Jared Benedict tried in vain to get the public domain maps for free or reasonable costs through various means and sources. So instead he bought the whole US in 1:24k scale and will release them for free once his initial $1,600 investment is paid back. Soon we’ll be able to get them from his site or the Internet Archive.

These maps are useful for many reasons, but for the cheap traveler they can help you find spots of land that are free to camp on, such as BLM or federal forests. Currently Jared has some to offer at the Libre Map Project, but the Map Ransom will make everywhere downloadable instead of just some places.

It’s been raining most nights lately at least intermittently if not quite substantially, and sometimes in the day too. And while I do like the sound of falling rain there are limits to my affection.

When my head rests about two feet from the metal roof of my van even a light sprinkling makes a big noise inside. But storms like last night  are downright oppressive in their volume as the sounds of nature take on truly unnatural proportions. I really wish I had a decibel meter to find out exactly how loud it was in there as I’m sure it wasn’t OSHA approved. But for sure, regardless of the actually decibel reading, it was far too loud to readily sleep. The sound of the rain drops was actually drowning out the lightening and thunder as the storm passed overhead.

Thankfully I’m not actually claustrophobic as I think I’d have popped and went insane. Nighttime is a very tight experience in my van. The roof is little over two feet from the bed and when the blackout curtains are up there is absolutely no light back there. So it’s physically a small space and there is no light to make sense of what space is actually there. I reminds me of taking tours of caves when the guides turn the lights off to show what darkness is really like. Yes, it’s that pitch in there. And when you can’t see anything it feels like there’s nothing.

So last night I spent many hours flipping around trying to sleep with my headphones on. I was listening music trying to down out the sound but the only thing that worked was really loud noisy music. I’d much rather have had the jazz playing from the local college’s radio, but instead I was searching out noisy rock guitars. Anything loud and pervasive to mask the sound of incessant rain.

Aside from just the loudness noise of the rain, the shear volume of it, my brain struggled to make sense of the sound. A lot of energy gets spent as my brain focused on the sound and tries to find patterns in it and organize it. Same with seeing static on television or radio, rain drops on puddles and other random events, they also sends my brain into overdrive. But it’s the auditory that really gets me.

Two of my migraine triggers are flickering lights and the white noise from rushing air. This is why I absolutely loath florescent lights and high volume air vents and prefer not to work in office buildings and other commercial buildings. Most places are just fine, but the ones that aren’t cause some serious issues. My last client had lights in the common area of their small office. I couldn’t be in there for even a second without being affected by the flicker. Thankfully the owner actually understood and would turn the overhead florescent lights off when I was there. I’d have given it ten minutes before starting the descent to a migraine. It was that bad.

So once I get a secondary power source for the van, a nice battery bank for living off of, I’ll be installing LED lights or some other constant light source. And with my occasional bouts of insomnia that light will not some too soon–especially as it seems to be monsoon season! With my deeply tinted windows even daytime can be dark in there if it’s overcast.

I was rummaging around and found another variation on the DIY camp stove. Don Johnston’s Photon Stove looks like a variation on the Pepsi Can Stove though with some additional extra features.

There’s two other sites I found interesting too. Backpacking sites have been yielding good information on how to pack light and small which is great for living in a van or car as space is indeed limited. And when I see my vans sagging suspension I get really leery about adding more weight. And while shaving an ounce here or there might not be a dramatic for me it still makes a difference.

Trail Quest’s list of Alternative Gear give cheap to free alternative for fancy and expensive camping gear. Their Ultralight page offer a few ideas as well. The scant treatment people use for gear on backpacking is quite the exercise in minimalism. Backpacking.net’s Make Gear page has many great DIY plans for various camping and outdoor living necessities.

I’m soaking up some of my free cable TV while I’m still housebound. Mostly by watching movies. The person I’m living with is a huge fan of TV and we have all the movie channels. I’ve long since written DVD rentals out of my budget so I’m normally catching up on Hollywood.

But at the moment I’m watching a fishing show. It seemed like a good idea as I have a fishing pole now and might be able to glean some info off it. But, instead I’ve been dismayed with what I have gotten myself into.

It’s a Babe Winkleman show and he talks about fishing, then when it comes time to cook the fish they turn to his wife. Oh just smack them all down! Did some exec at the station say, “you know, babe, that name is a little too effeminate. We have to reassure the viewer that you’re a manly-man so all the cooking needs to be done by your wife. The gender stereotypes must be preserved.”

Maybe I’ll need to paint my fishing pole pink so that I can fit in and get a guy to do all the yucky stuff like skewer the worm, remove the hook from the fish and clean it. Then I’ll cook it up, prepare him a plate and fetch him beer all night. Maybe I can even get pregnant and eschew shoes too.

To help control expenses I’ve thought about how I could harvest food for free. Perhaps get a book of regional plants that are edible and take notes at the library. I though about hunting and fishing too. Hunting for animals is a bit over the top for me, but fishing might work. The supplies are relatively cheap and unlike shooting guns there’s plenty of places to take worms swimming without venturing out into the backwoods.

Trouble is that I could budget for a hook and some worms perhaps, but buying gear beyond that is a completely different matter. So on sunday when I was browsing for some fishing techniques I just decided that I’d need to find something at a yard sale, or perhaps some generous soul would have an extra to loan or give.

Fate Steps In

My sister needed to clean out her old house as it was the last day of her occupancy. As I was staying with her I’d think it rude to not assist. So off we went to the old house. She cleaned the kitchen a little, gathering last minute items and wiping down some surfaces. I was sent out to the shed to finish moving a couple already selected items to her car.

As I was moving these I found other things, which beyond the stuff my sister said she was keeping that I was free to take as I pleased the remainders. And what did I find? A fishing pole and tackle box!

The Haul

I’m now the proud owner of a short little travel fishing rod and reel combo. It’s probably a tad over four feet in length so it stores easily in the van under the bed. The box I left behind as it was just too darn large and it was cleaned out of its contents anyways, I just appreciated the humor of finding it too. It seems to work well enough and I found another reel too which I took just in case. Apparently this was gear that my nephew didn’t want anymore so it was free to become mine!

I also scored some more wood to finish off the interior of my van. I wanted to make a cabinet that could have a work surface above it so that I could sit and have a desk or someplace to make a sandwich. There was a four by five foot piece of the most beautiful plywood ever. Eight ply 3/4 inch premium grade sanded one side plywood with not a single knot in any of the layers. It’s super expensive stuff from my brother-in-law’s work that’s used in the die industry where blades are implanted into the surface of the wood and then pressed against paper or cardboard to make die cuts like for cereal boxes and the like. The die needs to have incredible dimensional stability and this wood provides it. The tolerance for the dies is in the thousandths of an inch and now my counter top will be the most precise ever installed in a van!

There was also a few other pieces of the same plywood plus a full 1×6, some smaller 2×4 and several pieces of trim. With what I’ve gotten I should be able to wing together a suitable cabinet and finish the prior work off too.