#vanlife: Home Is Where You Park It

From my Manhattan office desk, I looked for vans on Craigslist, Ebay and The Samba during my lunch break. I wasn't drueling over Chrysler Town and Country's, but VW camper's and specifically the rare 4wd Syncro model. Growing uneasy with my regimented daily grind, a photo on a blog a few weeks early planted a seed in my mind that I could explore the roads in a camper van. Photos and stories of road travel like Travels with Charlie wouldn't suffice my building curiosity about leaving my job.

Not until experiencing something for myself can I really appreciate it. Call me thick headed, but it's been true about autumn in New England, sex and, most recently, camper vehicles or, as I call it, van life.

After a few months of deliberation, I purchased my Syncro with no prior experience of vans. Operating on the assumption that I liked the freedom and exploration offered by living out of a van, and in interest in the nostalgic exploration that they have embodied for the last fifty years, I committed to trying it out. A handful of interesting friends' stories of the road reassured me that it was the right thing to do.

The last four months on the road has only fed my interest in the freedom and adventure offered by vans and given me a new found appreciation for the many variations out there on the road. Each time I see a van, I imagine all of the adventures they facilitate. To catalog these vans and submitted vans from others, I have started a website called #vanlife, to further the notion that, "Home is where we park."