Road warriors

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur.  Which in part explains why we are so far behind on blog posts...

We had heard about a fun event in portland for sprinter enthusiasts and we decided it was a must-hit for us.  What we hadn't planned on was that it fell the morning after my fantasy football draft in Vancouver, BC late the night before.  Luckily, my amazing wife was willing to pick me up after the draft party ended (after 2am) and to drive south all night to portland so we could be there for the kickoff of Sprinterfest 2016 at 9am.  As if I wasn't already indebted enough to her before!

SprinterFest was an awesome chance to see other people's builds, share ideas and inspiration and to simply meet some people in the community.  We had a blast, despite me having a fairly rough/tired morning and despite an unexpected heatwave in portland.  The temps were over 100 degrees and we spent the entire day in the parking lot baking in the sun.

By midafternoon almost everyone had tapped out and left, so we repacked and hit the road.  Didn't get far before we stumbled upon a fountain and decided to cool off.  Im pretty sure nobody noticed that it was only dozens of kids playing in the fountain...and then two exhausted vandwellers and their dog.  nah...probably not.

The next few days were a harsh contrast to the very comfortable temps we had just left in Vancouver, and we spent each of them sweating it out in the uninsulated van parked anywhere we could open all the doors and hope for a breeze. 

Insulation now sits at the very top of our to-do list.

We got a call later in the week from Bryan at Latenight Aircooled in Chico saying there was an opportunity to take the bus in for a deep checkup and any work that might be needed so we shifted gears...as normal and added a california road trip to our un-plan.

We extracted the bus from the garage, put some batteries in the old walkie talkies and headed south caravan-style.  Such a strange feeling driving the bus and watching the sprinter on the freeway next to me.  Like past and present colliding in one space/time.  It was hard to not spend the 10+quiet (if you can call driving a 67bus on the freeway quiet) hours of driving in deep contemplative thought about our past, our current and how quickly things can change completely.

We drove quickly south, stopped into the casino for some late night entertainment and boondocking and then dropped off the Bus in the morning and turned around to head back north.   Yikes!  Mission accomplished, but it’s clear we are simply not built for speed.

On the way north we pulled over to camp in a beautiful state park with an awesome view of a rocky crag and took in a campfire before bed.  In the morning we hit the road and pulled back into portland (having driven over 1000miles in under 40hours) just in time for a birthday party at our shared shop space, ADX.

Parties and bus dropoff complete...we made sure we got some quality time in with a couple portland friends and hit a local neighborhood bbq and we’re headed back north to BC.  We have more exploring to do!