Priorities

Have you ever wondered what you’re made of?

I always thought I was kind of a wimp. Cold all the time. Can’t lift much. I complain about papercuts. The first year in the bus made me realise that I was a lot tougher than I ever gave myself credit for.

We had this idea that the bus conversion would go quite a bit more quickly than it really did and we moved in before much—ok, let’s face it—before anything was completed. For the first year, we gave up some pretty basic modern conveniences:

No furnace.
We had a small woodstove but the fire would go out after about 3 hours. This was a bit of a problem during a Canadian winter but thank goodness we live on the West Coast. We could see our breath in the morning when we woke up and when we got home from work. We gave new meaning to the suggestion to “wear layers.”

No plumbing.
We bought a port-a-potty after the first month peeing in a bucket. We got the Canadian Tire 24L camper model. With regular use they break after 1 year. We replaced ours yearly.

We showered and did laundry in my sister’s place. Not a huge big deal but it did mean walking outside every time we wanted to have a shower.

We kept a couple of 4L jugs full of water in the bus for washing up and we had a small Rubbermaid basin for doing dishes.

No water heater.
We boiled all of our water for dishes and washing up. We kept a pot of water on the woodstove at all times too.

No stove.
We had a single propane burner that looked like something from chemistry class. It was hooked up to a 20Lb propane tank (like you use for bbq’ing) that we kept inside. I used this exclusively for cooking that year. We boiled our water on it too.

No fridge.
Ok, that’s an exageration. We had a mini-bar fridge. It could hold a 2L of milk, a couple of Tupperware containers and a few veggies. A head of green lettuce stacked on the containers would fill it completely.

No wiring.
We had two extension cords so we could have power. For lights we used those small indoor Christmas lights. Aaron calls them fairy lights. We also had a lamp that Aaron made himself out of wire & cardboard and a desk lamp.

No curtains.
There are 11 windows on each side of Eliza, not including the back windows or windshield. Considering that we were parked on a corner, on a bike route in a fairly big city, beside a busy park that held a farmer’s market on the weekends, this is a big deal. Aaron used butter knives to stick blankets into the seams between the walls and the ceiling so we could have some privacy.

We did have a phone, a computer and high speed internet though. Was it the internet that gave me the strength to weather all these other hardships? Or was it something inside me?