I’m not talking about securing in the sense of safety and making something inaccessible, but rather in making sure something stays static relative to its container.

When you’re setting up your room or a new piece of furniture, generally the last thing on your mind is making sure it stays in place. It’s basically just a given that your various belongings aren’t going to wander around when you aren’t in the room. I knew from the start that I’d have to be careful about driving with everything in the back, and one of the first things I did was secure the bed with some rope. Even with proper securement at the forefront of my mind , estimating the stability and safety of various restraints is apparently not my strong suit, and I’d still occasionally find things fallen over after a trip to the post office. So without further ado, here are some things to remember when securing your very own truck-house.

In Charting the Waters, I mentioned two books that I picked up to get myself in the travel mindset. Last week, I set aside an hour and read through the lighter of the two: How to Drop Everything And Travel Around The World.

Overall, I thought the book was a worthwhile read. As far as actual, concrete information about travel and destinations, it was pretty light (the whole thing is only 56 pages), but it was certainly helpful in orienting my mind with respect to my future world tour.

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.

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.

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.