the turquoise trail

Phase II of building my van was to add the electrical system with the goal of powering a fridge, lights & two 12V sockets for things like an immersion element, fan & phone charger.  After extensive research & much deliberation, mostly on the part of my Dad, we settled on a game plan and started ordering things.  Once I arrived in Mission, we knew we had a 2 week window to get everything ordered, delivered & installed, so we were eager to start the process.  This is what our game plan looked like; if it looks like anything more than modern art to you, you're doing well.. Modern Art a la Dad Once everything was ordered, we had about a week before the parts started trickling in.  We used that time to measure, re-measure, disassemble, adjust and otherwise prepare for the parts to come.  Thankfully there were plenty of retirees around who were more than happy to lend their tools, parts and wisdom to the project.  I had ingeniously (aka p...

{michigan} nothing of significance to report, other than that the border guard granted me great freedom by not asking the length of my stay.... {ohio} ugh..  three hours in a cricket mobile shop in Defiance getting my phone wiped of all photos/apps/contacts/everything.  Eventually left with a functional phone - but no numbers to call, no addresses to search, no apps on which to search them.. awesome.. {indiana} Indiana started by having the nerve to full-on blizzard, but thankfully that passed quickly and thanks to my old-fashioned/OCD notes, I was able to navigate my way to Chris & Lauren's in Indianapolis for the night with them.  Chris's technical expertise reunited my phone with my people, while Lauren & I greatly enjoyed reminiscing over 80's-babies mixed-print fashion statements & dad's in short-shorts through a collection of super-vintage film prints; fantastic.  After a night at their place, Lauren's parents joined us for brunch featuri...

A few of you have been requesting blog posts for this new adventure i've started & although i'm not committing to weekly updates, I'll do my best to keep you posted.. I might as well start at the beginning.. There were several reasons why I wanted to try out vanlife, the biggest and simplest one being and I do not know where I want to live.. ruling out one city leaves me with a lot of options! I did a lot of research and planning this past winter and really had my heart set on a Sprinter high-top cargo van, but it is really difficult to find a used one so when a friend said he could get me a good mini-van (as the days kept slipping past and the snow kept piling up) I jumped on the opportunity and put the sprinter on hold.. January 31 st I picked up my mini-van & drove it home to begin the work! I took the seats out and gave it a thorough cleaning to start, took some measurements, then had the next 3 days at work to day-dream about how I was going to ...