CityWoman
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We Tried to Do Vanlife Right. It Broke Us Down.
What happened when one writer looked beyond the open road, the staged snapshots, and the hashtag
Excerpt:
"A few hours after I bought a 1995 Ford E-350 Econoline van for $2,000 in the fall of 2017, the ABS light lit up on the dashboard. That night, I had a dream: My fiancée, Rachel, and I were driving downhill on a steep, winding road when the brakes went out. As we were plunging to our deaths over a cliff, I stared into her eyes and thought, I failed you.
That was my first vanlife-stress dream. They kept up through the winter and spring as we prepped the vehicle for a summerlong road trip that would see us touring the country in a counterclockwise loop, starting and ending at Rachel’s parents’ house outside Philadelphia.
The ultimate road trip had been our goal since we’d met during our senior year of college, in 2012. We wanted to explore the country in an authentic way, meet its diverse people, see both its ugly places and its beautiful ones. Our idea was inspired by #vanlife, the faux-bohemian, four-wheeled lifestyle movement. Why tour the country in a regular old car, camping in national parks and rooming in hotels off highway exits, when we could buy a cheap van and make it our mobile home?
There was an important caveat. We decided to reject the cushiness of #vanlife and skip the saccharine Instagram posts. This was partly out of necessity—we didn’t have the budget for a $10,000 vintage van and a $10,000 overhaul. But we also feared the Instagramization of our lives, seeing the mountains through the lens of our camera phones. I rolled my eyes (though secretly a little jealous) at the shirtless #vanlife guys whose long captions detailed the importance of learning how to fix a timing belt with a shoelace. Rachel damn sure wasn’t going to sit naked on the roof of the van for a photo shoot every few sunrises. Social media of any kind was officially banned.
We decided, instead, to take the path of the van bums: the transients, the weirdos, the indie bands with no money.
Even entering the vanlife world at this basic level was a challenge. We scraped together enough money to buy a van we named Little Honey, a rusty hulk that dribbled gasoline the first time I filled her up, exhibiting all the grace of an old lady peeing her pants. I paid a mechanic in Gowanus, Brooklyn, to make sure she wasn’t quite a death trap. He wiped his grease-covered hands with a dirty rag and said, “You driving across the country in this?”"
The rest is pretty good. It's basically about how unprepared they were and yet kept going toward their romanticized idea of "vanlife" when things went wrong -- even though they deliberately tried not to romanticize it -- and how reality will eventually bite you in the butt. He does admit to learning a powerful lesson from the experience, in the end. I liked it.
What happened when one writer looked beyond the open road, the staged snapshots, and the hashtag
Excerpt:
"A few hours after I bought a 1995 Ford E-350 Econoline van for $2,000 in the fall of 2017, the ABS light lit up on the dashboard. That night, I had a dream: My fiancée, Rachel, and I were driving downhill on a steep, winding road when the brakes went out. As we were plunging to our deaths over a cliff, I stared into her eyes and thought, I failed you.
That was my first vanlife-stress dream. They kept up through the winter and spring as we prepped the vehicle for a summerlong road trip that would see us touring the country in a counterclockwise loop, starting and ending at Rachel’s parents’ house outside Philadelphia.
The ultimate road trip had been our goal since we’d met during our senior year of college, in 2012. We wanted to explore the country in an authentic way, meet its diverse people, see both its ugly places and its beautiful ones. Our idea was inspired by #vanlife, the faux-bohemian, four-wheeled lifestyle movement. Why tour the country in a regular old car, camping in national parks and rooming in hotels off highway exits, when we could buy a cheap van and make it our mobile home?
There was an important caveat. We decided to reject the cushiness of #vanlife and skip the saccharine Instagram posts. This was partly out of necessity—we didn’t have the budget for a $10,000 vintage van and a $10,000 overhaul. But we also feared the Instagramization of our lives, seeing the mountains through the lens of our camera phones. I rolled my eyes (though secretly a little jealous) at the shirtless #vanlife guys whose long captions detailed the importance of learning how to fix a timing belt with a shoelace. Rachel damn sure wasn’t going to sit naked on the roof of the van for a photo shoot every few sunrises. Social media of any kind was officially banned.
We decided, instead, to take the path of the van bums: the transients, the weirdos, the indie bands with no money.
Even entering the vanlife world at this basic level was a challenge. We scraped together enough money to buy a van we named Little Honey, a rusty hulk that dribbled gasoline the first time I filled her up, exhibiting all the grace of an old lady peeing her pants. I paid a mechanic in Gowanus, Brooklyn, to make sure she wasn’t quite a death trap. He wiped his grease-covered hands with a dirty rag and said, “You driving across the country in this?”"
The rest is pretty good. It's basically about how unprepared they were and yet kept going toward their romanticized idea of "vanlife" when things went wrong -- even though they deliberately tried not to romanticize it -- and how reality will eventually bite you in the butt. He does admit to learning a powerful lesson from the experience, in the end. I liked it.
