Remember when I got a bad speeding ticket, thought I was going to lose my license, and then luckily did not end up losing my license? Well as luck/fate/chance/happenstance would have it, that turned out not to be the end of the story.

Brandon, what are you talking about? You said you called up the California DMV and they said everything was fine, what gives?

I did say everything was fine, because I did think everything was fine. Like the Overly Cheerful DMV Lady said was going to happen, I got a letter in the mail that said, without a doubt, the California DMV had no intentions of taking away my license. It wasn't until I stopped into the DMV this past Thursday to get my motorcycle license that I found out anything was wrong.

I debated weaving out the intricate web of sadness and bureaucracy that took place that fateful Thursday into its own little story, but I decided against it because it's mind-numbingly boring and it physically pains me to recount the conversations that I had with various three-letter agencies in all of their vivid, nonsensical glory. So I'll just give you the SparkNotes version, which goes a little like this:

1. Brandon wanders into California DMV.
2. CA DMV says, "Sorry, something is wrong in the system and we can't give you a motorcycle license, call the Massachusetts RMV."
3. Brandon calls MA RMV.
4. MA RMV tells Brandon that he never took the course.
5. Brandon has never heard of the course.
6. MA RMV explains to Brandon that he has to take a course because of his ticket.
7. Brandon inquires why he hasn't heard of this course.
8. MA RMV says they mailed it to his old address, which was invalid.
9. Brandon inquires why they didn't send it to the address he's been using for 8 months, especially after realizing the old address was invalid.
10. MA RMV doesn't have an answer, but explains that they're going to tell California to take away Brandon's license because he didn't take the course and is reaching the end of the (apparently 90-day) grace period. MA RMV instructs Brandon to call the National Safety Council.
11. Brandon calls NSC.
12. NSC agrees that this whole scenario is ridiculous, and gives Brandon a list of four (in the entirety of California) sketchy locations where he can take the course. None of them are within an hour drive.

And that's where I am right now. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your perspective), I'm going to LA with a few friends this upcoming long weekend, and can take the course once I'm down there…while my friends ride rollercoasters at Knott's Berry Farm. In the end, it's still entirely my fault for getting the speeding ticket in the first place, but the course is clearly designed for people in negligent accidents or repeated violations. Oh well. I'll take the course, pay another $xxx on top of the $470 I've already paid, and move on with my life.

One thing I've noticed is that I'm decidedly less terrified this time around. Last time, I remember my heart rate shooting up and panicking over what I was going to do, and that just wasn't there this time. The consequences are still the same as before, potentially losing my license and home, but for some reason it isn't scary anymore. I'm not sure if it's because I've already made the leap and moved off campus, or I'm just getting better at handling weird truck-related strife in all its flavors. In any case, I think it's a good thing, and I await the next strange twist of fate with open arms, and an open back roll-up gate.

Do you think a female going to grad school could survive your adventure? My daughter is 25 and is going to grad school next year.

Normally I would drop a question like this into a Q&A post of some sort, but I've gotten a bunch of similar questions, and even met up with a few inquirers to discuss this exact topic. These things lead me to believe it's an important enough topic to deserve its own post (not that the threshold for "deserving a post" is very high). The question is a simple one:

Could I get rid of my house or apartment and live out of a vehicle?

The Simple Answer

A simple answer would just be: Yes. Barring any harsh health conditions/completely crippling poverty, most people could buy a sleeping bag and throw it in the back of their car. Even if you don't have a car to begin with, I'm sure you could sign a few papers with some questionable, semi-savory people and find yourself in a vehicle pretty quickly. Congratulations, you live in a car.

Even that's not so bad though. In fact, if you trace your lineage back, you'll find that you have 200,000 years (give or take a few tens of thousands of years) worth of ancestors wandering around in the woods. This makes you, with your sleeping bag and car, more equipped for braving the elements than thousands of generations before you. Grab a few Happy Meals a day, and maybe a gym membership if you care about how you smell, and you should be all set for the long haul.

But obviously there's much more than that, and I'm just being facetious for the sake of wanting to use the word facetious in a sentence correctly. My above ramblings aren't taking into consideration things like comfort, adequate hygiene, and real food, not to mention that people will probably think you're crazy. I'm sure there are a few other things on Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs that I'm missing too. So what does it really take to live out of a vehicle?

A ^_Slightly More Reasonable ^{_{But Still Ridiculous}} Answer

Making the decision to live out of a vehicle is a pretty big one. I had the luxury of spending 8+ months weighing out the pros and cons of the lifestyle change, and despite all of that incubation time, I was still having second thoughts even as I was signing the papers to purchase the truck I now call home. I've never really written about this before, but I vividly remember the feeling of closing my apartment door for the last time, knowing that I wouldn't have a fixed place to turn to from there on out. There's not much you can do to prepare for something like that, and I'm sure the uncertainty and chaos are even more biting when you don't make the decision willingly. It's one of those "here goes everything" kind of moments, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on your attitude.

Mindset

I legitimately enjoy living out of my truck, as I've undoubtedly mentioned a hundred-and-one times before. It's simple, liberating, and occasionally challenging, but part of the fun in this lifestyle is finding creative solutions to weird problems. I like that I'm not wasting a very non-negligible part of my life commuting. I like that I'm not wasting resources that I don't need. And that's the thing, I like doing this, and that's what makes it feasible for me. If you go into something like this thinking that it's some huge sacrifice, it's going to feel like a chore. You can kind of see this in the wording of the initial question above. Instead of trying to survive this adventure, one might even enjoy it or benefit from it. I understand that people find the idea attractive because of its cost-cutting benefits, but the whole experience will be a much smoother, more savory adventure if you go into it with the right mindset. Thinking that you're going to "grit your teeth and do it" is setting yourself up for burnout, if nothing worse. It can be a lot of fun, it definitely doesn't need to be taken so seriously.

Planning

As with most non-luck-based things in life, your ability to live in a truck hinges on your ability to plan things out. Off the top of my head, some questions you're going to need to be able to answer:

• What kind of car do you want? The type of vehicle you get is entirely contingent on what type of person you are and what you need out of life. I've seen people living in everything from the bed of a pickup truck to a cushy 40' RV. Looking back to when I was planning everything out, I thought I wanted some type of sprinter or conversion van. It took a bit of introspection before I realized that I personally wanted a little more space, more of a canvas to work with. Search around and try to find something that fits in with the lifestyle you want, each vehicle will undoubtedly have its own special set of trade-offs. For example, the box truck is large and awkward to maneuver, but it blends in more than an RV, and that's a balance I'm willing to work with.
• Where are you going to get the car? Once you've figured out the type of car you want, you'll naturally have to figure out where you're getting it from. Check Craigslist, check local dealerships, check Kelly Blue Book, check that site your aunt told you was great. Whatever it is, just do your research. Remember, you're literally shopping for a home, it's in your best interest to put a little time and effort into it.
• Where are you going to park it? Will it be safe to park it at work? Is a friend going to let you park it in their driveway? What do the vagrancy laws look like in your neck of the woods? This is another area that might require a bit of research.
• Where are you going to shower and go to the bathroom? Bathhouse, gym, school, work: all valid options. Just make sure you have something available to you. I've said it before and it bears repeating: you definitely don't get to skimp on the hygiene just because you're skimping on traditional housing. If you don't think you'll be capable of keeping up appearances, so to speak, don't move into a truck. Other parts of your life will suffer as a result, and it will be sad and not worth it.
• Where are you going to eat and store food? One of the great inconveniences of being a living creature is that we have to take time out of our busy days to eat food. If you're living in a car to cut your expenses down, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be constantly eating out. You either need a place to store food, or some method of procuring it. I'm fortunate enough to be able to eat most of my meals at work, but I understand that's certainly not the norm. My senior year of college, I experimented with a Soylent-like meal-replacement shake, as part of a bodybuilding routine I was doing. It's certainly not for everyone (and I occasionally found myself missing the sensation of chewing), but it's fairly cheap (~$3 a bottle), easy to store in a vehicle, and only requires water to consume. Something worth considering.

Everything Else

Check out this post if you haven't seen it already — it covers all the things that make it possible for me to do what I do. That said, plenty of people live in cars and don't have the same resources available to them that I do. I'm sure there are more creative solutions to the various facets and challenges of truck life that haven't even crossed my mind, and figuring them out is part of the journey.

One Final Note

Throughout this post, I've been ignoring one of the keywords from the initially-posed question: female. The world can be a scary place, filled with less-than-savory people. I know several women that live in vehicles, and they haven't told me about any major problems with other people. Still, my anecdotes don't necessarily align with the larger reality, and crime statistics will paint a decidedly less cheery picture. I live in a place with incredibly low crime-rates, and if it came down to it, I'm pretty confident in my ability to defend myself (hell, I didn't even lock my truck door for the first six or so months). Regardless of my personal feelings, safety concerns certainly can (and should) be a deal-breaker.

To end on a less somber note: truck life can be fun and rewarding, and will likely leave you with some unique skills and life experiences. And this particular trucker just finished his aforementioned defensive driving course and sent in the paperwork, hopefully saving his license once and for all.

This Q&A is a total potpourri of everything I've gotten in the past month (or three), but I've done my best to group them together.

Relationships and…Personal Matters

Do you have a girlfriend? What does she think of your lifestyle?

I don't have a girlfriend at the moment, so her opinions are nonexistent. If I were to have a girlfriend, I'd like to think that she'd be (at the very least) accepting of my choices. I'm pretty contented with the way my life is right now though, which is to say that I'm not in the market for a relationship at the moment. I don't want to say that I'll never have a serious relationship while living in the truck, because I have no idea how long I'll be doing this. But I definitely understand how ridiculous everything about my life looks From Outside The Box™, from the perspective of a reasonable person who has their affairs in order.

If you do get laid in the box, will you disclose this information on your blog (leaving out names and identifying details of course)?

Absolutely not, and I say that with the utmost confidence. I've chosen a lifestyle that dramatically reduces my chances of getting laid, I hardly think I'd be improving them if potential suitors thought I was going to recount my box truck (s)exploits for the Internet's perusal and entertainment. I'm also just not the kiss and tell type, as part of my Try Not To Be A Douchebag™ credo. On top of all these things, that's like a whole 'nother level of illegal. Like, we're talking sex-offender-registry-illegal, and for obvious reasons I have no intention of opening up that bag of worms and then proceeding to brag about it in a place accessible to the entirety of the Internet-connected planet.

Bike/Exercise Stuff

Are you going to the San Jose bike party tonight (11-20-15)?

I did actually read this on November 20^th (you can tell I'm pretty awful at answering questions in a timely fashion), but tragically I already had plans at that point. But thanks for letting me know those exist, I'll definitely make it to one eventually, especially now that I'm upping the ante with my bike trips.

Have you considered one of those eBike conversion kits that turn a regular bicycle into an eBike?

I (very briefly) considered it, then decided otherwise. As I mentioned at the end of this post, an electric bike is actually worse for rides over 25 miles (which I've been doing a bunch of) because of the whole range thing. Plus, the logistics of how/when/where I charge the bike are pretty nebulous on weekends because I can't exactly plug it into the truck, and it takes 5+ hours to fully charge. Also, if I want my cardio to eventually not holistically suck, a normal bike that forces me to do actual work will whip me into shape much quicker than a glorified moped.

How's the new bicycle?

The new bicycle is doing wonderfully, thank you for asking! I've taken it on several rides that left my legs in a state of matter somewhere between solid and liquid, and it's holding up nicely (unlike my legs). I replaced the left crank arm and picked up some lights, but that was really all the TLC it needed to be in tip-top road-ready shape.

How's the gym going?

The gym is going well. I've been doing a modified version of Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 program, and I've finished 11 3-to-4 week cycles of that since starting work. The good thing is that almost every cycle still has new personal records, but I'm starting to see plateaus in press and bench. Eventually I'll do a detailed fitness post.

The Current State of Affairs

So your employer has told you you have to leave their parking lot. What solution did you come up with? | What's your current sitch? You left us hanging when you got the boot. | Where do you live now? Still in your truck? | Are you going to tell us how is going there? Do you like your neighbors, how has your commute and daily life changed?

A lot of people seem curious as to how I'm managing my effective eviction. If I've learned literally anything from it, it's that I need to keep my obnoxiously large mouth slightly less agape. So as an exercise in restraint, I won't be talking much about my current living situation. I will say, however, that I'm still a vehicular vagrant, and all of the reasons I do what I do are still valid. My day-to-day life is virtually unchanged.

Everything Else

How do you prevent the doors from being locked while you are inside the truck?

I don't. If someone really wanted, they could come up and tie or otherwise lock the hitch down to the frame of the truck, and I'd be pretty screwed. I'm sure if I called one of my friends (I get fine cell reception), they'd come over with a knife or scissors or the Jaws of Life or something and save my life. Honestly, I couldn't even be mad because I've been wildly negligent in preventing it from happening, despite knowing the risk. I'd find it pretty funny (and learn my lesson), just because of how ridiculous the whole situation would be. It's pretty rare that someone gets locked in their home. It'd be worth it for the story, if nothing else.

Do you play video games?

Nope. I own a non-gaming laptop and a phone, neither of which are conducive to gaming. The last game I got really into was LittleBigPlanet, and I haven't played that in four or five years.

Would you consider installing a Tesla Powerwall in the truck?

Is that you Elon? In the past, I've talked about potentially getting some sort of electricity source, like a Duracell Powerpack. The idea is that I'd charge it up with a (roof-mounted?) solar panel, and then I could use it to power…something? I really don't have anything that would benefit from a constant AC power supply, everything electronic I own is battery-powered, by design. So if I don't need that, I definitely don't need a Tesla Powerwall, which, doing some quick math, stores ~40x energy and takes up ~8x the space.* Plus I think I'd also need an actual earth ground, like, a wire from the Powerwall that just leads straight into the ground, though I'm not entirely certain about this. In a home, that's not really an issue (1. Dig hole. 2. Insert wire.), but it sounds like a weird and potentially dangerous thing to try with the truck.

_{*And that's not including the inverter I'd undoubtedly have to install too.}

Have you read Thoreau's Walden? What about The Martian?

I'm in the process of reading both. Okay fine, you caught me, I'm actually listening to an audiobook for The Martian. Thanks to everyone who suggested I read them, Walden in particular is giving me a lot to mull over, so expect a future post on all of the ways that Walden is timeless and relevant to a truck guy.

I've discussed my homelessness on here before, but between my camping trip a few months back and my early retirement revelation, I now have a whole new lens to examine it under.

Getting Nostalgic*

So let's take it back more than 12,500 years: humans aren't doing anything productive. We're hunter-gatherers, we set up camp near wherever we think the food (berries, plants, and huntable animals) will be at. We build simple structures to protect ourselves from the elements, but we take them down and start over somewhere else when the food supply dwindles. Most of our time and energy is put towards the highly productive task of not-dying.

It isn't until we get our collective act together and develop agriculture about 12,500 years ago that we actually settle down in one place and make permanent homes. Here, homes still have the purpose of protection from Nature's hissy fits, but also act as more durable places to set up shop for the long haul. So people build settlements, but naturally there's not a ton of infrastructure; it's not like you can ride 50 miles in any direction and still have your daily Starbucks latte. Anchored to their large slash-and-burn farms, people tend not to move around much, barring war or particularly malevolent acts of nature.

How 'bout Now?

A lot has changed in the past decade or thousand. It took two days of me lounging around in a tent to realize that we have the luxury of an unprecedented level of mobility. Long before home ownership became something to check off of the "American Dream Bucket List," homes were just a place to not die, conveniently positioned near your farm and the rest of your relevant infrastructure. In this wondrous modern era, resources like food, water, plumbing, electricity, and even Internet are more or less ubiquitous in most of the desirable parts of the planet, and we have the modern miracles of cars and planes to travel to them. This means that, for certain lifestyles, the home can take a position of obsolescence. Anecdotally, I had no problem leaving everything (not that there was much to leave) behind for a weekend, and settling down 200 miles away with nothing more than a wallet and a bag of clothes. That's a big difference from 12,000 years ago: if you packed your bags and traveled 200 miles you'd likely find yourself 200 miles from the nearest human being, and you'd make some nice puppy chow for a pack of wolves. More comfortingly, now that humanity has settled pretty much everywhere and bent nature to our will, we have all the allowances of modern life all over the place, with a greatly reduced risk for puppy-chow-ification.

The reason we don't take advantage of our profound mobility is obvious: we've cast our anchors. We're anchored to our jobs, to our families, to our weekend tennis club meetups, and even to the piles of stuff we've been accumulating in garages, sheds, desk drawers, and cabinets. For the majority of people (who by and large are not travelling salesmen), it's completely unfeasible to dig this ever-more massive anchor out of the mud it's so firmly embedded in. Who would have thought that a basement full of forgotten Christmas presents would be a modern day Excalibur?

Loosening The Sword

I'm making a very conscious effort to make sure my life doesn't play out like the scene I set above. While the truck is still my "home", the traditional idea of home plays a much less important role in my life. Yes, I'm still anchored to the Bay by my job, but if all goes to plan, that'll only be the case for a proportionally short period of time.

When I first set out on this journey eight months ago, I thought I had it all figured out. I was going to truck it up for a few years, and then spend six whole months travelling before returning to work for the next 30-odd years. This was before I knew about the Trinity study and withdrawal rates and 401k's and HSAs and IRAs (oh my). But now, with everything falling into alignment, it seems silly that I thought six months would be enough time to do all the travelling I've spent my youth dreaming about. How could I possibly see everything there is to see when travelling 500 miles in any direction might as well be a new planet?

I guess I was worried that if I didn't travel soon, I'd never do it at all. But, if a bit of delayed gratification is all it takes to turn a six month trip into a lifelong adventure, I'm more than on-board. Plus, now that I'm more settled in my job, I'm finding that I do get to do a fair bit of work travel (in fact I'll be visiting two countries next month alone). My work-sanctioned excursions will be more than enough to tide me over until I can make travelling a full-time job. Then, I won't even have to drag up my anchor (since I'm hellbent on keeping this metaphor going). I'll just quietly cast the chain overboard and watch it sink down as I drift off into the sunset.

_{*I did really, really poorly on the AP US History exam in high school, so take everything I say with a kidney stone-inducing amount of salt.}

I know, I know, I don't write as often as I used to. I have an excuse or two for this week though, I swear. Between helping a friend move, drinking some Puzzled Pints, volunteering with Destination Imagination, trying out (and struggling with) yoga and swing dancing (not at the same time), celebrating the Chinese New Year, and biking 50 miles to watch the Super Bowl with friends, I've been a reasonably busy bus bum. I also have a ton of half-finished posts that are just waiting for me to get my act together and polish them off, so stay tuned.

Anyway, people seemed curious as to how my daily routine plays out, so here is a play-by-play of what my (surprisingly normal) work week looks like.

My Weekday

5:00 - 6:00 am Wake up. I use an alarm clock app called Sleep as Android, which I talked a little bit about in this post. The gist of it is this: I place my phone on the bed next to me, and it takes accelerometer measurements while I sleep. Based on these measurements and some combination of magic and science, it can try its darnedest and guess if I'm in light sleep, as opposed to deep sleep or REM sleep. If it's between five and six in the morning, and it catches me in light sleep, the alarm will go off. If I sleep soundly til six, it'll wake me up then. Considering sleep cycles are anywhere between 70 and 120 minutes, it's likely that I'll be in light sleep somewhere in the hour. In my experience, the alarm normally senses my wakefulness around 5:30, at which point I get up feeling pretty grog-free^{if that's a real expression}. I blink a few times and stretch out before rallying myself onto my feet and stumbling around in the dark. Eventually I find my best (read: only) pair of athletic shoes, normally by tripping over them. I work my way over to the back gate and hit the lights, then remove the vice grips I use to keep the door locked. I toss my already-packed gym bag over my shoulder, and (quietly) open up the back gate to head over to the gym.

6:00 - 7:30 am Exercise. I've mentioned before that I'm doing three-week cycles of a modified 5/3/1 routine. This means that Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are press, squat, bench, and deadlift days, respectively. Wednesday is a toss up, but it usually involves me sleeping in, forcing myself to do cardio, or targeting core and underutilized muscles (calves, trapezius, lower back, etc). Normally, I set aside the last 10-20 minutes for stretching, foam rolling, and the inversion table. At some point in the near future, I'll have a week exclusively for working on personal records and one-rep maxes; my goal is to have a combined bench, squat, and deadlift of 850 pounds. I'll follow up my attempts with a post.

7:30 - 8:00 am Making myself pretty. By the time I'm done with my workout, I'm normally a hot, sweaty, angry*, solemn mess, which doesn't translate well into maintaining positive relationships with coworkers. Sounds like something that could be (and is) perfectly solved by a hot shower. My morning prettification looks something like: shower, brush teeth, throw on the carefully folded clothes from my gym bag, send a few "you got this" looks to myself in the mirror, and head over to my office.

8:00 - 8:30 am Breakfast. Normally I'll grab the undisputed most important meal of the day with a coworker or two. I do my best to refrain from talking about truck stuff unless someone explicitly brings it up. Even though the cat is oh-so out of the proverbial bag at this point, I recognize that most of my life outside of work is still weird as hell to reasonable people. Even if they can understand why I do it, there's no reason to constantly remind them that I make highly questionable decisions — it's really just self-preservation for when performance reviews roll around. As for the food that I spend a continuous half an hour shoveling into my face, I spring for some combination of scrambled eggs, Greek yogurt, fresh fruit, and a bran muffin. Boring yes, but not unpleasant, and it's way better than dying of any number of maintenance-related ailments before I have a chance to travel the world.

8:30 am - 4:30(ish) pm Work and more food. My actual day job consists me arguing with computers and being aggressively indecisive about which mode I want my sit/stand desk in, which I'm sure annoys my coworkers. I take breaks for lunch and occasionally to have a cup of tea on the roof if it's particularly nice out, because it's important to stop once in a while and recognize all the wonderful things we have in our lives. I make a conscious effort to make sure I'm not working too much, and head out when my work has reached a logical break point.

4:30 - 8:30(ish) pm Everything else. After work, I'll usually have some event planned for myself, like checking my mailbox, grabbing dinner with friends, or any of the things I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I like to have things figured out in advance, because I'm sure as hell not sitting in a small metal box for four hours on top of the eight I already sleep there. If I haven't planned anything, I'll grab my bike and find a quiet place to work on this blog or any of my other pet projects.

8:30 - 9:30(ish) pm Bed time. I share a bed time with toddlers and the obscenely old. I'm a morning person, and I have been for the past four or five years. It works particularly well with truck life, because it means I'm normally not accidentally scaring the hell out of poor, unsuspecting passers-by when I crawl out of my truck-dungeon. The obvious downside is that when I want to go out on the weekends, I find myself nodding off at the bar, passively grunting to feign engagement in a conversation like the zombified, half-conscious shell of a human being I am by 10 pm. Anyhow, when it's time to hit the hay, I'll grab my gym bag from my desk, wash up in a (preferably single-occupant) restroom, and head over to my truck. My nightly truck-routine consists of me tossing the old gym clothes into my laundry bag, loading in new clothes for the next day, calculating and filling in the weights for tomorrow's workout in my log, and measuring out protein powder like a discount Walter White. Once everything is in order, the vice grips go back on the back gate, I plug my phone into my battery pack and open up my alarm app, and curl up under the warmth of my cozy blankets and heat-reflective mattress pad. I've actually ditched all the gear from this post, as my blankets are far more than warm enough.

9:30 pm - 5:30(ish) am Sleep like a small child. Unless I'm sleeping in an unfamiliar place, I normally pass out pretty quickly and sleep soundly through the night.

Analyzing the Routine

What would be the point of having a routine if I wasn't content with it? Sure, it's nice to have structure and regimentation in your daily life, it undoubtedly makes things go more smoothly. In the end though, it's all utterly useless if you aren't enjoying it. To me, finding comfort and complacency in a monotonous rut sounds like the most efficient way to watch your life pass you by. Luckily, I don't feel that's my case, and overall, I'm pretty happy with my routine. Waking up early minimizes the likelihood that I'll somehow annoy someone with my truck activities, and my nearly non-existent commute means I spend more of my time doing things I actually care about, like this blog and hanging out with friends (as opposed to simultaneously killing the environment and my ability to enjoy life). Not having a shower or place to safely store food means I'm forced to be consistent with my diet and exercise. I normally come back every month or two and make sure my life is still aligned with my goals, and make changes as necessary. From where I'm standing (err, sitting) right now, life is good and exactly where I need it to be.

*Hey, workouts are a great way to channel all your negativity into something productive, maybe even cathartic.