Well I actually wasn't feeling well the other day so I didn't get much done. Had a headache by the end of the day, and the next morning as the headache slowly wormed it's way out a slight feeling of nausea poured into my trachea. Basically anytime I stood and moved around the house I'd feel slightly dizzy and an uncomfortable lump at the base of my neck, that was just dying to pull bile from my stomach.
It took me like an hour on the couch before I forced myself to quickly get up and make a couple of poached eggs with a dash of tobasco sauce. I wasn't sure if they would sit right or not, but amazingly enough they did the trick and everything started to settle down.
After a bit I got myself up and luckily there was some broth in the cupboard, for real always keep some kind of broth around just for days like this! I took that mixed it with some chopped onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, celery, and broccoli. Seasoned it a bit and let it simmer for like 45 minutes, and then just had a bowl of that like every hour and half. By the end of the night I was feeling good again. I do feel like my body is still fighting something though, and it's kind of annoying.
Anyways, wokeup today and focused on getting everything in the van. I had ordered a bunch of stuff and was going through some things around my parents house, mostly cleaning up and had some items in boxes that I was planning on putting in the van. So I basically put all that in the van and then just sat in there with the doors closed and my heating system going, and started to go through everything. That seems to be the best way for me, is to like have everything in the room I'm in and just start spreading eveyrthing out. I need to see it all so I can figure out what I do and don't need. Then just started to figure out where everything needed to go in the van.
Everything is now stowed and I believe I've got everything taken care of. I had to move some web files from an old laptop to this one, mostly it's stuff for my personal website, so that I can start improving on it again. I think everything is good though. I just need to make one more quick stop at the storage unit to drop off a couple of things and then I'm good to go.
I was planning on leaving tonight, but at this point I'm thinking why not just leave first thing in the morning after a shower, because honestly showering is unfortunately going to turn into a more of a luxury on the road. Don't get me wrong I'm going to look into some things like truck stops or campgrounds, but it's probably going to be more of a once every other or every third day kind of thing. My brother did show me some cool shower ideas that are just built with PVC pipe and are mounted on the roof, but don't really have time for all that right now.
Remember how I said the Side Door was almost fixed, well it lied to me. The next day I went outside to get some things organized and the door stopped working again. Not sure exactly what happened. Everything was still connected, but it just wouldn't open again.
We looked at it again, and were thinking the cables might have got switched around. So we spent maybe thirty minutes on it then just kind of gave up, mostly because we couldn't get the door to just open to work on it, partly because it was colder, maybe also because my brother was going to have a late shift, but most definitely because we just didn't want to work on it again.
Made a few calls and only one place would have time to work on it the next day, as opposed to the other places that didn't have openings for another week or so.
It took them almost all day to get it done, well the door and an oil change, but at least it opens from the inside again. Sadly it only opens from the inside and that alone cost me like 80 bucks, which was only really for the man power since I had bought the parts and fixed the cables. But again it's better than it not being able to open at all, so got to look at the plus side.
I believe someone mentioned that for the outside it might actually be the door handle busted, not just the cable, so if that's true it will take longer and probably cost more to get fixed. So that's definitely not going to get fixed before I go. Once again, the positive side, is that I don't have to worry if I've locked that door or not because not only does the handle not work but the cable isn't connected.
Parts to fix the side door, 13.90$. Time spent with my brother fixing the Side Door, price...a lot! A lot of cold hours outside!!
Nawh, but it wasn't actually that bad. Glad my brother has more determination in fixing things than I do. Whenever he helps me save some money by fixing car stuff I'm thankful. After about two hours, I'm usually to the point of, "How about we just cram it all back in the door and I'll just pay to have them finish it?" My brother won't stand for that, and we continue into all hours of the day until we get it working. Which for me wouldn't be so bad if it was warmer, but I waited too long to get this stuff knocked out, so cold I must endure!!
I do start to understand why it costs so much to fix things that are relatively simple, and it's mostly because manufacturers make it a pain in the butt to get into the spaces where you need to reach. We had to take things off the door, that I don't feel we should have needed to.
We probably spent about three hours working on it, and got a good bit done but we need to finish it up today. So I can at least open the door from the inside now, just have to fix something with the outter handle so that I can open it from the outside. I'm guessing we are about 70% done, but I'm already feeling 100% better about it now!
Hopefully we can get it completely fixed before I have to go, I still got about four days left, so I'm feeling good about the progress.
I realized I haven't put anything in here in a bit, but now that it's been getting into the summer heat, my enthusiasm has once again skyrocketed.
After a couple weeks of stressing about getting the right rack, I finally just bought one and went with it. My good friend and movie partner, Chris, helped me get the roof rack installed. Which I'm glad for because it was harder than I thought it was going to be, definitly a two person job! He also had some great insight into the order of assembly, which at first I was like "what?", then I was like "yeah!".
So we got that sucker on the roof, and it's holding steady. Next he's going to help me get the solar panel mounted, and that is really the only big thing left to do. After that it's just gravy!
In other news, I got bored on the weekend and started to build out a closet in the back. It covers the battery, and will probably mainly be for clothes. I just needed something to help tidy things up, because the several loose plastic beens were easy to get into the first several times, but now are juts kind of annoying.
Still planning on a launch date of this year, hopefully before Fall hits.
Got tired of researching and bought a power inverter, it should be here in the next couple of days. Pretty sure it will cover my neads.
I also already have small electric heater that hopefully the inverter can handle. Everything looks good on the details, so fingers crossed.
Oh yeah, and I think I came up with a DIY way to build an electric air cooler. I'm going to just spring for the parts and see if it works out, but basically I'm planning on just using at least one enclosed liquid cooling unit for a computer processor. Essentially it's the same thing I have in my gaming rig. Mostly because every time I try to find like a portable or camping unit, they all require some kind of ventilation. This is something I'm not really interested in setting up. We'll see how it goes!
I'm wondering if I can run an InstaPot off of the small setup I'm going to do, but still not sure about this. Mostly because I would still have no way to store leftovers. Even the small InstaPots are for two to three people...I may just get one and try it out and if it doesn't work out just let my parents keep it.
Finally pulled the trigger on getting a solar panel kit for my van. I was just getting tired of being stuck in a research hole about it. Just putting so much time into looking things up and comparing what others had done, and since I'm no electrician I was just second guessing and worrying too much. Since it really is the next big step in what I needed to do I just got home from a rough day at work and decided I would just go with my gut and figure it out or make it work. It really wasn't that expensive, and hopefully it is as easy to setup as the diagrams are showing me. Most of my concerns about watts and all that I had to just use what I knew about building computers and figure out what I would exactly be using power for. Finally deciding that heating and cooling would be the biggest power drains, and in particular heating is a bigger concern then cooling. I found a small heater for an outlet that uses about 350W of power. The inverter I'm looking at pushes something like 1000W, so that should be fine. It's really more about figuring out how long until the battery is drained, that I'm not 100% about, but the good thing is that I do know I can create a battery array if I need more juice. So far my handful of tests with sleeping in the van have resulted in me learning that I'm fine until the temperature drops below roughly 45 degrees(F). That seems to be when my body wakes me up to alert me that I'm getting too cold. That's good to know because it means I can set the heater as low as 50. Got to hold off on installing the solar panels until I get the battery and inverter. Mostly because the power regulator says it needs to be connected to the battery before the panels, but hopefully I should have those within the next month. I think the biggest challenge of it all is going to be attaching the panel to the roof. That's the only thing I'm the most worried about. Just looks like I might have to drill into the roof to secure the panel, and I'm never 100% on anything that is going to permanently modify the body of the vehicle.