The Other Side of the Coin

Its only been about a week since I wrote that last post.  Buried in the low voltage depression of some dark grey winter days.   It even had The Wife writing to me about sounding down and out. But today it is better.  Today is Fat Tuesday.

Mardi Gras. I don't think that my better mood can be contributed entirety to that amazing margarita I just had. But it does have me thinking about warmer places.  Drinks with umbrellas.  You know, the big decisions in life.  Pink or lavender with this one?

It certainly can't be the weather.  We are back into an arctic freeze up again.  Twelve degrees below zero last night with wind.  The furnace ran a lot.  More by luck than good planning I parked nose into the wind.  I don't know how much difference that makes in heating costs but it is great the house doesn't rock around so much.

Ah, but they do make a
fine margarita.  It is a pity it
is fourteen dollars though.

I got my house batteries warmed and charged up real good over the weekend.  I put an electric heater in the battery space and ran it for 36 hours while charging them up.  They needed it.  They were frosty on the outside and swollen.  Barely holding 50% over the night.  The last couple of days I have been waking up to the batteries still being in the mid 80s.  It has been great not having that worry of wondering if I was damaging my batteries.

Living spaces, no matter if they have basements or wheels, are trouble and expense though.  Last night my inverter made an unhappy electrical noise while I was running the microwave and it stopped working.  No lights on the control panel, no lights on the inverter itself.  I checked the circuit breaker and it wasn't popped out.  I unplugged it and plugged it back in.  It did not recover.   When it is below zero and windy that is as much trouble shooting as I am willing to delve into.  But I am concerned what this means in this day of disposal appliances.  That was an expensive item.  Four hundred fifty dollars on Amazon.  On top of this, it was a bad match for me and I never liked it… Still, I am not looking forward to replacing it.

Looking up into the fender, you can see it
is about a quarter full of ice.  Hitting it with
the car wash pressure washer melted it back.

This past weekend was one of ice.  We got another six or eight inches of snow on Friday night.  Spoiling some plans we had for weeks.  I wasn't going any where in the BV anyway, I was letting it thaw out and re-charge.  I didn't bother to clean the snow off of it at all.  What happened though is the snow melted off the roof and down into the door hinge fender areas and building up and re-freezing.

By Sunday morning  it was totally froze up.  None of the doors would open.  I had to take a heat gun to the passenger side door which would at least unlatch and open not quite an inch.  Blowing hot air into the crack on the hinge side of the door, eventually I melted enough ice in the pocket of the fender so I could open it enough to squeeze inside.  From there I could hit it with more heat.  Once the one door was more or less operational I took it off to the car wash to melt out the remaining doors.  I ended up soaked from rebound water.  Big job at the self serve.  Twenty nine dollars.  The most expensive car wash of my life.

Signs of an ongoing project.  A path down the
middle, from bulkhead door to bed.

The BV is a bit of a boars nest right now too.  I am working on enclosing the fresh water tank.  So I have all the stuff that normally inhabits the area next to the water tank, strewn around the floor.  Or stuffed under the table.  Or piled on the countertop.  All flat surfaces covered. Really quite bad in here.  When I get this done though it will be another milestone.  The ability to keep my fresh water tank un-frozen and working regardless of the outside temperature is going to be great.  Plus the ability to tell how much water I have even though I will no longer be able to see the tank.  Wish I could have gotten this done last fall rather than now when winter is (hopefully) wrapping up.

But I tell you what, and I think is at the root of my happiness.  I woke up before my alarm this morning.  Looking up I noticed…  Light in the skylight for the first time this “spring”.  The days are finally getting longer.  My solar panels can work more and my batteries less.  I will have survived two winters of living in my van.

The ice block at my back door.  Opening
the door further would have broken the
plastic body material going around the corner
from the side of the door to the back.

So here is the deal about van life.  You are going to have some dark days.  There will be challenges.  And unexpected expenses.  But for living the type of half life I am needing to live these days, it has been great.  The nomadic life calls to me.  It always has.  This van life, as crazy as it is and for as many times as you have to put up with hearing the “down by the river“ joke, it is still worth it.  It has allowed me to live out a life dream. The option of having the best of all worlds right outside my door in the morning has been great!

Stuff, stuff everywhere!