlier this year my brother spent a month and a half wandering around New Zealand. He carried all he needed in a backpack, hitched rides, slept in campgrounds or on the sofas of people he just met, or sometimes just spent the night the city park. He had no itinerary and no paying job, but it didn’t matter.

Talking about our travels with other people, he and I might get the some questions about logistics or safety, but his travels are not something that would be discussed in hushed and secretive tones. Part of it, of course, is just the portrayal in the media of people who live in vans or cars. (Cue Chris Farley.)

I suppose that does make some sense, backpacking around the world is not something that people are often “forced” to do, while moving into a car or a van is more often than not something done out of economic necessity. Not for me, but usually.

So I suppose backpacking around the world is not really a fair comparison.

Well, what about an RV then? If I were traveling the country in an RV I doubt I would get this reaction. I would argue that traveling in my car isn’t all that different than traveling RV. What is it about the existence of a bathroom that makes that type of travel more acceptable?

Perhaps it’s because I’m not traveling full-time yet. The person who’s comment started me off on this train of thought only sees me while I’m in LA working. During that time I’m staying put. Maybe this is the big difference between traveling in a van/car and living in a van/car. Traveling is acceptable, living is not.

Because as we all know, (from tv shows and such), people who are living in vehicles do so only because they have no other choice. And so of course some people will assume that must be the case for me as well.

Inexplicably, this has not translated into people offering to buy me lunch. Perhaps they think I’d be insulted. (Really, it’s ok. Insult away.)

I spent three years saving, planning, and waiting until the time I’d be able to do this. I work only five months a year at a job I enjoy and spend the other seven months traveling. I am not touching a dollar of my savings. In fact, over the course of last year I’ve still been putting money away into savings. I’m visiting old friends, meeting new people. I have the time to read books, work on my own projects, or do absolutely nothing at all if I feel like it.

That is my situation.

And that is precisely why I talk to everyone I meet about living and traveling in my car. There’s nothing so bad about it that it needs to be discussed in those hushed tones.

Thanks mom and dad!

Next came building a support for the bed. I pulled the main board of the bed out of the van and was just plopping it down in the prius. In the back it just rests part way down on the “floor” of the trunk, but in the front it needed something to hold it up.

It’s hard to tell in this picture, but the bar is is attached to the car through the same holes where the seat was attached. One of them is at a strange angle so it was a bit of a pain to make it work, but this way there’s no damage done to the car. In the van the supports were also attached to frame this way as well. The only “damange” I’ve left on the van is the sticky stuff all over the walls from the Velcro that held up the curtains.

Now that the bottom of the support was secured the rest of it could be put in. This is a piece a plywood attached to the bar on the bottom. Attached to this are the two L shaped metal bars that are then screwed in to the bottom of the bed. I realize now I should have taken another picture between this one and the next one to better show how far up the bed comes.

The board sticks out in front about as far as the seat would be but it’s a bit higher up. It goes back far enough to rest on the “floor” of the trunk, but not all the way to the back. There’s about a five/six inch space between the bed and the seat in the back where I’ve stuffed a small blanket and my jackets.

There’s a bunch of space at the feet back passenger seat. I’ve got a couple boxes and small drawer there. My large drawer (the one that I used to stuff all my clothes in, is now in the front on the floor. I haven’t decided how I like it there yet. It’s so large and so full of stuff that it’s kind of difficult to open, but it does fit nicely in the space. I’ll just have to try it out for a while and see how I like it in the long run.

The pad, (and therefore also me when I’m sleeping) is half on the board and half on the floor of the trunk. The board itself is sticking out about a foot and a half past the curtain you can see in this picture separating the front and back of the car. The intention is to screw down a box or something on the front part of the board so I can put stuff on it that I’d want to get to easily. I didn’t really have time to consider what exactly I want there so I’ve left that as just the board for now. I basically can’t put anything there while I’m driving though because after a couple turns it ends up on the floor.

I didn’t think to take a picture of the curtain and how it’s attached. Dad figured out that for me (as well as figuring out how to do the bed support without damaging the car. Basically there’s space in the paneling on either side of the car above where the seatbelt attaches. He cut and bent the ends of a curtain rod so that they slid into those spaces. Then I took the same black cloth from the van and threw it over this rod.

As a side note, if anyone out there is picking out fabric for curtains let me highly, highly recommend you go with black. Even during the daylight if you’re standing in front of the car looking through the windshield it’s hard to tell the curtains are even there. It just looks black and someone walking by isn’t going to even think there’s curtains there, they’re just going to think it’s dark in the back. Actually, that’s not true. They’re not going to think about it at all. I’ve seen light colored curtains and I feel like they really stand out. Sure they block the view to the back, but they also draw attention to the fact that you’re blocking the view to the back.

On the left of the above picture you can see the space I had to work with for the easily accessible storage. There’s also space under the bed that I can get from the inside as well, but it’s slightly more difficult. I knew I wanted my two drawers of clothing to sit on the front of that space so they would open over the area where the passenger would be sitting in the back seat. Then I could put a couple bags (the large grocery tote bags which have become one of my favorite organizing containers) between the drawers and the back of the hatch without worrying about those flying around.

So I knew that’s where I wanted them, but the tricky thing was figuring out how to secure them so they don’t go flying around while I’m driving.

First came the latches to keep the drawers from opening. these are the same kind I have on the large drawer. Just a piece of wood (half of a dowel) cut down and screwed into the plastic below the drawer.

Next I had to figure out a way to keep the drawers themselves from sliding around when dad had the great idea of checking to see if Velcro sticks to the fabric on the floor. It does. So there’s Velcro on the bottom of the lower drawer keeping it attached to the floor and then a set of Velcro between the two drawers keeping the top one attached to the bottom one.

I neglected to take another set of pictures of the “finished” product, but I’ll be tweaking it as I go anyway. Also, I spend a lot of time doing the first half of all the packing, carefully stowing things away in well-thought out spots, but by the end of the evening I end up just tossing things on the floor of the front seat. I’m sure I’ll spend the next couple days sorting through that and actually putting things away where they ‘belong’.

The most pressing project at the moment is figuring out a way to make some curtains. The windows are tinted, but (especially in a space this small) I really want some curtains. But this is my car and my little baby and I don’t want to end up with sticky stuff from the back of Velcro all over the walls and would prefer not to screw anything into them either. Hopefully I will figure it out within a day or two.

The pledge drive is OVER and I can now start thinking about other things. One of the big things on my mind is the possibility of moving. For those who don’t know, I don’t own the van I live in. It’s my dad’s. My car is a Prius and we’ve traded for my trip. While I love the van, I like the idea of spending less on gas and also like the idea of forcing myself to simplify more and take less stuff with me when traveling. As I look around at the van I’m fairly surprised at how much stuff I carry around with me that I never use. (It’s pretty easy to use very little when you’re only gone for 1-1.5 months at a time.)

I’m heading back down to San Diego on Wednesday and staying through the weekend so I’ll have a chance to take a look at the Prius in person and figure out how I’d want to modify it to move in. When I first ‘lived’ in a car it was in a ’93 Camry (the old Camry’s were much smaller than the current ones) so I’m pretty sure I’m not over-estimating the amount of space I would have. There’s a number of things very different about living in a car versus living in a van and I’ll have to consider which I prefer for the next couple months. At some point soon I’ll write up a post about those differences. I do prefer the van for when I’m staying in one place and working.

I’m heading out to Colorado next and I’ve been warned that the little Prius isn’t going to be able to make it up the mountains, but I think I’ll give it a shot anyway. I’m 27. I can’t possibly be expected to learn anything from the advice of my elders, I need to try and fail on my own for anything to sink in. Besides, that’s how you get the better stories.

Also, I have to admit, it would be nice to actually be driving around the car that I paid for, rather than letting my dad enjoy the (most likely now gone) new car smell.

I have a friend who dresses up everyday. When I say “dresses up” I’m referring to more than just the quality of the clothes. In fact, lots of her clothes were bought at thrift shops. Some required repair and all require accessories.

I think sometimes that when she’s getting dressed in the morning she’s not thinking “what do I want to wear today?” but “who do I want to be today?

A flapper-ish dress means she takes the time to do her hair in a 1930′s style, (complete with a feather or two), find a long beaded necklace, and a pair of two-toned shoes. Another day, she might go with a gingham farm dress, pigtails and a sunbonnet.

I don’t want to imply these are outrageous costumes she’s wearing to work. I think of them as “outfits.” There is a theme, there is a plan and there is a great deal of thought that goes into each day. There’s also a very large closet involved. She takes pleasure in the everyday activity of picking out something to wear.

I admire her for it because she always looks great, but I haven’t the interest in shopping or patience to consider spending this amount of time on clothing. Or, at the moment the space. I’m sure she will shudder to see this picture. This box, (a drawer, really), and my gym bag are my clothes for the next month or so. (Well, plus a shoebox of underwear that’s already packed away in the van.) It’s probably more than I need, but since I’m working for the next month I’ve got all my nice office clothes along with the normal jeans and such.

The fact that I’m repacking, of course, means I am back in San Diego. I’ve been lax about posting lately, but the quick run through is that I made it back from Death Valley to the LA area, went to my college reunion, (more on that later, perhaps), and back to work for a week and a half. I came down to my parent’s in San Diego over the weekend, and now I’m packing and heading back up to LA later today. For about the next month I’ll be working at KJAZZ on the next pledge drive, then back on the road again.

Posting has been lax largely because of computer trouble. Technically nothing that actually made it impossible to post, but along with restarting work things that took too much time. Also I’m going to buy a new DSLR camera soon so I’ve been busy researching that.

Other things on the way as well, but I’ll get into those later. Hopefully will have all this computer mess sorted out soon.

I don’t see how running these things for a couple hours a night can possibly be a cost- effective way to clean up the trash.

Trick question. There’s someone living in both of them. Or at least there was at the time of this photo.

Before a friend of mine moved back to the east coast she had three weeks between giving up her apartment and finishing at her jobs heading out. I like to think that I was a partial inspiration in her decision to try out living in her car for that time.

This picture was taken the morning after we had a “sleepover” in a grocery store parking lot. She finished work at midnight, and we met up at the store. I went over to her place for a midnight snack, (chips, soda and gossip), and in the morning she came over and had breakfast at my place. My only regret is that it didn’t occur to me to dig out some nail polish for the more complete sleepover experience. Would have been just too funny.

I’ll probably post a bit more about the conference later, but I make no promises. I may be too busy playing with my new thread.

For nearly the first time this trip I passed by a truck stop, (been doing most of my traveling on smaller highways), and I had a chance to take a look at some of the 12 volt cooking appliances. I have been feeling a definite lack of hot foods this trip. Or perhaps I should say ‘cheap’ hot foods since I’ve been visiting with a lot of old friends this trip and we usually end up going out to eat.

That’s fine with me, of course. I think that’s part of the fun of travel, but as time goes on I’ll definitely be wanting to do some more of my own cooking here in the van.

Which is why I will probably end up getting the RoadPro cooking pot. (Sorry, no links right now. I’m posting this with my phone and can’t do them).

They have a couple different appliances, including a skillet which also looks pretty sweet, but knowing what types of things I’d actually cook on a regular basis the pot would be better.

There’s a crockpot, which Tara, from Hobostripper.com, says is not very good and a little oven which is also tempting, even if only to say I have an oven in the van and can make fresh cookies when I want. As neat as it is though, I’m not sure I’d use it enough to justify the space.

There’s a small electric water heater which I like the idea of, but might not be necessary if I get the electric pot. Still, when I was traveling in the winter I constantly had tea heating in my, -now broken-, SmartMug. Maybe that’s something to consider for the winter.

Now that my curtains are finished, (at least they’re up and working and I’m unlikely to put anymore time into them even though they’re less than elegant), my next little project of the van is figuring out the cooking stuff. Anyone tried any of these?

On the road it gets trickier, and I don’t shower nearly everyday like in Los Angeles. Ballys is a nation-wide club, (part of why I joined), and any time I pass a Ballys I stop and take advantage of it. Same with friends. Whenever I happen to stay with friends you can be sure I take a shower in the morning before I leave.

Relying on Ballys and friends being well spread out across the country doesn’t quite do it though. If there are no Ballys or friends in sight then sometime around the third day since the last shower I usually give in and admit I’m going to have to pay for one somewhere. That “somewhere” depends on where I am. If I’m in a city, (and especially if I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to do online), I’ll spring for a hostel. I don’t like to do this too often since it sort of defeats the purpose of traveling in the van, but hostels have some other things worth paying for everynow again as well. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

If I’m outside of big cities then I’ve got campgrounds, RV parks or truck stops. I’ll admit I haven’t yet tried out a truck stop. I haven’t found one where the shower was less than 10 bucks, and for 10 bucks I’d rather just wait another day.

Privately owned RV parks are handy because some times they’ll let you take a shower there for a small fee. I’ve done it for 5 bucks. State campgrounds will sometimes have day-use fees.

I’ve found that campgrounds are also nice just as a reminder to slow myself down. If I’m going to pay for a campground I’m usually going to stay put for the whole time. Sometimes spending as much time as I do in the van I start feeling like I have to get going all the time. As soon as one thing’s done it’s time to move on to the next. Campgrounds, (whether day use or overnight), are nice for getting me to slow down some.

I’d say that if I’m not doing anything that gets me particularly dirty, (hiking, biking, or if the weather is just really hot and humid), then I end up taking a shower two or three times a week. Not the “normal” daily shower, but plenty to keep me feeling clean enough.

Back to hostels for a moment. When I’m so happy sleeping in the van for free and spending money on a nice lunch or dinner, (or just saving it for later), I don’t really want to spend the night in a hostel. Still, once and a while it’s nice to splurge and take care of a whole bunch of things at once, showers, wireless internet, laundry, and cravings to do some cooking.

Depending on the city a hostel has other advantages. In Albuquerque I spent two nights in a hostel, and it was nice to get out of the cold for those two nights. I’m in a hostel in Sacramento right now and I’ve found another odd advantage of the hostel. From what I’ve seen parking in this city is sort of expensive, (the government seems to have a monopoly on all the parking garages), but I’ve checked with the hostel and once I’ve checked out of the room they have no problem with me leaving the van here while I go tour around the state capitol. Based on the prices I’ve seen for parking that alone is worth about half of what I paid for the hostel.

I plan on taking a number of posts to answer the most common questions I get about living in the van. Food, cold, (I feel like I’ve given this one too short a treatment earlier), bathrooms, etc. Leave a comment if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to talk about.

Which is what I’ve been doing for the last couple days. The business-y clothing is getting packed away in the closet, (specifically in two paper bags in the back of my brother’s closet since I don’t really have a room at my parent’s house anymore). The jeans and t-shirts are moving to the van, (once the van was vacuumed, that is); the biking and camping gear is being sorted through and packed up. Paperwork I don’t need anymore is being filed away and the books I’ve been carrying for the last month are being replaced with ones related to the places I’m visiting in the next two month.

Basically, it’s like spring cleaning six times a year.

It would be a good way to keep sorting through all my “stuff” and getting rid of those things I don’t need. But I’m sitting here and look around at the boxes at my parent’s house of things I don’t need now, but want to keep. I do still a ways to go with the whole simplifying.

The upside is that I do get rid of a few things each and each time I get a little faster, a little more efficient at packing up the van.

I’ll spend the rest of the day here packing up, getting ready to hit the road again tomorrow, (well, after two more days of work on my way through Los Angeles). I still have to give my bike the once over and put the rack on the van. I to have pack up my computer and a few more books and paperwork. I’ll probably sort through my tatting supplies since the far end of this particular trip is a tatting conference in Spokane, Washington, in mid-April.

Still lots to do in the next 24 hours, but like I said, each time I get a little faster and more efficient. It won’t take me much longer to have everything packed up, folded up, stuffed under the bed, fitted into the drawers or tucked away in it’s convenient, but hidden away nook. The oil’s been changed. The gas tank and cooler are full.

It’s like paying off all your bills at the beginning of each month. Closing that checkbook and starting off knowing you are all caught up and everything is in order.

It won’t stay that way for long, of course. As soon as you put away the checkbook and turn on the tv the electric meter starts ticking away. I know it will only be a day or two before I pull everything out from under the bed searching for one book or another.

But it’s a base to start from, and I know that whatever happens, however messy or cluttered the van gets, no matter what it is I’ve discovered I’ve left in San Diego, I’ll be back here in about 7 weeks doing it all again.

The way I look at it,  three unlikely things have to happen for me to have “trouble” with people bothering me.

First the person has to notice that I’m there in the van sleeping. This is unlikely because my windows are tinted dark enough that it’s hard to see in. You can see in right now, (and that’s something I’m working on and will post about soon), but it’s pretty dark and just walking by you’re not going to see in.

Once someone notices me sleeping in there the second unlikely thing that has to happen for me to have “trouble” is they have to actually be bothered by it. If they notice me sleeping and don’t care, then I don’t care that they’ve noticed me. Honestly I don’t think most of the people who might notice me will care. Overnight grocery store workers or shoppers have other things on their mind. They are the center of their own lives and to actually think that they care what someone is doing sleeping in their car is to presume too much of my own importance. And honestly, I’m the center of my own universe. If some random guy passes me in the parking lot when I’m sleeping and thinks down on me or takes pity on me that’s ok. ‘Cause I don’t care what random-guy-in-the-parking-lot thinks of me.

If they’ve noticed me and they’re bothered then the third unlikely thing that has to happen is they have to actually go to the trouble of making trouble for me. This particular point is perhaps a silly thing for me to be relying on, since I seem to be finding out more and more often that people don’t think like me, but I still believe it’s fairly universal that people are lazy. And I think I’m pretty well covered by the first two unlikely events.

So there it is. They have to notice me, they have to be troubled by it, and they have to actually take the time and effort to do something that would bother me. And that’s why I’m not up nights worrying about random people noticing I’m sleeping in my van.

Course that’s just covers being intentionally bothered by “random people.” Random people being loud as they walk has occasionally woken me up, but no big deal. I’ll roll over and go back to sleep. Bight lights and loud noises are a whole different category, as are cops.

Cops, I imagine are more likely to notice, just because they’re a little more in tune to what a van or car that looks like someone’s living in it, and (theoritcally at least) they’re more in tune to what’s going on around them in the first place. But I’m careful about where I park, (and I assume the likelihood of me randomly choosing to park in front of an FBI safe-house and looking like I’m staking it out is pretty small,) and so as long as I’m not breaking any laws they’re not going to care. I have been woken up by the police a number of times, but always when I was in my car rather than the van and driving between San Diego and LA. I explain that I got tired while driving and sometimes they let me go back to sleep and sometimes they tell me to move on.

Bright lights and loud noises are another beast all together. For those you just have to be careful about where you park. I like parking directly under lampposts, actually. Then I’m usually at such an angle that the light doesn’t really shine through the back windows directly. Plus, that way I can sit up in the front seat and read for a while before going into the back of the van, closing the black curtain that blocks off the front and the light. That curtain, by the way, also does a very good job of blocking off the view of those random people who walk by. It’s black and if you pass by all you see is darkness.

I still get bright lights, and even with the tinted windows, depending on how I’m parked and the angle of the light people could see in and see me sleeping there. So whenever I have a couple minutes here during the few slow periods of work I’m sewing up some curtains for the back windows. I did add some extra tinting to a couple of the windows as an experiment and it does really block off the light very well, but I can’t put it on the back window because that makes it too hard to see out when driving. And it’s hard to put on the back windows that roll down because that came peel off when you roll them down.

So I headed over to the fabric store on Tuesday night and picked up some dark fabric. I’m currently spending 13+ hour days at work during our pledge drive this week so I haven’t had much time in the van for measuring and cutting, but I’ve put velcro up on the windows and I’m sewing the other half on to the fabric itself. Soon I’ll have something that blocks out the light but I’ll still be able to take it off when I’m driving.

Soon as it’s done, (like I said though, it might take a while since we’re so busy at work this week), I’ll have pictures for you.

I looked at the items for how easily they could be washed and dry overnight, how they might layer for warmth, (barely needed for most of the trip), and where ever possible their dual uses. My pajama pants, (plain black with a tie), work as dressy pants and with long underwear is very warm. (The long underwear was only needed once, they spent most of the trip buried at the bottom of the bag). My shawl, (bought in Sorrento, Italy), also makes a great towel, tablecloth or skirt.

I kept all this in mind while packing, but still I was surprised when it only filled up half the backpack. I was more than happy to downsize to a small suitcase and extremely happy to be able to fit my hiking boots in the suitcase so I didn’t need to wear them on the plane. (Hiking boots a necessary for the hiking we did in New Zealand. Usually I’m happier hiking in tennis shoes, but this was too muddy and rough.)

After some debate I packed a trimmed down version of my bag of recording equipment, (sans the handy but bulky bag itself), and I’m very glad I did that since I had a chance to record some stuff I’m working on now.

All that being said, there are a couple things that could have been been better. My lightweight jacket does nothing for the rain. I brought along two hats for some reason, and of course, only used one.

Then amazed by all the extra room in the suitcase I threw in some extra colors of tatting thread. They don’t take up much room, but they’re more than I could ever possibly expect to use in the one month we were gone. Way, way more. But I thought to myself, “eh, I’ve got the space. They’re light. Why not throw them in and have the extra choices.

And there’s the rub. I ended up in Australia with more thread than I needed and choices to make that didn’t actually matter. It’s nice to have choices, but if all the options are equally good, (or equally inconsequential), then sometimes it’s nice to have to make no choice at all. At one point when we were rained in at our hotel in Cairns I sat there with four different projects in front of me trying to decide which one I felt like working on. In was quite possibly the stupidest five minutes of the whole month.

If I’d made the choice before I’d come I would have been more than happy to have picked up whatever I’d brought, sat myself down next to a window and tatted away while watching the lightening storm. If your options are all equally good, bad, unknown or inconsequential the only bad choice you can make is to waste your time deciding between them.

That’s one of the things I like about traveling. I’m forced to pare it down to the basics. What do I really need, and what do I really want in my van, in my suitcase, in my life? And how do I get rid of the rest of the stuff?

Rick Steve’s advice for packing is to lay out on the bed everything you think you need then pack half as much stuff and twice as much money. I’m certainly not there as far as the money goes, but I’m working on it as far as the stuff goes. It’s fun to see what I can get rid of.

This doesn’t necessarily mean doing without. Just figuring if something is worth taking along with you “just in case” or if it’s easier to wait and figure out a way to get a hold of it when you actually need/want it.

Food, would be an extreme example. Sure, I could pack up two months worth of food, but why brother, when that’s something that’s easy to get a hold of on the road and something that it’s more interesting to find on a day to day basis. In my van I have a cooler, a camping stove, and a (currently broken and soon to be replaced) Smart mug. That has been enough for now. If I start wanting to do more cooking I’ll find some way to manage it. Maybe a solar oven. That would be cool. But the desire for one has not yet surpassed the hassle of getting one, carrying it around or using it.

I’ve never actually owned a TV, but that doesn’t mean I don’t watch TV. I used to watch it a lot at work when I spent 25 hours in a studio with only 3 hours of actual work to do, (the rest of the time I was just there in case something went wrong). Mom and I watch The Closer, and House and other shows when I’m visiting, and I have a number of shows and a couple movies on my media player that I can watch on the road. But I’m more of a radio junkie than couch potato anyway, so not having a TV is easy when I have my mp3 player and podcasts of all my favorite radio shows.

It’s a balance between the desire to have something against the cost (time, money, or space in the van) of having it. If it doesn’t make sense to having something in the van (or in life) you can find a way to bring down the cost and then get it, or you can find a way to bring down the desire and not get it. Like replacing the tv with podcasts, books, and, oh yeah, the ability to travel around with no attachments for a year. With so many choices it’s nice to have one less option.

I did my best to resist the desire to start to create mathematical formulas for these ideas. Can you tell my dad is an economist?

I also suspect I’ll find the GoogleMaps application quite useful too. A great big thank you goes out to my friend Colin for selling his old Treo to me and helping me get set up on the employee plan with unlimited data.

Today was my first day back in the office at KJAZZ. Have I mentioned how much I love this place? It’s not a job I’ll have forever, and I probably wouldn’t like if it were year round, but it sure is a lot of fun. I think I enjoy the project nature of the job. Tons of random different things to stay on top of to get ready for the pledge drive, (which let’s me indulge in my obessive to-do list making), then with some luck the drive goes off without a hitch. Or at least without a hitch that completely throws us and puts the station under. Sort of reminds me of putting on a play, except afterwards we don’t have an artistic collaboration, we have a small pile of money and jazz and blues still on the air in Southern California.

After just over a month, it’s nice to be back in the van again. And nice to be back in LA. It is definitely a city that grows on you, especially if you’re able to avoid driving 7-9am or 4-8pm. There are people at work who drive 1.5-2 hrs each way everyday. I couldn’t do it. Seeing the streets of West LA at 6pm makes me happy I live in a van and have nowhere to go.

Ok, I’ve been typing with just my thumbs for a half an hour now. I’ll be very annoyed if this doesn’t post to the page like it’s supposed to.

Oh, and The Indie Travel Podcast might give me Lonely Planet books for writing this.  The podcast and website is celebrating their one year anniversary.  If you’re thinking about traveling Europe long-term, give them a listen.

Well, at least not under the covers.

Flagstaff will probably be colder.

One of the interesting things about the pledge drive was meeting new people. And meeting new people usually means at some point telling them about my trip. It’s not: “Hi, how’s it going? I’m living in my van. Nice to meet you.” At least not quite. I have heard that one of the first “rules” of living in your vehicle is not to tell anyone that you’re living in your vehicle, but that’s one that I break all the time. Supposedly it causes problems. You’ll be fired or something. I don’t know. Maybe you’re supposed to feel ashamed that you’re living in your vehicle. That just not true for me.

Anyone at work who doesn’t know I live in my van just hasn’t talked to me very much in the last couple weeks. I suppose I’m in a slightly different situation than most people living in their vehicle. I work in white collared jobs; I have the immediate excuse that I’m taking off on a road trip and not sticking around in town indefinitely; I don’t sleep anywhere I work; and most importantly I work with cool people, many of whom have done things like backpacking around Europe when they were my age or younger.

It works out for me. So if you’re here because you know me from KJAZZ, KCRW, Go Country 105.1, NPR or Clear Channel then welcome. Hope you enjoy this blog and don’t think I’m too crazy. If you do, then that’s fine too. I’m enjoying myself.

As for an actual update of what’s going on with the trip… Well, I’m flying out to a conference in Chicago on Thursday, back on Monday. Then a couple more days in LA; A couple days in San Diego at my parents to celebrate family birthdays, (mine, my dad’s and my cousin’s); Then I head off to Anza Borrego, the Salton Sea and other places further out east. At one point I was hoping to head out of town on my birthday, Nov. 5th, just for the poetry of starting the trip on the day I turn 27, but since that’s not going to happen I’ll just relax and leave the week later.

While in San Diego, (stalling until a birthday party over the weekend), I’ll be doing further work on the website and getting the podcast up and running. So I promise that little link on the right will be working soon.

Folks, I get off work at midnight.

True, it cool off a bit when I left the concrete parking structure that was radiating stored up heat from the day, but was still mid 80s all last night.

It got up to 112 yesterday afternoon. Luckily I was spending it the shade in a park with a very nice breeze.

If I could I’d head somewhere cooler. I’m wondering if once I get into the winter I’m going to be wishing for this weather. Probably not. I think I might prefer the cold to the heat.

At least while I’m still in LA I can head into work to get out of the heat. The studios at Clear Channel are always so air conditioned I have to wear a jacket.

Well, I started feeling settled into the van about three or four weeks ago, (something I think would probably have happened sooner if I hadn’t had so many 15 hour work days in a row), but thanks to some actual time off this week I’m starting to feel like I’m finally living in the van. Or rather living just outside the van. I had a very lovely Sunday morning and early afternoon spent at Woodley park in the valley, part of a couple of parks next to each other that I just discovered. (It reminded me of a Minnesota park actually, if you ignore the white noise of the 405 freeway 100 yards away, and the lack of sweltering humidity and swarms of bugs.)

I laid out on my brand new KJAZZ blanket and read a book on California history, nothing exciting to read about (as usual), but was great to be getting out. If I still had an apartment I’d probably would have spent the morning inside. True, I probably still would have been reading the same book, but it’s more exciting to me to know it’s being done in a park I never would have discovered otherwise.

I heard a guy once say that he loved road trips with his dog because his dog helped him meet other people. Well, tatting is my dog. I suppose it’s somewhat the same with knitting and crocheting in public. You always meet up with another crafter who wants to see what you’re working on. Tatting I think is sometimes even better because people can’t figure out what you’re doing without asking or without me noticing their interest and volunteering the information. Occasionally I meet someone who knows what it is, but I have yet to randomly run into another tatter.

The other day I was at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, when a group of women I’m calling the Armenian grandmothers sat down next to me and one asked me what I was doing. Not in English, but you can get the gist of tatting just by watching so slowed down and pointed out exactly what I was doing and got to use some of the eight words of Russian that I remember. Eventually another woman came who spoke better English and we talked for a while about how she came to the US.

That represents one of the things I’m looking for in this trip. I could just travel around the US and visit all the places listed in the guide books, but I’d be missing out on a lot. Tatting I think will work out as an excellent ambassador.

I suppose I could also spend a year sitting at Palisades Park tatting and meeting the people who stop to ask me what I’m doing, but I DO want to see the places in the guide book too. :)