The Vincent Chapter

After bouncing around for over a year - things are starting settle down and look normal again. I have a permanent address - in Edmonton of all places. After returning from Mexico I lived on a farm for 10 weeks, then did some more housesitting for my parents on Vancouver Island. Housesitting was how this whole cycle started - so it seemed fitting that it would conclude my semi-transient phase.

After my parents returned from their travels, I set about arranging to move to AB…and low and beyond, found myself surfing Craigslist for a used van. I hate U-Haul - it never goes according to plan. Either they don’t have the vehicle size you reserved, and/or it is poor repair (eg. on my last move, the gas filler hose was ripped - which poured gas everywhere when I filled it up)…and frankly I didn’t a large vehicle.

After pricing rentals out - I figured it would be around $800-$900 to rent one for 2-3 days - so buying a cheap van seemed like a reasonable gamble. After all, I had done it with Walden and it had worked out well - this time, all it needed to do was travel ~1000k and it would owe me nothing.

Enter Vincent - Vincent van Gogh. A 2000 green Dodge Caravan. He was for sale just down the hill from my parents place so I wandered down and took him for a spin. Originally from California, he is a typical high mileage Caravan. Foggy headlights and all. The seller wasn’t overly forthcoming about known issues which worried me but the wheels didn’t fall off, so I put in an offer. He was listed at $1200 - so I offered $1000, expecting the owner to meet me half way. Nope. No joy….so I waited a week and returned…ended up paying $1100. More than he is worth but there wasn’t much out there - pro tip: don’t talk more than necessary when buying a vehicle. I feel I ruined my chances of working him down because I mentioned how much renting a van cost. Gotta learn to be a little more ruthless when negotiating. Whoops.











Still. All said and done, I was happy with the purchase, I felt the extra cost was worth the freedom (after all, with a rental, I had to complete the move within 3 days). As with Walden, I was expecting bugs to come out of the woodwork and sure enough, things started to surface.  For example, the passenger door didn’t open from the inside…buddy had opened it with the window down and I hadn’t thought to check it. Lesson learned - luckily it was easily fixed ($4 plastic clip)

I picked up Tamara’s stuff in Vancouver and drove out to AB without a hitch. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there wasn’t an interesting story to go with it.

Once in AB - we emptied the back out and went on a road trip. More on that next post.

It looks like a lot of stuff but that is with the two benches stacked on top of each other behind the front seats.