Van Life Adventures

My van life journey started in the spring of 2019 trying to solve a problem with camping in my van at night.

I enjoy working with my hands but haven’t done so for about 20 years since working as a software engineer.

Finding the motivation to do woodworking or electronics again was challenging for me because I enjoyed programming and spent countless hours doing so, even after leaving work. As the years progressed it became harder and harder to disconnect from the stress.

Because I have become accustomed to the stress I wasn’t aware of the damage it was doing to my health. Therefore, my health demanded that I do something different. I enjoyed camping as a boy scout. I’ll do that. I scheduled a two week vacation and started planning my trip.

Because the month of May is iffy, I took a risk scheduling a camping trip in that month. The forecast initially showed sunshine. But it was growing cloudy and I didn’t trust the weather to remain agreeable.

I can still go camping but I would have to sleep in the van. The more I thought about it the more creative I grew. I can lower the stowaway seats and lay in a sleeping bag on the floor. After trying it out, one night, in my driveway I didn’t like the leg room. Not gonna work for me at my age.

I decided not to sleep, for an entire week, on the floor. I tried all types of configurations. I even built a wooden frame across the seats and placed a cushion on top. My back didn’t do to well.

I wasted a lot of money. But I had fun.

Then came the realization that I own the van. It took awhile for me to feel comfortable drilling holes in a perfectly running van. After exhausting all means to make my camping trip fun my brain said, “Why don’t you just take the seats out and stick some plywood on the floor?”. I took my seats out of the van, then drove to the lumber store and purchased a ¾ inch sub-flooring 4 x 8 plywood and it was a perfect fit.

In software development these this idea of building applications as modules, where the core of an application can easily be extending by adding modules. That’s how I’m gonna approach building my van.