I’m not big into self-realization stuff, but there seems to be a direct link between being able to roll with the punches and the amount of stress I experience when things don’t go exactly according to plan. You can plan anything you want and when those plans fall through you can either stress out or adapt and enjoy. Vanlife is a bit like riding a rollercoaster. You make the choice to purchase a ticket and get on the ride, but at some point the cars are going to go where they want to go and all you can do is hang on and enjoy the ride.
My plan for this video, “Dinner and a Movie”, was just that. I was planning to go see a movie at our local movie theater, have dinner at a nearby restaurant, and stealth camp in a nearby parking lot. Literally none of that happened. By the time I went to buy a ticket (for Wicked), the last show of the night was sold out. I recently purchased a digital TV antenna for my van and so on the fly I decided to hook that up and “watch a movie” in the van instead. (While I had planned to watch a movie, I discovered Sunday Night Football was on and I ended up watching that instead.)
Since I was already watching TV in the van, I decided to cook food there, too. I had planned to eat the chips and try the salsa, but hydrating a couple of dried Mountain Meals was, to use a football term, calling an audible. I’ve had them in the van for about a week and I’d been planning a completely different video where I was going to cook them, but things just fell into place. My original video idea of watching a movie in a theater and going to a Mexican restaurant turned into watching football on a TV in my van and cooking a dried chicken fajita meal.
I came up with a really fun (and somewhat risky) place to stealth camp and then ended up not doing it. I was sure the movie theater parking lot was not going to work and the longer the night went on the more I began to realize it was an ideal “ambiguous” spot, something I’m always looking for. There’s a strip of parking that literally looks like it belongs to six different businesses, including a 24 hour gym and a bakery. My van looks a bit like a catering van, so parking near restaurants is something that has worked for me. I’ve stuck that other parking spot in my back pocket and will use it in a different video.
The original cut of this video was roughly two hours long. It was so long that even I wouldn’t watch it, and I love watching me. This final cut is one hour long. I did long reviews of the TV antenna and the EasyLonger ES960 battery which I cut down here but will end up as separate videos. When you’re in the moment I am always in “fill the silence” mode. It’s only when editing that you realize… nobody wants to hear most of this. I cut out a three minute speech about my custom water bottle. I tried being entertaining during the entire 10 minutes it took to cook each of those meals, only to realize when editing… you can cut that stuff out. Duh.
Here are Amazon Affiliate links to the things that appear in this video. As always, if you have questions about any of them prior to purchasing one, reach out.
AllPowers R2500 2,000Wh Power Station: https://amzn.to/4cNp4n1
EasyLonger ES960 CPAP Battery (VIDEO): https://amzn.to/4gpzbQD
Digital TV Antenna: https://amzn.to/417Hv2N
Electric Kettle: https://amzn.to/4eQ3IFN
RCA Microwave: https://amzn.to/4eQuWfD
Some of my stealth camps go pretty much according to plan and some of my videos turn out pretty close as to how I had imagined them in my mind and neither of those things happened here. I hope you enjoy it and I enjoyed making it, but more than that I enjoyed experiencing it. Keep rockin’.
