Our First Vanlife Heartbreak
I was obsessed with the idea of that ambulance. It had seemed so serendipitous, reminiscing about those old make-out days then standing in the back of an ambulance, imagining being seventeen again... It was like we'd come full circle, twenty-one years later. What a story it would have made! So perfect, I was sure it would all work out.
It's silly to get so caught up in an idea. God bless our eldest son who kept telling me not to put all my hopes on the line. He's wise beyond his years. I'm a romantic fool and don't let naysayers knock me down, but when the call from the mechanic came, I felt the wind go out of my sails and I slumped in my chair like a deflated balloon.
It's silly to get so caught up in an idea. God bless our eldest son who kept telling me not to put all my hopes on the line. He's wise beyond his years. I'm a romantic fool and don't let naysayers knock me down, but when the call from the mechanic came, I felt the wind go out of my sails and I slumped in my chair like a deflated balloon.
It was going to be almost $6000 just to certify. We had set aside about $2000 in total and that quote blew our budget by a whopping $5,500! It seemed like everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. Having sat outdoors unused for at least one year, all the lines were rotted. It needed new tires and brakes and body work and and and and and...
Zander said, "I told you not to get your hopes too high."
I said, "Stop being such a downer." But also, "You were right."
We were so disappointed, but we knew it wasn't worth putting that kind of money (money we hadn't budgeted for) into a vehicle that would also need a huge amount of reconfiguration to make it work for us.
Things happen for a reason, and I chose to believe that there was something better waiting out there for us.
The beautiful thing about this whole process was that it brought us together on a shared goal. We wanted that #vanlife summer and one little setback wasn't going to slow us down.
So the search began in earnest and we became that couple who stopped at every van parked at the side of the road with a For Sale sign. The kids would groan and I would grin. "You just wait! This is going to be the best summer ever!"
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