February 2010
Scarlett is welcome to ride along in the truck.  * * * My best idea, only a few weeks into this plan, is the business name I have decided to paint on the sides of the truck: Roll-O-Rooter. Nobody wants to break into the rooter truck, am I right? Sure they've got some tools in there, but do you really want them? I doubt it. This stroke of genius is going to allow me all-access-parking anywhere on this planet I want to be. I foresee overnight parking at any strip mall, professional office, construction site, church, or rest stop. Gas stations, hospitals, university campuses, you name it. Give me a phone book, and I'll give you a parking space for the night. With the Roll-O-Rooter truck, I can park in front of Sears, Chuck E. Cheese, or the freakin' Highway Patrol office if I choose. See, I already spend about twenty percent of my nights sleeping in my SUV. Creepy, right? I really have no idea what that's all about, I just like sleeping in something other than a home. I love hotel rooms and tents and friends' couches and backs of cars. Ask your psychiatrist what this means and get back to me. I guess I've always had this hippie-gypsy streak in me - the fort-building streak - and now that Fifty is approaching, it can no longer be denied. So I have experience looking for places to spend the night, and it's not always easy. The street parking in the average urban neighborhood is crowded, and I suspect the neighbors all know each others' cars. And you certainly can't be the lone SUV sitting in the middle of the empty mall parking lot as the employees leave for the night. Finding overnight parking will always be the area where I have to keep my radar up, and I'll always be wondering who is playing Hall Monitor tonight. The few, calculated breaks in all this parking trauma will be the understanding and graciousness of my friends, the National Parks System, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), as well as the occasional week-long regional festival. I have friends scattered throughout the States, and I'm hoping they will agree a week parked in front of their house every year is no big deal. And what better scenario if they need to take a vacation? Call Darren, he shows up in the rooter truck, and camps in your driveway while you jet to Disney World without a care. As for the parks and BLM camping, I'm not experienced at this date, but research shows there are scores of free overnight camps around the country. Wander out into the wilderness, drop the liftgate as my back porch, and fall asleep to the sounds of a babbling brook. Hey, it could happen! This part of the discovery mission I could really enjoy. How many empty roads and graveled turnouts there must be between Point A and Point B. And me, in my unobtrusive little rooter truck, pausing in the shade and moving on my way. The opposite of all this solitude would be the equally enjoyable regional festivals and state fairs. A thousand campers in town for some kind of event? Now that's going to make my job just plain easy. Just another truck parked in town for the week. Just another stranger shuffling around the downtown area, stocking up on bread and hot sauce at the Piggly Wiggly. Blend in and disappear. There are so many fairs and festivals across the United States, all seasons, all styles. Festivals celebrating foods, plants, heritage, music, art, and legends. I've already began compiling a list with everything ranging from the Sundance Film Festival to Mardi Gras to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. But I'm sure my attendance will mostly be by accidental proximity. Southeastern Oklahoma the first week of October? Honobia Bigfoot Festival? See you there. * * * Back to the truck. I spent a few hours today ripping out some floor level shelving that had no purpose for me. I'm still not sure how to best layout the room, but I do know I've got to start with the floor. The old flooring is in miserable condition, but it looks like a fairly easy removal, leaving plywood exposed. Right now the plan will be to throw some foam insulation over the plywood, and build another floor about four inches above that, with trap doors allowing access. This would give me a 7x15 dry storage area in the floor of my room - for books, canned goods, discs, movies, jeans, shoes, etc. That's an idea. We'll see if it develops. I am especially pleased that the diesel engine starts right up and purrs like a kitten every time. I have 100% success when I leave the block warmer plugged in, and I can't help but wonder what kind of cold-weather trouble I'll get into down the road if I stay too long in the wrong climate. It's a little too cold out to do any serious renovations right now, so it's been a good time to think through the floorplan, maybe work on the Roll-O-Rooter logo, and definitely start getting some possessions sold. The worst thing that could happen is I find myself in Spring 2012 with a household full of stuff two months before the house sells. So I'm already blowing some dvd's and cd's out the door. I can start getting rid of decorative stuff too. Maybe a couple guitars. God, it all just seems overwhelming sometimes......too much stuff. It's like you've always heard: your possessions own you. I didn't want to be this person. "The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you. "You are what you is." - Frank Zappa * * * Crazy things going on today. I just bought ten acres of pretty-much-desert about a mile (if that) south of the Needles airport. That's Needles, California, folks. Right on the I-40. Average Winter temperature: 68-degrees. Guess who'll be camping in the desert for extended stretches? Latitude 34 degrees, 44 minutes, 57.57 seconds North - Longitude 114 degrees, 37 minutes, 50.93 seconds West. This translates to 34.749325 N, 114.630814 W, and marks the NE corner. Here are a couple photos I found online of a property about a half mile away.   And Monumental Pass Road which leads towards the property. Not sure how close the road gets to my acerage, but I'm hoping I can manage in the truck once the road runs out!    A couple months ago I was sold on the idea of slowly buying little parcels of land across America, giving me a lot of little bases and pit-stops to legitimately stay for whatever term my heart dictated. It's always nice to know you have a place to belong, even when you're intentionally living like a hobo, right? Then I started thinking how this was another form of ownership, and I really didn't want that. Self Correction: I'm thinking now it all has to do with home ownership, because I couldn't be more excited about having ten acres nobody wants, and spending a month parked on sand, doing my own thing - whether that means staying near the truck, or hiking six miles into Needles. And is that the Colorado River and a series of lakes I see four miles away? Small land ownership won't own me, as long as it's maintenance-free. So I am re-adopting the original pursuit. I'll be keeping my eyes open for some cheap acreage near Albuquerque-to-Taos. As for Needles, $497 for ten acres. Annual taxes - about $115. Excellent move on my part.  * * * I thought Monk, my 14-year-old cat, looked a little restless when I got home from work today....so I carried him out to the truck for a little sensory overload. He's going to have to get comfortable out there, so we might as well start working on that now. There's not a lot there for him to deal with, but it is something new and unfamiliar, and you know how that creates such cat-anxiety. There is a large flat area just inside the door, sitting under the front windshield, and I see this being Monk's favorite spot one day. That glass ought to heat his little bones up pretty good. He has no idea how different life will be in a couple years. And it makes me happy knowing he'll never be cold again. Here in Maine, he loses his best spots when the snow piles up on the roof in front of his windows. So, he mostly just spends Winter sleeping in the little heated" tent" I created for him out of bunk beds, a space heater, and mylar survival blankets. I hope moving Monk into the truck for his final years is okay with him. I hope he enjoys the unusual and extreme combination of Variety and Familiarity. The same 15x7 room every day with a perpetually changing world through the window. But we're a lot alike. I shouldn't worry. * * * I've got a three-day weekend, so I'm going to give myself a couple small tasks. I filled up with diesel, because I need to know my miles-per-gallon. Monday I'm going to drive into Windham and have the propane system filled and checked. At this point, the propane heating is the only crucial unknown. I can skate by with something not working, but when it comes to flammable gases, I want things in top shape. I started yanking out the dilapidated flooring, and it's an easy job. Now that the bare wood floor is exposed, I can envision the layout and framing a lot easier. More DVDs sold, the electric kiln sold, a never-assembled ping-pong table sold, and Mom's recumbent exercise bike......sold. And I haven't even begun to make a dent. I sold my Canon 100-300 zoom lens - my first separate lens I ever bought for my A-1, way back in 1980 - and I have to say, it's tough saying goodbye to things I've been carrying around for thirty years. That lens went front row with me to Alice Cooper, a couple classic shots at Van Halen, numerous photography assignments in college, and the Oklahoma City Zoo with my young wife. I dropped it off a tripod once, and spent good dough to have it repaired. I shot closeups of pets and in-laws and Christmases and Dodge conversion vans. But I converted to digital photography a few years ago and film is long gone from my life. So now, is the Canon zoom. Had a great parking idea today......I can never have too many ideas there. Okay, here he goes about parking again. Don't underestimate the importance of this! There are too many people out there consumed with how another person should live. There are laws out there that say you cannot sleep in your car. You can sit in your car staring out the front windshield until you grow mold on your forehead, but don't lie down or you are usually breaching some sort of civil code. I know, it sounds like it should be a real priority, doesn't it? I suppose part of law enforcement training is knowing that a person who will sleep in his car is the same caliber as any other vandal or thief, and should be treated as such. I submit that a person sleeping in his car is the last person in the community who needs watching. He's tired. He's not bothering anybody. Let him be. Anyway, my parking idea. I'll post a FOR SALE sign in the window if I need to park in a situation where I think I might be pushing my luck. We've all seen trucks parked by themselves in full view of the world, with a big FOR SALE sign in the window, right? Ever consider there might be a guy living in the back, and he just gets up and drives to the next town in the morning? That might be me. I'll carry two signs - one during the week, and it will say "Call Weekends Only" with a fictitious phone number, and the other for weekends, saying just the opposite. And of course, I'll want to put a high price on the sign so nobody will be interested anyway. Then again, a FOR SALE sign might be inviting trouble. What will I do if two or three people actually stop to look, circle the truck, try to peek in the windows (which I will have covered), and bang on the sides? What if they start messing with the door latch? Hmm......maybe I'll have to carry some kind of loud alarm that I'll turn on if somebody gets too friendly. Send 'em scrambling away, and then I'll do likewise. * * * Okay, I understand this might be a case of Too Much, Too Soon, but tonight there was a quarter-acre lot on Ebay, about twenty miles West of Taos, New Mexico in a little place called Tres Piedras. Twenty miles from the Colorado border. So I snagged it. $348.98. PROPERTY # 1 054 165 331 459 - TRES PIEDRAS ESTATES - UNIT 8, BLOCK 23, LOT J - TWP 28N RGE 9E SEC 24 QUAD 1. That's a lot of mumbo jumbo over a silly piece of land nobody has a use for. If you've ever had a conversation with me, you know eventually I'll get around to saying something about my need for Taos. Heck, didn't I just say I was going to do this about three paragraphs ago? It's zoned residential, but it's in the middle of nowhere, dirt roads, next door to Carson National Forest, and platted as a development. I'm allowed to RV on it while I'm visiting my property, and thank you very much, that's all I'm intending on doing anyway. Would I rather have ten or twenty acres? Sure. But that kind of thinking is so Old Darren. This new thing is all about the journey. And one thing we can all agree on: you don't stay put on a journey. A quarter-acre is fine. $5/year taxes. Visit. Move on. Again, the "recovery" from this purchase is the right feeling. Sometimes when I make an unusual purchase, my gut screams at me and asks why. Not this time. Not so close to Taos.  * * * I filled the propane tank today - 19 gallons. The mechanic said the tank looks excellent, and the system is just fine, and extremely safe. So the last great bit of unknown is settled, the furnace works perfectly, and with 19 gallons of propane to use, I can stay warm anywhere, for a long, long time. There's still going to be a cold engine block, so if I'm going to be parked in a cold climate, I'm going to have to be able to plug in the engine warmer. Maybe you've asked yourself why those big diesel semis keep their engines running in the rest stop all night? Well, they run their appliances of course, but probably more important is the fear they'll have starting issues in the morning and not be able to get back on the road. I've read an idling engine burns about a gallon per hour. Regardless, I am now satisfied I can heat my little living box in the mornings with ease. The flooring is ripped out now, and I've been trying to decide if I should also rip out the floor shelving on the left side of the truck. It's good work - very sturdy shelving - but I just can't justify a good use for it for taking up as much space as it does. Seeing the photo below, I think it needs to go, leaving just the matching wheel well. Then I'll staple down a layer of light R-1.9 insulation (the pink sheets, shown) which I found in my barn, an just-now-valuable gift from the previous homeowner. And finally, I'll unroll some Reflectix over that - across the whole floor. Reflectix is like bubble wrap, but with shiny silver mylar on either side. It's not insulation - it's a heat reflector. So you have to leave some kind of open space above it to let it do it's thing. Perfect for me. I'll frame a floor above the Reflectix giving a good 3" of space for the R-value to increase, and heat loss to decrease. I live in an old 1850's house right now. Part of it is built on granite slabs. Trust me, I know the effect of a cold floor, and you have to insulate.  * * * Pouring rain today. I cross my fingers. I go out to the truck to see what might be happening with the skylight/ceiling fan. This is the first day of rain since I bought the hippie-wagon. And it's coming down in buckets. Will there be puddles on the floor? Will some kind of poly-whatchamacallit roof sealant be in my future? Uggh. I slide the door back, enter, and flip on the lights. BONE DRY. And the lovely sound of the rain on the aluminum roof. Some of you people won't understand. I'm okay with that. But the sound of rain falling on your tent, your shed, your lean-to, your.......your '95 GMC step van.......what a beautiful sound. The sound of freedom and dreams coming true. I am winning right now. I'm beginning to think I stole this truck. * * * The rain is continuing in buckets the past few days, and the wind is howling and dropping branches, if not entire trees. I haven't seen rain this hard and constant in a while. I made another run into the truck just to see if the roof vent was actually surviving something major like this. Once again, the ceiling and floors are completely dry, and I can put this fear to bed for good. It's going to take a hurricane to make me question the roof integrity again. Since part of this little diary is intended as a how-to course, I should probably begin to address the financial planning towards this sort of dream. I make a modest income as a Staff Accountant (Fixed Assets) - by no means well-to-do - and the people around me know more than me and get paid more than me. I have a part-time job working the Front Desk at the YMCA every other weekend. And for the past four months I've also been working a little photo route for a marketing company - three hours a week, shooting a couple photos of lobbies and signage in five local hotels. Together, all these jobs are helping me bring down my huge debt, although allowing me no time to pursue creative ventures. But I am single with no kids. So I realize a certain benefit, which is, my money gets spent on me. Okay, bottom line, hippie-style. What is it going to take, per day, to live in a truck? Who can answer that, but the person who has lived it. The best I can do is estimate, plan, think, prepare........always calculate for the worst-case scenario. In fact, this might be a good time to share one of my life-philosophies with you, which is: Find your happiness in having the least. What would you do if you lost everything right now? One phone call, "It all burned to the ground." One meeting with your boss, "We have to let you go." What if you had to work for minimum wage at Family Dollar, and live in your '77 Buick Regal? You couldn't do that? Why not? You have to see the adventure in that situation. You have to consider that the Regal has a comfortable back seat, and your housekeeping is low maintenance. The people you meet at the Family Dollar are good people trying to get by, like you, with no pretences. You have shelter; it could be worse. You have regular income. Do you judge people who have so little? "Of course not," you say. Why are the things around us so important? Try to live life like a movie. You're just going through the next scene, and the next. Enjoy the commotion around you. Adapt. Have fun with it. Be creative. All you need is a spot to return to, to enjoy the show, and participate when you feel like it. And if you find a Buick Regal and a couple blankets........make yourself a fort. Thank you for the lame sociology rant.......ehh, we just want to know how you're going to afford this. I guess the first step is to figure out how much you've got in money and assets. Don't already have a list? Why not? Make a list now - you're not twelve anymore! List everything you would need to replace if you lost it in a fire, and list what you could sell it for today. The lowball price. If you had to sell it this minute, what price would attract buyers? Yes, this is what your assets are truly worth. Because when you make the leap, cashing them in is all you care about. Nobody cares what you paid for the fox coat; I'll give you thirty bucks for it, and you better take it. Once you have your list, you have to figure out the difference between what you owe - credit cards, school loans, medical, personal - and what you've got. Leave your house and mortgage out for a moment. Got forty grand in total assets and twenty grand in debts? Great, you're up twenty. Now....what do you owe on the house? And what could you sell it for today? Right now. What would bring 'em to your door? 75% of appraised value? You tell me. Not what you'd like to get, this is about what you know you could get, without question. This is critical, because if you have a big-ticket item like this (or a nice car), you need to accept, in your mind, the low dollar you're going to get. Accept it in your mind, know what you can count on, and everything else is gravy. Find your happiness in having the least, remember? If you paid $160k for your house, and you know you could dump it tomorrow for $150k, maybe $145k.........your answer is $145,000. Yeah, we all lost money in the housing market the past few years, but never mind that. You're either going to stay in that house or get out and get on with life. Okay, so let's take a look using the quick example below - a very truncated version of reality. You know you can sell the house for $145,000, and you're still carrying a mortgage for about $139,000. You've inventoried everything that won't go in your truck, and all these assets - furniture, vehicles, pots and pans - all put together with the house total $149,841. But all your outstanding debts, mortgage and loans are $158,504. So to be debt-free and possession-free - to reset yourself to ZERO - you only need to come up with another $8,663. You might get more for your crap, but we're planning now, so we have to shoot low. The guarantee. Example of spreadsheet:  At least now you know what it's going to take to be at Zero tomorrow. Too much math for you? Too bad. Zero is a great place to be. Zero doesn't mean it's time to quit your job; we haven't begun to discuss what you'll need to hit the road. But enough math for now. Besides, you probably still need to get your asset list pulled together. Absorb all this, and I'll come back to it later........but don't dismiss it. You MUST know what it will take to get you to Zero. March 2010 Furnace Removal Begin New Flooring |