Back again with another riveting installment of Questions and Answers.

Mountain View has a car show during its Thursday Night Live series of events. Are you in that?

Erm, no. Though if I ever go fully insane and paint the outside of the box with flames and other crazy shenanigans, I'll definitely start attending some car shows. I could go the full nine yards, get an amp and put a sound system in the back, maybe a disco ball or two. Open up the back gate and have a good old-fashioned truck rager. I could even make a business out of it, call it "Block Party in a Box". Or I could not do any of those things, that's also an option.

Can people be in the back of the truck while you drive it? If no, could you attach seatbelts to your bed or something to make it kosher?

I'm not going to look up the driving laws surrounding this, because common sense dictates that it's illegal, much in the same way that riding in the back of a pickup truck is illegal, at least outside of the Deep South. Theoretically though, since I've secured everything down in the back, someone would be totally fine laying in the bed with someone driving, as long as they weren't going full-NASCAR. It'd actually probably be pretty cool, like a discount, white trash version of Space Mountain. Continuing the trend of monetizing my housing, I could just paint a huge "White Trash Space Mountain" sign on the side (next to the flames), and charge $5 for a ride up and down the 101. Again, I could also just not do that instead.

Do you have an emergency plan for when your truck gets stolen/explodes? Because then you will be extra homeless

For all the planning I did to get where I am, I've never really thought of any particularly good contingency plans. I've always known that if things don't work out, I can just fall back to an overpriced apartment for normal people, but I've never concerned myself with worrying about various truck-related disasters. Regarding the "stolen" scenario: Virtually no carjackings occur on the company campus, and it's surrounded by video cameras. If anyone was dumb/crazy enough to steal my gross, dumpy vehicle while it's surrounded by Teslas and Porches, they're going to get caught fairly quickly. The whole explosion scenario is far more likely, because it has about 160,000 miles on it, and while there's no outright mechanical issues with it, I wouldn't want to be my car insurance company. If it were to die on me (preferably not in a blaze of glory), I'd pack my gym bag with a few outfits, have it towed to a repair shop, and stay at an AirBnB or a hotel for a few nights. Hardly the worst thing that's ever happened to someone.

A few of the questions were comments on site features, and I've implemented a few of them, and some more are on the way. The Question/Comment box and the About/Search box should show up on more pages now, and I'll be adding in "Previous/Next" buttons from individual posts soon, so stay tuned!

Okay, that's definitely a bit of a dramatic title, but I am definitely not happy with this turn of events. This actually happened two weeks ago, but I've been busy vacationing in LA (staying in a hotel, with a real room!) and haven't been posting.

Anyway, as you can see, someone has hit and damaged my front-left blinker, dislodging it from its socket and ruining a perfectly pleasant afternoon. They didn't leave a note, not that I should be expecting decency from a reckless stranger anyway. After a (very little) bit of sleuthing, I think I understand what happened though.

The Hunch

Looking at the damage, it's immediately clear that a taller, larger vehicle is the source of my woes. The scratches are higher up than a car or truck's front bumper would be. Additionally, the area I'm parked in is near where the corporate buses queue up before going about their routes. In all likelihood, a bus took the turn too tight, and the tail swung out into my poor house-truck. The driver may not have even noticed.

The Lesson

Like I've said before, I'm constantly learning new things and encountering situations that nothing in my past could have prepared me for. I can say with a fair bit of confidence that if I lived in an apartment, I'd be significantly less likely to experience someone busting their car through my wall like a Kool-Aid Man/Transformer-hybrid. But I live in a parking lot, and I guess car/house-accidents just come with the territory. The upshot is that since my house is mobile, I can move it to a spot out of the path of bus-destruction, which is exactly what I did. The damage isn't bad enough that I need to get it fixed immediately, and I'll try my hand at fixing it up before I bother a mechanic about it, especially since if the bodywork took them a few days, I'd have to relocate temporarily. Stay tuned for a future home improvement post.

It appears I have a few prolific inquirers, so here goes Q & A round two.

Is what you're doing illegal?

There's two underlying questions here. First, is being homeless illegal, and second, are you homeless if you live in a car. To briefly answer the second one: living in a car is definitely considered being homeless, but I'll address that in one of the later questions. As for the legality of being homeless, I had trouble finding relevant city ordinances for where I frequently park, but nearby cities like Palo Alto and Manteca have cracked down in recent years. Additionally, there's an excellent paper that details all of the laws that California cities have regarding homelessness, in addition to providing a bunch of other useful information. Nearby places like San Francisco, Oakland, Sunnyvale, and San Jose all have anti-homeless laws, but there is no statewide ban on homelessness. I might just be missing the ordinances in my specific city, but from what I've read, it might not actually be illegal. Naturally, these laws only apply to public property. Since I'm in a parking lot owned by my company, it's well within their power to "evict" me, if they so chose.

Can you please figure out a way to lock yourself in at night? This doesn't seem safe.

I've mentioned my door situation before, it's one of the few things I haven't found a good solution for yet. I have some ideas, and they'll get their own posts when I get around to trying them. It's certainly not the safest situation, but it's no less safe than people who leave their front door unlocked at night. Except my door is giant, metal, and super loud, so any attempted intrusions would immediately yank me from my slumber.

You should get a pet!

Absolutely not. Not that I don't love animals, I really do, but I think it's frankly unfair to the animal to be subjected to my lifestyle. I chose to live in a box, an animal would not be doing so of their own volition. Even if I brought them to work every day (which is actually encouraged where I work), there'd undoubtedly be times where they'd have to stay in the car, and I'm not a fan of putting an animal in a dark, confined space. So, for the sake of any hypothetical future pets, I'm definitively not getting an animal while I live in a truck.

Have you made friends?

I have! I lived in the area last year and made some friends then, and they weren't entirely shocked with my housing choices this year. Since I started work, I've also met a bunch of great people who enjoy the novelty of my situation. If whoever asked this question was worried that it's hard to make friends when you're insane and living out of a car: people can be pretty flexible and compassionate. Naturally, not everyone is going to agree with your decisions, but people who can understand someone else's perspectives and choices make infinitely better friends, as a general rule.

Do you consider yourself homeless?

I alluded to this earlier, but there's really two perspectives that you can employ here. In the eyes of the law, I'm definitively homeless. All the cities with anti-homeless laws listed above included a snippet similar to the following:

[They] have daytime laws that criminalize the four basic kinds of activities that can be applied to the homeless: “(1) standing, sitting, and resting in public places; (2) sleeping, camping, and lodging in public places, including in vehicles; (3) begging and panhandling; and (4) food sharing.”

-Fisher, Marina and Miller, Nathaniel and Walter, Lindsay and Selbin, Jeffrey, California's New Vagrancy Laws: The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State

Like I said before, it's not quite a "public place", but I am certainly "sleeping, camping, and lodging [...] in vehicles". I guess I'm guilty of "sitting in public places" too though, that's a pretty wide net they're casting with that one. The other perspective, and more to your question, is how I feel about my situation. And I don't feel homeless at all. I have a place I call home, it's distinctly mine, and I feel comfortable being there. Like my tagline says, "Home is where you park it."

A few days ago, I opened up a question form where people can ask whatever they want about the truck-life. I've gotten a few questions (potentially all from one person), and I'm going to copy them in all of their unedited, verbatim glory here, and answer them to the best of my ability.

Will you be throwing a truck-warming party?

Yes actually! I don't know specifically when it'll be, or where it'll be (besides in the truck, obviously), but plans are in the works. Moving into a new place can be stressful, as I've undoubtedly alluded to in previous posts. House-warming parties help to take the edge off and ease the transition. I think that the truck-warming party is just as important, if not more of a necessity, than a standard house-warming party would be.

Since you have fewer expenses, you should probably just take the extra dolla dolla bills and fill your truck so you can swim in it Scrooge McDuck style.

The main reason behind minimizing my expenses, aside from wanting to live simply, is to save up for my eventual travels. While it would be a total baller move to fill my truck with freshly minted dollar bills and swim around in them, I just don't see it happening. Also, I just did the math, and using stacks of one dollar bills, I'd still need $19.9 million dollars to fill up the entire box. That means filling it halfway would still be nearly $10 million, and even if I crumpled them up (to increase their volume), it'd still be a pretty pricey ordeal. Turns out living in a truck doesn't make you Scrooge McDuck-status wealthy.

I noticed there are no sources for your images. ARE A THIEF? Gosh.

I try to take pictures and use those whenever possible, but I do frequently resort to Google Image Search. And despite the caps lock and sassy attitude, you have a pretty good point, I should give credit where credit is due. I'll add in that feature very soon, and I'll update all of the old images.

How fast can your truck go?

Well, I've never quite taken it drag racing, but I do like to keep up with highway speeds so I don't get run down by a stressed-out techie with road rage. The truck will go about 75 miles an hour if you ask it nicely, though it's definitely much more comfortable not moving at all.

When you go traveling, are you planning on doing it all in the truck? Or will you (temporarily?) abandon your truck?

I haven't written a post about this yet, but the first part of my trip will be a road trip back to Boston, where I'll hit all the major landmarks and attractions on the way back. I'll drive/live in the truck for this part, and then I'll store it in Boston while I do my traveling. At no point will I actually abandon the truck, just store it away for safe-keeping.

You should probably just get a nestcam and live stream the inside of the box all the time.

So this isn't actually a question, but neither was the Scrooge McDuck one. Anyway, even if I did do this (incredibly creepy) thing, it would be super boring to watch for the following reasons:

1. I'm never there.
2. When I am there, I'm getting ready for bed.
3. If I'm not doing that, I'm cleaning or folding laundry.

I didn't buy a truck to spend all my time in it or host lavish dinner parties, I bought it for almost expressly the purpose of sleeping. I've mentioned it before, but if you're living a large portion of your waking hours inside a small box, you're doing it wrong.

Those were all the generally reasonable/answerable questions/comments I've received so far. As always, I'm more than happy to answer any questions, so the box is on the side if you're feeling particularly curious.

Tips from the Truck is a new series I'm starting now, where I talk about the various little things you can do to make truck life easier.

I briefly mentioned in this post that eating out all the time can quickly cut into your truck savings. Why would you be eating out all the time, you ask? Because you can never, under any circumstances, keep food in your truck. Even non-perishables, you don't want to keep any vaguely organic, edible substances within like a 100-foot radius of your abode. You might be saying to yourself, "Brandon, doesn't that seem a little excessive? What if I get hungry at night and want a Clif Bar or something?" To which I say, Too Bad^TM.

As I've mentioned before, my place of work extends many benefits to me, one of them being free meals. While certainly helpful, free meals are not a requirement for living in a truck. Aside from the benefits of being physically removed from the possibility of late-night eating, there's a much more practical reason I don't keep food in the truck: lions, tigers, and bears.^{oh my!} Okay, maybe not actually those three animals in particular, but the literal last thing you want to deal with is an infestation/intrusion of any kind. I keep nothing even remotely edible in the truck, aside from maybe a small, tightly-sealed bag of protein powder. The remainder of truck-residing items include a bed and a Velcroed-shut dresser full of clothes and various cleaning products.

And you know what? Despite not having anything for bugs or animals to eat, I still occasionally have to deal with bugs. I reluctantly disposed of two HUGE* spiders yesterday, and became acquainted with more than a few moths while washing my sheets. I'm sure it's mainly due to my door setup, which I'll without a doubt discuss in a future "Home Improvement" post, but basically I keep my door slightly open at night for fresh air and so that nobody can lock me in here and subject me to a pretty embarrassing death. Back on topic, I can only imagine what critters I'd find myself face-to-face with if I actually had something enticing for them. I saw a stray cat walk by a few nights ago, who's to say it wouldn't have decided to move in if I had some sweet treats just laying around? And it's hard enough to clean things in here, with limited access to waste disposal, you want to generate as little trash as possible, the absolute last thing you want is a raccoon rummaging through your things because you threw a candy bar wrapper away three weeks ago. The main, and really only, takeaway from this is that if your setup is even remotely like mine, or you plan on having a setup even remotely like mine, don't bring food in it, the results may take away your appetite.

_{*They weren't actually huge, in fact, they were tiny. But they looked super menacing in the sub-standard truck-lighting.}

Final Note: I added a Question box to the site, so if you have any burning questions, you can anonymously submit them, and I'll do my best to answer them in future posts.