Pre-coffee, but my timeline was something like this:

my personality, such as it is

I was a shy, bookish, “sensitive” child, prone to finding small spaces to hide away and read a book. “Go to your room” doesn’t really work as a punshishment when one’s greatest wish was to be left alone in the quiet.

In restrospect, I realize I was (and am) overly sensitive to sensory stimuli and withdraw from human company as a form of self-protection.

aesthetics of small spaces

When I would see small space like a 1-2 man prison cell that looked about right. Japanese coffin hotels seemed about right. Train sleeping cars… you get the point.

travel trailer

From 1988-1990 I lived in a travel trailer, a 22ft (?) Holiday Rambler of late 60s or early 70s vintage. Looked like the one in the pic on the right.

I bought it while I was in the Army so I’d have a place to live on the family land when I got out. I think I paid $5k for it. I was glad to have it because I exited the army with a ready-made family.

Hotel Ranger

collage genasun controller underbed storage

I traded a Suzuki DR650 dualsport for a Ford Ranger with 160k miles, title for title. Blue book prices were $40 apart so we swapped.

I found a Fiberine (?) fiberglass camper shell for $25 on craigslist because the guy’s wife was nagging him to get it out of the back yard. I replaced the locks (no keys came with it) and the gas struts that were dead. I did a minimal build in it:

  • sleeping platform (3/4” scrap plywood over 2x6” slats in the bed supports
  • 60w panel on the roof (~$250 at the time!) and a Genasun 5A MPPT ($100). The Genasun was early enough in their production that the serial number on it was hand-written.
  • grabber pole made of 6ft of PVC with an L-bracket hoseclamped on the end. Great for pushing/pulling stuff into place without climbing in
  • underbed storage tote, the kind that goes under your residential bed. Two fit neatly side by side and stored stuff nicely.

campervan retirement

planning

  • 2015 - started thinking about a campervan retirement ~2028, reading forums, posting on /r/vandwellers (different username)1
  • 2016 - research intensifies, RTR.

bought a van

  • 2017 - bought vehicle, started the build, RTR

I stopped buying physical objects (other than food and other consumables) to start reducing Stuff.

I got a job offer that would allow me to move into the van fulltime way 9 years ahead of schedule. I sold everything I owned and the proceeds were to be my emergency fund.

going full-time

  • 2018 - transferred job to an area where I could live in the van and save money, RTR

snowbirding retirement

  • late 2019 - work got shitty, realized I had enough $$ to retire early. I retired in Dec 2019.

inheritance crisis

My father died in home hospice in late 2023. Normally I’d be somewhere warmer but I had a filial duty to perform so I spent the winter there.

backstory

He’d already told my sister and I that he was going to skip us and leave “everything” (not much) to a much younger son he had adopted with his (much younger) 2nd wife.2 We felt snubbed and said so. My position was he was free to dispose of his estate as he wished but he should aside funds to repay the $thousands he borrowed from me to keep the land from getting repo’ed.3

He said he’d reconsider but changed nothing, including making no arrangements to repay the money I loaned him to save the land. My service to him during his hospice assumed the snub would still be in effect (it was).

reality

The small self-built house and property were in “homeless squatter” condition. I set to work on the filth and disrepair in an attempt to keep social services from moving him out to a clinical hospice. It is a perfectly serviceable little house and chunk of land for someone who cares about it and knows how to maintain it.

repercussions

Spending my days on the land, working, cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry in the house depressed me because it was obvious that the house and land would fall to ruin after his death and my departure.

It also forced me to confront a truth about my own vandwelling: it’s not so much a free choice as a way to preserve my fragile mental health by removing myself from regular interaction. I would have gladly parked the van and lived on that rural homestead had it been left to me.

It’s now well into 2024 and it still feels like grieving a series of losses: a father, the relationship I had (or thought I had) with my father, getting disinherited, the possibility of having a home again.

  1. I discarded that username because I was being stalked and my then-partner harrassed ↩

  2. she has predeceased him due to catching a bad hand of cards: brain cancer ↩

  3. this was 100% of my emergency fund from the sale of my possessions, cash I saved later, and credit card debt when I had no cash. I finally came to my senses on the 4th or 5th round of begging where he asked me to liquidate my retirement account. In my fifties. ↩