The plan? Head north. Find a commune up north and work on the farm. Learn about different ways of thinking, meet new people, have exciting experiences, discover a world outside the bay area, hike and continue to heal my hip, do photography.
Acquired most of this gear by visiting 20+ garage sales in Moraga. Total cost: $39. I was lucky, it was mega-garage-sale-weekend in Moraga.This cooler is vintage. Seriously vintage. It’s from the 1950’s – apparently the quality has gone downhill since then.Unassuming soccer-mom minivan. Who would suspect that an unemployed-31-year-old-long-haired-slowly-spiraling-into-full-blown-hippie-man resides inside. I particularly love the “Los Lomas Lacrosse” and “K-12 Education Fund” bumper stickers. Will definitely leave those on.Purchased this about 3 weeks ago – 190k miles, single owner, all maintenance records. Decided on the Sienna because of the high resale value, known reliability and spacious interiors (with all seats removed of course).The Bed! It’s about 28 inches wide. Just enough for me to comfortably lay on my back with my hands rested on my side. Cost of this 10 inch, sealy memory foam mattress? 0. Thanks Craigslist! I cut this bed with a kitchen knife to customize the exact size I wanted. Finally getting a good use out of all my psychedelic Peruvian blankets!General idea for the mini-van conversion is that there are two areas: sleeping and cooking. Sleeping is the bed of course and the cooking area is the trunk. Eating happens outside. Basically everything happens outside! All gear seen here will allow me to eat a delicious hot meal and drink coffee.View from the bed. So far, I’ve spent two nights in the VanBun (parked in my parents driveway). It’s quite comfy and cozy!My Dad helped me construct the bed. My woodshoop skills from high school were a bit rusty, so I was glad to have his input. I struggled with designing the bed. The goal of the platform is to give extra storage space and provide a semblance of legitimacy to my operation. What kind of deviant would sleep in his minivan with the mattress laid directly on the ground?!?!As I was saying, I struggled with the design. How much storage would I like? How much headspace do I want to sacrifice? How wide? Space is limited in the VanBun; one must conserve as much as possible and only use what is needed. After several scribbles, hours of manic pacing and days of internet research, I decided on a final design.Woah, those legs look a bit short! It was all part of the plan though. As it turns out, the legs were a bit too short for the standard storage bins I acquired – also, I didn’t account for the width of the 2×4 supporting the frame; several inches of valuable storage space sacrificed! Oh well, I hacked together a solution by standing the bed platform up on 2×4’s. I am reminded that it’s all about creating a minimal viable product and iterating on improvements. It’s impossible to make it perfect the first time; just hack something together and take it from there!
