How about an update for us avid fans?!
Any luck on your brakes?
–Desmond

Since I’ve last written I’ve managed to save up enough money to purchase a newer van rather than repair the old one. The new ride is ten years newer and has a third of the miles on the clock. It’s still not converted over to “full stealth” mode, nor does it have the secondary battery system installed yet, but it is a fitful place nonetheless. For the curious, it’s a standard American made full-sized van though this time I bought a “shorty” instead of an extended in part because that was the awesome deal that fell into my lap and partially because it’s easier to maneuver.

Personally I’ve been making more money, hence the new van, though still not enough to afford “normal” housing. At this point I’ve become so used to living in my van that shifting back to an apartment of some sort would be a novel experience and one that I’m not ready to make at this time. Certainly not at this time of year while the weather is glorious outside. The cool breeze through open windows is a joy and not a cursed draft.

Just in case anyone is crazy enough to go beyond the capabilities of the four wheel drive Sportsmobile vans in their quest for boondocking there is hope. Get stuck in the snow? Never, not with a snowmobile van hybrid like the folks at Yellowstone Expeditions.

I’ve visited your site often since I found it, and have wondered why you haven’t taken advantage of the means to monetize your blog through Google, Amazon, or a small number of successful on-line models.

You live in a van. I’m disabled, yet I make a fairly good income with AdSense and affiliate programs.

Your writing is top-notch, and it speaks to the soul. You should reconsider monetizing your blog, or perhaps make a topical essay site on tightly-focussed niche themes.
–Rick

I’ve looked in some of those monitizing models before, when the site was young with little traffic and lofty expectations. But reality sunk in when I realized just how much traffic I’d need to effective spend my time setting up these various schemes.

I have thought about it though and will perhaps bug you in the future for some assistance in wiring together the bits that needs to be placed. My traffic is getting better albeit slowly. And now with the chillier days I’ll be spending more time “indoors” and paying attention to the site. Ideally this will help traffic all the more as I’ve not been posting regularly for some time now.

Part of the hesitation is that I can actually meter out the time to pay ratio of “real world” writing projects as I have professionally worked as a writer before. And last time I did that it was $16 per hour. One thing I do need to keep in mind though is that setting this blog up, the loading of the borrowed server space and mucking around with PHP and whatnot was very time consuming–but educational too. So if I could think to myself, “Oh, this is a good entry, with the google hits I should make X number of dollars from it.” Then I would be very keen indeed on monitization.

Shall I assume you’re not posting anymore? What’s the haps?
–Gary

Various things have happened to make blogging a very low priority for me. A chronic illness flared up, the summer was too nice, I felt bored with the site, felt that the time spent versus pages viewed wasn’t high enough and most of all… the dog ate my keyboard.

But I’m still alive and kicking and, ideally, will be going through my folder of post ideas. While I might not have been writing much I have been building up things to share.

Rather that posting excessively today I should be taking care of this:

I can still stop and the pads in the front aren’t totally gone but with a mild midwestern winter entering the scene sooner that later now would be the better time for a little fix up. That and I should probably do a full engine tune too as my van home is getting harder to start and harder to keep running until the engine temperature warms up a bit.
Being a naughty mechanic I’m pushing the front pads to their limit by breaking off wear clip so it doesn’t sound so nasty. The rotors need replacement no matter how long I stretch out the life of the pads so I’ll just keep visual tabs on them.
Part of my hesitancy is that, aside from fiscal issues, I just plain don’t feel like doing it. If it was normal passenger car brakes it be no problem but now I’m dealing with a large, heavy duty truck platform. To replace the rotors I’ll need to swap out the bearings and hubs at the same time and then there is the simple act of getting the wheels off. At some point someone before my ownership put on fancy lugnuts that are impossible to remove and impossible to fit a socket to. It’s simple seeming thin metal caps pressed over but neither SAE or metric works and I fought them for a couple hours and only managed to remove one. Clearly, to the above parts total will be new lug nuts all the way around.
So there… point your fingers at the screen and chide me as you please. I deserve it.

April, I’ve spent the last couple days reading your blog…you’re a brilliant writer. You should really consider writing a book.
Robbie

Thanks for the compliment. You’d probably be amazed at how long I actually spend with some of these posts too. The writing part usually takes little time as that’s the easy thing. Debating on weather or not to post what I have in mind far more time consuming. This ability would come as a shock to my high school English instructors as they focused so much on diagramming sentences and very little time on writing. And quite frankly I’d not know a possessive pronoun if it bit me on the tush.
As far as books go I think this site, when I actually post to it, is far more productive to the greater society than would be reserving the information only for those who have access to a book or the money to order one.

I’ve done some copy and technical writing in the past but those gigs were found through networking or just plain old luck. Though I have several degrees none of them focused on the right things to make much of a jump into the commercial writing world. I’ve tried applying before and if I get call backs it always for a different position.
Oh, and let’s not even mention that I’m prone to taking on too many projects at once either!

I was wondering you said 55 foot of square space and having a small space but then you talk about how much gas that vehicle uses so my question is what kind of van or vehicle are you using? that gives you that comfort that traditional homes have.
–Ranger

I gave the original post a brief read through and while I do have about 55 squares of floor space, typical for a full-sized van, many of the hallmarks of traditional homely comforts are missing.

There’s currently no plumbing in the van. Electricity is supplied by a second set of batteries that I need to be energy conscious about as it take a good bit of driving time to refill them with amp hours. My kitchen is a small butane stove though I usually just eat stuff that doesn’t need cooking and being rather ambivilenet about food temperature is a big help there. And let’s not forget that ceiling to floor is only about four feet.
What does make it home like is the stuff that’s in there, my various possessions and the familiarty of the surroundings–especially as I built out the interior as the original inside was literally falling apart. The van is mine, paid in full and revived by my own hands, and once inside it’s my space, my way and therefore very homey. And when people inquire, those used to large and normal home, I just say that I’m rocking it like it was 1850 in terms of home based lifestyle.

I have a soft space in my heart for the normally sized VW vans and also for scooters. Note though that this oddity is a bad idea for stealthy living. One of the rules of sucessful car living and van dwelling is to not draw attention to yourself.

To all the nay sayers who’ve written me hate mail since I’ve started this blog I hope you’ve been reading the papers lately. I’ve been maintaining that the economy had been in trouble for a long time and that the government has been using bandages to fix broken bones along with the usual smoke and mirror and bread and circuses. But now the crisis has exploded. It can’t be hidden and is breaking loose.
Even the mainstream press can’t suppress the horrible state the United States economy is in. The housing market is crashing, the dollar is falling, consumer confidence is failing and the list goes on. And it’s not even buried either, it’s all through the front section and make the entire cover of the business section.

A couple months back I was preparing a bunch of posts about this with links to various articles. But if you don’t believe me just go to google news and read.