It’s been a while since my last Home Improvement post, which is bad because it means I’m not improving the truck. And trust me, the truck certainly does have areas for improvement. Anyway, I mentioned that I got a new bike recently. This was great but, like every time I get something new, it posed an issue.

I’m now in possession of a large, 50 pound hunk of metal and rubber, which I have to store somewhere. It makes sense to keep it with me, because:

I like to think I’m pretty environmentally friendly. I try to minimize my waste, take quick showers, and not run unnecessary appliances, like heating and cooling systems. I’m definitely not a super earthy-crunchy-Hippie-type, but I’m at least vaguely cognizant of the atrocities I commit against Mother Nature. My main sin against the planet, aside from just being American, is the fact that I run errands in an 11,500 pound tank that gets 8 MPG on a good day. That’s bad for at least four different reasons, in no particular order:

I’ve never really been camping before, so when a friend asked if I wanted to go camping over Labor Day weekend, I gladly accepted. In the past, I’ve mentioned that living in the truck feels like perpetual camping. Think about it: I practically live outside, I forgo a lot of modern conveniences (namely heat, A/C, and a nearby bathroom), and I fall asleep to the sounds of nature every night (there’s a shocking amount of wildlife at the edge of my parking lot). So I expected camping to feel like just another day for me, and I packed for it almost like I’d pack for a normal day: a few t-shirts, a pair of shorts, and my handy dandy battery pack. So, how was it?

People have all sorts of suggestions for how you should spend your 20s, and they land pretty much everywhere on the spectrum. Some say you should work extra hard to provide yourself with a solid foundation for the future. After all, you’re young and void of life’s later obligations, put that time to good use. Others say you shouldn’t squander it toiling your best years away in monotony. As is probably evident from some of my other writings (read: ramblings), I fall somewhere in the middle. On one hand, I recognize that I’m setting up the foundation for the rest of my life right now (little to no expenses, investing early, yadda yadda yadda). But on the other hand, as I’m one to note, I only get to be this young once and I’ll be damned if I don’t make some memories to reminisce about when I’m old and gray. Plus, one of the main reasons I decided on the truck life was to minimize the time until I could start travelling.

In a world where everything is prepackaged, replaceable, and easily disposable, trash is tragically an unavoidable by-product of living. Whether it’s paper towels, tissues, plastic packaging, cleaning products, cardboard containers, clothing tags, receipts, pretty much every transaction you make is going to generate some type of waste. And waste is, like, generally bad, right? It takes up space, serves no real purpose, wastes resources and energy, and most importantly for truck folk, there’s really no good place to put it.