More and Now

I watch a bit of social media before bed, usually about comedians, MMA and vanlife. FWIW, I saw Ryan Long, who I was introduced to by Instagram, at Zanies in Chicago and his set was drop-dead funny.

Most of the vanlife stuff is sort of soft-core Only Fans, targeting men, usually starring cute hippie chicks or straight men playing it up for gay guys. Mostly I watch these things for inspiration on what rig I might build next after this one. The longevity expectation on a Windsor 5.8L V8 gasser, the van’s engine, is 250-300k miles. I’m at 215,000 and the transmission is iffy. After meeting a couple from Florida with a fully converted MCI Greyhound bus, I fight the urge to think I need one of those. They come cheap, at about $4,000 for a mid-90’s bus with the seats still inside and about 500,000 miles on the clock, but the engine and transmission combination will go to at least 1 million without an overhaul. Problem is, it’s going to cost $3,500 to drive that thing across the country each time. And there’s no stealth camping freebies in that.

I think about that scene in Wall Street quite a bit, when Bud Fox confronts Gordon Gekko about smashing up his father’s company into parts to be sold: “How many yachts can you water ski behind? How much is enough?” Perhaps it’s a quirk of human evolution — that we’re wired for fitness over fulfillment — which drives people to work away their lives to attain so many things they don’t need. The vacation home. The movie theater. The motorcycle. The Polo shirt. Even my grandma, the most frugal Great Depression veteran ever, used to stick her uneaten Meals On Wheels in the freezer. She was over 100. Like, what was she saving them for? In case she ran out of dinners at 110? When she passed, the ice box didn’t have room for even one more.

Addiction is the disease of more and now. Having enjoyed the migration from upper middle class to broke, I also think about this a lot. Why didn’t I save anything? Why did I buy so much stuff I didn’t need? After 2 years living in a van, today, I’m a born-again miser. If I can live without it, I do live without it. Food prepared from Le Creuset pots and pans goes down just the same as what’s made from the ones at Goodwill. Except, I don’t even own pots and pans.

I came to thinking about this again when I stumbled across this self-professed minimalist YouTuber living in a box truck. My reaction: dude, that truck is bigger than my old apartment in NYC and it gets 5 MPG on diesel. But, joke’s on me too: minimalist influencer is an oxymoron.

I pulled over somewhere on the 300 miles of dirt road between Dawson City and Fairbanks. Now I see why a cracked windscreen is a Yukon passport. It cost $12 for a site at an empty, gorgeous BLM campground somewhere in the high mountains along the Top of the World Highway. Having had a chunk cut off a cold block of cheese, some pickles and beef jerky, plus a handful of unsalted peanuts and a banana for dinner, and now listening to Mike snore, I think to myself: you know what, I really don’t need more right now. Actually, maybe a little mosquito spray would be nice. But that’s it.