I think I had honored my guest, Glenn of toSimplify.net, a week before he showed up in Gunnison, CO. The bolts that hold the travel trailer to its frame were loosening -- and credit that vital discovery to my friend Mark (Box Canyon Blog). Since one of those bolts was under the shower stall, it was necessary to remove the shower stall. But hell, why not just get rid of it! You can see I was already under the influence of Glenn's philosophical penumbra, despite him still being a couple hundred miles away.
What horrors would be revealed by removing the shower stall? Tools, money, or cellphones, that were lost years ago? A rodent nest and one pissed-off mama rodent baring her teeth at me? How about ghastly water damage and mildew?
Oddly enough I found nothing except the bolt that needed to be replaced. It was no small miracle that a plastic tub of just the right size was found at a well-known big box retail store. Then I rigged up a cloth shower curtain that hangs into the plastic tub. The flexible plumbing stayed the same. After taking a standard navy shower, I lift the plastic tub out of there and dump the dirty water into a sink.
This can't be claimed as a huge success at downsizing, but it will be, eventually. That plastic tub could be temporarily laid down on the floor in front of the kitchen sink. Thus you could take a nice navy shower without allocating space for a permanent shower stall. (I also got rid of several feet of shower drain plumbing which used to chop up storage space under the bed.)
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Very well then, I had honored my visitor where it counts: with action rather than words. But would I learn that much from his famous Vanagon? He considers it "self-contained," but I don't. In fact I wish I had a nickel for every time I got excited about a smaller RV, only to see the bubble burst when they finally admitted that there was no toilet or holding tank; then they give the standard van-camper spiel about sponge-baths, baby wipes, or paying $5 to take a shower at the city swimming pool.
To make it even more challenging, Glenn is basically an urban boondocker. That is an activity I deign to, occasionally, when the back-country is pure mud. Still, if 10% of what he did to his customized and ingenious rig was useful to me, then he is worth learning from.
He got into town and we had a marathon BS session at the coffee shop. Because of the rain and mud we both went off in the evening and found our own urban boondocking sites. My site was known to me; I got a great night's sleep there, and that is no small miracle in any town or city.
In the morning I had many hours to kill before the danged City Slicker would wake up. So I did some errands. While driving around I wondered what sort of place he had found last night. After hearing him boast of the "go almost anywhere" qualities of his rig, it was easy to imagine him finding a rare and exotic niche; perhaps it would be representative of an unknown category of places! I was really curious.
Well, as long as the engine was warm I might as well drop in at a certain well-known big-box retailer and do some routine errands. I was not emotionally and philosophically prepared for what I found:
Camp anywhere, go anywhere indeed! Another bubble burst. Still, it was his first night in town, and he soon redeemed himself.
The best way to benefit from Glenn's example is pull out of of the muck of phony pragmatism; ignore dissimilarities of his camping style and yours; and look for the larger significance of his project.
1. He did a rare thing in tackling a ball-buster of a project, instead of the mainstream RV approach of comfort and security worship. These are the very things that turn the "RV Adventure" into a non-adventure.
2. His project would be called an "existence theorem" in mathematics class. Metaphorical existence theorems are very important in the real world. Some people won't try a difficult project until somebody else has demonstrated it to be feasible.
What horrors would be revealed by removing the shower stall? Tools, money, or cellphones, that were lost years ago? A rodent nest and one pissed-off mama rodent baring her teeth at me? How about ghastly water damage and mildew?
Oddly enough I found nothing except the bolt that needed to be replaced. It was no small miracle that a plastic tub of just the right size was found at a well-known big box retail store. Then I rigged up a cloth shower curtain that hangs into the plastic tub. The flexible plumbing stayed the same. After taking a standard navy shower, I lift the plastic tub out of there and dump the dirty water into a sink.
This can't be claimed as a huge success at downsizing, but it will be, eventually. That plastic tub could be temporarily laid down on the floor in front of the kitchen sink. Thus you could take a nice navy shower without allocating space for a permanent shower stall. (I also got rid of several feet of shower drain plumbing which used to chop up storage space under the bed.)
_____________________________________
Very well then, I had honored my visitor where it counts: with action rather than words. But would I learn that much from his famous Vanagon? He considers it "self-contained," but I don't. In fact I wish I had a nickel for every time I got excited about a smaller RV, only to see the bubble burst when they finally admitted that there was no toilet or holding tank; then they give the standard van-camper spiel about sponge-baths, baby wipes, or paying $5 to take a shower at the city swimming pool.
To make it even more challenging, Glenn is basically an urban boondocker. That is an activity I deign to, occasionally, when the back-country is pure mud. Still, if 10% of what he did to his customized and ingenious rig was useful to me, then he is worth learning from.
He got into town and we had a marathon BS session at the coffee shop. Because of the rain and mud we both went off in the evening and found our own urban boondocking sites. My site was known to me; I got a great night's sleep there, and that is no small miracle in any town or city.
In the morning I had many hours to kill before the danged City Slicker would wake up. So I did some errands. While driving around I wondered what sort of place he had found last night. After hearing him boast of the "go almost anywhere" qualities of his rig, it was easy to imagine him finding a rare and exotic niche; perhaps it would be representative of an unknown category of places! I was really curious.
Well, as long as the engine was warm I might as well drop in at a certain well-known big-box retailer and do some routine errands. I was not emotionally and philosophically prepared for what I found:
Camp anywhere, go anywhere indeed! Another bubble burst. Still, it was his first night in town, and he soon redeemed himself.
The best way to benefit from Glenn's example is pull out of of the muck of phony pragmatism; ignore dissimilarities of his camping style and yours; and look for the larger significance of his project.
1. He did a rare thing in tackling a ball-buster of a project, instead of the mainstream RV approach of comfort and security worship. These are the very things that turn the "RV Adventure" into a non-adventure.
2. His project would be called an "existence theorem" in mathematics class. Metaphorical existence theorems are very important in the real world. Some people won't try a difficult project until somebody else has demonstrated it to be feasible.
Comments
The go anywhere van can do Walmart just fine ... Walmart is somewhere. ;-)
We recently had some battles with critters trying to nest. Thank goodness we caught'm hurry!
Namaste,
Ms. Minimal
Work shop & support during the last 6 months