First weekend in the truck

Truck from the front

Truck from the back

Interior, looking forward

Interior, looking backward

I decided to get the truck on Tuesday (7/3/07) and by Friday I had researched running it on solar. Make it as off-grid as possible. I kind of thought it was a completely ridiculous idea, but the more people I told, the more excited they got and that helped me to take on the project. Seamus and I had thought about converting it last year to use as a snowboarding vehicle so we already had a rough idea of how we wanted the interior to look.

That weekend I spent an afternoon in it-- measuring, photographing and generally sitting in it to get the feel. It's bigger than I remembered. The interior measures about 15' long, 7' wide and 6'9" high. Doable. The driver's area is nasty. Mildewed steering wheel, rotted seat, lots of glued-up garbage. I checked out the camper and it's pretty trashed as well. Yay.

Why convert a '78 Chevy P-30 stepvan into a moving home

I am going to The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA this fall. This is my second time around and I am 39. I started looking for housing in Olympia at the beginning of the summer and have gotten no replies. I think that being 39 makes me sound over the hill and possibly a bore.

I started kind of freaking out-- I had no idea what to do. So I was talking to my boyfriend who runs a Tim's Chip route and I joked that I should buy his chip truck because it has a diesel engine (3.9 Cummins turbo-charged 4-cyl), then I could run it on biodiesel. By the end of the day, I decided to convert the bastard and live in it. Screw you guys, I'm going to go live in a chip truck. That night I bought his brother's old piggyback camper for $250 for the appliances which include a stovetop, 3-way fridge (12v, 110AC and propane), a propane furnace, sink and water tank.