Easy on the miles

In the 20 months that I've been vandwelling, I've driven a total of 10,000 miles. That's pretty sedentary City living, I'd say.

Simple awesomeness

Sometimes the obvious answer is right under my nose, and it feels so good to finally find it.

What's the best container to put ice in so that it doesn't get my cooler all wet when it melts?

Oh, how about... an ice bucket?

So obvious. So simple. $25 at Smart & Final. A stainless steel ice bucket, the kind that is used for chilling bottles of champagne. After a year, I finally realized that is the thing to buy.

It's the perfect size for a block of ice, if I get a hammer and bang about a half-inch off of the corners of the ice block. Fits right in, and close the top of the cooler. Cold food and a dry cooler.

Street Cleaning, bah.

One of the more annoying costs of vandwelling for me these days is street cleaning tickets. I've gotten nailed twice in the last two months.

When I was in the city every day, I got in the habit of always looking at the signs and taking careful note of what day it is (or, the real gotcha: what day it will be at 2-4am!).

But I've been spending several days a week in the country or suburbs, where there aren't obnoxious street-cleaning regulations. Then when I come home again, I have to re-learn this diligence, painfully at $50 each shot.

Turns out the city has a website which lists the street-cleaning times for any address you type in. If I can get a GPS working, I'd like to write a mash-up that will look up the address of my location, look up the street-cleaning schedule, check the current day-of-week (and, more importantly, tomorrow's day-of-week), and put up a big huge warning if I'm in a danger zone.

There are some hurdles involved in getting that working, but it'd sure save me a lot of money for the effort.