Van Life! (Patreon)

Woo life update!

I started the van life thing full time last Wednesday. It's been a busy few days while I adapt to this new situation, but so far things are pretty good! I'll try and get you guys some video or something so I can show off the van, but in the meanwhile here's a few photos.

Also, the name of the van is "Love is Blue", after one of my favorite Paul Mauriat pieces. It just seemed right to name the van!

The interior as seen from my bed:

I brought my bamboo and sad peace lily, along with ivy from my old place:

I've been mostly self sufficient. I carry 40 gal of water and refill at national parks. 300 Ah worth of lithium batteries make sure I have plenty of power. The hot water heater, induction cooker, and heater are all big draws, so I don't use them too much, since the power bottleneck is the surface area of my van roof, which is pretty much maxed out at 600 watts of solar panels. My inverter is also a charger, so I can recharge the batteries off of a 120V grid if I need to.

I'm avoiding gas appliances for now, but if I find myself spending time in cold areas, I'll probably add gas to take stress off the electrics.

A park I was drawing at earlier:

My home network is a tp-link router hooked up to a netgear LTE modem. I could go wireless for this, but right now I have the ethernet cables just rampant. Since I love backing up my work, the device you see mounted on the side of the cabinet is a System76 meerkat mini computer, and it's hooked to a tiny SSD raid array. It backs up the work I do on my iMac to the local array and also uploads it to my AWS S3 bucket. 

All these devices run off the 12V system. My router is currently using the 120V because I forgot to buy a DC adapter for it, but that's in the mail! I just have to remember to swing by the PO Box and pick it up!

Anyway, that's my van life update for now. I'm visiting friends and traveling around the midwest for a bit before things get cold, then I'm heading to Texas. I'll do my best to keep a consistent schedule, I have so many stories that I want to tell and hopefully when I get used to it this lifestyle will free me up to work harder!

Thanks for your support, folks! Mwah!