Nothing Good Happens at 3AM

The Wife and I spent last week at our favorite campground. To say I am less than motivated this week upon my return would be the under statement of the year. I lengthened the vacation some just so I would have only a three day week to hate life itself, rather than a full first week. Still though it is rough to leave almost two weeks in my lover's arms.

Additionally complicating my life, I don't have the van this week.  I’ll get into that in a second. But it really hadn't occurred to me how much I have let my couch network languish while I am living the van life. Wednesday morning on the drive in those realities presented themselves.

The good Doctor is off riding his bicycle across the United States….for whatever reason I will never understand.  It all seems very tiring to me.  I rode the North/South cross country route on a motorcycle one time and it like near to wore me out.  To pedal it?  Oh hell no.   I mean, Amtrak will let you do the same thing and you never have to break a sweat.

The true object of everyone's interest.  Yes, I drove the
van, thank you very much for asking!

Other friends are vacationing as well and then there is the one I have been promising a van tour who became hard to reach after I mentioned I was in the family van this week.  I guess the van has become my identity.  These days when I show up at parties people say, “hey Joe, great to see you!” as they are looking over my shoulders, “Did you drive the van?” with the first real excitement in their voice. I give a lot of tours.

It was amusing during the time we were camping because we ended up meeting a couple who we hung out with a bit over a couple of days.  Both of them in the education business, they had the natural curiosity of the genre.  He was a self admitted construction clutz and yet he was interested in every detail.  Shooting me rapid fire questions at first, settling back to random mid-conversation “how did you do this…?”  Or, pointing at a missing LCD panel, “what goes there?” questions as the four of us lounged inside.

She asked me the only question I have ever been stumped by in the almost two years of this project.  It was when I was describing the temperature probe network. At one point she said “why would anyone ever think of this?” I told her it is very important to know the temperature under the van for cooling purposes…and she got that, but again asked “yeah but why would anyone think of thinking about this?” I was genuinely surprised to get a new question.

It was at this point I had a choice.  I  could admit to being the obsessed tweeker my friend Craigie refers to me as, or I could throw it in the compliment pile. (I must be some sort of f-ing genius!) I chose the latter (of course) but replied, “too much free time.“

During this week as well our time at the campground overlapped with a genuine fan of this blog and project.  The heater salesman I have referred to in previous installments comes to the campground this same week as well. I talked to him about the project last year but he had not yet gotten his van tour.  It was interesting and reminiscent of the blog three blogs ago.  —Where my readers know as much about my project as I did.  He was interested. He wanted to see it.  But at a certain point we both knew I was grasping for details not already posted here. He knew the published story front to back.

The reason I am not in the van this week though is a touch on the scary side.  I had someone (maybe) trying to break in on me the last night I was in town.  It was about three am.  I woke up, likely because I heard a noise.  I realized I could hear a voice, or voices.  Now the van has a pretty extensive camera system.  I can use it to see all around the parameter.  But, I had that camera system disconnected because we were going camping the next day.  The Wife wanted to put her bag on the shelf where the camera hub usually sits.  I figured I didn’t need it taking a bunch of pictures of myself and others walking around a campground anyway.  So I had disconnected the cameras and cleaned up the shelf the night before.  The cameras were off.

I installed them!

Now when you are sitting someplace blind, things can be scarier than what they really were.  In hind sight, I am actually less sure about the break in part.  The night in question (I have always wanted to write that phrase) I was in the back corner of a parking lot I use often.  To me, I thought this parking spot was perfect.  It was out of the way.  I would park somewhat narrowly into the second parking spot in.  Making it rare then that anyone parked next to me, in front of my side doors.  Parked this way it was almost like I had my own private deck outside my doors.  The parking lot I am in is about three city blocks long.  At the far end is a convenience store.   At the back, outside of my doors is some ten foot chain link fence, then the railroad tracks.   The end oposite the convenience store there is no fence and the land drops away in a gully.  There is a fairly sizable homeless tent village down in there along the tracks.  Also at that end, a bridge and some stairs in the corner of the lot funnel all the pedestrian traffic from that whole little walking distance neighborhood across the middle of the lot.

I thought my spot was perfect because it was out of that foot traffic.  But what I didn’t account for was other people would find this spot its attractive as well.  My van, made it even better for them. They could hang out back behind it and do whatever they wanted.

So I woke up hearing noises and voices.  I couldn’t hear very well at all but I knew I didn’t want to move the side curtain or they might see motion.  In fact, it was more complicated than that.  I didn’t want to even touch the side curtain.  The night before I had gotten my new side curtain from The Seamstress and we had a mix up on how the magnets were sewn in.  It was just barely holding up.  I did not want it falling down making the whole inside of the van visible to whoever was outside.

I listened at the floor hole, but I couldn’t tell how many people there were.  In the end, I feel like there was only one.  I have deadbolt lock for both the side door and bulkhead door but I don’t have them installed yet.  There just have been other priorities.  I gotta admit, when I was laying on the floor, ear stuck down the vent hole, unable to hear over my own hyperventilating… Well, at that moment, those  priorities seemed a little wrong.

I kinda was getting a handle on it after a few minutes.  The practical side was starting to kick in.  I was beginning to think, “how am I supposed to go back to sleep with this joker outside?” So I must have been calming back down.  Then I heard a noise like maybe he was pulling on the door handles.   …Or maybe he stumbled and fell against the side of the van.  Or, maybe he moved his bicycle a bit and it scraped against the side.

Anyway, whatever happened the panic button got pushed big time.  I opened up the bulk head door and slid into the drivers seat.  What I should have done at that point was open up and slam the door.  The bad guy would have said “Whoa!  I didn’t even hear that mofo walk up on me!”  Of course no one is a genius at three a.m. either.  I just started the engine.  A guy popped forward to look through the passenger window and then dashed back.  I heard some noise again, I was thinking he was making a last ditch effort at breaking in.  What he was actually doing was grabbing his bike before I ran it over.

I drove about three blocks away.  Pulled into a street parking space and crawled into the back.  About an hour of unwinding and I got back to sleep.  Lemme tell you what, I was a groggy unit at seven oh four when my alarm went off.

I am going to have to do a couple of things to the van this weekend.    I need to get the side door dead bolt lock installed.  The bulkhead door is less of an issue, but I will try to get that one done as well.   The back doors, when I am in my primary lot, are pretty safe.  I back right up to the fence and those doors are not really openable.  Still I don’t always park where this is the case so I will put a chain with a padlock across the back doors. I have burglary screens for all the windows but I have resisted putting them on so far.  I like being able to pull the blackout shades back and seeing outside and I think I would lose that.  I will do some more planning on that.

Window screen in place.  I now have
burglar bars!

Finally I ordered a siren.  I will mount it under the van somewhere.  I also have a bell that I plucked out of a dumpster a couple of years ago.  I haven’t tested it but it likely works.  If so I will put both of these units on switches so I can flip them on from my bed.  It will give me a chance to use a couple of the red covered switches I bought a while back.  I would sure feel better if I could make a whole bunch of noise.

The last thing, I need to re-evaluate my parking protocols.  I need to think less about my own convenience and more about security.  I need to park between two vehicles whenever I can.  If I can only have a vehicle on one side, make it the door side.

I have a friend who has a refrigerator magnet that says “Oh god, please let this not be another learning experience.” This project has been a continuous flow of them.  But, I confess, I have learned a lot via this thankfully harmless incident.