A wake-up means you made it to another day

Means you’re still alive.

Hopefully I’ll have a few more wake-ups. Like tomorrow and the day after and the day after…and the day after…for a long ass time…till I hit ninety five at least. After all that I’d like to be mummified. Like Jeremy Bentham.

Jeremy is on display in the foyer of the University College London Student Center. They had to stick him somewhere. His will stated he wanted to be included in college board meetings, etc., but the People in charge couldn’t decide who’d sit next to him. What do you say to a mummy? Plus you gotta clean him, get rid of the bugs and shit. No. Better to stick him in a glass case out of the way where he don’t pain the squeamish. So that’s what he got. Stuck in a glass case next to the stairs with the students breezing by like he’s a china vase. Maybe we can do that with Trump when he croaks. Stick him in some nondescript corner of a pharmacy beside the test-your-blood-pressure chair. Naw…I’m betting the Republicans will build him a pyramid, like Khufu’s…

You know, now I’m thinking about it, I maybe don’t want to be mummified. I mean, I’m no big shot. I’m not even a little shot. Where would they put me? On a sofa at my gym? On a dock box at my Marina? Joan might have me at her place. Stick me on the sofa there in front of her big screen television. Twist up my head so I’m gazing intently at Fox News. She’ll have real company for a change. Do I want to be a mummy watching fox news all day and all night seven days a week? It’ll get so bad I might come alive. Mummy eyes rolling back, drool waxing my leathered chin, my dead legs twitching. Joan will think I’m overcome with joy. She’ll turn up the sound. Then I’ll explode. Parts of me scattered on the carpet. A humpty dumpty Mummified Gloomy. She’ll need to wrap me up and stick me with the free stuff mummies.

Mummy give-away pile

A van life wake-up means you’re a success at van life

Means you’ve been ignored out there in the suburban landscape…

I come awake this morning around five. It’s below forty but I’m not cold. I’m tucked into Rel Render’s old thermal sleeping bag, guaranteed to keep you alive maybe during an overnighter on Everest. Top of the bag a thermal blanket I snagged from one of the storage nooks in the cruising club bilge. Lastly, a goose down blanket my ex-girlfriend, fellow stealth camper, Sharon, got me for Christmas long, long, long ago, when we were young and living under a stationary roof. That’s a lot of goose down.

This must mean I’m good with the van life in a cold ass van.

Torrents of rain pelted the sienna last night with nary a leak. Which means I’m good in the rain, too.

As for the cops rousting me? So far, so good. Around one a.m. a cop glided by. Making his rounds. He didn’t stop. Just glided by like he’s thinking, “Christ, I gotta deal with this shit?…another van lifer…old fart in a Toyota…could be it’s that Gloomy dude…heard he’s on the bum…well, that aint worth stepping outside in the rain, is it?”

And he didn’t.

He just drove on by.

Another positive achievement I can stick in my three dollar dollar store journal.

Four days and a wake-up

This is how long I’ve been van life’n. Four days and a wake-up. This was how we used to calculate our get-out time back when I was in Boot Camp. “I got two weeks and a wake-up.” Or “I got seven days and a wake-up.” And so on. The wake-up was the day you cashed out. Joined the so called free world. The wake-up part, whether it’s jail or the military or any kind of service where your freedom is restricted, denotes the day you achieve a release from a dreary situation.

In my current situation, the wake-up means I woke up.

I didn’t die in my minivan.

I’m still van life’n.

I woke up in my van, alive, free, homeless, on the street!

I’m a survivor!

Yes, another achievement worth jotting down in my five dollar dollar store journal.

Yet, there’s no point in me boasting.

Cuz I may not be van life’n a hell of a lot longer. I found a boat. This boat.

A Catalina thirty in fair shape. Way bigger than the picture allows. Owned by Bay Area Association Of Disabled People, a non-profit hosts sailing. They got a fleet of these boats. This one’s got a diesel engine, nice rigging, wheel steering, crummy sofa cushions. I gotta fix it up some but the price is right. Raul my harbor master sez he’ll rent me a 28 foot slip for under five hundred bucks. I’m back in the Marina. Plus, I’m helping Crippled People. Works out all the way around.

$490 a month.

I mean, come on! Let’s be real here. I know I’m cheap. But how much cheaper can I live and not be out on the street!

Plus I’m back on my old dock, three boats down from Scruffy. With Ronnie as a neighbor.

And my feathered pals.

Shit. I know, I know, I’m nank’n out. Ditching the Van Life before I even got started.

Maybe I’ll hang on the street another month at least. Earn a Van Lifer’s chip. Like the ones they give out in A.A.

It aint that bad, Van Life’n.

It sucks.

But it’s Free.

Plus I’m Van Life’n here in California.

There’s way worse spots to be for Stealth Camping.