DriftA journal written from the passenger seat of a converted Sprinter. Slow mornings, camp stove recipes, and sixty square feet of enough.
The seller was a flooring contractor from Boise. The van smelled like sawdust and old coffee. We handed over a cashier's check and drove it home in the rain, windows fogging, already planning the bed platform.
The bare metal walls had seen better decades. But standing inside that empty cargo hold, we could already see the kitchen, the bed, the desk by the window.
Three versions in one night. The third one stuck. Bed facing the rear doors, kitchen on the driver's side, 40 inches of counter space.
The forums said Thinsulate. The forums were right. Two days of cutting, fitting, and re-cutting.
We ran the cable through the roof on a Tuesday. By Thursday we were charging phones off sunlight. It felt like cheating.
¾-inch birch plywood, piano hinges, and a mattress from a local surplus store. Sleeps better than our apartment did.
We parked at 8pm. Lay awake until 1am listening to shopping carts. Woke up at 6 to golden light through the curtains. Called it a success.
Boil 200ml. Steep two minutes. Press slow. Drink looking at whatever's outside the windshield. Better than any café.
Pulled off at mile marker 112. Nothing for forty miles in either direction. Stayed three days.
Propane refill, two cans of white beans, half an onion, olive oil. One-pan pasta that took seventeen minutes and tasted like a slow Tuesday.
We installed the magnetic screen on a Thursday. By Friday evening we were watching a Utah sunset through it, eating crackers and cheese, saying nothing.
We ran dry in the Escalante at noon. Nearest fill was 34 miles east. Lesson learned, never forgotten.
The Starlink dish sits on a magnetic mount on the roof. Signal in the desert is better than my old apartment in Brooklyn. The meetings are still the same.
We pulled into a BLM site at 4pm. By 5 the sky had turned green. By 5:15 it was the loudest rain either of us had ever heard. We made soup and listened.