wait·ing

NOUN

the action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens.

Good things come to those who wait, and wait, and wait.

Patience has never been our strong suit, but we’re getting much better at it and that is important when you are preparing to make a big change in your life, such as putting all your worldly possessions in storage and moving into a van. People have done it, quite successfully according to the plethora of video bloggers out there whom we have become addicted followers of on YouTube, but by the time they are YouTube stars, they have already been through years of decision making, preparation and practice. We are smack in front of the whole process, waiting for our turn to arrive.

Step one, pick your van. Sounds easy enough, right? Turns out, there are a staggering number of options when it comes to camper van choices. Some folks build their own, some go with prebuilt models. There are little 4 wheel drive ones that can climb over stuff we would be nervous about taking our amped up Jeep over. There are luxury ones that cost as much as a fairly well appointed house. There are so many custom builders out there for van conversions it can make your head spin, not to mention all the different brands of vehicle chassis, sizes, suspension options and upgrades. It just goes on and on. Overwhelming is the correct word here.

Everyone has their list of wants and needs and a time frame for their plans. Lucky for us, retirement is very close, but not here just yet, so we have some time to get the van we want made exactly to our specifications. We have had time to plan financially and we decided that since this is going to be our home for an extended period of time thereby replacing a mortgage/rent payment for us, we didn’t want to compromise on anything. We want it like we want it.

We did our homework, exhaustively, and after looking at all the options out there, we chose a custom build on a Mercedes chassis. The one for us is the Mercedes Benz Sprinter 170 extended chassis all-wheel drive 2024 model and our custom builder is ActiVan Conversions located in Reno, Nevada. We’ve turned over our list of wants for the van chassis itself, including an extended range fuel tank, Line-X coating on the hood and sides, an Owl Vans Pismo front bumper with Warn winch and much more down to the choice of tires.

Now we wait like expectant parents for our baby to come off the assembly line and be delivered to ActiVan where it will be converted into our new home. In the meanwhile, we are thinking, always, of how van life will be, what we might need and how to talk our cat, Butch Catsidy, into being a mobile adventure kitty.

What we think will need for van life is a whole other topic and deserves a story of its very own. Suffices to say that our van build will not be completed for 7 more months, but we have half a dozen large boxes already filled with mini versions of household appliances and collapsible versions of everything that you can possibly think of that can collapse. Word of warning here, a real hazard of waiting for a custom build to complete is falling prey to the need for retail therapy in the mean time. Pick your poison.

I was Born a Ramblin Van

Choices, Choices