On the road again
I can’t wait to get on the road again…
— Johnny Cash
The van in the Broadhead parking lot on Huguenot Street in New Paltz had Florida plates. It didn’t look like any van this reporter had ever seen. It was oversized, bulky and had a panel on the top that looked odd, like a tornado had dropped it there, which it might have done considering the recent weather. Compost dumped in the zero waste bin, I headed back to my car and spotted a woman surfacing from the side door. The van was mesmerizing and I kept on looking. The woman noticed my curiosity. “Want to have a look inside?” she asked. Then we introduced ourselves as she slid the door completely open onto her living space, a miracle of engineering. It has everything — sleeping quarters, a cooking range, a compostable toilet, refrigerator, running water out of a tank — all of these accoutrements of living powered by the solar panels on the top. Solar panels! Even though the van uses gasoline to run at 20 miles to the gallon, the solar panels power everything else. There are very few days that don’t have enough sunshine to power-up apparently. That’s good news for all of us in our climate-changed world.
The woman was rosy-cheeked and energetic for what turned out to be her 70 years. She shook my hand, I shook hers. “Name’s Jan Whitman,” she said. “I travel up from Florida in the summer and visit friends and family all over the Hudson Valley.” As the former director of the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley and the founder and former board president of the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center in Kingston, Jan has many friends and former colleagues to see. And though she settled in Florida in retirement, the van keeps her moving, connecting and exploring. How grand it would be for all of us, even before retirement, to enlarge our worlds and learn more about our fascinating diverse country, not from an airplane, but from the ground. By definition our homes are circumscribed, and our villages, and towns too insular and tribal these days. Imagine if we all had a van parked in our driveways ready to go. Imagine if we opened ourselves to strangers in faraway towns and cities and shook their hands in friendly greeting without hesitation, as Jan shook mine.
Jan had her van “converted” in Florida by a dedicated custom builder, but any local artisan who specializes in woodwork could do most of the interior work. Different contractors would be necessary to complete electrical wiring and install the solar panels. Total cost: approximately $50,000. Considering the price tag on homes these days, conversion vans are a bargain. Many aficionados are doing the conversions themselves; there are several “how to” You Tube channels. And Facebook has numerous sites. “Van Life for Senior Women,” for example, is replete with suggestions. It has 23K followers which leads to the conclusion that the itinerant life is more than a fad, it’s a way of life.
“I love that unlike an RV, which is much larger, I can park my van in my friends’ driveways,” Jan says. She hadn’t spent the night in the Broadhead lot — it’s not allowed — but had arrived in the early morning and was ready to take a walk on Huguenot Street before heading out on the road again.
Carol Bergman’s last article for HV1 was about Keith Perry, a volunteer firefighter. This summer she’s been teaching a “Where I’m From” writing workshop for K-12 teachers at the Mid-Hudson Teacher Center and swimming laps outdoors, climate-changed weather permitting.
Join the family! 
