Van Life Trash Talkers
Helping you decide if life in a van is for you
You know what’s really difficult?
Making decisions.
There’s always a channel or influencer or brand vying for your attention, and your decision would best be made with their benefit in mind. Don’t you owe it to them for all the material you’ve consumed? All the many hours that have enriched your life in countless, doubtless ways? All the work they do so that you don’t have to?
Yeah right…
In this endless sea of creators I spy grifters and shills and liars, and most of the time everything just feels a little bit too saturated. Every single little thing is ripped apart and reassembled, mulled over and figured out, with an outcome and decision made for you to follow. What more is there to do than find the answer to all of your life’s questions on YouTube or Instagram?
I do everything in my power to believe in creators, to trust that they’re loyal to their art or, at the very least, loyal to the people populating their space, but it’s hard to know anything about someone who has creative control over their own individual presentation; complete control over who you believe it is you see speaking in front of you.
I got sucked into van lifers telling me about the right and wrong ways to plan, execute, and sustain van life. Terrible way to do it, with very few answers, BECAUSE THEIR LIFE IS NOT MY LIFE. Holy shit, what a concept. I gotta figure out how things are going to fit together for me because I’m doing it… for me.
Then I discovered a van life counter-culture forming around the idea of quitting van life.
Or the list of reasons people quit van life.
Even though this is an AI generated list it complements what most of these quitters are saying, and I’ll summarize it as something like this:
Once I started living out of a vehicle it was decided that I will forever be doing this and any changes that might occur should be a direct reflection of my inability to totally and completely devote myself to this one way of living.
I have never spoken to anyone living out of their van and heard them say I’m gonna do this ‘til I die, or Van life or die!! I think it’s a fairly ubiquitous thought that living out of a vehicle, hopefully because you’ve made the choice and not out of necessity, is temporary. It’s not a marriage or a child, it’s just another potential lifestyle, and a lifestyle is very flexible and ready to change, if you want it to change.
If you have any thoughts about doing something like van life I can say, with the utmost regard for wherever you may be in your life: just do it!
Start by finding your reasons why living in a van would be worth it. Can’t think of a good reason? Then don’t do it. What’s the point of doing something without purpose?
The real reason most people choose to live in a van…
Magical van sex.
Nah, it’s way less interesting — travel. Everyone wants to travel, but most people don’t know why they travel. I’m not sure travel is a good enough reason to build out a van anyway. It’s kind of like how wanting to help people isn’t a good enough reason to be admitted into medical school, the intrinsic motivation needs greater strength to withstand the stresses of time.
My list of reasons to build out a van went like this:
DIY project incorporating interior design, engineering, woodworking, and painting.
Learn to work on a vehicle’s mechanics and functionality1.
Share the experience of building the van with my partner and then put it to use.
Travel slowly and let plans remain flexible.
Consider documenting and uploading the whole process on social media only to realize how much we cherish anonymity.
The van started to look more like a functional art project instead of just a vehicle that sleeps two. We developed practical skills, found creative solutions to annoying problems, and daydreamed about the many places we’d visit in our mobile home. After our art project was mostly complete we anthropomorphized the van, named her Cherry2, and started shredding her.
We met character after character living out of their van meandering through the possibilities in search of the answers that work for their particular scenario. What’s funny is that I never once heard them complaining about the lifestyle, they just deal with it, or maybe they just sensed my lack of sympathy and kept to themselves.
But these Instagram assholes complaining in their rustic-country-barn-inspired-Sprinters aren’t speaking from a place of tenacity or resilience3, they’re just here to share their plight for views. And goddamn doesn’t everyone have a big bowl of plight to share with you4??
Whatever you do, wherever you go, there will be problems to solve. Some will be easier than others. Van life has its own set of problems that are unique to the lifestyle, and how you solve these problems will begin to write the story of your experience. What are you going to do when your body decides it needs to take a shit at 2am and Wal-Mart is closed? When your engine begins to make an unfamiliar noise will you take it to a mechanic or are you trying to learn how to maintain the van yourself5?
Isn’t everything about rhythm? All that shit about marching to the beat of your own drum becomes real when you’re figuring out how you want to live, whether in a house, apartment, or vehicle. You have to recognize what needs must be met and then adjust to the ones you never thought about or let slip through the cracks. Every so often you need to pivot so that what was once new doesn’t get stale.
I once heard a mechanic say something so utterly profound it’s been with me ever since, and I apply it to everything I can. He said, “For every 1 or 2 people that complain about a specific car, there are 100 others who drive it everyday and love it.”
If you’re looking for someone to talk you out of doing something, you’ll find it, because if you’re thinking it, it has already begun. Find a couple people online who confirm your hesitations and that cool, doable idea is now littered with obstacles.
So, then, what makes doing something worthwhile? Is it capturing an image and sharing it with strangers online, or is it the feeling you get when you see an idea through to completion? Is it the approval you receive from a community of masked and manicured internet fools, or is it the proof you build to believe in yourself and your dreams?
Social media is about creating a dream. The perfect images and videos are there to create this idea that someone has the perfect life. That the perfect life exists. And your brain teases you with ideas of “I want that…” because why wouldn’t it want the perfect life? Why wouldn’t your brain be attracted to a safe, ideal situation, absent of difficulty and tumult?
But we know that’s not the truth.
Everyone’s life has good times and bad times. Everyone experiences hardships that they choose to face right now or suppress for later. Everyone makes mistakes.
Not everyone takes those mistakes and learns. Not everyone adjusts to a decision they’ve made to try and see it through. Not everyone starts a journey, and for those that do, many never finish it.
But as Christopher Hitchens once said, “You have to choose your future regrets.”
Does the regret of not living and traveling in a van, even if for a single summer, outweigh the regret that comes with the frustration of having to learn the hard way? Does the regret of fucking up and having a story to tell overcome the regret of avoiding what might be possible?
Does the regret of NOT trying something outweigh the regret of giving it a shot?
At 39 years old, this van was my first vehicle purchase. My life without a vehicle had been glorious, but an opportunity to learn something new and unfamiliar sounded appealing. Working on a bicycle is like pouring hot water on pre-packaged ramen, while working on a car engine is like making ramen from scratch (that broth though).
I’m not going to show her insides because she’s shy.
Engineering the storage & bed frame was incredibly fun. I pulled inspiration from many different builders, acquired as much free material as possible, and started building with what I had. Watching some of the companies doing van builds and the van models they choose to build out can be discouraging, especially from a financial perspective, but it need not be an expensive process. It’s like movie effects: if you can’t afford it, then you’ve gotta make it.
I watched a video where a couple lived in a Sprinter together and claimed that there just wasn’t enough space for two people. Did you see the above pictures I posted?? We lived in Cherry for 3 months without issue and are ready for the next 3 months.
In all fairness there is a lot of good material out there that is helpful and productive. I find that the most helpful people are rarely the most popular, they’re just putting out useful information in a simple way. The more flashy and polished someone’s presentation is regarding van life, the more likely I am to skip around or completely ignore it.
If the inside of your van looks like a house - fuck off.
If your van is the size of an RV - next.
If you just pay for everything because it’s easier than learning how to do it - I’m not your boy.
This says nothing about who these creators actually are and everything about what I’m interested in and looking for in the people that surround me (whether that’s IRL or online).
I am by no means a mechanic, but I’ll take any opportunity I can to give it a shot. During our trip to the PNW I began to hear a soft whooshing from the brakes and decided to try and change the pads myself. Done it on other cars, shouldn’t be a problem on this one. Until I met a partially stripped caliper bolt. Not completely stripped, just the first signs of wear. I tried gently hammering the bit in, twisted the wrench, and stripped the bolt a little more. I attempted to release this bolt 3 times, and after the third try I resigned myself to finding a mechanic because I didn’t want to completely shred it and make the job that much more difficult. We also had to leave the parking lot we had been working in because the Beaverton (suburb of Portland, OR) police had received a call about a couple working on their vehicle and, apparently, without a single sign informing us of our misdeed, trespassing.
I searched local mechanics on Facebook and found a guy that worked on trucks. We had a short exchange and he said we can come down to Oregon City tomorrow around 5pm to get the job done. Most excellent.
The next day we drive down to Oregon City. This drive, about 20 miles south of Portland, damaged the brakes so much that it started to sound like a local noise band took up residence under the van. We stopped driving as soon as we could and texted our brake guy to let him know we had arrived. An hour goes by and no response. At this point we’re kind of stuck — the brakes have been damaged enough to where it felt unsafe to drive much more and our guy isn’t getting back to us. My partner suggested that I give him a call because not everyone is good about communicating via text. I call him and he answers. He says he wasn’t sure if we were coming so he did other stuff, like driving up to Portland to pick something up, but he adds that he’ll be returning to Oregon City in about an hour and we can get the brakes done then.
We wait another hour and then get a text saying he’ll be at our location in about 20 minutes. He pulls up with his apprentice and takes a look at the brakes. His immediate reaction upon seeing the brakes is Yeah, you guys are metal on metal at this point. We figured as much.
We establish how much it will cost to do the brakes, get the remaining parts we need from a local store, and head back to his place to get it done. Usually I’d be trying to bargain a deal, get some of the cost down since we drove to his location, but considering the damage done and the limited options for a solution I immediately accepted his price without question.
The rest of the evening was essentially just a hang out of getting to know a couple new guys and receiving a step-by-step tutorial on the specifics of our brakes. We helped wherever we could and watched the entire process so that next time we’d be sure about how to do it ourselves. We had a few beers, burned some trees, and laughed together.
One of their neighbors came by later and chatted us up. He mentioned traveling to Manila and my partner mentions that she was born in the Philippines. Upon hearing this the neighbor decides it’s time to call his girlfriend in the Philippines and show her off to these two travelers getting their brakes done. Delightfully awkward.
The brake job comes to an end and we say our thank you’s and goodbyes. We drive back to Portland, spend a little more time there, and when we’re choosing where to go next we realize that we’ll be driving through Oregon City again, so we reach out to our new friends. They tell us to meet them at a local bar and we spend another evening together.
What had been a stressful situation became yet another opportunity to get to know a couple of strangers who became friends. That’s our rhythm when we travel — some things are going to go wrong, but the solution we come up with will make for a hell of a story.