Let's get moving...

...to AYearInACar.com!

That's right. You no longer need to type ".blogspot" whenever you want to check out A Year in a Car for No Apparent Reason. What will you do with all that extra time!?

It's still being tweaked, so expect changes over the next month or so.

So now you know one of the reasons why I haven't been posting must the last couple weeks. Also I'm working on getting the podcast up, so stay tuned for that.

This also means that I have a new and exciting email adddress: Jessica(at)ayearinacar.com

Can't wait to get my bike back.

I have been really missing my bike the last couple weeks. True, I've only had a couple half-days off from work when I could have gone on a ride of any decent length, but still would have been nice.

But one more month and I'll head down to San Diego, pick up my bike and camping gear and head out onto the road. I'll have about a month and half or so before I head back to San Diego for a family trip in January (more on that later), so I won't be heading all the way to the East coast yet, but I'm thinking I might check out the biking in New Mexico. All depends on the weather.

People keep asking me where I'm heading first. I love being able to answer, "Depends on the weather."

Can't wait to get out on the road. One month left.

Review of the Smart Mug

I've started using my Smart Mug in the last couple weeks and I got to say, after all the praise I've heard for it I'm a bit disappointed. The concept is great, the mug plugs into the cigarette lighter, you set the temperature and it heats up to that temperature. I don't know if I have a defective one, but I found it to take an incredible amount of time to get to it's max temperature of 160. It spent most of it's time in the 120's. It seems to be more for maintaining heat than actually heating.

The pluses are that it fits in the cupholder quite nicely, and the interior cup screws out and is easily washable (dishwasher safe too, though it's not like I have one of those in the back of the van). Definitely functional, and I've appreciated having hot food without having to buy it that way.

I've made both tea and ramen in the mug, and did have it full each time, so certainly a lot for the mug to heat up, but still I found the ramen to take about an hour to cook. I can see myself making this at some campground when I'm not in any hurry to eat some breakfast, (yes, I love ramen for breakfast), but I'd have to get it ready and plug it in right away after waking up. Might be better for tea in that case.

An hour is a long time, though. Luckily I have two plugs in the front of the van (and one in the back, though I haven't used that one yet), and one of these supplies power even without the key in the ignition. This means that my most successful morning breakfast of ramen involved plugging in the Smart Mug and setting the temperature first. Then filling the smart mug with water, ramen powder, and three-fourths of the noodles, (all that would fit before the noodles softened). Then, because a watched Smart Mug never boils I left the van and ran a quick errand to Staples, came back out, put the rest of the noodles in, drove to the gym, went in for a quick workout and a shower, and then drove to work and ate before going in.

So not ideal, but it does work and it is nice to have something nice and hot in the morning. I like the idea of being able to use this and heat food with the rechargeable car battery rather than a propane campstove. I can see myself really liking this when I'm out on the road in cold weather and don't want to get out of the van and set up the campstove, or when I'm not at a campground and can't get out the campstove. That being said, I'm taking suggestions for other brands that heat faster, and I'll be watching at truck stops once I'm on the road. (Or if you have a Smart Mug and yours doesn't take this long let me know; Maybe I've got a defective one). I really like this mug in theory, but it's not looking like it'll be as helpful as I was hoping. I'd like to be able to heat canned soup, but I'm afraid that anything with chunks of vegetables won't work very well, since those will take even longer to heat to the core.

To sum up, I'll keep it and use it until I find a better one.

As a side note, I'm at the possibility of a small solar oven. It would definitely need to be something that folds up and packs away small since it would be a total luxury item. Anyone have suggestions?

Los Angeles has been tempting me to stay with my favorite weather.

Today I woke up and looked out my window at the most beautiful orange clouds peaking through the Santa Monica skyline. Would have taken pictures, but I feeling too cozy in bed and just watched the colors change as the sun rose. We've been having some excellent cloudy days, (without it being cold), and as I got out of the van and walked around it was still that magic hour of the morning where the colors of the palm trees, the Santa Monica pier, pop out like a photoshopped picture. I think to myself about how nice it is and how mornings like this are exactly why I'm doing this whole trip.

And just as I'm looking out at beach wondering how I'm going to attempt to describe this later I look up past the water at a flock of birds taking off against a rainbow in the background. Amazing. So I watch as they fly off, think about my trip and about how nice it would be if it rained sometimes this week. Other than about half an hour one afternoon about a month ago there still hasn't been any rain since I moved into the van.

I couple years ago, when I lived in Seattle, I took a weekend trip to Olympic National Forest. I took advantage of the weekend to get out of town because I was so sick of hearing people complain about the rain, (at the time, really just a sprinkle). It's Seattle, folks. Surely the novelty should have worn off by now.

I spent the first day driving until I felt like stopping (more about my obsession with driving aimlessly in a future post) and spent the second day curled up in my cozy car with a book looking out at a spectacular thunderstorm. I have always thought of that weekend as the epitome of relaxation and slow travel. Just sitting and enjoying the weather that others are taking as burden. Enjoying the smell of rain and having no plans to speak of; secure in the knowledge that anything I want to explore will still be there when it stops raining and I'll still have the time to explore it.

I don't remember now what book I was reading. But I do remember the story I started writing inspired by the couple I saw as I walked by their RV while they sat at their table enjoying a glass of wine and the view of the clouds and a rainbow over the ocean. I remember cooking ramen with the car as a windscreen, and exploring an inlet of the Washington coastline later when it stopped raining, and I remember thinking, "I need to do this more often."

And this morning, here I was. Looking out over the cliffs at different clouds and a different rainbow over the same ocean, 1,100 miles away, reveling again in the idea of travel with no particular plans.

And then I went off to work.

After all, I'm not living on the road yet, just the streets. And that, to be honest, is why I'm getting out of LA. I've been enjoying living in the van in LA so much that part of me wonders why I'm leaving. What I need to do is just take more time off and enjoy this city. I do really like LA, I just don't get around to taking advantage of all that's here. It's tempting to convince myself to stop working so many places and actually do some exploring of this city.

But I know myself. I've got too many places I work here and too little ability to say no to work.
That's the problem with having 3-4 part time jobs, (and only one with regular hours). I'm always afraid they're going to dry up so everytime I'm offered work I take it, even when that means I'm working 70 hours a week. Even now that I know that the very idea of the work drying up is crazy. It took me a while to build up to that 70 hours and I guess I just remember what it was like when I first started in LA and was working that after school program that paid $25 for an afternoon of attempting to teach 20+ kids science.

I've been listening to the "A Year in Europe" podcast lately and on one of the early ones Sheryl mentions that it's taking her a while to slow down to travel speed. I know it'll take me some time too and I think the only way will be for me to get out of town for a while. I suppose that's generally the purpose of travel. I need to go to places where it's harder for me to fall into work that is not what I really want to be doing long term, but entertaining enough that I don't quit. Places where I'll slow down and learn to focus. Once I've got figured out though I'll be back to LA to explore.

Another month and a half and I'll be out of LA and actually have the time to stick around and enjoy the rest of a gorgeous day like today.

Maybe it'll even rain.

What a day. My pretty van is looking slightly more lived in tonight. I woke up this morning to a flat tire, so I'm driving on a donut until I can get a replacement tomorrow. My spacious living is somewhat less spacious while I share it with the tire. Tomorrow morning this will disappear. At least it sure as hell better get taken care of tomorrow. I'd rather not have a tire in my living room for more than a night.

While I've got the pictures up, notice the black cloth on the left side? You might be able to make out the wooden dowel running the width of van just behind the seats. That's my curtain, which is probably not as stealthy as I like to pretend it is.

I had to call AAA to put the donut on the van because I have no jack. Dad and I took it out of the back of the van last time I was down in San Diego. I don't remember what the logic behind this was. Probably went something like, "Might as well leave that here. What are the chances you'll get a flat?"

As it turned out just getting the donut out from underneath the van was enough of a pain in the butt that even if I had known where it was it would have taken forever to do it myself. Every time I get a flat tire it's with a new (to me) car and I have no idea where the spare is. But now I've seen it done and I feel confident I'll be able to do it myself. (Once I put the jack back in the trunk). Yay for increasing self-sufficiency!

My favorite part of the morning though was when a mother and her two small (maybe 2 and 3 years old) children were walking by and the older one wanted to know what was going on. She explained that the man was changing the tire because it was flat and you can't drive on tires when they're flat. The little boy watched in absolute fascination then turned to his mom and exclaimed "This is a very special day." I told his mom it was a very special day for me too, but that I was hoping it would stop being such a special day soon.

It ended up being a very busy day, but nothing else particularly special happened.

While in the photo posting mood let me get some pictures up from my trip to Santa Barbara. That was a very special couple days in the good way. I give you the best of the camera dump.I was a big fan of the sunsets.


On the way down I stopped in Malibu and got a campsite at my favorite campground. If you scroll down a few months you can read my description of the sound of the waves on the rocks of this beach. I took audio while I was there, of course, so once I've figured out how to put that up here, you'll get to actually hear it for yourselves.



Also, my ex-roommate's 18 year old cat, Misha, passed away this last week. He was a great cat, even if in his old age he confused my laundry basket with his litterbox. He will be missed.

The joys of free space vs. the time it takes to create it.

Last night I slept on Ventura Blvd, which was not my intention when I left work.

I left at midnight, but was feeling pretty wide awake so I thought I'd pull over and read for a while by the street lights streaming through the back window before driving to where ever it was that I was going to sleep, (undecided, but hopefully someplace darker). I think I made it about 4 pages before falling fast asleep until 6 in the morning.

Today I'm taking advantage of the fact that I'm working in a studio with a tape player hooked up to the board and I'm going through a stack of old tapes digitalizing everything that I want to keep. All part of the plan to consolidate as much as possible of my life. It's a good feeling, but I got to say, the ratio of time spent to get rid of a single cassette to the amount of space gained by getting rid of it, it's understandable how this stuff builds up. There's always been that intention to go through these boxes and digitalized these cassettes and minidiscs (some of which are interviews I did a while back that I might eventually need for pieces), just like there's always been that intention to read all those books on the shelf before getting rid of them. You really need something like this trip, (or at least I do), to actually force you to get it done. It's so much easier to just through it in a box or under the desk for later.

Well, now I've got no desk and space for only a few boxes, so I'm forced to do it all at once. It's a very satisfying feeling to get rid of something you haven't used in a year (or years), and know that you will never have to think about it again. It feels like crossing things off a to-do list.

This pruning/compacting process is yet another reason I'm glad I moved out of my apartment 4 months before leaving town, (the $917 a month in rent being the big reason I'm glad). It's forced me to start the process much earlier. Still, there's at least a closet full of stuff down at my parents that I'll continue to do what I can to get rid of.

Next time I'm visiting I may tackle the crafting supplies. Anyone want some yarn? I am tempted to use the desire to free up the space as an excuse to crochet some blankets, but the amount time to make the blankets vs. the amount of space this would free up is absurd. (Plus then I'd need to figure out what to do with the blankets.)

I may stick with tatting for a while. Thread is so much more compact. About half of mine is sitting easily under the passenger seat, ready to go with me anywhere I choose to.

Now if only I can get the rest of my life to fit into the van as neatly as the tread. Just seven more weeks to pare it all down.

Damn you Google Maps!

I was loving my google map of places to go visit, until I just realized that I have so many landmarks that it doesn't list them all on one page anymore. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you when you've clicked on something that's on another page, (and most importantly it doesn't give you the description of it.)

I thought I could get around it by splitting my landmark among a bunch of maps by geography, but you can't point someone to more than one map at a time.

SO,
Anyone have suggestions for other mapping programs where I can list all my landmarks on one map?

Cause I'm definitely not interested in cutting down how many places I have marked.

Santa Barbara!

Last week I had 3 (three!!) days off so I headed up to Santa Barbara for a little sight-seeing.

It was great, I toured the Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez missions, talked with strangers, hung out on the pier, watched dolphin and seals in the ocean, tatted, read Jorge Luis Borges, did some writing, almost went on a glider flight over the valley (too overcast), and ate excellent blackberry pie with an awesome crust at a place that also had very beautiful baked potatoes. It even rained one night for about 20 minutes which was very nice. I can't wait to be out in the (parked) van in a proper rain storm, preferably somewhere with a nice view.

It was also a nice experiment in going to a new place and finding (free) places to sleep. This involved some driving around, but wasn't too hard, except for getting crazy lost one night in Goleta and ending up on a dirt road somewhere near the UC Santa Barbara campus. It was nice to know that I could show up in a new town and find places, though Santa Barbara is pretty friendly to homes on wheels.

The state parks up there are $25 a night. Seeing that just makes me like the grocery store parking lots more. You can eat quite well on $25. And I did. Spent too much money on food that week, but it was well worth it.

Yesterday, I spent the holiday morning at work taking advantage of the fact that there was no around and I could actually get a editing booth, and then spent the afternoon hiking. Except for the heat (which was actually not as bad as the weekend) it was quite a pleasant day. Though I did kill my battery running the fan and the radio in the evening. Got a jump from the vandweller parked next to me and was on my way.

I guess it's summertime.

Yesterday I got off of work and it was 96 degrees outside. The day before it was 92 and the day before that 94.

Folks, I get off work at midnight.

True, it cool off a bit when I left the concrete parking structure that was radiating stored up heat from the day, but was still mid 80s all last night.

It got up to 112 yesterday afternoon. Luckily I was spending it the shade in a park with a very nice breeze.

If I could I'd head somewhere cooler. I'm wondering if once I get into the winter I'm going to be wishing for this weather. Probably not. I think I might prefer the cold to the heat.

At least while I'm still in LA I can head into work to get out of the heat. The studios at Clear Channel are always so air conditioned I have to wear a jacket.

Finally LIVING in the van and tatting in the park.

I mentioned earlier to some friends that I didn't really feel like I was living in the van, just sleeping in it, because I'd been spending so much time at work. (One friend asked if I actually felt like I'd been LIVING in my apartment, which is a very good point.)

Well, I started feeling settled into the van about three or four weeks ago, (something I think would probably have happened sooner if I hadn't had so many 15 hour work days in a row), but thanks to some actual time off this week I'm starting to feel like I'm finally living in the van. Or rather living just outside the van. I had a very lovely Sunday morning and early afternoon spent at Woodley park in the valley, part of a couple of parks next to each other that I just discovered. (It reminded me of a Minnesota park actually, if you ignore the white noise of the 405 freeway 100 yards away, and the lack of sweltering humidity and swarms of bugs.)

I laid out on my brand new KJAZZ blanket and read a book on California history, nothing exciting to read about (as usual), but was great to be getting out. If I still had an apartment I'd probably would have spent the morning inside. True, I probably still would have been reading the same book, but it's more exciting to me to know it's being done in a park I never would have discovered otherwise.

I heard a guy once say that he loved road trips with his dog because his dog helped him meet other people. Well, tatting is my dog. I suppose it's somewhat the same with knitting and crocheting in public. You always meet up with another crafter who wants to see what you're working on. Tatting I think is sometimes even better because people can't figure out what you're doing without asking or without me noticing their interest and volunteering the information. Occasionally I meet someone who knows what it is, but I have yet to randomly run into another tatter.

The other day I was at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, when a group of women I'm calling the Armenian grandmothers sat down next to me and one asked me what I was doing. Not in English, but you can get the gist of tatting just by watching so slowed down and pointed out exactly what I was doing and got to use some of the eight words of Russian that I remember. Eventually another woman came who spoke better English and we talked for a while about how she came to the US.

That represents one of the things I'm looking for in this trip. I could just travel around the US and visit all the places listed in the guide books, but I'd be missing out on a lot. Tatting I think will work out as an excellent ambassador.

I suppose I could also spend a year sitting at Palisades Park tatting and meeting the people who stop to ask me what I'm doing, but I DO want to see the places in the guide book too. :)

Last minute packing in San Diego

A few hours left here at my parents home before I head back up to LA.

I came down on Monday for jury duty, (which I suspect I got out of because I expressed my belief in the importance of probable cause for the police to do a search of a stopped vehicle), but stayed till today to take advantage of the air conditioner, a kitchen, (made a chocolate souffle), and of course my parents company. :)

While down here I sorted through the boxes that sit in the spare bedroom and managed to empty seven of them. I quite pleased with this progress though only about a third of these things are leaving the house for good. Another third was redistributed throughout the house to be used (and hopefully used up) and rest is a success story of creative repacking and remains in the bedroom, but much more compact.

I did not even begin to deal with the boxes of yarn and crafting supplies which was my original goal. I had to go through the rest to even get to them. So they will remain for the next trip down to San Diego.

While at it I did a great deal of organizing what's left managing to sort of separate the rest into what I will take with me when I leave southern CA at the end of October and what will stay. I gathered books during the two years I volunteered/worked at NPR and had access to their shelves and shelves of free books (sent by publishers for review) and put many aside for my trip. Some history books, some of regional interest. Anything that had a geographical tie-in to some place I might visit on my trip got put aside and now as I look at the boxes of books and have a fair idea of the size of the van I'm slightly concerned. But I'm going to continue to ignore it now and will only worry about it when I am getting ready to leave southern CA.

It's been interesting while living in the van to see how few things I use on a daily basis. I'm sure I'll be writing more on this later, but I have always enjoyed getting rid of things. There's a joy in saying to yourself, "There. This is now gone and I never have to think about it again." This is at odds with the fact that I'm still a bit of a packrat. But I think the packrat-i-ness comes from not wanting to throw things away. I want to get rid of them, but I want to know they're being put to some use. Or at least that they're sitting in the back of somebody else's closet rather than in a dump.

I'm so stealthy I might be a terrorist!

Yesterday when dropping a friend off at the airport the police had me pull aside for a "random" car check.

I think it's because it's a van with darkened windows.

They let us go after a quick look in the windows which made my friend very happy. She had visions of missing her plane while my house was spread out all over side of the road, picked though by the cops.

I had no where to go. I would have been amused.

And I would have had a better story from it. :)

Time I got around to posting this. It's my start of a map of "unapparent reasons" for my trip. (Click on it to go to the google maps page for it and see details.) It's not finished. But I suppose it won't ever be finished. Pink markers are food related things to visit. A wise traveler, (Alicia), once told me while in Italy, "all travel is really just a glorified food tour."

I'm always looking for suggestions. Canada's looking quite empty at the moment. I may not necessarily hit all these places, and there's a lot that I know I want to go to, but haven't put on here yet.

Like I said, this is the start. Give me some suggestions.

Remodeling

I did some remodeling of the van while I was down in San Diego last week. I had three main concerns. 1) Taking out the back seat to make more room and putting in a drawer for clothes. 2) The bed tilted downward towards the back of the van. 3) Generally just sorting though the van and taking out the things I don't need while I'm in LA.

Before pictures:
(With stuff in it)

The shockingly bright white blob on the right is my pillow. The shockingly bright right blob on the left is a box of various travel-related articles I've been collecting, but have yet to go through. (It's on the to-do list for next weekend.) It's hard to tell, but there's clothes hanging from hooks on both sides of the van. It works, but not as well as I thought it would. The hooks come out so far that the clothes seem to take up more room than they should.

Same view, emptied out:



The "bed" (more on this later) rests on the back seat and a board attached to it. Here's a picture from the left back door:


That thing blocking your view of the bottom of the legs is the most annoying thing about this van since it blocks access to most of the space under the bed from the inside. Unfortunately, it's not possible to take it out easily.

The first step now was to get the back seat out. Or rather half of it. Without the backseat that the bed is part of I'd have to build something else to let the bed rest on. It'd be possible, but not enough of a gain in storage space to worry about it right now. The bottom of the van comes up there so it's not actually a huge improvement. So just half came out.



A break was taken in the remodeling process at this point for lunch, cleaning the van, and a trip to Target for a new plastic drawer.



The bottom is screwed into the fabric on the floor and I made two latches to keep it from flying around while I'm driving. I am very pleased with the drawer. Ridiculously pleased. It fits into the space just perfectly.



Now onto the bed.

The big problem with the bed was that it tilted down towards the back. Ok if I park on a hill, but it's easier not to have to insist on a hill. Originally, I was going to fix this by taking out the back seats and building a whole new bed. Instead, I found a quicker and easier solution in the garage.

Dad bought a new piece of foam for the back of the Prius so he can lie down in there. Luckily for me there was a piece left over that I could use for the downhill half of the bed. Another piece dad cut (with a crazy big straight edge razor) tapered to transition from foam to the board.



Next the foam the stretches the full length, (that's my camping chair underneath it), and then the sheepskin. Very comfy and (now) quite flat.

The third thing on the list was to take out all the stuff I'm not using. No campgrounds, so no camping gear. So that is all sitting in a box in my parents' garage waiting for when I get out of LA. Between that and the new drawer I've got most of the stuff that was floating around the van put away.




No more clothes hanging from the hooks. The first night I slept back in the van the space seemed so huge. :) So strange to have nothing hanging there.

Of course, I could also leave out a bunch of stuff because I'll be back down to San Diego in just three weeks for jury duty. So really it's just a short trip back up to LA. But in three months I go out on my own and can't be leaving stuff down at my parents' anymore. Well, nothing I might need anyway. I've already got lots of stuff that will stay there while I'm traveling. But I'm hoping to sort though the stuff down there and getting rid of even more in the next three months. I'm enjoying getting rid of stuff.

Days off are great.

Having two days off from work, (or rather having only a limited amount of work, all of which could be done from outside the office), I headed "home" to my parents' house in San Diego. Much good food was eaten, much laundry was washed, and much remodeling was done to the van.

Pictures soon, I promise. I'll have time over the weekend to do a proper post detailing all the changes, but the short of it is one of the two backseats was taken out (the other still being used as half of the bed), and a brand new plastic drawer from Target put in its place. I am ridiculously pleased by this plastic drawer. It fits into the space just perfectly, swallowed the stacks of clothing I'm planning to take with me, and still has plenty of room. In fact, I haven't finished packing everything back up yet for the next three weeks in Los Angeles, (have to come back on the 20th for jury duty), but I am quite pleased with the free space in the van so far.

Makes me a bit less worried about the state of the van once I leave Los Angeles and actually start "TRAVELING."

I have however, taken out most of the camping stuff and put it in a box to stay at home. It's an acknowledgment of the realities of what the next couple months will be. No proper campgrounds for me. Just urban camping.

You know you're grown up when you walk into your parents' house and think to yourself, "this smells like grandma's house."

Thanks to this morning's washing, my van now smells like citrus.

Slowing down.

It's very odd to me to have nowhere to be. It's something I'd forgotten about from my first taste of living in a car three years ago. I ended up spending a lot of time at the Burbank library.

The van is technically a machine for transportation and for the last four weeks I've been too busy to have any time with no where to go. Normally when I had nowhere to go I'd go home. I might not actually have anything to do at home, but it made sense to be there when there was no where I had to be. Now, when I get into the van I sometimes have to sit and think a minute deciding where to go. It's a feeling I'll have a lot of in the next year when I get on the road, but for the next three months while I'm still working the options will be constrained by time limits.

I did a tape sync* for All Things Considered on Friday in Malibu so I had Thursday evening and Friday morning with nothing much to do but hang out. I think It was the first time I've had a couple hours off since the 4th of July. I had a nice dinner at a park near Pepperdine, (I have photos but for some reason my computer and camera aren't talking this weekend), then visited a bookstore, a pet store and a Radio Shack. (I actually had three things I wanted from the Radio Shack, but they didn't have any of them.)

The next day I didn't do much with my few hours off between the tape sync in Malibu and my normal Friday afternoon/evening job at Clear Channel. Drove up into the Santa Monica Mountains, passed a hike I haven't done in years and thought about doing it again, (even ate my lunch in the parking lot of the trailhead), then decided against it drove up Mulholland Drive and took an hour nap at a scenic overlook.

I'm afraid it is not very exciting to read about. Drove through some pretty mountains, took a nap, went to work. But it was a pleasant afternoon anyway, and I'm working on slowing down and doing nothing.

That being said I promise I'll also do some more interesting things as soon as I stop working so much. For now it's nice to just sit around.


*A tape sync is where the person they're interviewing can't (or is too big/busy to) come into a studio to record so they send someone like me with good recording equipment and do the interview over the phone. Then I send them the audio and they sync up the interviewer and interviewee in post. Basically I'm half engineer and half mic stand.

I LOVE not paying rent

In the first two weeks of this month I have spent about $350. Of that about $100 was gas and almost the same for food. I was surprised to see I'd spent so much on food, but I did go out a couple times with friends, so I was paying for the company more than the food. But I'm no longer paying rent so I can afford dinner out now days.

This has been such a busy week at work that even if I still had an apartment I wouldn't be there. It's nice not to have the first couple hours of work going to paying rent on an apartment I'm never at.

I broke the first rule of living in your van last night. I was at the Bolsa Cica state preserve (I think it's some sort of state preserve anyway), and was there after 8:00 when they technically close. 8:00 is way too early, by the way, the sun was still up. Anyway, it was 8:45, I had just finished writing in my journal and was sitting in the drivers seat of the van enjoying the birds before I drove away when the police came by. Of course he shone his flashlight in the back of the van and saw the sleeping bag. He asked me where I lived and I explained that I lived in Santa Monica but was working in Long Beach. He asked me if I was living in my van and I said I was for that week. Then he wanted my license and I gave it to him then he took it back to his car to run it and my plates.

I let him do it. And that's where I should have at least stopped and found out why he wanted to do that. Next time. I'd like to avoid it, but I have no doubt that I'll run into the police again at many points along this trip. Now I'm just worried there's some sort of record of this check.

Ahh well. I'll have to do some poking around and see if it's possible to find out what comes up with the police run your license. I've had the police wake me up plenty of times, so they may have run my plates before, but I think this is the first time they've taken my driver's license back to their car to check. But it's also the first time I've admitted to living in my van. As soon as I said it I knew I was breaking the rules, but I couldn't see how I could deny it when the sleeping bag is laid out and there's clothes hangers on the hooks above the doors.

All that being said. I love my little van. I like having as little stuff as possible. I'm looking forward to having the time to get rid of more of it.

The first two weeks.

Ok. I've been out of the apartment for two weeks and finally getting around to posting. It's been a crazy busy two weeks at work getting ready for the pledge drive at KJAZZ. So life in the van has been going well. I have found a number of things that I need do differently. For one, I had all this food at the apartment that I thought I'd be making at campgrounds in the evenings. Problem is, no campgrounds. All the campgrounds in LA county have been reserved for basically the rest of the summer. So it's urban camping for me and it's a bit hard to stay stealthy when you've got a camp stove cooking soup in the Ralphs parking lot.

So I have crazy amounts of canned soup sitting in the van that I can't really make except at work. At any rate for the first couple days the van was a bit of a mess as I had just poured the last of my stuff in the apartment into the van. Now I've got a couple drawers that make the whole place feel more organized.

The last week has been spent at work. Basically I've done nothing but work or sleep so I don't don't really feel like lately I've been actually doing much living in the van, just sleeping. That will continue for the next week. Eventually I'll get to actually doing more interesting things.

I did go to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for the 4th of July. I'd been planning on going to the beach or hanging out at a campground relaxing, but like I said, no campgrounds. So I drove around till I thought of something to do for the fourth. They had some stuff doing on for the holiday. It was exactly the sort of thing I plan on doing for the trip. Random museums that I run into. Actually I will probably hit all presidential libraries. History is good.

And of course I'm still looking for suggestions of places to go.

Ready to get started.

Four more days until I'm homeless again. I can't wait. Mom and Dad are visiting tomorrow and we'll switch vehicles. I'm going to miss my pretty little prius, but I'm looking forward to getting the van put together. By Sunday I had basically run out of the packing that could be done before I had the van. I've been super busy with work the last couple days so no time to do anymore anyway. I just found out today that I have the fourth of July off. I never even occurred to me that I would. I haven't had the fourth of July off in years. I haven't decided yet if I want to go to a party/picnic and go see some fireworks, or if I just want to hang out on my own at the Malibu
beach campground laying in the sun and reading a good book.


A whole day off. It feels so luxurious. I like the work I'm doing, but I'm looking forward to when I get lots of time off. It's been a while.

Spontaneous order is awesome

This morning I was out and about and found myself with an extra hour and a half to kill before I had to be at work. Not enough time to go home, too much time to just get to work early, and I wasn't hungry, so no point in going out for a nice lunch, (which I wouldn't really want to spend the money on right now anyway). So I went for a drive down Mulholland Drive. Immediately upon rounding the first bend I felt a little leap of joy at a new view. Here I was only 200 yards from the freeway entrance I take a couple times a week and yet it felt completely new.

I used my extra hour an a half to drive down the section of Mullholland east of the 405, stopping at view points along the way and reading the small informational plaques, and reveling in the iconic sprawl of the city stretching out into the edge of the mountains. I love looking at Los Angeles from above. I better comprehend how it fits together nestled in the valleys, it's tiny little downtown creeping down Wilshire blvd all the way out to the ocean while the rest of the city oozes out to the mountains. Even the traffic takes on a larger than life quality when you're looking down on it. It feels like life. All these people going about their lives unconcerned about 99.999% of the other 4 million around them. But somehow they all fit together and a century of spontaneous order has created this beautiful city.

I can't wait to get out on the road and check out some other new places.