I’m getting with the times and keeping the Restless Transplant spirit going over on https://arestlesstransplant.substack.com. Subscribe for updates and thank you for the support over the years.
I decided to put PUKE on YouTube. my intention is the get people to see it. It’s definitely not a film for everyone but I think it will find a place. Out of all the things I’ve been apart of making, I’m very proud of the process of how we made it. Jake and I put our hearts and souls into it. My brother is in it. It’s a very personal project to me that I made with little intention of it being commercially viable. My hope is that sometime people will look back and think that PUKE captured a moment in time that was more universally experiences than first look at the life of a man that collects owl pellets to make a living. Take a look let men now what you think.
This is the first of a multipart series on whips that I’ve lived in and traveled in. The first vehicle I lived in was a 1987 VW Vanagon Syncro. I lived in mine from the summer of 2011 to the late spring of 2013. Mine had front and rear locking differentials and a lot of room to live in and store gear than any other van on the market. The Syncro seemed like a really capable option. At the time I was looking, there really weren’t many good options for four wheel drive vans. Ford Conversions were running easily north of 30k. Toyota 4x4 vans were too small. Japanese Hiace and Delica’s weren’t old enough to import. GMC/Chevy Astrovans didn’t have the living space. Long before I had any real intention of leaving New York and jumping into my van, I started searching Craigslist and forums for vans.
I Found my Syncro on the Samba in the spring if 2011. It was listed for $15k by the original owners and had 275k miles on it. They had babied it and had it totally tricked out with an engine swap, the Tica South African Conversion, 16 inch steel wheels, front and rear lockers, skid plates and a tire swing and rack. It was love at first sight. We agreed to a price on the phone and I bought a one way flight from NYC to Reno to Pick her up. My first night somewhere near the Nevada and Oregon boarder changed my life forever.
There are things about Syncros that I love. The model I had is called a Weekender, which means it had a fold-down bed, but didn’t have any of the fancier addons that came standard in Westfalias. For me, as a single guy in my mid-twenties, that was actually a really good option. There's a lot of things that are antiquated about the Westphalia interior — specifically the refrigerator, which is a propane/electric hybrid. Those things suck. They never work. And they take up a lot of space in the front.
I knew I didn't really want to cook that much in my van. You do that a couple of times and everything you own ends up smelling like what you cooked. I used a Coleman cooler to store my veggies and meat. For the stove I used a two burner Coleman stove with the little canisters. You don't need anything fancy to cook for a bunch of people. For one month in 2012, three and sometimes four people traveled, slept and cooked out of my van in Baja.
I installed a little storage box and put some storage racks on the top for clothes and wetsuits and surfboards and stuff like that. I also put in a power inverter and a new sound system. One thing that’s really nice about Vanagons is they have tons of windows. The visibility is amazing. When you’re camping, though, that can be kind of problematic, because people can see right into your space. So I got a tint in Watsonville, CA from this Mexican body shop. They put on a super dark limo tint. Other than that the majority of the modifications I made was adding storage on top for other people's gear when they would travel with me. That was pretty much everything I changed.
The previous owners coated the front in truck bed liner to protect from rocks and brush.
One of my favorite parts of van dwelling is camping in places in the off season. In fact, summer high season was my least favorite time to travel in my van. This was during the fall of 2012 in the Eastside of the Sierra.
The great thing about this set up is that I could sleep in parking lots in Santa Cruz or I could sleep on 4x4 access beaches in Mexico.
If these musings interest you, make sure check out two phonebooks I’ve worked on on the topic Home Is Where You Park it and VanLife.
Baja was the first and only time I really needed to carry extra gas.
Here are a few of my favorite trips I took in the van from circa 2012.
In 2013 I sold the van to my mom. She used it on a few trips and then sold it in 2014. Last I heard the Syncro rolled over in an accident in Bend and was on the chopping block to get totaled. That van sure brought myself and few others a lot of joy. Is a Syncro right for you? I think they are an amazing piece of history. I'd love to own another one someday. I'd use it for special occasions and the occasional week long trip. With all the options available today, I wouldn't recommend one for full-time van life. They are an amazing vehicle and will always make me rubber neck when I see one.
"Well, I thought I would be back, but not this soon," Tim said as I threw his suitcase in the back of my Honda CRV. His Covid test came back negative two hours after his flight black to Berlin was supposed to leave. With frustration, he opened the passenger door, sunk into the seat with a sigh and took off his mask.
"At Least the weather is nice," I said as wet snow piled up against the windshield and I pulled onto I-205 north heading over the Glenn Jackson Bridge into Washington. "I wonder if its snowing at the Cone?"
Somewhere around the eight-hundred feet above sea level, the slurry of snow and rain turned to snow and started sticking to the grass around the Douglas Firs. By the one thousand foot mark, the snow was sticking everywhere.
"I think it's time to finally fire up the hot tub." Tim had been home since before Thanksgiving and we hadn't hot tubbed yet.
"There's nothing like hot tubbing in the snow."
Grabbing a bunch of 2x4 cut offs from the Movie Mountain shop, we started both stoves. As the stoves heated up, falling snow sizzled when it hit the anodized stainless steel chimneys. The smoke turned from a thick grey to a heat mirage and the occasional flame blasting out the top of the chimney contrasting with the twilight. Once we had burned through a wheelbarrow full of cut offs, we switched to Douglas Fir cordwood.
Six years ago, we erected the twin turbo wood burning hot tub in its original form. Since then, the tub's got a lot use; from relaxing after long days during the building of the tree houses to summer parties and solo tubs during the fall and winter. It's starting to show its age. The red of the cedar has given way to a combination of grey and green from algae. The cedar top cover is slowly losing tongue and groove slats. Dents from windstorms and BB gun pellets cover the stainless steel chimneys. Despite all this, the stoves still hummed and twanged, melting the slush floating on top of the 400 gallon stock tank.
Over the next few hours, Andrew, Tim and I took breaks from watching Trading Places and Two Mules for Sister Sara and made the trip from the house to the tub to stoke the fires and check the temperature. Each trip, the new snow had covered our footsteps from the prior.
For the record, I think Trading Places might be Eddy Murphy’s best movie, especially in light of this recent bullshit with Hedge Funds and Game Stop. Dan Aykroyd is a maniac genius and Eddy Murphy is something else.
"Think it's ready?" Tim asked.
"Ehh its getting there. I'm going to give it 10 more minutes," Andrew replied, stirring the water in the tub with an old wooden canoe paddle.
A hot tub, a cold beer and the first snow of the season.
I pulled half of the hot tub cover off and hopped in. Laying flat in the tub, I floated, keeping my body in the hot water at the top. Snowflakes hitting the tinging hot chimneys sizzled. From the house came Tim's signature cackles.
"How is it? Is it hot enough?"
"It feels great, It's definitely hot enough," I said as Tim pulled the other half of the hot tub cover off and got his 6'8 frame in, one leg at a time.
"I'm glad I missed my flight."
"Me too."
“I wonder when we’ll Tub again?” I asked fanning the hot water from the exhaust jet.
“Shit, I don’t know. Eri’s talking about coming back in September, but that seems so soon.”
Laying back I looked up at the tree houses above, tracking snow flakes as they missed the suspension bridge and fell towards the steaming tub. I guess that is soon I thought to myself.
I left my job in New York in the summer of 2011 and moved into a camper. Since then, I have driven 100,000 miles around the west, surfing and camping. During the summer of 2014, I set up a home base in the Columbia River Gorge. These are some of my stories and photos.
