I’ve added a lot of amenities to my van to make my stays in it more comfortable, but it would be a stretch to say the van is more comfortable than my “sticks and bricks” home. The MaxxAir fan I installed does a good job of pulling and pushing air through the van and creating a breeze, but it’s a far cry from the central air conditioner that keeps the temperature in my home in the low 70s all summer long. The foam mattresses I installed in my van are comfortable and borderline overkill for a camper van, but even they are inferior to the king-sized mattress my wife and I routinely sleep on.
That being said, at least one night last week, I found my van to be superior in almost every way. That was the day we lost power.
A few days ago, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that someone was trying to smother me. After swinging my arms to fight off some imaginary assailant, I realized what had happened — my CPAP machine had turned itself off. When I reached over to turn on my bedside lamp I realized it too was dead. For a split-second I thought the lights in my room were flickering on and off until I realized the flashes of light were from lighting outside our bedroom window.
Most people wouldn’t even notice that their electricity had gone out in the middle of the night. My wife certainly didn’t. As I fumbled around in the dark troubleshooting my CPAP machine, my wife remained fast asleep! Most people turn off their lights and televisions at night. The only way most people know that the power went out in the middle in the night is that they wake up to a flashing on their microwave.
I’m not supposed to sleep without my CPAP machine, but occasionally I do. On the rare occasion that I do, it’s usually in a recliner. I got out of bed and was heading to my recliner when I realized that I was starting to wake up. As I stumbled toward the living room in the dark using the light from my phone I was just about to light a candle when I remembered… I have six LED puck lights out in my van! I abandoned my plan to light a candle and instead slipped on my Crocs and went out to the van to get a couple of my lights.
The storm was still on top of us. Rain was coming down in sheets, sideways. The path to my driveway was mostly dark, occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning. Had any of my neighbors been looking outside during one of those flashes they would have seen a middle-aged man wearing a t-shirt, black boxers, and a pair of Crocs running through the rain toward his van.
When I reached my van I quickly jumped into the back to get out of the cold rain and slammed the door shut. Just like my house, the inside of my van was dark, too. I tapped one of my LED lights which lit up the entire van. With the light on, I noticed several things… like my spare CPAP machine! Despite the fact that my old CPAP machine works great, my insurance company insisted it was time for a new one. Instead of moving my CPAP back and forth to the van every weekend, I just put the old one int he van and left it there.
A flood (no pun intended) of thoughts hit me all at once. I had lights in my van, and I had a working CPAP in my van. I also had a little over 3,000Wh of battery power at my disposal. I had a working refrigerator full of cold drinks and a television with a digital antenna that I could use to get weather updates. Literally everything in my van at that moment was better than what I had available in my traditional home.
And so, that is where I stayed! With the sound of rain tinkling on the top of my van (I love that sound!) I crawled under my flannel blanket, tuned my television to the local weatherman, and put on my backup CPAP. Everything was perfect and before long I was right back to sleep.
I woke up about three hours later, just before 7:00 AM. After shutting everything down I made sure the coast was clear before trotting back into my backyard to sit on the patio and enjoy a beautiful sunrise. With the storms still near and the sun behind the clouds, the entire sky lit up pink and a rainbow dropped down right behind my fence.