There are two major aspects of living in a Vanagon that appealed to me. One, the shear adventure of being able to roam as desired. The second is the freedom of living simply. The past year I had lived in a tiny house I helped build in Terrebonne Oregon, and at 240 square foot, the place felt quite a bit bigger than necessary. The next logical step, take it to the road and move into […]
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This is not a post about self help, at least not one that will guide you out of wanting and into some higher state of being. Rather, this is a post about my personal battle with it and confronting it. Thank you for reading part of catharsis. Eckhart Tolle, author of the Power of Now, would likely describe it as part of the ego. I say likely as, to be honest, I have yet to […]
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When I lived in my last Vanagon and traveled all over the US for 6 months, Santa Cruz, one of the first places I stayed, was my all time favorite. Sure, it is a beautiful little city and the coffee and cookies at Verve Coffee are so good I went out of my way to stop there this time around; but the best part of Santa Cruz was the “office”. In 2012 it was the […]
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Last time I moved into a van I feel like there was more planning, more projects, more everything, before I headed out. Today I left the tiny house I helped to build a little over a year ago. In a whirlwind of packing and ultimately just throwing things in a box and saying I would figure it out in the coming days, I rushed out of Terrebonne in hopes of missing the snow storm that […]
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If you have been following along, my last post So you think you want a Vanagon huh?, addressed the romanticized concept of vanlife – specifically in a regards to the VW Vanagon. These vans are, at their newest, 25 years old and are all wearing out. Mine and my dad’s are no different. While my van is suffering through snow and sub-freezing temperatures back in Bend Oregon, not to mention an engine transplant, I am […]
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Your Instagram feed is full of vans in cool locations, filled with happy campers, and a dog or two. The #vanlife is your favorite hash tag. Your new goal in life right now is to live out of a van, and what better van than the VW Vanagon? I mean, it has such a great following and is the epitome of a road trip vehicle. A current theme I see in my feed is a […]
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I had built the cabinets for my previous Vanagon out of 3/4″ plywood – three sheets of it. To say the least, they weighed a ton! I learned some valuable lessons about how to build cabinets and what I needed in this next version. I wanted these new cabinets to weigh far less than the last ones, this was a high priority. When I go backpacking I try to keep my load as light as […]
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A footprint, as I often think of it, is our environmental one – how much resources we require and how many earths it would require if everyone lived this way. It is also, the space we take up, like the footprint of a house. Both are at play in this case. The latter is quite tiny – approximately 60ft2 total with probably about 40ft2 of living space. That is a less than 3% of the […]
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As with all things, there must be a beginning. For me, the first step is the structure of this site and getting things up and running. I have already been working on the Vanagon, and will get to that build in the next post. But here, now, I want to quickly tell you a little about me, this site, and what the end goal is here. At the end of 2011 I purchased my first […]
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