Itinerant Air-Cooled

We're doomed:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/ ... a-movement

ha

Bleyseng wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:59 am

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/tag ... ia-camper/

troo, troo

"Smith and King slowly grew accustomed to their itinerant life style." What, no kudos to Colin for being the Original Itinerant! Shame....

Bleyseng wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:59 am

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/tag ... ia-camper/

"...did you know there are over 50 distinct species of mosquito in Minnesota?...showering (while camping) is a bourgeois luxury...as is air conditioning...I'm pretty sure the election was rigged...look: I snagged us 20 extra sugar packets from Starbucks!"

...just because one can "afford" to maintain an old VW doesn't preclude one from eccentricity, "thievery", being a conspiracy theorist or abstinence from bathing.

...what's instagram?

miz

Instagram is social media with only pictures posted and little words are posted. I guess the name is from the Instaphoto Kodak camera of bygone years but I like it as you communicate via photography which happens to be my long lost education was in so it's a good outlet. Colin posts lots of pics here but he also writes long winded text too.

Mosquitos? Damn, I thought Suriname had the lock on those little bastards carring Zikka, dengue and other crap.

I wrote briefly about this phenomenon in my book On the Bus, where I talked about how people around the world are traveling in buses and blogging about it. A quote from the book:

A month seldom goes by when I don’t hear of an adventurous person or family buying a bus and taking it around the country, or around the world, or into areas not frequented by civilization, and blogging every step of their journey or posting their progress on Facebook. I won’t name any of them in particular, since their journeys will be over by the time this book goes to print, but there will be others to replace them. The usual scenario is as follows: a young couple finds that their life in a nine-to-five job is unrewarding, and decide to shuck it all and take to the road. Sometimes there’s a child or two, or a dog, who comes along for the ride. They travel the entire length or width of their continent, sometimes on the most unimproved roads they can find. Their blogs or Facebook posts have pictures of their bus in front of spectacular scenery – imposing mountains or deserted coastlines -- or on the side of lonesome roads. Every picture says “We’re here, and you’re not.”

What I didn't realize when I wrote the book was how aggressively these people promote their lifestyle and how they're getting subsidized by Go Westy, travel bureaus, and other businesses. It's not just a life-style, it's a business model. And like most of these business models, it's approaching the saturation point, and they'll have to up their game to stay in business. What's next? BASE jumping with buses? Celebrity-hunting with buses? Or, God forbid, somebody who travels around the country teaching people how to fix buses? (I'm talkin' to YOU, Colin!)

the more time i spend in the vanagon scene, the more i think it's just the VW for jocks and popular kids. give me the cantankerous greasy weirdos of the bus world EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Bleyseng wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:59 am

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/tag ... ia-camper/

Well Dan is just so hip and with it.
Colin

JLT wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 24, 2017 3:11 pm

What's next? BASE jumping with buses? Celebrity-hunting with buses? Or, God forbid, somebody who travels around the country teaching people how to fix buses? (I'm talkin' to YOU, Colin!)

I find all that self-promotion sort of yetchy. There will not be much essential honesty left after they have to create more "content" more "product".

I have been carefully nurturing a brittle refusal to stage a damn thing. I read some quote about "this photograph is to show you I am here and you're not." And that guy is selling his knowledge of how to live on the road? Seriously?

Here is my advice on how to live on the road, it is free advice:

Figure It Out For Yourself

Colin

chachi wrote: ↑

Wed May 17, 2017 3:19 pm

the more time i spend in the vanagon scene, the more i think it's just the VW for jocks and popular kids. give me the cantankerous greasy weirdos of the bus world EVERY SINGLE TIME.

HEY! I can be just as cantankerous, greasy and weird as any of youse bus-drivin' clowns.
Don't be judgin'...

Amskeptic wrote: ↑

Wed May 17, 2017 4:10 pm

I have been carefully nurturing a brittle refusal to stage a damn thing. I read some quote about "this photograph is to show you I am here and you're not." And that guy is selling his knowledge of how to live on the road? Seriously?

I think that quote was from me, and I certainly wasn't being laudatory. It's just bragging in another form, and that always wears on one.

Here is my advice on how to live on the road, it is free advice:

Figure It Out For Yourself

Amen. And I'll add another one that seems curiously appropriate now:

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

SlowLane wrote: HEY! I can be just as cantankerous, greasy and weird as any of youse bus-drivin' clowns.
Don't be judgin'...

Stay greasy...

Please forgive me the use of the trite, overused cliche of recent coinage, but "it's all good!" I just returned from a 4300 mile trip through the American Southwest, with my good friend Zeke, in his 1987 stock Vanagon. He lives aboard a sailboat in Seattle, or, in the Vanagon. He picked me up in Southern California, and, starting in Death Valley, we spent almost 6 weeks camping in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. It was an abbreviated Vanlife, but it certainly gave me a taste of what two people need to do if they expect to live in a van without killing each other. We met a handful of people in Vanagons or air cooled busses, and the camaraderie, of course, was outstanding. I know a couple who had lived in theirs for 4 years now, another couple for 1 year, and we even met a young honeymooning couple, in their 20's, in Chaco Canyon camping in his mom's one owner '69 Bay. I met a 69 year old guy who lives in Furnace Creek, Death Valley, who works for the park concessionaire. He was sitting in the parking lot there, with his sliding door open, drinking a beer. His 1969 tin top bay "would be my last car" is what he told me. "I love this thing.", he said. Point is, there are a whole bunch of folks traveling around out there, using these vehicles as they were intended to be used, and that is good for all of us. This means, more VW's being saved from the scrapyards, more demand for continued QUALITY parts supply, more people interested on proper repair techniques, and more stops for Colin, so that he can make his living doing this thing he loves. I don't want to go to museums or car shows to see a Vanagon or air cooled bus. I want to see one, like I did, coming up the wash boarded Hole in the Rock Road of the Escalante, raising a great billowing cloud of dust, with a grinning, bearded visage staring out through the red streaked windshield. Keep 'em Rollin'.