Week Two

October 11th, 2015

Now to directly address the group who thinks this is a stupid or impossible idea.  How the hell am I planning to live in a car - a sedan - for months and through a Midwest winter???  I'll tell you how (with photos)!

I have a 2010 Toyota Yaris with 101,000 miles which I purchased new in November of 2009:

Here are the items I require:

Work shirts, pants, ties

Toiletries in the box next to a laundry basket in the trunk:

Pillows, blankets in the footwell (car meticulously cleaned pre live-in) and entertainment:

And a little thing that let's me plug normal stuff into my car:

While my back seats do fold down there’s a 3-inch bump between the seat back and the trunk.  If my hips stuck out about 4 more inches this would probably be a comfortable place to sleep.  As they do not, I simply recline the front seat and konk out.

Important Q&A:

Where to go to the bathroom? 

I foresee many concession purchases as I patronize nearby gas stations and pubs.  I’m already working on a list based on cleanliness and accessibility (will publish later).

Where to shower?

While I can go two nights in my normal routine before desperately seeking a shower, I'd prefer not to.  Luckily (?) I don’t exercise and any rigorous activity is usually pre-planned complete with safety lines or life vests.  That will likely change eventually, but for now CPTB and a couple close friends have graciously offered their WC a few times a week.  If all else fails I can find a Love's gas station and use the trucker showers.  I've always wanted to do that, but I hate wearing foam flip-flops.

So that's all nice and good, but I still wake up with greasy Wolverine bedhead every single morning.  Where do I wash my hair before work?
I’m expecting to become fast friends with the Bride of Frankenstein who mans the counter at the gas station near my work.  They have a nice, detached, clean bathroom where I’ve washed my hair the past few days.  I can park right in front of the door and go in with a towel, shampoo, and toothbrush without getting weird looks or questions too complicated to answer when I’m still half-asleep.

The last question which CPTB posed in the planning stages was where I can park while I sleep.  After a quick Google search I discovered Wal-Mart welcomes travelers, vagrants, and those saving for babies to sleep in their lots unharrassed.  After briefly considering taking anything from that awful company, in the end CPTB and I decided that the only nearby Wal-Mart was in an area too saturated with crime to consider even as a temporary bedroom.  In fact, it was actually just recently deemed The Worst Wal-Mart in America.

Until a cop taps my window with his flashlight I’m planning on hitting up the streets and parking lots around places I’ve already lived.  I mean, I got away with much crazier shit in and around each of those places (See below for examples*), it doesn’t seem that anyone would give a damn about a dude passed out in his car.

That’s the plan.  Let’s see what happens!

Next post:  The weird shit I've already witnessed.

Lucky Numbers:  2, 13, 14, 23, 27, 42
Your new favorite website (slightly NSFW)

My email:  mccoynstard@gmail.com

Please comment and share this page!

*

Backyard archery with flaming arrows

Pulling down a tree with a garden hose (click for video)

Pyrotechnics testing (click for video) 

and some extreme Halloween setups

Week One

October 4th, 2015

My name is Sean and I live in my car.  I broke my apartment lease and decided to do this to save money for this coming spring when I’ll become a dad.  I’ll be documenting the experience here over the following months.

The car!

In trying to imagine who might read this I imagine two types of people:  The first thinks this is the dumbest thing anyone could do, the second would call it a great adventure.  If those opinions were on a thermometer with dumb (cold) on one side and adventurous (hot) on the other, I think I’d fall around the summer in Vegas area.  Wow, way to complicate a metaphor, huh?  Anyway, we’ll see how I might fluctuate in two months as winter in Cleveland gets underway.  For the moment I’m excited.

My other car is a Tauntaun.

Although I doubt many people outside my friends and family will actually read this, I suppose I should give a little info on myself.  I work full-time in a nice office job for a very large business and have done so for 5 years (five years today actually).  My co-parent-to-be (CPTB)* is brilliant and hilarious and just as adventurous as me (if not moreso).  I love the shit out of her, and that’s actually less a shibboleth and more a metaphor now since many women poop while giving birth.  By the way, people won’t stop warning me about that, as if either CPTB or I are interested in watching when that goes down.  I mean, seriously, no matter what anyone tells me I find it hard to believe anyone ever wants to get in the splash zone all up-close and personal.

That’s close enough for me, thanks.

In my free time I write screenplays and paint.  The scripts are Goonies or Indiana Jones-type adventures and I get a bit obsessed with them.  I’m trying to sell one right now, so if you tell your aunt’s friend’s daughter’s college roommate who is the daughter of a big producer to email me and it gets sold I’ll be your best friend and do your laundry for a year.

Oh, I also paint stuff.  You can check the art out here if you’d like:  Sean’s Art Page!

Okay, enough about me for now.  Back to living in a car.

Now you might ask, Why not just move in with CPTB now, split the bills, and save like a normal person?  Well, my darling CPTB lives with her sister and her sister’s toddler and for multiple logistical reasons that would simply not work.  CPTB’s sister will be purchasing a home and moving out sometime before the due date in April at which point I’ll give up this life of vagary, move into the house, and live happily ever after.

So initially I thought, heck $600 for the rent and another $100 for utilities.  I’ll be saving $700 every single month!  When I told CPTB the great news, she was at first jealous (I said she was adventurous, right?) then she asked what I was going to do about food (she’s also more practical than me).  While I’m still working on a specific answer, I have allocated an extra $200 toward that for the month as an initial estimate. 

My second miscalculation was realized just last night.  Sometimes car, clothes, and blankets are just not enough insulation when it drops below 45 degrees at night (yeah, some nights are already getting that chilly in Cleveland, Ohio).  So I put another $100 toward the extra gas burned in idle whenever I wake up from the cold.  So $400 a month!  That means every two months in the car will cover the expenses for one month while CPTB is off work after the baby is born.  Not bad!

Those are the finances thus far.  Maybe at the end of the month I’ll post a more detailed breakdown and we’ll see where I actually landed in my savings.

Next post:  You think I’m nuts?  Here are some facts!

Challenge:  Help me find a cool name for this blog.

My email:  mccoynstard@gmail.com

*The word “girlfriend” seems too flimsy and I’d rather run my teeth over cement than use the term, “baby-mama.”  The problem is that “co-parent-to-be” is just clunky.  I’ll have to work on a better moniker as this blog goes on.  For now I’ll use CPTB, because that at least sounds cute when spoken...