Long time no post, eh? Well, I’ve been working on a few projects to help me earn a location-independent income so I haven’t had as much time to update this bad boy as I’d like.

The troops were getting restless in the comments of the last post and I actually had to delete a few comments that crossed the line, which bring me to the age old question ” how do you avoid the crazies when you’re living in a van down by the river?” It almost seems rhetorical right?

I’m realizing that it’s not the 60’s anymore and that in 2007, 4 out of 5 people you meet on the road will either stab you or try to steal your bucket of KFC.

So aside from installing a gun rack (I don’t even own *a* gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack), we have a few different options…

A taser. I would love to reenact “Don’t tase me bro” at every truckstop where people think it’s ok to make eye contact.

An eye patch. People are scared of pirates and usually avoid them – especially if they also appear to have scurvy. Starting tomorrow I’m not eating any more citrus.

A dog. We both love dogs, but I have allergies to them which might be a bad idea in such close quarters. Plus they poop.

Van alarm. This one is pretty much a given already, but I’d like to rig it for 2 settings: screaming banshee or Cher – depending on intruder type.

Then again, an eye-patch wearing Shredder next to a pooping dog with “Believe” blaring in the background might actually attract the crazies.

Now if you excuse me I have to go practice my nunchuck skills.

The goal: To get a late model Honda Odyssey into my garage so I can go all “Frankenstein” on it.

After doing some research and test driving vans with Flinstones-braking technology, I’ve decided that a Honda Odyssey would be the perfect minivan for this trip – mostly because:

• It goes up a hill
• Can sleep a 6 foot tall hobo +1 (I measured)
• Has somewhere between 30-40 airbags (not the circa-1993 kind that hits you like a brick in the face when someone taps your bumper).
• Looks about as cool as any minivan is allowed to look
• Has a cool storage compartment that can store a lot of Bananarama tapes
• The engine is not held together by duct tape
• 26 miles per gallon on the highway

Unfortunately these buggers cost 15-25K used. But realistically we’ll only need it for a few months to a year – so if we intend to sell it, we get a different version of the math.

The math behind the van

Going off Rob’s suggestion, we can look at the depreciation by looking at Kelley Blue Book prices.

A 2005 LX Honda Odyssey in Good condition and with 40,000 miles costs $17,795.
A 2004 LX Honda Odyssey in Good condition and with 60,000 miles costs $14,220.

So buying a van, putting 20,000 miles on it, and aging it for a year ends up costing about $3,575 in depreciation – and that’s on the high end. Realistically it would probably be quite a bit less.
So the next question is: If it will only cost a few thousand in the end (which we can probably make on the road), how can we get someone to put up $20,000, with the prospect of getting it all back?