I Lived the #VanLife. It Wasn’t Pretty.

April 23, 2022 7:44 AM

"To suggest that the worst part of vacationing in a van is sleeping in a van is not fair to the other aspects of the endeavor, which are also all the worst part — but it is cramped, slovenly and bad. "

The writer Caity Weaver’s pursuit of the manifest destiny of the millennial generation ended up looking better in the photos. [The New York Times Magazine]
posted by riruro (93 comments total)

As entertaining as it is to read people not liking things, seems like this writing project might have begun with a preordained outcome?

I have a very janky homebuilt camper van setup that sleeps my family of five comfortably deep in the sierras or BLM territory. It is an order of magnitude more comfortable than a tent, especially when it is cold, loud, or windy. Without Stanley (our van’s christian name) we would have had a much worse time in quarantine, and my kids would certainly not have the same relationship to the outdoors.

A hotel, it is not.
posted by q*ben at 7:51 AM on April 23, 2022 [37 favorites]

If you've ever been tent camping, this is basically how it goes. Maybe it helps not to travel each day to a different place?
posted by tommasz at 8:00 AM on April 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

I haven’t read the article yet b/c my library NYT free passes are full, but I can attest that the influencer #VanLife trend is — or maybe more accurately — has been pretty predominant in my young staff’s chit chat as an aspirational lifestyle. Those 20-somethings are on Instagram all the time, didn’t camp a lot as kids (a few have), and are priced out of the real estate market in a lot of ways.

I think anyone who’s read (or maybe watched although some of the context was removed) Nomadland can draw the lines between real estate and aspirational van living content (and to some degree tiny homes. Both of which have some pretty pricey option.) So I look forward to reading a piece pushing back on that glossy content. Thank for posting!
posted by warriorqueen at 8:12 AM on April 23, 2022 [9 favorites]

I’m about half-way through the article, and it reads like two upper-middle class kids discovering things outside their experience.
posted by The River Ivel at 8:18 AM on April 23, 2022 [32 favorites]

The article has nothing to do with van life. It's about two people, who probably have trouble navigating the sidewalk just going around the block to the deli, going camping in a van.

Next time I hear about how newspapers have trouble doing journalism in these modern times, I'm going to tell them to piss off.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:20 AM on April 23, 2022 [49 favorites]

Yeah, this is very much "dilettante gets in over her head, news at 11".The fact that she didn't realize that the camper van is the budget option in an industry that rents out class A RVs clearly illustrated that.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:23 AM on April 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

the allure of #cybervanlife has been a thing for me since reading The Programmer in the early 80s . . .

Fulltiming it does not look appealing at all, but taking off-season long draws through scenic country of the Pacific and Mountain time zones for a week or three w/o spending hundreds per day does seem pretty cool. #vanlife does require a hundreds/month investment tho but by contingent events I'm now perfectly placed to have a quite awesome 500 mile radius of action for these jaunts.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:26 AM on April 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

I got halfway through and quit the article because I'm jealous of someone who can find a second person willing to go on an intentionally sketchy week-long outdoor trip with them.
posted by Horkus at 8:28 AM on April 23, 2022 [28 favorites]

They did it for a week. This wasn't choosing #VanLife, this was taking a vacation from their reality.

I know several people who are living #VanLife, one of them is a MeFite who has been doing it for a while. It suits them, and that's great.

This article is about a vacation that was found to be unpleasant. It isn't about living the lifestyle.
posted by hippybear at 8:30 AM on April 23, 2022 [35 favorites]

I think this is supposed to be a humor piece? It's hard to tell.
posted by Ndwright at 8:35 AM on April 23, 2022 [10 favorites]

I would file this in with Bill Bryson's "A Walk In the Woods" where people who don't like camping go camping and, to no one's surprise, don't enjoy it. Except with less kindness to themselves or the topic.

This article is a bit old now, but goes along similar territory of taking an unsentimental look at the #vanlife trend (with two folks who claim to have invented the hashtag!) and goes fairly deep on how much of a grind it is to keep being a micro influencer in order to afford the maintenance cost that comes with having a home with so many moving parts.
posted by bl1nk at 8:41 AM on April 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

I love Caity Weaver and the rest of you can nitpick her to death. I don't care. She's hilarious and I'm just glad to see her byline, anywhere.
posted by 41swans at 8:43 AM on April 23, 2022 [51 favorites]

ah having read the piece, it is quite easy to end up dead near Mercey Hot Springs if you're not careful, since that particular road off I-5 is from the primeval days of motoring, more of a trail than a highway (but Google won't warn you).

Whenever I'm lucky to have a scenic spot of California to myself for a minute or two I do marvel at the chances of it . . . 7.753 billion people on this planet and here I am with this million-dollar prospect all to myself. My RV will have off-road capability to increase my odds in this department . . . to get away from the beaten path takes effort!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:48 AM on April 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

Reads like a whiny Bill Bryson minus the pre-trip research and planning skills.

I think the article might have read better if they had skipped the vanlife angle entirely. It’s not bad as a "crappy road-trip" story.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:53 AM on April 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

I could see the article working as a funny self-deprecating fish-out-of-water piece, but there's no acknowledgement that "van life" could actually be aspirational and positive for the right people.

Instead, it just comes off as vacuous and mean.
posted by Ickster at 8:59 AM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

"By opting for lodging we could take anywhere, we had inadvertently saddled ourselves with accommodations that were inescapable."

From the article. A succinct summary of going on a weeklong trip in California in a camper van while mentally being unable to leave your Brooklyn apartment.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:02 AM on April 23, 2022 [13 favorites]

to get away from the beaten path takes effort!

A lot less than you might think. In the case of Yosemite it actually takes a lot *more* effort to get there than hundreds of other quieter State and National parks in California. I used to have Joseph Grant State Park mostly to myself on weekdays and it is only a half hour from the Silicon Valley.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:04 AM on April 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

I've read the article and a chunk of comments at the NYT.

I think this should be a working conditions issue, since the editor made decisions which caused it to be a miserable week, starting with telling a bad driver to manage a large vehicle. Possibly dangerous?

There was a consensus among a fair number of commenters that having a good time requiring *not* maximizing the distance covered.

I'm pretty tired of the whole genre of personal accounts from people trying things for the first time. They're bad at it. Surprise, surprise.

A sizable minority of the NYT commenters thought the piece was funny.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:07 AM on April 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

Metafilter: Here is someone willing and able to perform unlicensed aquarium repairs — for the right price.
posted by Otherwise at 9:15 AM on April 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

As Heywood notes, there is something irresponsible about this. Unprepared car campers are found dead often enough for it to be only lightly remarkable. Add in East Coast urbanites with no real feel for the remoteness and hostility of deserts and mountain ranges out west, who if they've camped or hiked at all it's never been in places more than a few miles from a cell phone signal or well-traveled road ... even worse.
posted by MattD at 9:15 AM on April 23, 2022 [9 favorites]

I can’t figure out how to connect the opening statement that she has no reliable memory of her own life with the closing contrast between her memories of an unattractive trip and her beautiful photographs.

Terrible trip for a nervous driver, and she wasn’t rude about anybody else, so no hate reading here. I think my main takeaway is, let’s have another interview with Michael about meditating.
posted by clew at 9:18 AM on April 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'm pretty tired of the whole genre of personal accounts from people trying things for the first time. They're bad at it. Surprise, surprise.

I enjoy them when they include a lot of the person discovering an unexpected problem and then solving it either in their own creative way or just looking it up in the manual. Sharing someone else’s discovery process can be frustrating but it is always engaging.

I was really hoping that this would be that kind of article for vanlife, but not so much.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:19 AM on April 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

The writing is fun, but the premise is (as others have pointed out) absurd. This isn't #VanLife, it's a poorly planned vacation, and we're too far into the 21st century for people to still be surprised that Instagram doesn't accurately represent reality.
posted by coffeecat at 9:37 AM on April 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

I find that the longer I read the piece the more unsympathetic I became to Caity Weaver's attempts at depreciation. While it may be a writing style, I find the combination of self-awareness without taking steps to improve noted deficiency a form of false humility, as seen below:

Many of my driving difficulties are most likely attributable to a lack of confidence. I am a bad driver because I am so preoccupied with driving safely that normal drivers have trouble predicting my actions (which are also surprising to me), and because I have poor spatial reasoning.

Just because you've identified your issues doesn't mean that you can continue to practice said deficiencies. I've seen first-hand how even microseconds of distracted or poor driving can lead to multiple fatalities, and I'm tired of people excusing bad behavior just because they've recognized said traits. Congratulations, you've identified you're a threat to the drivers around you. Maybe improving or taking a driving class might help prolong your life, or the bicyclist in the lane next to you?

I also feel sorry for Caity Weaver's friend. In all respects he comes off as a fairly balanced individual who's learned to improve his faults. I can see how Caity is trying to weave a 'growth of individual' bildungsroman narrative around her prior and current perceptions of him, but Caity can't help but write "but look how far he's come!" anecdotes that make me think she's a more toxic individual than she may seem.

I'm glad they came back safe, and maybe she's hamming up the 'but we were so naive' aspects of this roadtrip, but I can't help but think like MattD and others above, that with a different roll of a dice, they could have died, been maimed or lost in the wilderness. The outdoors is beautiful, but can also easily be unforgiving.
posted by kurosawa's pal at 9:38 AM on April 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

Thanks for this amusing article. I read it as a cautionary tale of what happens when editors have bright ideas about how to force someone who is not interested in a thing to write an experiential trend piece without recognizing their limitations and allowing them to adjust accordingly. She might have had an entirely different time if she had spent more than one night in a place, had better heating, not been required to visit the busiest places, etc..

I really hope she appreciates Michael, too. That guy is a good friend.
posted by rpfields at 9:43 AM on April 23, 2022 [11 favorites]

Perhaps some day the NYT will not be tone deaf.
posted by Melismata at 9:47 AM on April 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

but I can't help but think like MattD and others above, that with a different roll of a dice, they could have died, been maimed or lost in the wilderness

I don't think they ever went into the wilderness though. At Yosemite she notes how one roadside walk was the only actual hiking they ever did.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:49 AM on April 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

I have a friend who lives full time on the road (with her husband and two small dogs) but they're in a fancy RV and this is something the two of them spent years prepping for (they were already RVing a lot).

They're clearly having fun and enjoying it but they certainly have the privileges to do so -- they're both employed full time as remote workers and had previous experience. It wasn't like they woke up one morning and decide to live in a van. Even they would say it's sometimes hard because weather/etc. can be unpredictable. (They are also older -- mid to late 40s).

So yeah, this was an amusing article but I don't know if two people who have no prior experience in anything like this (one of whom is a self-reported bad driver) doing this for a week with little preparation or knowledge are really the best representatives for what this is life is actually like. Yes, I get that things look different on Instagram than in reality/etc. but I feel like that point has been done to death anyway.

I'm sorry they had a bad vacation, though.
posted by edencosmic at 9:52 AM on April 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

But now that I think about it, it wasn't a vacation. It was a reporting assignment. They went on a trip for work and hated it and wrote about it. They didn't even pick this for themselves.

Everything about this is stupid from the beginning. I don't often really hate something I've read as much as I hate this piece. It's so full of bullshit and either real or pretended naiveté and it reads like something someone who lives in New York would want to read about a lifestyle that lies outside of the five boroughs.
posted by hippybear at 10:03 AM on April 23, 2022 [15 favorites]

MetaFilter: A succinct summary of going on a weeklong trip in California in a camper van while mentally being unable to leave your Brooklyn apartment.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:09 AM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

I get the feeling that the angle was always "how badly will this go?" When her husband bailed the moment he heard "van", I don't think anyone had any illusions.

As others said, indirectly: living like this, or tent camping, requires discipline to do well. You have much less slack to avoid discomfort. You need to put shit away when you're done with it. You need to know how to deal with wind and rain. And you find out beforehand whether your destination will likely have space for you, if you don't reserve in advance.

I did find the part where Michael helps her meditate back to sleep really touching.
posted by fatbird at 10:11 AM on April 23, 2022 [9 favorites]

I even wonder whether it counts as a "trend piece" if it's something that the New Yorker covered more than adequately in this previously. Those #vanlifers were actually good at it, but the article still got at some of the potential drawbacks to it. And that was done five years ago.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:12 AM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Well, The New York Times has displayed regularly across decades that a major part of its brand is to promote being an urban dweller with more money than sense. Publishing pieces that denigrate any other life choices is a part of that, and they do it all the time.
posted by hippybear at 10:17 AM on April 23, 2022 [12 favorites]

Reads like a whiny Bill Bryson minus the pre-trip research and planning skills.

Well, this is the thing: a trip can go well or it can go badly, and you can recount the trip afterwards or not.

If you recount a pleasant trip afterwards, at best it evokes some degree of interest or maybe listeners going to the same place, or even just polite murmurs of, “sounds great.” If it goes badly, the worst case scenario is just kvetching about what happened and risks exposing your personal prejudices (“No one in Europe can make a decent cup of coffee!”) and make you sound whiny. Your better travel writers — Bryson, Tim Moore and the like — will take great personal inconvenience and make an entertaining tale of it.

I worked in the travel business for a long time and occasionally encountered people who through no fault of their own were having a rough time — airline lost their luggage for three days and the like. If they seemed like they might be philosophical enough, I would point out that lousy travel experiences make the best stories later. No one ever dined out on, “We stayed at the Ramada and it was okay.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:21 AM on April 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

I noticed the thing about only “hiking” in one place, then later it talked about what I’d call “hiking” elsewhere. I decided this wasn’t intended as “journalism,” where you expect consistency, but “humor” where it isn’t mandatory.

I did read through to the end, basically under the “what a car wreck” principle. I’m pretty sure I’m not in the demographic the piece was targeted at, since the author isn’t my daughter.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 10:28 AM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Perhaps some day the NYT will not be tone deaf.

If there's ever been dirt under your fingernails, you are not the NYTimes main audience.
posted by mhoye at 10:48 AM on April 23, 2022 [10 favorites]

I seriously zoned out trying to read this and gave up on it, but it reminds me of a girl I knew pre-pandemic who decided to no longer rent and decided to live in her camper car with her cats. This did not sound like the world's best idea to me, especially in an area with a super tight rental market where you have to commit for a year six months in advance, so changing your mind and finding a home later would be difficult. As I recall, she also got some foster kittens too! and they got giardia, and once winter happened she had to move in at a friend's for awhile...I don't know what happened to her after that because pandemic, but this sounded like a Super Bad Idea.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:02 AM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Perhaps some day the NYT will not be tone deaf

If there's ever been dirt under your fingernails, you are not the NYTimes main audience.

The New York Times has displayed regularly across decades that a major part of its brand is to promote being an urban dweller with more money than sense

Its alright - it's ok
You may look the other way
No need to try to understand
The New York Times' reports on vans
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:25 AM on April 23, 2022 [25 favorites]

The story she didn't write was about how 'influencers' portray things so manipulatively. The writer didn't want to experience inconvenience, and shows virtually no curiosity about nature, travel, why other people might live in a van. There are some people living in vans and making it look attractive on Insta. I did a big Road Trip and lived in my minivan. I met some of the vandwellers whose stories were made into Nomadland.

Many people choose vehicle-dwelling because rent is wildly unaffordable. After the Big Recession, people lost homes and moved into RVs, then got work at Amazon. There's more work now, generally better paid, but rent is still out of reach for a lot of people. Get a van, set it up, get a membership to a gym for showers. Hustle to find safe parking where you won't be hassled. The insensitivity was overwhelming until i remembered it the NYTimes; they care about status, and not much else. She should be embarrassed by this piece.
posted by theora55 at 11:26 AM on April 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

"We've gone on holiday by mistake!"
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 11:29 AM on April 23, 2022 [10 favorites]

I'm surprised at the number of people here who are like "ah!! Inexperienced van campers face CERTAIN DEATH!!!11" which, I mean, yeah, *slightly* more dangerous in some ways than hanging out on your couch but it's not like they headed into the Yukon wilderness in February with nothing but a baguette and a Jack London novel. It sounds like they visited well traveled areas, near roads, with a mechanically sound vehicle, and not in the hot season. Yes, sure, plan, be aware of safety, read up on LNT, maybe don't just wander off into trackless wilderness, but there's plenty of room to for newbies to completely screw up that kind of camping trip before it becomes actually dangerous.
posted by surlyben at 11:37 AM on April 23, 2022 [16 favorites]

>> Reads like a whiny Bill Bryson minus the pre-trip research and planning skills.
>
> Well, this is the thing: a trip can go well or it can go badly, and you
> can recount the trip afterwards or not.

True, but failing to do research and planning upfront raises the bar on how interesting the story has to be. "I laid careful plans and everything went awry" has far more resonance than "I spent a week tripping on potholes."

> It sounds like they visited well traveled areas, near roads, with a mechanically
> sound vehicle, and not in the hot season.

I think people’s point is that, given this woman’s lack of research, those are a matter of luck. She could’ve just as easily ended up in a desert campground with the bright idea to park the van down in this nice dry gully out of the wind.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:04 PM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

The article was funny.

In the mid-80s, after several years doing some short-term backpacking (and having camped as kids), my wife and I bought a used VW Vanagon, took out the seats, and converted it to a camper. We weren't super-fancy...a permanent bed in the far back, a cabinet with a counter, and lots of storage. We took it on at least two major road trips: Seattle to LA in one spring, including Yosemite (pre-tourist season) and to the northern tip of Vancouver Island a year later, and it provided us with free sleeping space on at least two family visits, a church retreat, and a weekend-long photography workshop.

Memory has blurred, but I don't remember any incidents or mishaps (well, there was that solid wall of mosquitoes on Vancouver Island...). I'm sure it helped that we were at least somewhat experienced with camping.
posted by lhauser at 12:53 PM on April 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

OK, so this part: “E.g.,” read my editor’s email, veering occasionally into Latin. “Etc.”

Ummm I use "e.g." and "i.e." and "etc.", both in my writing (for work) and in emails, and I never anticipated anyone would think, "Whoa, is she is writing in LATIN?!" Now I feel really old. (Yeah, I know this piece is supposed to be funny, but still.)
posted by trillian at 1:32 PM on April 23, 2022 [9 favorites]

The River Ivel— that’s her entire career. Who can forget the mozzarella sticks piece?
posted by Ideefixe at 1:45 PM on April 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

Those 20-somethings are on Instagram all the time, didn’t camp a lot as kids (a few have), and are priced out of the real estate market in a lot of ways.

I have to watch making off hand "Living in a van down by the river" comments at work because to the older guys it's a phrase of distain and to the younger people it is often aspirational.
posted by Mitheral at 1:55 PM on April 23, 2022 [18 favorites]

Well, I found the article pretty funny and entertaining. Camping is just housekeeping under adverse conditions. Van camping is the easiest kind! I want her to do a backpacking trip next (assuming she recovers and can walk).
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:57 PM on April 23, 2022 [9 favorites]

...
posted by y2karl at 2:35 PM on April 23, 2022

There's only one van life channel that I follow on Youtube and it's Foresty Forest. This is van life, warts and all. It occurs to me that in order to do the van life thing successfully, you have to be able to troubleshoot issues and be able to fix those issues, whether it's a van problem (engine and suspension especially) or installing new things that require altering the van in some way (installing a diesel heater or a wood stove, etc). Also, as Foresty has been finding out over these last few months, your health can go south rapidly; good thing he's Canadian.
posted by NoMich at 3:32 PM on April 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

I WILL FOREVER BE HERE FOR HER MOZZ STICKS PIECE i read it every six months or so. thanks for reminding me, Ideefixe
posted by capnsue at 4:29 PM on April 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

I can't believe I read the whole thing. I got some wryness at the end. It just reminds me that now, two generations have grown up in front of digital media, and who step out for bagels, like it's crossing the plains in an ox cart.
posted by Oyéah at 4:39 PM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is absolutely a specific genre, in which an enjoyable and distinctive writer is consigned to do a thing they are absolutely certain not to enjoy very much, purely as a means of generating an enjoyable and distinctive recounting of their minor, temporary and self-inflicted unhappiness.

The degree to which that succeeds with readers is going to depend a lot on both their tolerance for that kind of piece in general and their enthusiasm for the writer's stylistic choices in particular (not to mention whether they would find the experience similarly unenjoyable). Personally, I thought the article was pretty fun.
posted by eponym at 5:11 PM on April 23, 2022 [14 favorites]

Ha. I'm a person who takes week+ long camping roadtrips for every chance I get and I thought this was funny. As someone who recently tried to sleep in the back of my prius I understand the struggles of midnight claustrophobia.

I am a meticulous planner and researcher for this type of vacation, which makes me feel really boring and unspontaneous-- but it's really not very much fun to be driving around looking for cell service because you need to figure out what your camping options are and then you're spending your vacation sitting your car in the parking lot of a Walmart, squinting at the Google Maps app trying to figure out which campsites might have availability and which one is 15 minutes away vs 45 minutes away because the road got washed out and it looks like maybe the permitting situation here changed last year but we should call the rangers office during business hours tomorrow morning to find out for sure...
posted by geegollygosh at 6:09 PM on April 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

Unreal that anyone would get paid for this pablum, what, nearing seven-eight years into the van life cliche, which was, I dunno, already 40+ years from when it actually began and had been quietly thriving all along (while not socially viral) for decades.

Spent 7 months and 23,000 miles in an '84 Westy with my wife over the summer of her 40th birthday and am quite certain I'll have no fonder memories of my time in this mortal machinery of meat.

I mean, wow, what an edgy and unexpected angle: mousy person who's ill-inclined for camping lives out of a motor vehicle for an entire week - hilarity ensues. Whatevs.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 7:16 PM on April 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

I have never written a NYT article about vanlife, but if I did (as a fulltime van dweller for several years) it would be about learning the proper and careful way to dump and flush your grey and black tanks. Nothing else in the occupation really makes you look into the abyss quite as deeply, or literally.
posted by credulous at 7:56 PM on April 23, 2022 [12 favorites]

I do not understand how people are surprised when they decide to go all-in on something way outside of their comfort zone and then discover that it's hard and not fun: this is every single new thing ever. Malcolm Gladwell or somebody said something about how it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at anything: playing the violin, or building spreadsheets, or whatever. I propose that any time you try something new, the first 100 hours are going to suck. Camping, roller skating, gardening, cooking, whatever it is. When you start, you are going to fail fail fail so many, many times. It's going to be painful and not fun. But if you can push through that first 100 hours, it will start to suck less, and then you're on to something.
posted by nushustu at 8:22 PM on April 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

Van life? Sounds complicated. Anyway, is everyone done reading this? Cool.

*makes a pillow and blanket out of the print edition of the NYT and takes a nap in the mossy roots of a large tree*
posted by loquacious at 11:53 PM on April 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

As I grappled for composure, I warned Michael that the suffocation panic seemed moments away from resurging. But that would be OK, he said, because feeling scared was temporary. If it happened, I could simply wait for the feeling to pass. A short while later, I heard the quiet clink of plastic on enamel. Michael had removed his retainer to speak to me soothingly, I realized.

Michael is a treasure
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:46 AM on April 24, 2022 [5 favorites]

Just put knobby tires on an old minivan. That's really all you need. Even now, during the car apocalypse, you can put this together for $5-8k for the vehicle, plus however much you want to spend on normal camping stuff.

Then you can use your 20 year old, fwd minivan to drive down a hill or through the desert.

I'm a bigger fan of #vantrip than #vanlife. Van camping is much cheaper and more practical when you don't make it your whole life.
posted by ryanrs at 12:56 AM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Caity Weaver is awesome. Her restaurant pieces for Gawker were consistently phenomenal, with the Epcot trip being the pinnacle.

Anyone who enjoyed the mozzarella stick piece and hasn't made their way through this particular oeuvre of hers is well advised to do so.
posted by Gadarene at 2:53 AM on April 24, 2022 [5 favorites]

Thanks to those who brought up the mozzarella stick piece. It was much better, though I thought it would have benefitted from more editing (it just seemed too long for what it was). But yes, she can be very funny. (I also started picturing chubbyemu saying, "A woman ate 32 mozzarella sticks. Here's what happened.")

I think this kind of stunt journalism works much better for eating a lot of mozzarella sticks rather than trying something that uses skills that take time to learn. The vanlife piece reminded me a lot of pieces I've seen where a writer tries being vegan, interprets that as either living on salads or eating fake meat and cheese at every meal, and then concludes that veganism is either unsustainable or elitist because it's expensive. Plus your baby might die. I just feel like talk to some frickin' vegans. Or it's like when Gwynneth Paltrow tried living on SNAP funds for a week, failed miserably, and wrote that if someone with her education couldn't do it, it must be impossible, not realizing that people living in poverty have skills she doesn't have. I mean, the woman bought five limes with her SNAP money. (It might very well be impossible, but Gwynneth Paltrow is not the person to prove that.) Contrast that with the documentary Living on One Dollar, where four Americans try living on one dollar a day in Guatemala, fail miserably, but then ask local people how they do it and actually learn something from them.

I would much rather have read interviews with people who were honest about how they were making vanlife work, but I don't want to criticize an article because I would have preferred a different article. For me, the vanlife article also failed at humor, though apparently not for everyone.

I do share the fatigue with this kind of journalism though. Hard things are hard, and they take time to learn. Nobody writes, "I ran the Boston Marathon with no training whatsoever." We know that's absurd. This was too.
posted by FencingGal at 5:07 AM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

One element of this piece that I appreciated: the matter-of-fact way it presented a mixed gender friendship that includes sleeping together in close proximity. No one, including the author's husband, is tittering or flipping out or nursing hopes of romance or even, unless I missed it, explaining the situation away with talk of a past relationship or someone's LGBTQ bona fides. More of that in American life, please.
posted by carmicha at 8:08 AM on April 24, 2022 [19 favorites]

If you do enjoy this sort of writing, I recommend also its close cousin I Attempted To Have A Mildly Unpleasant Experience, But Was Gently Foiled By My Own Enjoyment (NYT link).
posted by eponym at 8:14 AM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

To me, this reads much more as:
- are you an urban-dwelling office worker type who is vaguely aware of nature, but have no particular personal relationship with it? (me: “yes, I am!”)
- have you seen pictures on Instagram of people seeming like they’re having fun in nature and looking all scenic and stuff? (me: “sure have!”)
- do you occasionally think “I bet it would be fun to rent a camper van!” but fundamentally aren’t interested in having that become, like, a whole thing for you? (me: “oh yeah, I bet it’d be neat. There’s probably, I dunno, sunsets and stuff!”)
- well, I did do that, with roughly the level of preparation you’d have. Here’s what it was like: it was kind of okay but mostly kind of frustrating and pretty minimally magical. But I can tell you about it in a way that may be funny to you, if you spent a lot of time reading Gawker at your desk ten years ago? (me: “oh, neat, thanks! Boy, I sure did read a lot of Gawker. Yeah, I probably should just get a hotel and go to the beach instead of this, right?” CW: “yup, have fun! Get some mozzarella sticks!”)

In short, I’m the target audience for this, and I enjoyed it. Its failings are also my failings, and I while I already feel vaguely guilty about them, “anonymous suburban office-working xennial with no particular personality” is kind of just who I am!
posted by twigatwig at 8:18 AM on April 24, 2022 [11 favorites]

Then we run our little boat into some quiet nook, and the tent is pitched, and the frugal supper cooked and eaten.  Then the big pipes are filled and lighted, and the pleasant chat goes round in musical undertone; while, in the pauses of our talk, the river, playing round the boat, prattles strange old tales and secrets, sings low the old child’s song that it has sung so many thousand years—will sing so many thousand years to come, before its voice grows harsh and old—a song that we, who have learnt to love its changing face, who have so often nestled on its yielding bosom, think, somehow, we understand, though we could not tell you in mere words the story that we listen to.

And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister’s kiss, and throws her silver arms around it clingingly; and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king, the sea—till our voices die away in silence, and the pipes go out—till we, common-place, everyday young men enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not care or want to speak—till we laugh, and, rising, knock the ashes from our burnt-out pipes, and say “Good-night,” and, lulled by the lapping water and the rustling trees, we fall asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the world is young again—young and sweet as she used to be ere the centuries of fret and care had furrowed her fair face, ere her children’s sins and follies had made old her loving heart—sweet as she was in those bygone days when, a new-made mother, she nursed us, her children, upon her own deep breast—ere the wiles of painted civilization had lured us away from her fond arms, and the poisoned sneers of artificiality had made us ashamed of the simple life we led with her, and the simple, stately home where mankind was born so many thousands years ago.

Harris said: “How about when it rained?”

--- Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog), Jerome K Jerome.
posted by SPrintF at 8:28 AM on April 24, 2022 [6 favorites]

Isn't there something about the cynical marketing of downward mobility to a bunch of overeducated tech-dependent inside kids that deserves to be subjected to ridicule?
posted by Selena777 at 8:42 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

*makes a pillow and blanket out of the print edition of the [Sunday] NYT and takes a nap in the mossy roots of a large tree*

ftfy

*daily NYT is getting pretty thin these days...
posted by y2karl at 8:50 AM on April 24, 2022

I don't know, I feel like I'm closer to the target audience for this than many here, and my reaction still ended up being "self-deprecation is not a complete substitute for a personality."

Michael seems like a good dude, though. And that might have been a much more interesting piece: using the account of the trip to examine how your friend seems to have grown over the years and to compare his changes to yours. There's just enough of a gesture in that direction that I would be interested to read more.
posted by praemunire at 8:55 AM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I feel like I'm reading a different article than some of you. The 'dilettante' who 'can't mentally leave her Brooklyn apartment' and 'probably has trouble navigating the sidewalk just going around the block to the deli' (yikes, y'all! that's a surprising amount of vitriol) specifically did not want this assignment, partly because she knows she is a bad driver:

"...it was determined — with no evidence — that what was right for me was to spend a week driving around California in a van."

She 100% did not decide to do this on her own, thinking it would be easy and fun (where did any of you get that impression? I'm so confused). She got assigned this by her boss, and made the best of it. I thought the article was pretty funny. I imagine if Bill Bryson had been ordered, against his own wishes, by his editor to spend several months hiking the Appalachian Trail, he might also have let a note of bitterness and cynicism creep into his prose as well.
posted by ananci at 10:00 AM on April 24, 2022 [10 favorites]

I enjoy them when they include a lot of the person discovering an unexpected problem and then solving it either in their own creative way or just looking it up in the manual. Sharing someone else’s discovery process can be frustrating but it is always engaging.


I'm massively dating myself here (and frankly making it really obvious I was a nerdy young white girl in the early 90s), but the first pop culture thought that came to mind when I read this was when Claudia Kishi figured out how to set up a tarp to capture water on an island she was trapped on in The Babysitters Club Super Special #4 Babysitters' Island Adventure. Nope. Not embarrassed.
posted by Gumshoe Grimshaw at 10:10 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

that's a surprising amount of vitriol

...exactly the thought I had about this article, which was in theory supposed to be funny but was just sort of lazily hateful. Reminded me of watching Family Guy.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 10:30 AM on April 24, 2022

imagine if Bill Bryson had been ordered, against his own wishes, by his editor to spend several months hiking the Appalachian Trail, he might also have let a note of bitterness and cynicism creep into his prose as well.

Dunno. Bill Bryson describes situations when he was dispirited or just in a bad mood, but he doesn’t seem to let it creep into his writing style.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:43 AM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think there's a stereotypically feminine Fear Factor element to this article, as also to the mozzarella sticks article, which I did read and found not very funny. The van article also reminded me of an old memoir "The Egg and I," by Betty MacDonald (1945) about an equally clueless couple who take up chicken farming just before and during the Great Depression. Who knew that chicks are extremely messy and die like flies, and that a doughnut recipe will be ruined if you put in ten times the number o feggs just because you can? It had the same kind of humor. It ought to be required reading for the cottagecore set. It's also fairly classist and has other prejudices of its day, so be warned.
posted by bad grammar at 10:44 AM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

What Caity did, what Caity did next... I'm weirded out by Weaver's relationship to her editor, as if he sits around thinking of things he can get her to do next to write humorous articles about.
posted by bad grammar at 10:46 AM on April 24, 2022

Okay, so I read the TGI Fridays mozzarella sticks piece. It was a lot like an Onion story: a funny idea dragged out to the “please shoot me” point and beyond. But, I am a fundamentally fair man, I better read the Epcot thing. It is a collection of links and apparently some Tweeter stuff. Clicking several of the links to the restaurant reviews (apparently?) gives me a 404 for each one. Hilarious. Even better than the Onion!

Well, it *was* shorter than the other two pieces, but still not a fan. I am sure she isn’t responsible for keeping Gawker’s antique links in working order but this is sort of the quintessence of a work “not aging gracefully.”
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 5:26 PM on April 24, 2022

Writing gentle comedy pieces for a mostly boomer NYT audience that doesn't understand you has to be at least as existentially challenging as this van trip.

Imagine the emails Caity gets.
posted by zymil at 5:27 PM on April 24, 2022 [11 favorites]

She wrote aboUt some amazing things, the almond bloom, wHich is visited so much, and delights so many; that hot springs, I nearly went there in my '85 westy a couple of pre-plague years ago. The road it is on, the little crossover highway, is a breathtaking turny drive along a golden valley, and soft hills. This is the kind of stuff I love. And, I take a roadmap. The only times I have ever needed GPS, there was none. Yosemite is crowded, but worth a drive through. I love Yosemite, and Tioga Pass to get there.
posted by Oyéah at 7:26 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

As a female writer who has often been assigned uncomfortable things because my editors thought it would be funny, and who has then tried to be self-deprecating about my foibles during the experience ... yeah. Many, many people who will laugh at a man's accounts will absolutely skewer a woman for doing the same thing. 'Cause women aren't funny, see?
posted by cyndigo at 7:34 PM on April 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

So as not to abuse the edit window: I undertook a similar trip for an assignment (with my best friend who is male, even!) and although we had a large "luxury" RV, the driving was absolutely fucking miserable and I would never, ever do it again. The trip itself (and my friend) were awesome, but no RVs again, not for love nor money.

Let the skewering begin.
posted by cyndigo at 7:40 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm in the camp of not finding the article funny or charming at all, but clearly it has an audience. You can write an article about a tragedy that everyone will find sad, but good luck writing a humor piece that everyone likes.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:56 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Or even a form of humor that lasts. 30-40 years ago, I thought Dave Barry was the funniest thing ever. And he was genuinely funny -- I've gone back and read some of his earlier stuff. But it didn't continue to work for him. Erma Bombeck is a similar way a humorist falls out of favor.
posted by hippybear at 8:02 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

In short, I’m the target audience for this, and I enjoyed it. Its failings are also my failings, and I while I already feel vaguely guilty about them, “anonymous suburban office-working xennial with no particular personality” is kind of just who I am!

Yeah I am pretty sure any attempt I, a terrible driver who has never camped, would make at van camping would be just as bewildering and unpleasant to me as it was to the author, so I enjoyed reading someone who could spin a yarn out of it. Last night I managed to break the ice with some new acquaintances by relaying the story of my most recent utter disaster of a hike. The women I was chatting with are much more outdoorsy than I am but even so, they each had a story of getting in juuuuuust slightly over their heads, and we noted how it's that "just slightly" part that makes it funny instead of tragic.

I can't tell whether the idea prevailing in this thread is that folks like myself need to spend MORE time camping/hiking/whatever (so as to get better at it and stop embarrassing them) or NONE EVER time camping (because we just make a mockery of the very idea of nature and should stick to our sad failure lives and eat our stupid idiot bagels that we probably almost died purchasing) or what.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:20 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

I think the prevailing idea in this thread is that people should start with less ambitious camping and gradually take on more challenges, and also do research.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:28 AM on April 25, 2022

Actually, my view of the prevailing idea in this thread is that many metafilter members should not read lighthearted NYT articles, apparently expecting only hard news.

I say that as a retired person willingly and anxiously looking forward to wandering the US full time in our RV. It’s our fourth year, so it can be fun. And difficult, but that’s what life is all about.
posted by jeporter99 at 4:57 AM on April 25, 2022 [8 favorites]

> Actually, my view of the prevailing idea in this thread is that many
> metafilter members should not read lighthearted NYT articles, apparently
> expecting only hard news.

Or, apparently, expecting said articles to be more than peripherally connected to their headlines.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:07 PM on April 25, 2022

> I'm weirded out by Weaver's relationship to her editor, as if he sits around thinking of things he can get her to do next to write humorous articles about.

That's what editors do. What's weird about it?

I was amused by this piece. And now I want mozzarella sticks.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:59 AM on April 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Okay, so let me present to you the YouTube equivalent of this essay, although this I actually found amusing even though I give no fucks for its subject matter: I went to see Morbius 5 days in a row [28m]
posted by hippybear at 4:48 PM on April 27, 2022

I could see the article working as a funny self-deprecating fish-out-of-water piece, but there's no acknowledgement that "van life" could actually be aspirational and positive for the right people.

there sure isn't! come to think of it, that wouldn't be funny at all

probably some connection there to the reason she didn't insert that and many other such anxious "acknowledgements", I'll go run some equations and report back on my findings
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:56 PM on April 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

Amongst outdoorsy people there's the common concept of Type II Fun. Type I is something that's fun in the moment and makes for good memories: a good meal, a fun game with friends, a nice date, etc. Type II fun sucks in the moment but it makes a good story afterwards. Part of it is human memory having the ability to selectively forget pain and discomfort while remembering awe and pride. But another part of it, when done in company, is how that mutual suck is a bonding experience. As Caity says in the end, one forgets how much one hadn't enjoyed it.

Camping often sucks, even for people who are Good At Being Outdoors. You're dirty and sweaty all the time, sleeping on the ground is not as good as one's bed at home, your body aches from all of that accumulated discomfort. But, you know, you come out of it with some good memories of seeing a gorgeous waterfall or a fun story that you can cotell with a friend. Otherwise, why put up with it?

I feel like my "meh" reaction to this article was mostly feeling like it had this agenda of saying that VanLife isn't fun and the people who are posting their airbrushed idealized images of it on social media are all liars. Therefore all of that Type II fun that people purport to have is invalid. I think that would've been a mean and facile take from some folks who don't get it.

However, on reread, I think I missed or didn't appreciate the friendship bits with Michael, and that is its own fun, and I am glad she got to appreciate it in the very, very last paragraph of the article.
posted by bl1nk at 6:00 AM on April 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

She’s clearly a talented comedy writer & has that skill where nearly every sentence has the right level of zip. I laughed!
posted by stoneandstar at 1:14 PM on April 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also hilarious to me to see this light comedy piece described as “hateful,” this is the site that just keeps on giving.
posted by stoneandstar at 1:16 PM on April 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm in the camp of not finding the article funny or charming at all, but clearly it has an audience. You can write an article about a tragedy that everyone will find sad, but good luck writing a humor piece that everyone likes.

There's a Stack Overflow answer that digs into a famous line James Thurber almost wrote: "humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." I think of that sentiment often, even if the best-known version of the comment isn't what Thurber actually wrote.

Times Insider (available to subscribers only) now has a thoughtful essay from her travel companion that illuminates the piece a bit more:

Caity was astonished by my equanimity in the face of hundreds of opportunities to complain. Discomfort is inevitable, I’ve learned, but suffering is optional. I shivered and smelled, but there was no use resisting what I couldn’t change.
[…]
Perhaps surprisingly, our spirits remained fairly high throughout our weeklong journey. Many readers found Caity’s self-deprecating tone in the article funny, and others commented that the van life wasn’t supposed to be glamorous. They might be relieved to know that her complaints about things such as our “dire” lavatory situation and poor weather did not outwardly manifest themselves during our journey.

In other words, it was definitely a humor piece, and the negative reaction wasn't limited to Metafilter.
posted by fedward at 12:53 PM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just today the NYTimes yet again was showing this on the front page of the website -- this is one of those pieces that is either accidentally or on purpose calibrated precisely to maximize "engagement," whether love or hate. I'm not a fan of the piece but I am impressed with what the author managed to accomplish.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:36 PM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]