New Member from Souther California

[sephson]

Hello all!

I've been lurking on the site for a couple of weeks now. Finally decided I'd join.

I've been in the theatre industry since the age of fourteen, so a bit more than 24 years at this point. I've been the Master Electrician for a venue in Southern California for the last fourteen years and absolutely love what I do for a living.

I don't plan to join the van life any time in the near future, but I do love road trips. The cost of hotels and eating out make these trips prohibitively expensive for the most part, so I've been giving some thought to buying an older van and converting it into a good road trip vehicle. I just need to come up with the money for it. A bit of online research into camper vans brought me to this site.

Happy Trails!

---

Well, this is embarrassing. I just noticed that I misspelled Southern California in the title line of my first post.

 

[msbarth]

Welcome Sephson, like you I have no ambition to be a van dweller although I do enjoy travel. I have a motorhome with all amenities and a short school bus with very few. LOL

I make short trips of about 200 miles each month in the summer and once every other year I go to Milford, Indiana where my motorhome was built. There are usually 30/40 motorhomes present and we host a Saturday luncheon for former employees. This GTG (get together) will be the last of May this year and I am looking forward to it.

Hoping that you soon have your van and can join the fun.

 

[rvwandering]

Welcome sephson! When I was a kid camping trips were the only way that my family could afford a vacation. Many years later we still remember the fun we had on those trips. I carried the camping experience over to my own family. We camped in series of vans, the bed of a pickup and finally bought a small motorhome. Not only is it less expensive than staying in hotels and eating out, it's also healthier to cook your own food. But I think the best part is the freedom that it gives you. Most of the time it's not necessary to make reservations. You can stay in campgrounds if you want - small sites with no hookups are almost always available - or you can boondock or overnight in parking lots. There's no need to rush from place to place or worry about where you'll spend the night. Having all of the stuff that you need with you all of the time and the fact that you don't have to drag things into hotel rooms every night makes traveling very relaxing.

 

[sephson]

Thank you for the warm welcome!

I've found a lot of useful information here and seeing how some of you have your vans set up has given me a few ideas on how to do mine when I finally get the thing. I suspect that my biggest challenge will be setting it up so that I can also use it to occasionally haul stuff for work.

 

[helinwheels]

Welcome, Sephson. Maybe you already found this site; it is impressive:
http://www.tosimplify.net/p/rig.html

 

[blkjak]

welcome .... blkjak

 

[Unchained]

I suspect that my biggest challenge will be setting it up so that I can also use it to occasionally haul stuff for work.

Ask and ye shall receive

 

[helinwheels]

OMG the youtube link was amazing! Thanks, Unchained.

 

[WheelEstate USA]

That's one of the most amazing transformations I've seen.

 

[sephson]

Very impressive!

I'll probably end up going a different route. I simply do not have the storage space for a setup like that. That's not to say I won't steal a few ideas here and there though.

 

[Unchained]

That's why I posted the link, sephson. We rarely find the exact setup we want, but... oh, the ideas we can get from what others have done!

If you did it right, you could have a 'pop up' camping interior that, when folded down, left a flat surface and plenty of space for hauling stuff. Jus' sayin

 

[Starlight]

I have a couple of links that make a quick van conversion---



and this guy did this with just one arm
a chair with piano hinges that folds into a bed

 

[sephson]

Very cool setups in both of those videos. I might find a bit of inspiration there.

Thank you Starlight!

 

[Pikachu711]

Welcome to the group sephson!