The troops were getting restless in the comments of the last post and I actually had to delete a few comments that crossed the line, which bring me to the age old question ” how do you avoid the crazies when you’re living in a van down by the river?” It almost seems rhetorical right?

I’m realizing that it’s not the 60’s anymore and that in 2007, 4 out of 5 people you meet on the road will either stab you or try to steal your bucket of KFC.

So aside from installing a gun rack (I don’t even own *a* gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack), we have a few different options…

A taser. I would love to reenact “Don’t tase me bro” at every truckstop where people think it’s ok to make eye contact.

An eye patch. People are scared of pirates and usually avoid them – especially if they also appear to have scurvy. Starting tomorrow I’m not eating any more citrus.

A dog. We both love dogs, but I have allergies to them which might be a bad idea in such close quarters. Plus they poop.

Tattoos. Do you think anyone messes with you when you have a tatoo of MC Echer on your head. Fughetabbout it. “1. 2. 3. not it” Angela loses.

Wear a Shredder outfit. Pretty self-explanatory, this one.

Van alarm. This one is pretty much a given already, but I’d like to rig it for 2 settings: screaming banshee or Cher – depending on intruder type.

Then again, an eye-patch wearing Shredder next to a pooping dog with “Believe” blaring in the background might actually attract the crazies.

Now if you excuse me I have to go practice my nunchuck skills.

After doing some research and test driving vans with Flinstones-braking technology, I’ve decided that a Honda Odyssey would be the perfect minivan for this trip – mostly because:

• It goes up a hill
• Can sleep a 6 foot tall hobo +1 (I measured)
• Has somewhere between 30-40 airbags (not the circa-1993 kind that hits you like a brick in the face when someone taps your bumper).
• Looks about as cool as any minivan is allowed to look
• Has a cool storage compartment that can store a lot of Bananarama tapes
• The engine is not held together by duct tape
• 26 miles per gallon on the highway

Unfortunately these buggers cost 15-25K used. But realistically we’ll only need it for a few months to a year – so if we intend to sell it, we get a different version of the math.

The math behind the van

Going off Rob’s suggestion, we can look at the depreciation by looking at Kelley Blue Book prices.

A 2005 LX Honda Odyssey in Good condition and with 40,000 miles costs $17,795.
A 2004 LX Honda Odyssey in Good condition and with 60,000 miles costs $14,220.

So buying a van, putting 20,000 miles on it, and aging it for a year ends up costing about $3,575 in depreciation – and that’s on the high end. Realistically it would probably be quite a bit less.
So the next question is: If it will only cost a few thousand in the end (which we can probably make on the road), how can we get someone to put up $20,000, with the prospect of getting it all back?

So what are our options?

Here’s a brief list I came up with:

1. Begging - not a fan of this one as it requires trading diginity for cash. plus carting all those nickels around will weigh down the van and cost us more in gas (theoretically).
2. Affiliate marketing – the ole fashioned way to make money online. old as them (digital) hills. The shoemoney, john chow, and Darren Rowse way. I’m not sure what we could ask you to buy that you would actually want.
3. Goolge Adsense – we could paste Google adsense all over this website which might annoy the bejesus out of our readers but make several cents per click with “van grease” ads (or whatever would be the targeted market for a site like this).
4. Create an informational PDF and sell it – not sure if this would work. Possible titles could be “How to create an informational PDF and sell it” or “Little known ways to make money when you’re living in a van down by river” but that one would result in the classic “chicken before the egg” paradox.
5. Eat things into the shape of Jesus and sell them on eBay – did you know that people pay thousands of dollars for food that looks vaguely like their deity of choice? Strange but true. Here are my first attempts – the “Jesus toast classic” and “baby Jesus” – whichever you prefer. Any takers?
   
6. Run a lottery scam – We could spam a bunch of people telling them I’m King/His Highness/Minister Abdul Jafar III (the third or fourth lends an air of legitimacy to a name) and that they have just won/found out about/been recommended for a prize/lottery/inheritance worth millions/billions/trillions of dollars and all they need to do is send us a Honda Odyssey van to transport the gold/cash/IOU’s out of Kenya/Argentina/Canada.
7. Promote an MLM - A little less insidious than the lottery scam: we could plaster Avon or YTB Travel or MonaVie stickers all over the van and pressure people to join our down line. Everyone would hate us. Including ourselves.
8. Give psychic/psychiatric advice – we could charge 5 cents to 5 dollars to tell people about what will happen to them or listen to them whine about what has already happened to them.
   
9. Sell prints of our photos – this one is a bit more legitimate, but it’s tough to predict demand so it’s a bit of a wildcard.
10. Sell magazine subscriptions – would you like to buy 40 subscriptions of Vibe?
11. Sell Bumper stickers via Cafepress – how about a “WWJDIHLIAVDBTR?” bumper sticker? Two hundred “Schrute bucks” to the first person who figures out the acronym.
12. Become a motivational speaker – a tried and true method, according to the economists/SNL-comedy-sketch writers of our time.

What would you do to create an online income to help finance a lavish trip around the world? Or in this case around America (but to those of us who are as ethnocentric as me, it’s basically the same thing).

Photo credits: massdistraction, me, me, pbs

It’s 2007 – where is my all-electric van? Or even a solar powered van. And yes, I say “van”, not a giant ultralightweight soapbox that can only transport a stuffed teddy bear down a hill.

Maybe I’ll rent “Who Killed the Electric Car?” to get some answers, but I fear it will make me into a crazy conspiracy theorist, pointy aluminum hat and all.

You can’t tell me that this is the best we can do:

That’s the Eliica. It looks like it was designed by Homer Simpson. Scratch that – it makes the Simpson mobile look like an Aston Martin.

Is that really the best we can do?

We’ve gotten a barrel-load of awesome advice – everyone ranging from cynics to hippies gave us their 2 cents and well wishes – and lots of food for thought.

One suggestion was to get a greasecar – which sounds pretty cool – and I’ve actually considered it – but after doing some research it seems a bit impractical for our purposes. I wish we could run our car on children’s smiles or puppy tears or something just as magical, but it seems like the technology isn’t quite there yet. I am considering putting up some solar panels to power our various knickknacks and iCrap. But I’m a geek at heart so don’t worry, lots of things will be rigged and powered by other weird things.

Check out this horribly made video of me ripping my car apart to see if I could convert into some sort of living quarters:

(flickr photo credit: meganpru)

The VW pooped oil on the driveway and had some rust-trim, plus it came with a 4th gear bungee transmission feature. The inside was pretty nice though, better than the one I saw a few days ago.

The soccer mom van is your standard model from the late 90’s bratty kid transport series. It’s all carpet, plastic, and cloth inside which makes it a little musty and strangely reminds you of aunt Flo (we’ll assume that’s a universal sentiment). It drove pretty well though – it would definitely be able to make it up a hill, which is a questionable feat for the VW.

The search continues…

The van definitely has character. In this case character = nonfunctioning brakes. It’s the only vehicle I’ve ever driven that makes Flinstone’s brakes seem like advanced technology. I drove it around the neighbodhood and kept forgetting that it took about 100 feet to stop per every 10mph, but thankfully there were no cars or wayward childrens around. Human-power steering was another feature, but it actually made me feel like Sampson, so that was cool.

It had wooden floors, various moccasins strewn about, a sink and fridge (both for show more than anything), and a popdown bed that could sleep up to one full sized elf.

I really did like the van! What it lacked in safety and comfort, it made up for in character. If it weren’t for the prospect of heat stroke and necessitating walls to come to a complete stop, it may have been perfect.

My top 2 choices are a cool retro VW camper or a newish Honda Odyssey.

Ideally it wouldn’t lose it’s engine in the middle of Alabama, explode on impact, or make us feel like we’re in a solitary at Guantanamo.

The basic requirements:

• an engine that runs and burns as little fuel as possible
• enough room to fit a 6 foot traveling hobo +1, asleep
• enough room for a spare battery, LCD screen, 2 bags of assorted crap
• something that doesn’t scream “child molester inside”

Anything I’m missing?

I’ve looked around the local Craigslist for ideas. Feel free to drop your own. A few interesting choices:

• A veedub camper (I want to see 47 pictures)
• we could make extra cash retrieving cats
• headphone jack for kids!
• Motor ran strong. No rips or tears in seats
• Borat-mobile

I’m really bothered seeing so many variations of “brakes need looking into” and “brakes are acting weird”. Probably best to stay away from the kamikaze buses, eh?

Literally.

Who’s we? Markus and Angela. Hi.

We’re a young couple currently living in Sarasota, Florida and after taking a spontaneous road trip across the state a few weeks ago we decided that it would be cool to get rid of our belongings and travel the country for a few months – aka – live in a van down by the river. (You cool kids should get the reference).

This was inspired (in part) by the 4 Hour Workweek, where Tim Ferris talks about living a totally mobile lifestyle. Well, we love America and before setting out abroad we want to have a base and find the best city to live in that we could make our permanent home.

We’re sort of tired of Sarasota and want to find a city that a couple of twenty-somethings would love. And what better way to do it than drive all around this country and take photos & video – and meet some cool Americans along the way?

Will we find the urban utopia and meet awesome people? Or will we end up stranded in the middle of country, broke, starving, and juggling broken beer bottles on street corners for 5 cents a piece to finance 7-11 hot dogs for sustenance?

This plan is sort of getting hashed as we speak, so we’d love to get your input on every aspect on this trip. The rough plan as of now is:

1. Sell most of our crap. Store the rest.
2. Find, buy, steal, or otherwise get a van.
3. Pimp out said van with a custom bed, office, LCD tv, etc.
4. Get a high speed internet connection
5. Get laptops, photo, and video gear to document this crazy thing.
6. Figure out what to take along for survival
7. Go!

We plan to make money “on the internets” as we go along to help pay for gas and food and maybe even the occasional hotel or hostel stay.

So why not follow us along for the ride?

We’ll give you more background info about ourselves (and videos), detail our plans, try to amuse you (sometimes), and chat with you about this crazy trip in the coming weeks and months.

So please subscribe to our feed, let us know what you think in the comments – and join us in our quest to live “in a van down by the river.”

P.S. Hopefully it will be a bit nicer than the one you see at the top of this page.