Bigdirtygreen
New member
Hi, I'm Rick, new member, but I've been lurking and stalking many of you for over a year as @ricusmortis on Instagram. I thought I'd post an intro to myself, my family, and our van project. I hope you like to read! Just about no one will listen to us and our van stories which has been frustrating. So writing this has been cathartic for me. I will likely expand on this intro post with some of my characteric sarcasm and crude humor in my first blog entry when I get time for that - someday. I've been dreaming of getting into vanlife full time for quite a while. I'm permanently disabled with a degenerative autoimmune musculoskeletal disease and wasn't sure if I'd ever make my dream a reality.
If you are a Mötley Crüe fan (a recent Netflix film shed more light on this), I have the same disease as Mick Mars, Ankylosing Spondylitis, and a nasty case of it. I won't bore you here with all the details of my disability. Although, if you are interested in that sort of thing, there's a lengthy blog bio linked in my profile here and on Instagram. I'll be sure to start a post in the disabled explorers thread as well. The reason I mention my disability first is because it is the primary reason that I not only wanted, but NEEDED to get into a van sooner, rather than later.
When I became disabled in 2011 and lost my job, home, sense of self, etc, and went thru all the misery that goes along with the Social Security Disability denial/approval process, I became pretty depressed. My wife, Jess, and I ended up moving to Phoenix from Michigan after her parents offered us a place to stay so we could start all over.
A few years after settling here, I discovered mountains, hiking, and off-roading in the desert southwest. Hiking literally saved my life. It simultaneously aided me in tremendous wait loss and improved physical conditioning, while improving my outlook on life. I'm not a big peak bagger and I'm not winning any long trail marathons, but I do all right for a dude with a completely fused spine who can't even wipe his own butt.
That last rather crude bit of "TMI" is what makes vanlife necessary for me to continue my lifestyle and maintain my sanity. I have a host of neurogenic degenerative issues because of my fused spine and spinal cord injury including neurogenic bladder and bowel. That essentially means that I cannot predict when I'll have to use the bathroom and I have a lot of difficulty. And as mentioned previously, I need assistance, from my lovely wife or a brief shower.
This means that I spend more time pacing around a condo or sitting on the toilet planning hikes, expeditions, and National Park trips than actually doing anything, ever. I can never seem to get out of the house and make it to the trailhead except for maybe a few hours before sunset. What if... my home was already at the trailhead?... when I had a bad day and had to ditch my plans, I could just explore until my body was treating me better? What if... A van was the answer.
Things got slightly more complex when we had our first child in November of 2017. I thought my dream might not be realized again. My wife, who had put her dream of becoming a nurse on hold when I became disabled, started picking off some nursing classes again, but with the new baby and working full time, it was too difficult and she had to put her plans on hold yet again.
Then my health took a turn for the worse during the last year while being a disabled stay at home dad with very little help. I had overwhelming guilt about the amount of time I spent in the bathroom instead of with my daughter. I did zero hiking. We went on very few trips anywhere. We were all going insane. Something had to give.
Then one day, my wife called me from work and said, "can I quit this **** hole"? I couldn't have been happier. I had done the math tons of times and told her that she didn't need to work. My disability pay alone was enough to live in a van comfortably. I was never concerned about the money.
In the last year of being home alone with my newborn daughter, I discovered that living in a van with a family was possible and it appealed to me a lot. I read everything I could find about world schooling and unschooling and found that I was already practicing this with my daughter, Raven.
I am unable thus far to convince any of our family and few of our friends that we are doing right by our daughter, but I'm guessing I'll find similar thinking minds in this group. I can't think of a better way to teach my child than to actually go to all the historic sites, visit all the National Parks, see all the States, explore every mountain and river, talk to all the people, eat all the different foods, experience all the different cultures, learn about off-grid living, learn about maintaining a vehicle yourself, etc. I'm really excited about this!
So it was decided in November 2018. My wife quit her lousy retail job. We started looking at what we could afford with our small budget of $13K from a 401K loan to start. We will add more money to the budget as we sell all of our belongings from a 3 bedroom condo and two other vehicles. We also plan to move out asap to avoid costly Phoenix summer utilities. We will likely be living with my wife's parents temporarily while we build the van as we can't build in our condo carport.
I started hounding Chris at UJOR on an almost daily basis for advice while I shopped for the perfect van. We knew we wanted an extended E-350. We preferred a cargo, but knew a passenger might be easier to find and the easier route for insurance as a lot of the cargos were titled commercial. I searched forever for a 7.3 until I finally decided that the diesel maintenance cost and my complete lack of diesel knowledge made the 6.8 V-10 gas a better option. I wasn't planning to tow nor travel long distances in one shot so mpgs were not a concern. I just needed plenty of torque for the 4 x 4 conversion later.
Our ideal van was a 2005 to 2007 V-10 with the 5R110 and no RSC, but none could be grabbed. We had at least three of them get bought before we could even make the call. We test drove one of those super low mileage 2008 Homeland V-10 cargos that can be found in San Diego, Tucson, Florida, Washington, and occasionally and few other places. They all look the same. Disconnected rooftop AC units. Wires cut from all the inverters. Disconnected engine hour meter. You remove the doghouse, and the valve covers and intake manifold look roasted like it has 300,000 miles on it, not the 18,000 shown on the odometer. We did a lot of research on these Homeland vans and decided against them for a number of reasons. I can go into detail if anyone is curious.
After failing repeatedly to find a van under 60,000 miles and under $10K, we decided that we'd probably need to start looking at cheaper, dirtier vans that might need some work as it seemed like every one ton van in the country was starting to accumulate on the UJOR lot. We also decided that we might end up needing to travel across the country to find one. We started looking at the $5000 single owner market and found our van within a few weeks.
I found it online on at the end of February via one of the popular listing sites. I called the Ford dealership that was selling it the instant the listing went up. It was so new that they didn't even have pictures yet. I didn't care. I'd already had several vans bought out from under me without pics. This one was an extended length V-10 with 99K on the odometer, so I made a deposit site unseen.
After a few hours of haggling, some phone calls, and picture swapping, Big Dirty Green was ours! We just needed to find a way to go get her south of Nashville, Tennessee. I had a lot of anxiety buying a vehicle site unseen as I've never done this before, but buying from the same Ford dealership that originally sold this van to the church, serviced it for most of its life (it was a fleet vehicle in Vegas for its first 25K), and then bought it back, settled some of my anxiety. I was assured service records at least this way and had a legit looking Car Fax to match.
The only thing I didn't like about the van was the roof rust, but I was planning to put a Fiberine 24 inch top on it immediately so I used that to negotiate $700 off the deal and dropped our price to $4300. For that price, I didn't really care what was wrong it as long as the body and frame were fine. We now have a lot of extra budget to make everything better than new.
So in early March, after waiting out a few coast to coast winter storms along the I-40 corridor, we rented a minivan, loaded up the whole family, and headed east to get our van. This was our daughter's first long road trip and she did really well! It took us a little over 3 days to get to the dealership staying at dirty motels (can't wait to just stay in the van).
In my next update, we pick up the van!
If you are a Mötley Crüe fan (a recent Netflix film shed more light on this), I have the same disease as Mick Mars, Ankylosing Spondylitis, and a nasty case of it. I won't bore you here with all the details of my disability. Although, if you are interested in that sort of thing, there's a lengthy blog bio linked in my profile here and on Instagram. I'll be sure to start a post in the disabled explorers thread as well. The reason I mention my disability first is because it is the primary reason that I not only wanted, but NEEDED to get into a van sooner, rather than later.
When I became disabled in 2011 and lost my job, home, sense of self, etc, and went thru all the misery that goes along with the Social Security Disability denial/approval process, I became pretty depressed. My wife, Jess, and I ended up moving to Phoenix from Michigan after her parents offered us a place to stay so we could start all over.
A few years after settling here, I discovered mountains, hiking, and off-roading in the desert southwest. Hiking literally saved my life. It simultaneously aided me in tremendous wait loss and improved physical conditioning, while improving my outlook on life. I'm not a big peak bagger and I'm not winning any long trail marathons, but I do all right for a dude with a completely fused spine who can't even wipe his own butt.
That last rather crude bit of "TMI" is what makes vanlife necessary for me to continue my lifestyle and maintain my sanity. I have a host of neurogenic degenerative issues because of my fused spine and spinal cord injury including neurogenic bladder and bowel. That essentially means that I cannot predict when I'll have to use the bathroom and I have a lot of difficulty. And as mentioned previously, I need assistance, from my lovely wife or a brief shower.
This means that I spend more time pacing around a condo or sitting on the toilet planning hikes, expeditions, and National Park trips than actually doing anything, ever. I can never seem to get out of the house and make it to the trailhead except for maybe a few hours before sunset. What if... my home was already at the trailhead?... when I had a bad day and had to ditch my plans, I could just explore until my body was treating me better? What if... A van was the answer.
Things got slightly more complex when we had our first child in November of 2017. I thought my dream might not be realized again. My wife, who had put her dream of becoming a nurse on hold when I became disabled, started picking off some nursing classes again, but with the new baby and working full time, it was too difficult and she had to put her plans on hold yet again.
Then my health took a turn for the worse during the last year while being a disabled stay at home dad with very little help. I had overwhelming guilt about the amount of time I spent in the bathroom instead of with my daughter. I did zero hiking. We went on very few trips anywhere. We were all going insane. Something had to give.
Then one day, my wife called me from work and said, "can I quit this **** hole"? I couldn't have been happier. I had done the math tons of times and told her that she didn't need to work. My disability pay alone was enough to live in a van comfortably. I was never concerned about the money.
In the last year of being home alone with my newborn daughter, I discovered that living in a van with a family was possible and it appealed to me a lot. I read everything I could find about world schooling and unschooling and found that I was already practicing this with my daughter, Raven.
I am unable thus far to convince any of our family and few of our friends that we are doing right by our daughter, but I'm guessing I'll find similar thinking minds in this group. I can't think of a better way to teach my child than to actually go to all the historic sites, visit all the National Parks, see all the States, explore every mountain and river, talk to all the people, eat all the different foods, experience all the different cultures, learn about off-grid living, learn about maintaining a vehicle yourself, etc. I'm really excited about this!
So it was decided in November 2018. My wife quit her lousy retail job. We started looking at what we could afford with our small budget of $13K from a 401K loan to start. We will add more money to the budget as we sell all of our belongings from a 3 bedroom condo and two other vehicles. We also plan to move out asap to avoid costly Phoenix summer utilities. We will likely be living with my wife's parents temporarily while we build the van as we can't build in our condo carport.
I started hounding Chris at UJOR on an almost daily basis for advice while I shopped for the perfect van. We knew we wanted an extended E-350. We preferred a cargo, but knew a passenger might be easier to find and the easier route for insurance as a lot of the cargos were titled commercial. I searched forever for a 7.3 until I finally decided that the diesel maintenance cost and my complete lack of diesel knowledge made the 6.8 V-10 gas a better option. I wasn't planning to tow nor travel long distances in one shot so mpgs were not a concern. I just needed plenty of torque for the 4 x 4 conversion later.
Our ideal van was a 2005 to 2007 V-10 with the 5R110 and no RSC, but none could be grabbed. We had at least three of them get bought before we could even make the call. We test drove one of those super low mileage 2008 Homeland V-10 cargos that can be found in San Diego, Tucson, Florida, Washington, and occasionally and few other places. They all look the same. Disconnected rooftop AC units. Wires cut from all the inverters. Disconnected engine hour meter. You remove the doghouse, and the valve covers and intake manifold look roasted like it has 300,000 miles on it, not the 18,000 shown on the odometer. We did a lot of research on these Homeland vans and decided against them for a number of reasons. I can go into detail if anyone is curious.
After failing repeatedly to find a van under 60,000 miles and under $10K, we decided that we'd probably need to start looking at cheaper, dirtier vans that might need some work as it seemed like every one ton van in the country was starting to accumulate on the UJOR lot. We also decided that we might end up needing to travel across the country to find one. We started looking at the $5000 single owner market and found our van within a few weeks.
I found it online on at the end of February via one of the popular listing sites. I called the Ford dealership that was selling it the instant the listing went up. It was so new that they didn't even have pictures yet. I didn't care. I'd already had several vans bought out from under me without pics. This one was an extended length V-10 with 99K on the odometer, so I made a deposit site unseen.
After a few hours of haggling, some phone calls, and picture swapping, Big Dirty Green was ours! We just needed to find a way to go get her south of Nashville, Tennessee. I had a lot of anxiety buying a vehicle site unseen as I've never done this before, but buying from the same Ford dealership that originally sold this van to the church, serviced it for most of its life (it was a fleet vehicle in Vegas for its first 25K), and then bought it back, settled some of my anxiety. I was assured service records at least this way and had a legit looking Car Fax to match.
The only thing I didn't like about the van was the roof rust, but I was planning to put a Fiberine 24 inch top on it immediately so I used that to negotiate $700 off the deal and dropped our price to $4300. For that price, I didn't really care what was wrong it as long as the body and frame were fine. We now have a lot of extra budget to make everything better than new.
So in early March, after waiting out a few coast to coast winter storms along the I-40 corridor, we rented a minivan, loaded up the whole family, and headed east to get our van. This was our daughter's first long road trip and she did really well! It took us a little over 3 days to get to the dealership staying at dirty motels (can't wait to just stay in the van).
In my next update, we pick up the van!
