Van Life Begins
"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Having never been remotely interested in this thing called van life before, I knew very little about what I’d be getting into. But I had a pretty strong desire to get started, concerned that my enthusiasm would wane and it would remain yet another idea I was excited about but never actually went through with. So I came up with a timeline, and it was tight. Which left me with a finite amount of time for learning things and preparing. I decided to prioritize actually buying a van (I’ll get into why I bought instead of rented in another post) over basically everything else, because it was the keystone for the whole venture.
I won’t bore you with the details, but I learned just enough about vans to have an idea what I wanted and I made the purchase with about 2 weeks to go before leaving. Skipping ahead those two weeks, I had a van packed to the gills with clothes, food, camera gear and odds and ends I assumed I would use out on the road. For my first night I had done a little research to make sure I knew where I was going to stay. So with a spot in mind, I pulled out of my driveway and headed to Nashville.
Not the part of Nashville you’re thinking of. I’d selected a parking lot that allowed overnight parking just outside of town. After a couple of stops along the way, I arrived at the location. There were only a few cars there, it was getting dark, and I pulled into a spot I thought would be out of everyone’s way in case they came through with a boat. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it was a parking lot with river access, mostly for launching boats. Multiple lessons were learned that first night.
Lesson #1: Level ground should be prioritized when parking your van. I parked at an angle on a damn boat launch. Common sense would normally tell me this is not a great idea. But I was more concerned with the larger adventure I was on and didn’t even think about this. So when I opened cabinets, stuff fell out. When I put things on the counter, they rolled away. And most importantly, when I was in bed trying to sleep, my body wanted to slide down into the corner of the bed. I spent the night pushing myself back into position, fighting a losing battle with gravity.
Lesson #2: Always consider the activity level for your chosen location. You know who apparently wakes up early as hell on a Sunday? Fishermen. You know what makes a lot of noise right outside your van? Large trucks backing boats into the water with spotters shouting directions from behind. When I arrived just after sunset the night before, it was peaceful and quiet. It seemed like a great spot to get some sleep. But I should have considered what that area was used for.
Lesson #3: Have a pee plan. We’re friends now, so I’ll share a personal fact about myself. I generally have to urinate after I wake up in the morning. TMI? I don’t know, I think it’s a fairly basic biological certainty for most people. At night, with nobody around, as a man…it was pretty easy to go to the bathroom. I walked to the edge of the lot and peed in the grass. Now, is that ok to do? I don’t know. It felt pretty harmless. Maybe it would be frowned upon if you asked a cop or the person who manages the property. But I didn’t want to get uromycitisis poisoning. The point is, I hadn’t considered it that night but it didn’t pose much of a problem. The next morning, however, when there were roughly 20 people milling about the parking lot, that was a different story. I’ll admit at this point that I have a toilet in my van, but I was pretty much terrified of using it for fear of making it smell like a port-o-potty right at the beginning of the trip. These problems can be avoided with just a little planning.
So went my first night in the van. I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but I did get a lot of good experience that would pay dividends for the rest of the trip. So many more lessons were coming, but I won’t get into those now. For the most part, the first overnight was a success. I’d parked, slept, eaten in the van and I was more than 4 hours from home. I pulled out of that boat launch parking area feeling pretty good. Because so often, fear or anxiety are rooted in the simple fact that you don’t understand what’s in front of you or how you’re going to handle it. With a day of driving and a night of parking behind me, I realized I now understood what was in front of me. The terrain would change, the locations would differ, I’d experience new things. But at a basic level, this trip was driving and parking. Wash, rinse, repeat. So I put my sunglasses on, turned up the music and started to sing along. I got this.