Welcome to My World

Have you ever thought about what your life would look like from someone else’s perspective? Ever considered what people would think if they could watch your day as if they were watching a movie? Well I have.. and it’s more of a blooper reel than a feature film. But since I have absolutely no talent with a camera, and since I love nothing more than to embarrass myself, I’ve decided to describe what a typical day is like for Sheila and I, so that you can get a good laugh at our expense, and get a better idea of what an average, every-day series of screw-ups might look like. So welcome to our world- a day in the life of Caroline and Sheila. I hope you’re sitting down. 

I wake up every day very early. Not a normal early, like, say, seven or eight-ish, but an elderly-person, can’t-sleep-on-account-of-my-hemroids early. I’m usually up by 5, and reaching for the JetBoil by 5:30. The JetBoil is how I make my coffee. Sheila still does not have any power… but luckily, when I was planning for life in the van, I completely forgot that she had power to begin with, and I planned a crazy, convoluted system of heating water in the camp stove and using a pour-over to make my morning coffee. In hindsight, just pushing the button would have been much easier. But it does make good coffee when I remember not to fill the entire filter for one cup. Half-awake, I open the cabinet above my bed, most of the coffee supplies fly out at my head, I grab the few things that don’t, and set up the stove. I light the propane burner with an old cigarette lighter, using the “do it quickly” method, which one day I’m sure will cost me my eyebrows, but until then I plan on just telling myself “well it hasn’t happened yet.” Then once the coffee is made, I wipe everything out with paper towels and throw them away in my grocery-bag garbage can that hangs from the passenger seat arm rest. 

Now it’s time to say good morning to the truckers. So I open the van curtains, check for any parking tickets on the front windshield, and step outside with all the grace of a potato-sack racer as I trip over one of the 800 items I keep in the van doorway. Hopefully only spilling half my cup of coffee, I drink the rest of it while considering how dirty my hair is. Or rather, considering if it’s dirty enough to warrant a shower, or if I’ll be able to make it through the day unnoticed with just a baseball hat, a pair of sunglasses and possibly a fake mustache. But if the fake mustache just isn’t going to cut it, it’s shower time. However, since I don’t have any water, I fill jugs of water to use as a replacement shower. I then pour one jug over my head, wash my hair, and pour another jug onto it to get the shampoo out. Is it a perfect system? No. Do I usually end up with half-soapy hair, looking similar to someone who may have inadvertently walked into a car wash and then realized their error and escaped halfway through the rinse cycle? Most likely, yes. But hey, if it works, it works. 

My weekly shower complete, I dry-shave my legs and throw on some dirty jeans, and I’m ready to hit the town, looking like a damn supermodel. I can only imagine what people must think- who is that girl? How is she so… clean? Is she from Los Angeles? Have I seen her in a movie before? Is that Jennifer Lopez? Don’t worry, it’s a common mistake. I won’t hold it against you. 

Our mornings are pretty consistent, but from that point on, Sheila and I change up our plan a little every day- I like to keep her on her toes. However, there are usually two distinct types of  days- hiking days, and town days. Hiking days are 95% of our time, but the other 5% occurs when we either (a) run out of socks, (b) run out of pepperoni, or (c) actually need to get real-world things done (In my defense, (c) doesn’t happen very often). Hiking days are pretty self-explanatory, and by far the best days- I love nothing more than being outside and breaking a sweat. Does that make me a little psycho? Possibly. In my defense, I considered lying to you guys so you would think I’m cooler, but I’m very confident that ship has sailed. Hell, it’s halfway across the Atlantic by now. 

But the town days- the 5 percent- are the interesting ones. The wild cards. Let Sheila and I loose in a town, and you never know what’s going to happen. I fully anticipate that some day there will be an iPhone alert announcing our arrival. Instead of an amber alert, it will be a “Sheila alert”- an alarm will sound on your phone that makes you scream and jump three feet off the ground, and a message will appear that says something like “Sheila has been sighted entering Boulder, Colorado this morning, June 10th at 8:56 A.M. All residents are advised to stay in their houses, leave only for emergencies, and blockade their driveways to prevent an un-solicited parking situation. This is not a test. I repeat, this is not a test.” Or something like that. However, until that happens, we’ll continue to sneak through small towns across American unannounced. 

And when we do, we always stop at Grocery Outlet. Ok not always.. as upsetting as it is, not every town in America has a Grocery Outlet. So as much as it hurts my wallet, we do sometimes have to visit normal grocery stores. But either way, I am always running low on food. So we quickly pick up our go-to’s: pepperoni, taco shells, tuna packets, and jugs of water. Sometimes I splurge and buy a bag of ice for the cooler, so I can keep a container of guacamole cold. But that’s only on special occasions. 

I then usually go to a Starbucks to charge my computer. I’m really not a big computer person- in fact, I’m not a big technology person in general. Usually my attempts at using any kind of 21st-century technology end in a lot of yelling, a few this-piece-of-crap-is-broken’s, and end with some poor, concerned passer-by stopping and pressing the power button or turning off the keyboard lock. I’m not proud of it, but if that doesn’t prove that I am living the right lifestyle, then I don’t know what does. But before I moved into the van full-time, I had finally heard enough people tell me that I would need a computer that I succumbed to peer pressure and bought one. Many times I’ve considered throwing it out the window on my way down the highway, but so far it has lived to quite literally tell the tale. 

Depending on the day and the amount of remaining socks in my basket, I’ll sometimes stop at a laundromat, then find a parking lot with good cell service to loiter in as long as legally possible. But once I start pushing the limits of the “max allowable parking time,” I’ll make a pepperoni taco for the road and Sheila and I will high-tail it out of town as fast as possible. But there is one more stop we occasionally have to make.. 

Every once in a while, we have to dump the poop tank. Now, the technical term for it is the ‘black water tank’, and this is much less offensive, but I’m secretly 5 years old, so I prefer the colloquial version. But despite my childish choice of words, this still should not be an incredibly difficult or particularly disgusting task. It should actually be very simple- but by now I’m sure anyone who has read a single one of my other posts knows that nothing I do is ever that simple. My method involves a hammer, a can of PB Blaster, a roll of duct tape, a leatherman, a pair of scissors, and 2 plastic grocery bags. Is it absolutely ridiculous and unnecessarily difficult? Yes it is. But until it stops working, I’m going to continue to do things the complicated and sightly less effective way- it’s much more fun like that.

A hard day of social interaction behind us, exhausted and most likely covered in poop, Sheila and I finally retreat to our campsite. I eat my dinner of pepperoni tacos or tuna packets, brush my teeth outside with a jug of water, open all the van doors and watch the sunset. And every night, right as the sun is going down over the horizon, laying in the back of my van in the middle of nowhere, the Grateful Dead playing quietly over my bluetooth speaker, flicking the last of the poop off my shoulder.. every night I find what I was looking for when I took off in my van earlier this year. I find peace. And every night I remember how incredibly fortunate I am to have these experiences. Sure, sometimes it’s frustrating, or difficult, or frankly a little gross. But it is always worth it. And I wouldn’t trade one minute of it- not one dirty pair of shoes, or one pepperoni taco, or one tough moment- for anything else in the entire goddman world. Because without those moments, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the moments of peace and beauty and pure joy that I am lucky enough to experience every single day. 

But Sheila and I have many more of these days to come. So until next time, we’re off to keep screwing up- and I can’t wait to tell you guys about our latest adventure!

This post’s quote is from a podcast I heard a few weeks ago- it’s long, and I transcribed it while listening, so it may not be perfect, but it is very worth reading. It’s from a man named Colin O’Brady. Among many other amazing feats, he has walked across the continent of Antarctica completely alone and unsupported, pulling a 375-lb sled behind him full of his food and supples, a feat which he completed in 54 days. And on his second Joe Rogan podcast, he talked about his philosophy on life and experiences: 

“I’ve started to think about the totality of life experience between a numerical one and ten, one being the worst day of your life and ten being the best day of your life…’one’ might be a day that a family member passes away.. just rough moments in your life…and ‘ten’ is this hedonistic joy, the most pleasure-filled day ever…People say, ‘what are you afraid of.’ What I’m really afraid of is actually living a life range-bound between four and six…in this life of quiet desperation in the middle. And I think a lot of that is because…we’re afraid of the ones. But what I’ve realized…is to get to the ten’s, you also need to embrace the one’s. I’m not experiencing these high high’s or these hedonistic joys in spite of the ones, in spite of the challenges- but it’s because of them.” -Colin O’Brady

I probably butchered that quote, but the concept behind it is beautiful.