Living in Style - climbing bum style.

I'm heading out on a six month climbing road trip, and I was looking for the perfect set-up. In 2004, I lived out of a Saturn for about five months. It wasn't that cool. For this trip, I decided I needed to roll in a little more style. I needed a van.

After watching craigslist and the local classifieds for a few weeks, the perfect van popped up. I called the number, and no joke, this is the story the guy told me:

"Yeah alright, the van. So it's parked on a vacant lot in Sandy. But it's not exactly vacant, cause it's my brother's, well the lot is, and the van is too, and he's letting a guy live there and do autobody work cause he's got medical problems. So you gotta go there. And the last guy that went there, the guy on the lot said the van was his, and he should pay him for it if we wanted to buy it. But that's not true, so don't pay that guy nothin, just get the keys from him and go take a test drive."

I hung up.

A week later, an even more perfect posting came along. A 1995 Ford E250. I knew that this was to be my ride.

The deal was dissapointingly un-sketchy, and next thing I knew I was rolling around in my new home.

But there was lots of work to be done. First to go in was the bed platform. Then some shelving, an end table, floor mats, some storage bins, a few hooks, an inverter, lots of bungee cords, and a trip to Cabella's for some other redneck camping essentials: propane heater, camping table, big ol water jug.

Big thanks to Backcountry.com for hooking up some cool stickers, and kicking down some gear for my tavels.

Before and After photos, left and right.


This ride is now officially Pimped Out, and ready to live in for the next six months. I slept in it Saturday night, and the neighbors were only a little weirded out when I stepped out of it in the morning, yawning and stretching, as they were getting in the car headed to church. This is gonna be awesome.

Watch for more highlights of my trip on this blog, and check in on my blog for all the gritty details:

http://reallyuphere.blogspot.com/

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