Conventional Wisdom: Thinking About Vans (Patreon)

I’m hoping I’ll already have the MAGFest 2018 comics posted by the time I get this blog post finished, in which case you’ll have already heard that my actually getting into a hotel room was a bit… eventful. Between that and my overall re-evaluation of how I do conventions (which is ANOTHER blog I’m really hoping to have already finished before I post this) I’ve been thinking more and more about probably my greatest con-fantasy. Well, second-greatest, after some kind of floating chair so I don’t actually have to walk around all weekend. I want a Con Van

And no, I’m not talking about the struggling, beat-up old Ladd Family Van that I currently use for convention caravans. I’m talking about one of these big ol’ glorious custom conversion vans. You know, the ones with whole living quarters in the back and giant airbrushed sci-fi murals on the side and ladies with 80’s hair constantly posing next to them. The kind of land boat you’d see camping out across the street from the Starcastle show, immaculate Brothers Hildebrandt reproductions painted all over the exterior, luxurious shag carpet and fake woodgrain peaking out from behind the bead curtain in the door as Kansas album tracks blare at entirely unacceptable volume levels until the wee hours of the morning. Except, of course, mine would have Wizardmon and Gatomon riding giant guitars through the landscapes of Tron painted all over the exterior and have the interior be all black with red neon trim to look like inside of a Suncoast Video, complete with black and white movie star pictures lining the top of the walls. The classic rock blaring at all hours would definitely still be a factor, though. But that’s my grand dream: a big ol’ otaku camper that I can roll up to any convention and just live in without bothering with a hotel at all.

Yeah, that’s the real point to this delusional rant: I’m tired of dealing with hotel rooms and just want to camp out in my van instead. Just think about how much easier all this convention-going nonsense would be if you could cut out the hotel stuff entirely. It’d be VASTLY cheaper, you couldn’t have to find and coordinate with multiple roommates, you wouldn’t even need ANY roommates if you didn’t want, and above all else NO SCRAMBLING TO BOOK A ROOM BEFORE THEY ALL RUN OUT. I already like commuting to cons when I can for these very reasons, but that “when I can” really doesn’t cover all that much outside of the Raleigh area before the to/from drive becomes impractical. So, if I can’t drive back to my room at night, why not drive my room out to the con with me?

And I really wouldn’t need all that much, despite what my fantasies of period-specific Suncoast décor might have suggested. Just a semi-decent cot on one side, enough space to stash enough clothes on the other, and little minifridge to keep a weekend’s worth of food fresh. Heck, I’m only being half serious when I talk about a custom van in the first place. For the most part, I wouldn’t even need any new furniture installed, I’d be fine with just taking the seats out of a normal van and having space to lay out a sleeping bag, a suitcase, and a cooler. And I’m obviously being facetious about the whole “crazy paint job” thing, that’d actually be spectacularly bad idea. Most convention locations frown upon the act of camping out on their property, and for very understandable reasons, really. Granted, they frown upon cramming as many people into a single hotel room as we regularly do, and that doesn’t stop us. BUT we don’t go around carrying signs that announce we’re grossly violating fire code either, and driving around in a van that basically has “I’m camping out in here!” painted on the side would be just as dumb. So, yeah, for the most part I’d be fine just sleeping on the floor of the current van, like I did that one Ichibancon.

Yeah, you were wondering when I’d bring that up, weren’t ya? For those who either haven’t been reading Conventional Wisdom long or just need a refresher, I used my inability to find a room for Ichibancon 2015 as an excuse to see what camping out all weekend was actually like. I had an extremely primitive setup, so it wasn’t a GREAT time, but I could definitely see the advantages to doing cons that way… WITH ONE MAJOR EXCEPTION. There was one basic need that I just couldn’t fit into the van, and never really could without rebuilding the interior from scratch: a bathroom. I don’t mean one of those road toilets like they have in the back of a bus, as long as the con hours aren’t absurdly short and you have a decent about of self-control, you can easily get away with doing your business over at the convention center. No, I’m talking about a shower. Even the trashiest, most truck stop-esque motels I’ve ever seen didn’t have public showers, and you can bet your britches I wouldn’t use one if they did. And even I’m neither cheap nor tacky enough to say “I’m deliberately avoiding pitching in to help you pay for your hotel room, but can I hog your shower for a bit anyway?” And anyone thinking I could just go without for a few days obvious didn’t listen to that one lecture that EVERY SINGLE CON give during EVERY SINGLE OPENING CEREMONIES ever. You know, the one about drinking lots of water, eating three proper meals each day, getting roughly six hours of sleep each night, and BATHE ONCE A DAY. Seriously, I tried to get around it at Ichi by bringing an entire bag full of sanitizers and wipes, and it didn’t work. And I’m not kidding about it being an entire BAG full, either. I had hand sanitizer, a completely DIFFERENT kind of hand sanitizer, two separate brands of disinfectant wipes, a third box of straight-up baby wipes, and even some of those Lysol scrubber things you use to clean up kitchen disasters, and I was STILL felt and smelled disgusting by Sunday. And this was at a small, compact convention that required minimal walking, during the middle of January, when getting hot and sweaty isn’t an issue even down here in The South. These were the absolute BEST conditions to try and go a con without bathing regularly, and it still left me a greasy, itchy mess. Never again.

So that’s why my big fancy dream isn’t just to throw a sleeping bag in the back of a van, but to actually trick one out with permanent accommodations. I’ve looked around a bit just for curiosity’s sake, and there’s a whole industry for this kind of thing even outside the Mulletted Styx Roadie demographic. Turns out plenty of people want the basic experience of an RV without having to drive something the size of a bus (and getting the fancy driving licenses or whatever). Granted, most of it is freakishly expensive, but most of it is also intended for people looking to live off the grid for weeks, if not months, way out in the wilderness. Since I’m only talking about a couple of days at a time, never venturing anywhere more rugged than a parking deck, I think I could get away with a far less complicated rig than most of the ones I’ve seen. Heck, I wouldn’t even need enough room to actually stand (which is good, since I doubt you can fit one of those tall house-cars into a parking deck anyway) just someplace to change clothes, sleep and, yes, wash off the accumulated layers of human filth at the end of the day. The bare minimum for this would seem to be some kind of enclosed waterproof booth in the back (sealed enough to avoid leaking on anything else), a basic shower nozzle set up, and a whole system of pumps and heaters and insulated tubes and tanks to handle all the water for several days. You know, nothing too complicated. (Insert pause for the irony to sink in HERE) Again, the fact that I’m not looking to go live in the wilderness for months would help a LITTLE bit. I’d only need water tanks big enough to allow me to rinse out my thick, luxurious mane two or three times rather than a dozen or two. But still, that’d be a crazy elaborate customization job, and a crazy expensive one for sure. Not something I’d ever be able to afford in the foreseeable future.

Still, I can dream, right? With the amount of money I’d save on hotel costs, the con van would pay itself off eventually. And if I could totally eliminate the need to find other people I know/trust/like enough to actually share a room with AND who also happen to be going to the same con that I want to, I could drastically increase the number of cons I hit up every year. More cons means more comics which means more revenue which would pay off the van even faster, right? Maybe I should add that to the Patreon goals: “Donate BLANK Dollars A Month And I’ll Go Buy A Really Tricked Out Van.” THAT’S the sort of thing a professional artist says, right?

Gosh, I think this thing is already finished. Jeez, I thought it’d be sitting in the half-finished pile for a few more weeks at least, along with all the other blogs I started tinkering with MONTHS ago. I guess it really WILL be going up before the MAGFest comics and the 2017 In Review blog post and all the other stuff. How the crap did me fantasizing about a FRICKIN’ VAN manage to be the one project I just couldn’t resist finishing right away?