Adventures on Wheels and Rocks
The truth is, solo female travel is the schrodingers cat of safety.
You both are, and are not safe the entire time you are traveling, and you only know which one it ends up being at the end of your trip. The risk being, you’ll either be totally fine, or you’ll be dead.
The best day of climbing I ever had, the air was on fire.
It was summertime in Squamish, a small town just north of Vancouver in British Columbia Canada. This town, up until recently had been known as a sleepy kiteboarding destination and—to those who cared— a place where you could find some of the best bouldering in the world.
We see two people soloing intersection rock in the distance, one is possibly naked and the other is wearing a pair of hot pink booty shorts.
Mike grabs the binoculars, “Yep. He’s definitely naked.”
5 minutes later the naked guy rides by on a bike. There’s a chalk bag clipped to his waist that is almost covering his junk, and he hollers loudly as he wizzes past. “ANARCHY!”
“Well,” Mike puts his hands on his hips, “that happened quickly.”
Last year I came up with a ‘Best gifts for Vanlifers under $50’ blog post.
It did pretty well, but I looked at it again this year and I have a lot more useful things to add to that list, so here is my Christmas gifts for Vanlifers 2018! Enjoy and make a vanlifer in your world happy this holiday season.
I’m a digital nomad!
I’ve been working as a freelancer since 2014 doing social media marketing, which you can learn more about here and one of the things I get asked a lot is ‘what about internet?’
So, this is pretty easy to answer. When I’m in town or a city I go to coffee shops, libraries, laundromats or just friends houses for wifi.
Vanlife isn't always a vacation, sometimes it's just a financial reality.
The first thing you should do if you know you are going to be in a city full time for a while is get a PO box! This is essential because you can have an address in the city for all your important documents to get delivered to. Post office boxes can cost between $19-$75 a month depending on the size and location of the box.
The first thing you should do is lock your door every time you leave your van, put up your blinds and hide your valuables. Fortunately for me my van kind of looks like a piece of shit from the outside and I’ve never had anyone try to break into it, but I do know a few girls who have been sleeping in their cars/vans and woken up to the sound of someone trying to break in!
Livin' in a van in a city actually kinda sucks.
There are a lot of benefits to living in a van, and I know many people who chose to do the vanlife thing in a city. It's great for them! But in my experience, it kinda sucks. That's why, after getting stuck in Grand Junction Colorado for a week and then getting even more stranded back in Santa Cruz for a few weeks, I decided to put together a little guide for staying happy and sane in the van in a city/town. Hopefully this will help y'all out if you have to hang out in a mechanics shop for a bit longer than you would have liked.
If you've been following me for a long time you KNOW I have been meaning to do this for a while. If you haven't been following me for a long time, then welcome! This is the DIY hangboard set up for my 2006 Dodge Sprinter Van.
I get this question ALL THE TIME. So I decided to start tracking all of my expenses.
I’ve also compared my expenses to the national average because I like data and numbers.
Average Rent in America: $959
(Source: https://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/)
My Average Rent: $198.49-$378.49
Gas: $70-250
Car Insurance: $128.49
Kate and I are cruising down highway 191 headed back to Indian Creek after getting rained out of Castle Valley.
We had been planning on climbing the North Face of Castleton and Fine Jade, two excellent (and challenging) climbs, but the weather decided otherwise.
I've been living in a van for two years as of today! Yay!
It's been a really crazy two years, and one of the most recent challenges for me has been managing my personal health and well being.
When I first met Kate, she was in her standard post climbing attire.
Sundress, spandex shorts, Birkenstocks. We were hanging out at a dirtbag potluck, which is basically just a bunch of climbers hanging out in a parking lot and sharing food together. I was instantly drawn to her bubbly attitude and her impressive list of badass climbs she had been ticking off in Squamish. Kate wasn't afraid to go for it.
I was lying in my bed, half asleep, when I heard the first knock.
It wasn’t so much of a knock as a bang. Someone was pounding on the side of my house. In the large metal box that is my van, it reverberated around the small space and startled me awake.
Hey Kaya! Can you make a video about hitting the road as a climber? How skilled were you when you started? Is it better to be a fully competent trad climber before starting? How often do you climb with knowledgeable climbers and how often are you taking novices? And most importantly, how do you not get in over your head?!
I blink and it’s morning.
My shoulder hurts so I roll over onto my other side.
Nope.
I blink again and the sun has risen higher in the sky. I’m on my back. I look over to see Mike with his puffy jacket covering his face.
Nope.
I never thought I would be bored at 500 feet off the ground.
Standing on Ahwahnee ledge on the West Face of the Leaning Tower, I pace back and forth in anticipation. Or what amounts to pacing when you have less than 3 feet of space to move around in.
One of the things I get asked all the time is ‘How do you insure your van?’
I think it’s a valid question and since I’ve done a bit of research on this exact subject I thought I’d share with you how I got my van insured and how you can most likely get yours insured if you want.
Big wall climbing is the culmination of all of the climbing skills I’ve been honing over the last 5 years.
It takes technical skills, mental toughness, physical endurance, and good communication with a partner. I borrowed gear from friends, grilled them on the terrain, looked over maps that climbers before me had drawn, and scrolled through comments people had left on the mountain project to try and prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the hardest thing I had attempted to date in climbing.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Turn the key. Hear the rumble of the engine. Beep, beep, beep, beep, click. Roll the automatic windows down. Feel the warm breeze on my skin. Smell the wet grass and the still damp asphalt. It’s hot outside.
