At first glance it might seem that Dodge is addressing the need to homeless people to have shelter by suggesting the purchase of a Sprinter van. The article in the Calgary Sun is about local officials breaking up a homeless camp, allegedly not because of Not In My Backyard, but so that people can get into proper housing–like a shelter or a pay as you go campground.

In reality though, it doesn’t appear to be keyword driven placement. It looks like it’s just bought off an impression count as random ads are being thrown up into the space.

The majority of this weekend was spent moving and packing, selling and storing the remainder of my worldly possessions. And as of yesterday about 10pm I became officially and totally homeless. Not just a little, like when I spent weeks at a time couch surfing, but actually and truly without a regular roof over my head or an address to call home. No lease, mortgage, title, deed or even a handshake agreement of any terms for anything resembling conventional housing. I feel like I need to attend a Housing Anonymous group, stand up and say, “I live in a van and I am homeless.”

When I got into bed last night for my first night of homelessness, and the van does have a bed of course, I laid there with my battery powered light, grabbed some reading material and started reflecting on the experience. There I was, me, living in a van and reading a comic book with a flashlight! It was such a crazy idea that my cackling laughter broke the pitter pat of rain on my fabulous metal roof. As I was laying there the whole idea of me living in a van seemed the most preposterous idea ever. But, there I was and there I will be for the foreseeable future.

It was a nice night’s sleep over all. My body was too sore from moving to rest well but I still slept through the night, awoken only to move about. Which was a challenge, adapting to moving in the new space, as my bed it rather near the ceiling to allow more room underneath for storage. Something that I’m sure I’ll be used to before long, or at least better be. Nothing like kicking the roof of your van to blow your stealthy cover.

This is how the homeless roll in Palm Springs. Just look at the whip this baller rides!

Stolen from: Palm Springs Life

Niece: I don’t know how you can do that.
Me: Do what?
Niece: use power tools like that.
Me: It’s easy, far easier than using  a hand saw.
Niece: But what about cutting your fingers off, aren’t you afraid?
Me: Terrified actually.
Niece: Then why do you do it? Why not use a regular saw?
Me: I’m afraid because I’m aware that I can cut my fingers off and therefore am hyper vigilant about being safe. As such, I don’t expect I’ll ever cut my fingers off.
[silence]
Niece: I don’t care, I’d never use one…
Me: Your elbow and shoulder must really hope that you’ll never need to cut anything.

I’ve had numerous people ask about my safety and are concerned for me while living in my van and being a homeless drifter. One has even broken into tears over possible harm to me. Another friend even gave me a can of some fancy police issue pepper spray she got from her brother the cop.

But mostly, I’m not concerned.

As I’ve lived in some ramshackle neighborhoods since 9/11 I’m used to dealing with the realities of high-crime neighborhoods. I’m used to hearing gun shots. I’m used to hearing screams. In one apartment I’d actively avoid going out after dark, especially after about 10pm. And if you live in a big urban area crime isn’t totally uncommon in the so called “safe” neighborhoods either! You need to live smart, reduce the opportunities for harm and know how to dial 911–if not for your sake than for the others around you.

Know the danger, respect the danger and avoid the danger. It doesn’t mean burying your head in the sand, it means moving ahead smartly. Complacency and ignorance is the most dangerous thing of all. Fear is a good thing! It’s your way of knowing to pay extra attention to something and make some smart choices.

Yes, I’m worried. But I’m not a risk taker, I practice risk management.

My friends sometimes look at me like I’m nuts. Even before the whole “I’m going to go live in my van” idea came out I was usually the one to have wacky ideas. But since I usually pull them off I get a good deal of slack now with my new ventures. I’ve not done anything too wacky, no risk of limb loss or anything, just that I’m willing to see opportunities where others see nothing.

Take kitchens for example. Lots of people wonder where and how I’m going to eat. But most of my meals of late have been peanut butter sandwiches. On a nice whole grain bread they’re quite the little bundles of complex cards and protein. I’m eating the quintessential lunch of school children everywhere. Well, mostly. I don’t like jelly, it’s too sugary. I’d much rather have a banana, which I commonly do with my sandwich.

I have hypo-glycemia and need to watch what I eat. This combination serves me well. All the sugars are slow to digest and it’s reasonably nutritious. So what do I need a kitchen for?

I see my currently normal apartment kitchen as being grossly under utilized. The fridge is mostly condiments. The oven and stove rarely used. Most of the times I use just a single pot on the stove. This can easily be duplicated with a single burner. The fridge holds mostly stuff that can sit just fine at room temperature or is the condiments and things that I use when cooking. I think though that I could live just fine without a cooler full of little jars of Asian sauces, or various pickles, or whatever else I have in there to make sauces and whatnot with. I rarely cook big meals anymore as they just cost way too much and when I’m not feeding friends and loved ones I just eat… well, things like peanut butter sandwiches.

So, tell me again, why is it so weird that I’ll not have a kitchen?

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.

I went out last night wearing the previously mentioned new jacket. I was deeply appreciating being warm and not looking embarrassingly shabby. I ended up looking good, inside and out. A friend took me out for dinner last night to a neighborhood pub I used to frequent when my money situation was a goodly bit better.

It’s a great little place modeled after an Irish pub, where it’s a bar/resaurant hybrid and being filled with locals it’s common to bump into old friends and make new ones. When I lived in that neighborhood I used to go there frequently, as do others in the area. It’s a local haunt.

When I got up for a bathroom break I bumped into someone I know through friends and who’s company I’ve always enjoyed. We chatted for a while in the bathroom line and I got the dreaded question, “So what are you up to these days?”

Well, that ones is tough. I don’t really have a pat answer yet for such questions and stumbled a bit and then changed the subject. On my mind heavily now is that I have about two weeks of regular housing left. After that it’s going to be the van.

How does one proudly say, “Oh, by the way, you’ll want to change me in your address book to miserable financial failure and scratch out the address. I don’t want you wasting a stamp should you mail something.” It’s a tough thing to spin. I don’t want to say that I can’t find a decent job or anything regular. Sometimes I’ll say I’m going to travel and live out of a van and just joke that I’m going to go pull a Kerouac and write the next Great American Novel. It usually diffuses the situation and yet is still getting the truth across and the non-literal reference to this artsy-farsty hippie ideal of “finding yourself” on a road trip make the idea romantic and not desperate.

But last night I just wasn’t feeling like pimping some non-existant plan so I skipped the topic and mentioned that, “I’ve just been really busy with things lately, y’know how that is.” This is a favorite tactic of late as my friends are usually all very busy as nobody just works a job or goes to school. So I just turned the conversation back to her and heard about who she’s dating, her job and her schooling. I was saved. We talked about me but I just kept turning it back to her. Thankfully there’s a little ego manic in us all.

On the walk home I was warm and comfortable. It was about a mile and a half back to where I’m staying and the air was brisk. Since I had conversed with my friend about my situation while partaking in her kind dinner offer and avoided the topic with the person I bumped into, the idea of being homeless was very fresh on my mind.

It’s funny how my thinking is changing. I’m starting to look at building differently. I used to wonder what it’d be like to live in some of the fancy homes or condo buildings I’d walk by, but now I wonder where would be best to stay is living outside them. There’s a church that I passed by that frequently has homeless people outside of it. It funny that people choose there to fall asleep and I wonder if they’re looking for divine protection or altruistic church goers to lend them a favor and help them to their next meal.

I felt very fortunate indeed to be warm and have something lined up for when I’m officially homeless. That I’ll have a van to sleep in and take me from gig to gig. One of my greatest concerns is the weather. I’m not only loosing a roof, I’m loosing the heating and cooling that comes with it. No longer will I be impervious to the elements and I’ll either cook or freeze at mother natures whims.

What the person I bumped into last night took away from me was that I’m busy and happy. And indeed I am. Disposing of my accumulated possessions plus trying to hawk up some work is indeed very busy work. And I’m still quite fortunate. I’m warm, fed and loved. In a cold world that counts for much.

Back in the Days of Money I generally wore nicer clothing. Not necessarily expensive clothing, just things that were stylish, nicely made and that wore well on me. My favorite thing was shopping the clearance racks at better department stores so that I could get 80% or more off clothing. It was rather easy to do actually as my tastes in clothing is quite well satiated by what fancy menswear, the stuff most men would hold up and say, “that’s gay!” So this sort of stuff is plentiful at shops with low end designer names that caters to the everyday shopper.

As such, I always looked smartly dressed. Casual to me doesn’t mean jeans, I don’t find them very comfy, so even slumming it to go run some errands often involved dressy pants and nicer shirt. Once for a job I bought a pair of jeans for their casual Friday as I was sick of hearing, “it’s friday, you don’t have to dress up!” Thing was, my everyday clothing met their daily dress code.

Fast forward back to the current times and my wardrobe has eroded substantially. I haven’t shopped seriously for clothing in many years. Just plain simply don’t have the funds for it. So my yesteryear, pre-9/11 clothing is looking seriously warn and has mostly been replaced with thrift store clothing. My warm jacket was the most desperate case of needing replacement in my entire wardrobe and unfortunately it was the most expensive to replace and the most publicly visible in the colder months.

So for years I worn this old leather jacket that in its day was really quite nice–that I bought for a steal. But last winter it looked worse than most of the jackets that hit the thrift stores. It was just plain worn out. And not James Dean rebel biker worn out, not ultra cool rock-n-roll authenticity… no, this was… homeless person clothing. The kind of clothing that homeless people are portrayed as wearing in Hollywood movies, the sort of things the averages person thinks of as hallmarks of the homeless.

I didn’t realize it until just recently but it was probably why I was being ignored in public. Being in a snowy area I wore black leather boots that also should have been replaced, a pair of thrift store jeans and black hoodie and t-shirt under that leather jacket. The leather was terminally dry, scuffed, marked and wrinkled. It was pretty shot. And it was only a month ago that I realized I was being ignored because I looked poor and homeless. What a turn to take in five year’s time!

About a month back a cat attacked my jacket while it hung. These weren’t just scratches, these were full-on perforations from the claws. It was punctured like a sieve and there was no disguising this or rationalizing it away–it was trashed. And functionally it was seriously degraded. I had ventilation installed by claws!

So I went jacket shopping. Not only was my winter coat destroyed buy my spring/fall coat fell victim in a biking accident and was significantly torn.

First up was a run through the thrift stores but nothing was to be found. Despite being homeless I didn’t want to look “homeless” and ill fitting out of date clothing would foster that look as the cliche street person. So I rustled up some cash that and found a half off jacket. Where? At a better department store of course. And it was quite a deal too that was found after visiting about a half dozen shops and searching the internet. It was the lowest price to be had on the item, period.

What an amazing personal transformation! The first time I wore it people smiled back when I looked at them, said hello and generally acknowledged my presence. I was quite pleased with this. Surely this fine jacket was making me a fashion plate and endowing me with movie star presence! But sadly I had just grown accustom to the slow decline of my old clothing and hadn’t realized slowly over the years how shabby I had become. The jacket wasn’t causing positive reactions, the fancy new jacket placed me back in the realm of normalicy. It was just that the old jacket was just no longer able to cause negative reaction! I no longer looked poor and forelorn in that beat to death jacket. I looked affluent! I had a snazzy new coat!

What a revelation I had then. I personally don’t care what people look like, I just consider their clothing a personal fashion choice. People who don’t care don’t dress well and people who do wear nice things and I never made it a money thing, just that some are willing to spend money on clothing and some aren’t. And that’s perfectly fine. It was never an economic choice in my mind, it was always seen as motivated on personal likes and dislikes and who was I to judge them on it? Well, okay, sometimes I’d trash talk in my head whether thrift of Neiman’s, but I realize others do the same so fair’s fair. I always looked at worn leather jackets as, “oh, that person really loves that coat. I wonder what it means to them…that’s so nice. I wonder what happy adventures it took them on!” But people were looking at mine and averting their gaze lest it be tainted by the lower caste. It must be the case. I was the same person wearing the same clothing, just the jacket changed.

Now I proudly wear a Columbia jacket with zip out inner fleece jacket. I figure if I’m going to be homeless and living in a van but calling the world my living room and back yard then I should probably have something best suited to outdoor function. So a multilayer water shedding jacket was in order. Something that would protect me three months out of the year and do so with one easy to pack garment. This was a double score as it replaced both damaged coats.

And indeed it’s perfect. Shockingly so. I was out one day and dreaded the sound of impending rain, but once it actually started I quickly realized that the hood and water proof fabric was going to keep me dry and it did! And I was warm too, much more so than my old broken down leather coat that had minimal insulating properties left.

So I now feel set. I have warmth, flexibility and dryness. Despite not really having a hundred buck to spend on a single garnment, my nest egg is painfully low right now, it’s something that is going to serve me better than I could possibly have hoped. It pained me to spend the money. A hundred bucks is a precious commodity for me right now and it was a huge percentage of my net worth. But, being cold and wet is not going to be healthy for me and I have little safety net for being sick.

And, just as importantly, I don’t look “homeless” anymore when in reality I’m more homeless now than I’ve ever been!

One of the things I discovered years ago was that when traveling it it so much easier to clump like items together in gallon size baggies and then place them into a larger container. Like when I’d put all my shower stuff in one bag, the “in the mirror” stuff in another, medications and vitamins in yet another then place all that into my suitcase.

I’m applying a similar treatment to my van. Divide and conquer! I’ve separated things like sewing supplies into one bag, for easy access to clothing maintenance items and basic office supplies into another. Each bag holding numerous small items as one big bag is easier to find than many separate items. And for something like the packet of needles and the spool of thread, one is pretty useless without the other anyways. So having it together like that only makes sense, right?

From there it’s going into boxes. I have a few of those large plastic totes that are easily found for $5-7. Mine are about 25 gallons in side and stack nicely. From the bag level of organization I can further organize the bags into appropriate boxes. Clothing, food, maintenance supplies… everything can be further sorted and organized. There’s also multi-gallon sized bags now though I’m more fond of thrifting old back packs when bags are needed as they are far more durable than plastic film.

It’s funny how anal retentive I’m being about all this as typically in my everyday life I’m very carefree about such matters. Piles here and there, general locations only. But having already lost things in my three hundred cubic feet of interior space in the van I’m every so ready to nip this all in the bud. And in such a cozy space it’s hard to move things about looking for that one little item that you want.

Interestingly I’m really looking forward to living in the van for organizational reasons. I’ve spent so much of the last six months couch surfing at various places, staying out of the van and also at my current “home” that I’ve lost track of many, many things. It’s too hard to remember where I last used Item X, whether it’s in the shoulder bag or the back pack, whether I left it in the bag, at “home” or at someone’s house. With the van I’ll at least feel like everything is at one place–one highly organized place at that.

The smaller sandwich sized Ziplock bags are also ideal when fixing your van. Use them to store all the little parts, the screws and such, and then you can even label the bag with a Sharpie telling you where they came from. Piles on the floor or ground get kicked, cups get knocked over, but the baggies hold their contents tightly.

When I get busy and am involved in a project, which for me is most of the time, I’ll often neglect the basic needs like eating and drinking. This is only amplified when I’m a bit depressed or anxious, like much of what my life is at the moment. Throwing out and fire selling the cumulatively amassed property of a lifetime is heartbreaking. This act of purging really is my admittance to myself that yes, indeed, I have failed. I’m dealing with anxiety issues not knowing that the next couple of months will bring. I really don’t want to live in shelters or in some tarp in the woods somewhere. I don’t want to be mugged, raped or killed. I worry that I’ll not be able to pull off this nomadic van based living that seems rather do able having never tried such a thing, but which in reality may just be yet another big step down the ladder.

As such, with all this on my mind and being busy making it happen, I’ve not been eating. it’s about 3pm, I’ve been up since 8am working and I keep thinking to myself, “I should really go eat something.” Then, maybe, I’ll pop into the kitchen, look around, see nothing obvious to eat, grab four grapes from the counter and return to working. Maybe there will be a beverage in there too, but unlikely.

When I get stressed like this I tend not to eat, and when I do I don’t like to put much effort into it. This is why I bought the grapes. They were on sale, they’re relatively nutritious and they can sit on the counter ready to be eaten. But I need something more than that. 200 calories of food isn’t cutting it.

Yesterday I didn’t eat until almost 11pm and had almost nothing during the day. For dinner it was a sandwich. Nothing major, no great intake, but it was simple to prepare and sufficiently appealing to entice. It was amazing how much better I felt after eating. All day I had grown increasingly tired, slothful and disagreeable. Being hypoglycemic I’m prone to moodiness and being spacy when not eating properly. This doesn’t serve me well at all yet currently it’s been my pattern.

When not at home, out with friends or family, I tend to eat well. Other people live by a three meal a day schedule and generally when outside my daily environment I can forget about my woes and therefore experience hunger. So I’m sure everyone thinks I’m being a loon when I’m at someone’s house eating dinner and I’m scarfing down my second plate and talking about how I never seem to eat anymore. I’m sure some people get it, but others give me the confused puppy look–head cocked to the side and looking curious.

But indeed, I’m not eating. My health is suffering as a result and I need to take better care of myself. One element high on my agenda come May when I’m officially and unequivocally homeless will be to watch what I eat. It’ll be one of my greatest challenges I’m sure.