I’m living out of my car this week, and the crazy thing is, I’m sort of enjoying it.
It was a last-minute thing. A friend of mine was coming to Aspen on vacation and wanted to know if I’d be interested in renting my condo short-term. It was his first trip to Colorado with his new wife and he wanted to stay somewhere decent, but wasn’t able to find a hotel room for less than $150 a night.
“I can pay you like a thousand bucks,” he said. “I sleep on people’s floors, but I can’t do that with the wife.”
“For my place? Are you sure?” I replied.
I live in a tiny one-bedroom condo in a business park above a Jacuzzi store. My place is nice enough on the inside, but it’s certainly not your typical Aspen ski condo setting, unless you want to be in close proximity to Aspen Rent-All or FedEx.
Being inconvenienced for the week certainly seemed worth the money, so I hit the road.
I went to Moab for the weekend and then delivered my dog to Steamboat so I might have more mobility while couch-surfing in friends’ places where dogs – especially my 90-pound chow mix with behavior problems – were not welcome. I stuffed as many clothes as I could into my big, old duffle bag, the one that’s full of holes and threatening to disintegrate any second, packed my little Jeep to the brim with camping gear and various footwear and jackets, threw my mountain bike on the back and vacated the premises.
Since then, I’ve been basically living out of my car, my luggage open in the back for easy access in case I need to do a quick change in some parking lot. I have two bags of groceries in the front seat that I bring in and out of whichever house I’m staying in at the moment. Remnants of my road tripping – empty bottles of Evian, half-melted bags of chocolate-covered raisins and gum wrappers – litter the floors.
For some reason, the disarray makes me happy. I haven’t felt this content in years. I don’t know if it’s the lack of routine I like, or the freedom, or maybe that it brings me back to the spirit that led me to this lifestyle in the first place.
After college, I moved every six months for about six years. It was always on a whim, with little in the way of thought or planning. I constantly bounced back and forth from the ocean to the mountains, from the idea of being a sun-kissed surfer girl who spent her mornings driving up and down the coast scouting the best breaks to a lithe rock climber who lived on protein smoothies and shopped only at Wild Oats.
Sometimes when I didn’t have a particular destination in mind, I’d just drive around the West visiting various friends. I’d go to Tahoe and hang out with Tiff and Jer, who spent their summers wakeboarding and cliff- diving into the emerald-green waters of the lake. I’d head up to Portland to see Shanti’s mom and snowboard on the glacier of Mount Hood and then frequent the skate parks located under bridges in downtown Portland, even though I didn’t know how to skate. Then I might swing through Hood River to camp out on Sky’s land and contemplate learning how to windsurf before heading down to San Fran, where I’d go on long trail runs on the cliff sides overlooking the Pacific and watch Shad surf the monster waves of Ocean Beach. If I timed it right, I might get to join my friend Peter on a Thursday night group ride with all the locals from Larkspur who have been mountain biking since before mountain biking was invented.
More often than not, those trips would spark the idea that I’d actually move to one of these locations and take up one of these sports full time and blend my life seamlessly into whichever activity I chose.
With little to no planning involved, this usually meant I’d end up living out of my car for at least a few weeks, staying with friends or camping until I could get situated with the same duffel bag, the same layer of dust on the dash, and half-eaten snacks on the front seat.
Maybe I was missing the point all along with all that moving around, thinking one destination would be better than the next. Instead of moving, maybe I should stay on the move, swap out my condo for the long term for a more portable living situation – one that has wheels.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
