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Why Van Life

(upbeat music) (door creaks) All right, let's do this. So this is kind of where I grew up out here in Temecula, California. Pretty nice weather year round, stoked to have been from here. I grew up the fifth of six kids, a big family. So I grew up with vans in the parking lot, but they were full of people. They definitely weren't any sort of motor home. I always thought it was cool though. I would see motor homes and kind of be a little jealous. We were full of kids, they were full of just really cool houses and stuff. Well, I found photography just because I wanted to do, I wanted to travel and I made a friend and she jumped in with me to take a road trip that I wanted to do and she happened to have a camera. So photography definitely found me based off of me wanting to go to cool places. And then the camera came later just to potentially capture that. But in all reality, it was just a, I was a pretty creative dude growing up, creative kid. But I kind of almost suppressed those feeli...

ngs because my family wasn't creative and didn't value creative pursuits. So I took art classes in high school, but it was just like an elective that was kind of just goofing off until I eventually went to college and I majored in accounting and I studied Spanish so that I could be an international businessman, that was my overall future vision of myself. And few years into that path, I was definitely wasting pretty much all my time as an accountant. Not saying that I wasn't happy, it was more so I was like living for my time outside of the office. When I was in the office, I was literally wasting time and pretending like I was working for my boss, very much like a classic "The Office" scene and just like straight up wasting time. And I liked my coworkers, I hated my boss and hated my job and just kind of wanted to do other stuff. Eventually, it was kind of time for me to, I guess, stop wasting time on the computer researching all these cool places that are out there and more so go experience it for myself. So I started really small, I had a 99 Toyota Corolla that got pretty good gas mileage, and I was pretty stoked on 45 miles to the gallon. And I figured I'd put that to use and just started doing little road trips to the neighboring states. I had never really been to Colorado and I ended up going there and it kind of blew my mind. So I started pretty small and I made a work friend that was pretty down to go road trip with me and turns out she had a camera. I remember pretty vividly one time, like standing under Double Arch in Arches National Park. And she had her Cannon camera and I had my iPhone and just kind of looking over to her like, "Oh, this is awesome." But like, these photos are terrible. It was like midday light and I was shooting like straight up into the sun and it was just literally like a black blob and then like a bright sky. And then she looked back, she's like, "Oh, that's actually pretty sweet. "I like the ones that I'm taking." She showed me hers and they were, thinking back on it, they were very overexposed to show like the highlights of all the Arches and stuff, but it was like such a night and day difference. That's when I realized maybe there's some merit to a legit camera as opposed to a cell phone camera. So that's when she kind of started teaching me a little bit about the basics of like, "Oh, I actually changed the exposure and the aperture "and all these different settings." Like words I'd never heard of and it was so mind blowing to me that she would change like four different things for one single photo that she wanted to get, as opposed to just pointing it straight there and taking the photo and letting it do it for you, which in my mind was such a better way to go. I just wanna be able to point it and take the photo. But in that moment, I realized that there was a lot of merit to being able to choose what you want, how you want it to look, how you wanna portray the landscape and all that. So photography definitely came to me from just making a friend. I didn't go online and research how to take a good photo or anything like that. But that was definitely a pretty impactful seed that she planted. And eventually our road trips that were just to the neighboring states got so fun and so good that I wanted to do a massive road trip. I just got so into it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. So left my job, me and her took off on this road trip. We went all the way up to the Pacific Northwest, I'd always wanted to see that, into Canada. First time in Canada, all the way down through the states, made it to Panama, was thinking we were gonna make it to Columbia. This is all in the Toyota Corolla. Yeah, so we eventually made it through all the Central American countries down to Panama and the road ended. We didn't know the road ended. I'd always heard the Pan-American Highway went from Alaska to Patagonia, but turns out there is a section called the Darien Gap. It's between Panama city and the border of Columbia, that's just such an gnarly road that you just can't take, especially a Toyota Corolla on it. So we were gonna have to drop 1,000 or $2,000, which we did not have at the time to ship it from Panama to Columbia. That basically ended our trip right then and there. I sold the car and flew back, 'cause that was really the only way that I could have done it with my money situation. I thought that I was gonna take this trip, get all my bucket list locations checked off, get the adventure bug outta me, and then go back to accounting after that. Turns out, that was a lot harder to do than expected. Kind of once I opened that door to that adventurous lifestyle and whatnot, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I was going through the photos, I probably took thousands of photos on that trip. It was a little too much to think that there was a lot more out there. We had just seen a taste, we didn't even make it to South America, we got close. But yeah, I just couldn't stop thinking about it. And eventually I got a, basically a seasonal job. I was in a, I was installing alarm systems for like a few months of the year. And then for the rest of the year, I was just trying to get out and seeing as much as I could. All the while I was practicing my photography and posting to social media. And at that time, I started gaining followers and whatnot, and eventually brands started contacting me to take photos and pay me money for it. So, yeah, I mean, my photography career definitely was, it started from that simple decision to take a road trip in the car that I had at the time. And I'm really grateful that it really turned out that well. So hanging out in places like Moab and all these outdoorsy areas, it became pretty clear that the coolest people had vans, that was the best setup to have to be in that situation. So we're driving around this Toyota Corolla, potentially setting up our tent and roughing it a bit. And then right next to us, there was this sprinter van with all these things hanging off of it and a toilet and a shower. And I just always remember looking at those people and thinking they looked so happy and clean and well fed. And we were out there living off of whatever, ramen and so there was kind of pretty early on the dream to be able to afford a van, to be able to have the comforts of home while still being in these really wild and untamed places. It's just at the time, I probably had $4, in my bank account and a quick research into a sprinter, the cheapest sprinter you could potentially get it's like 20,000 and that just wasn't in my budget. So yeah, the dream was definitely placed in me to eventually get a sprinter or some kind of a van. Maybe my first van would be a little cheaper option, maybe an older van, VW, whatever. And that's exactly what ended up happening. I think it took me about two years to be able to save up, to buy my first van. My first van ended up being a 1985 Toyota van. So the official vehicle name was The Van. I was crazy stoked when I bought it. I remember calling up all my buddies and telling them that I got the van finally. I think I did the build out in one or two days, consisted of taking out the back seats, making a bed platform outta two by fours. I thought I was really tricky by putting this little pull out piece of wood that would function as a table, I thought. It worked I guess in some ways, I made some sandwiches on it. But I mean, I took off so many times in that van over the probably nine months that I had it thinking that I was taking off and I'd drive up to Alaska and never come back or something like that. And I would get maybe a few hundred miles down the road and it would break down and I would have to tow it back to Southern California. So honestly, my first experience in van life was a massive lead up to it, that ended up being an absolutely terrible experience. I spent I think, $4,000 on that van and that really illustrates I think you get what you pay for in van life. I would say photography on the other hand, you can buy a cheap camera and be a really great photographer. The cost of your camera doesn't really impact the quality of your work, nearly as much as the cost of your van impacting the satisfaction of van life. I really do think you get what you pay for. And that first experience I was like, I was so done with it. I was hiring my brother, who's kind of a mechanic to try to fix the engine, 'cause I didn't have any money to pay an actual mechanic. We were in the garage for six months, it would start running, I'd take off and I ended up breaking down again and back in the garage. Ended up selling it for, I wanna say $1,000. And the funny thing is like last year, the dude that bought it from me, sent me his, a post that he made and apparently that thing went up in flames. It was, it eventually completely blew up, a bunch of photos of the whole thing, charred, black up in flames all of his gear got burned. That was just a lemon of a vehicle and that was a pretty terrible intro to van life. Although it did set the bar very low, so when I started getting more vans or different vans, all of a sudden those felt really nice. So after that first van, I swore off van life, I really did not want a van. I was pretty convinced that it wasn't for me. It wasn't all as cracked up to be all those romantic images that I had in my head were completely fake, not attainable, blah, blah, blah. After the van, I bought a Honda Element and I took out the back seats, it seemed like a good idea. And it was a pretty good idea, it was a pretty good vehicle, never broke down, which was nice. But as I got the element, as I started getting better with my photography and getting paid more, my bank account grew and a buddy of mine went into building out sprinters and he announced that he had this short wheel-based sprinter that was a pretty good deal. He had it all converted out and Mr. Money bags that I felt I was, I thought it was a good idea to potentially try van life again. This was at least a year, maybe two years after my first van. So I took a good break in there. Yeah, so my first sprinter van, I just bought it off my buddy. I didn't really think it was worth spending the time to convert out my own van simply because I wasn't convinced on van life being right for me, given that first experience that I had. Honestly, like a week after I bought that sprinter, I pretty much knew that this was gonna be a long term thing. I didn't buy it thinking that I was gonna go into it full time. I thought it would be more of like a weekend thing for me and I would potentially rent a place in Southern California and take that on road trips. I mean, instantly I just didn't wanna leave that van. I could stand up, I could lay down, I could sit down. It's like just the luxury of being able to stand up inside of my vehicle was yeah, it changed everything for me. That being said, I also pretty much instantly realized that the bed was too big, the kitchen was too small, I didn't have a desk to work with. Yeah, so I instantly started kind of picking apart the layout and seeing the flaws that were in it. Every time I would turn, all the storage under the bed was completely too big, too open. So I had like a surfboard under there, I had some climbing gear, maybe a few other things, but the volume was so big that everything was constantly just falling on each other. It didn't have any barriers or anything really under there. So I instantly knew that the bed was too big, the storage under the bed wasn't well designed. The kitchen had about one foot of counter space and I started to throw stuff that I was cooking on my bed. So I was using my bed as a counter. When in all reality, I just wanted more counter space and less bed space. So I had just started drawing up, basically the exact same layout just with slight tweaks. So my second build that I did, this was my first official build that I undertook. Really was almost like a spitting image of the one that I bought in terms of style, in terms of approach and everything. It just was changing around some of the dimensions of the bed, the kitchen and I added in a bench to be able to work in a pullout table. And it was a massive upgrade at the time, I thought it was completely different. But when I would post it on social media, nobody could tell the difference at all, between my first sprinter and my second van, which was actually a ProMaster, they looked identical. So I wasn't super into that. When I announced my second build and showed it off, I don't think very many people even understood what I was saying. My first official build in the ProMaster that I did, I was super happy with, but I don't know what it was. I think at that point, it kind of the building bug bit me. Where I had no reason, really, I had no reason to build another van, it was just that I wanted to. That was when it changed in from actually having a need to build a van or a good reason to, into almost like a self-indulgence, it became like a creative outlet for me. In between photography jobs, I would just literally start just drawing different designs of how I think I could improve on my van layout or even the van design, the use of wood or the use of color or whatever. I started to get really into the idea of designing a completely unique build, look, feel, functionality, everything. And I think it was just because I was spending so much time in my van. I had a lot of time to think about it and really put a lot of mental effort into making the best thing possible. So my fourth van, which is actually just my second build is this one right here. And this was the van that I started gaining a little bit more confidence in my building skills. I started to know like what could be done, what couldn't be done as in like what hasn't been done, but can be done like ways to push the boundaries. So in this one, there's a lot more character and I'm proud of that where there's a lot of secret compartments and kind of goofy quirks to it. And it's just a lot more fun to photograph 'cause there's a lot more going on, a lot more like lines and it kind of shows off my photographer mind in a lot of ways, it's more symmetrical and I'm just a little bit more proud of it because it's considerably more unique and it just feels good to sleep in something that you've created and that doesn't feel like it's everyone else. Yeah, people started to ask me what they should do on their van, and it's such a tough question to answer because everyone's so different. I can't really give some cookie cutter response on that. Now at this point looking at the messages that people send me, I'm posting 90% landscape images and just a few van life images. But so many of my messages, people asking me questions are all about van life. It's clear that people are curious about van life, and for some reason they saw my video and they like what I did so they're curious what they should do. So, this is an attempt to answer that question as best as I can, just wanna make a more long form answer to the question, "Oh, what should I do on my van?" Because it really is a long and complicated answer and it really does pertain to your situation who you are, what you're looking to do with the van, what you expect from it and what you value. So, here I am trying to answer that. My favorite part of van life is designing new things for sure, like designing new layouts. I don't think I would ever replicate or build the same van over again. I like the idea of potentially hiring on a team or something to replicate a design, especially if there's demand. But overall I just like trying new things and getting creative with it. It's just a creative outlet. Similar to photography, I'm not gonna go back to Yosemite and go take the exact same photo and get really excited that I recreated my photo that I liked so much, that just doesn't doesn't appeal to me in any way. So for me, it's just about constantly creating something new, innovating, pushing the limits, just making a really surreal spot to sleep, to cook. I love the idea that I can take this van anywhere and it will feel the same in a lot of ways. It will keep the comforts of home with me, but my backyard is constantly changing. So yeah, I'm constantly drawing up new designs. I have graph paper in this van, I have it everywhere. I'm kind of habitually, like when I can't sleep, I just start drawing designs. So I have a good number of vans that I want to do in the future. And I really don't see myself stopping anytime soon. So I'll definitely stick with van life for the next few years at least. So I had a friend approach me about potentially making a van for him, and I've never done that before, but his idea was a different approach to it. He wanted an office on wheels, he didn't want a home on wheels. So we ended up just talking about it and basically came up with this idea of making a really cool, aesthetically pleasing office that can be moved around to showcase different views of the American West, that converts into a hotel room. So it's an office that converts into a hotel room. There's no full kitchen. There's a lot of, lot of what I have in this build is not in the box van and that's intentional. We're trying to keep it as simple as possible and approach it in a different way. So I've been working on the box van for about seven months, it's almost done and I'm really excited to share it with everybody, 'cause it's just such a different approach to your conventional van life setup. I don't know, I chose van life initially just 'cause it made so much sense. I'm on the road constantly, I'm constantly taking photos, the idea of paying rent and only being there like a 10th of the time, just did not sit very well with me. So in the end, I'm just kind of a weird, I have a weird job where I'm on the road so much and really don't need a home base. What I did need was a good car 'cause I'm constantly driving. So might as well, really pimp out that car and be comfortable in it and make it my own, and that's what I've done. So realistically, I chose van life because it just made so much sense for my lifestyle. Now there's a lot of other reasons to choose van life and every van lifer has their story and their reason for it. I know a lot of people that just think it's cool, like the idea of living small and not having to have a car and kind of condensing your home and your car into one space and save space, you take up less space, you use less energy, you use less water. Generally, there's just like a really good community in van life. There's a lot of interesting people with different stories and community is a really big aspect or a really big positive in the van life experience also. Everyone chooses van life for different reasons. For me, it was because I'm a traveling photographer and I need a place to comfortably sleep and to get me closer to where I wanna take photos. But everyone has their reasons for going into van life.