I got my Van back, with no diagnosis at all and nothing done to it.  It wouldn’t “fail” to start for the mechanics.  They tried over a hundred times to start it and it started without fail every time.  Several hundred dollars later, I traded the Ford Explorer back in for my Mini Van and headed back out on the road.

I spent a long weekend in my tent.  Heavy rains were coming and I had hoped to get the Van back before they hit.  These rains were badly needed because of the Forest fires in the area.

With the National Forests all being shut down in the area, I had the choice to “move on” or adapt. Adapting meant staying in commercial camp sites or camping stealth.

I pulled out of my campsite of nine days on the day the rains came.  With the rain brought experiences that both rocked my world and turned it upside down.  I found myself writing feverishly but unable to post my writings, because they were so deeply personal and I wasn’t quite ready to share this content.  I realized that I would save some of the content of my journey for my “Flying Solo” book, which will allow me to have some distance from some of the experiences before sharing with the world.  This is always a writer’s challenge.  How “up close and personal” do we get with our writing.

The one thing I can say now, is if there is a such thing as “instant karma” I’m all over it.  Every action has an immediate consequence, whether it is good or bad.  There is a boomerang effect happening.  Sometimes it is really good and sometimes it is really bad, depending on my actions and choices.  I’m being forced to be “hyper aware” in every moment of the choices I make.

There is a saying “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”  Well, this is what my “flying solo” journey has been like from the beginning.  Nothing was going as “planned” and I was being challenged on some very deep levels.  I was being challenged to reach deep inside of myself and find the will to “carry on,” to keep going, even when the going was getting pretty rough.

There were times I allowed myself to get disorganized in my Van and the one thing I have learned is that everything has its place and if things don’t get put back in their place, I may never find them again.  It is far too small a space to leave things lying around.  I ended up bringing too much, which as I understand, is a common mistake van dwellers make.  The more you have, the more you need to organize and find places for.

I cherished having my van bed.  It doesn’t matter where I am, my comfy, cozy bed remains the same and is always welcoming at the end of the day.  There are even times I wake up and I’m not really sure where I am.  I have to reorient myself.

The van is starting for the most part but has had a few “near misses” where it didn’t start for me but eventually it did.  I know that I could be stranded at any moment but taking it to a shop didn’t work out well for me.  Eventually I’m sure it will go back into the shop, but under what circumstances?  Time would tell.