 Good morning from Washington right now. I am at a little truck stop. I Just wanted to hit the road first before I started vlogging Today today is gonna be a pretty awesome day I'm gonna meet up with this guy Dylan Who makes in my opinion some of the best mini documentaries on YouTube? Dylan is also a van lifer and I came across his videos and hit him up and Surprise surprise. He was nice enough to respond back and agreed to To do a little video with me. So I'm super stoked about this. You guys definitely got to go check out his channel I'll link it down below Just a quick little update. I've taken a few days off. I had a little procedure so still a little sore from that and Just been kind of Relaxing up at my aunt's house and hanging out with my nephew and stuff Doing errands. I did get Some things for the shower, which is super exciting We'll jump into the install later in the week, but I just want to update you This is my plan and We got it looks like we got have another collab Later in the week or early next week. So I'm just gonna try and relax get better and then shoot up to Vancouver, Canada for that one. Let's hit the road. All right guys. Here we are. We are meeting up at a truck stop and Then we were heading out to a state park somewhere Yo, man guys. We just met up. We me and you just met up with Dylan and We got some bad lighting right now, but There we go, this guy knows his lighting so Dylan is the Captain of this awesome van over here. Like I said before I'll put some links down below, but Dylan is Well, you could tell us about yourself. I suppose I'm a short documentary Filmmakers what I would consider myself. I guess an independent artist whatever you want to say like I Work for myself and I work on YouTube and I make videos for living. So that's what I do and I live in a van. Yeah, and His videos are super awesome. I was just thanking them for the opportunity for Me to be in one of his videos and because they're super high quality and they're they're awesome So you guys got to go check them out. Oh, all right. So we're gonna hit the road up to state park tomorrow Yep, all right I'll follow you as I do feel a little bit out of it today um probably from the medication I was having a little pain couldn't sleep that well last night. So took a couple painkillers and Ugh dealing with the aftermath. It's like a double-edged sword. You want to sleep and you want to feel all right You want to be pain-free but at the same time you have to process all the toxins from the medicine the next day and didn't sleep as much as I wanted to so If I feel kind of out of it, that's why Well, you know, you're in the country when That's right I'm gonna tractor drives by state park so It's funny right on the state line Is like all of a sudden there's a bunch of big trees I guess they uh cut them down outside the state park. So It's kind of like a little little oasis out here All right guys, so we found a little uh parking spot somewhere in the uh state park here and uh This is a little behind the scenes in case you guys wonder What exactly goes into one of Dylan's videos? He's got a nice little DSLR setup over there. He's got a little audio contraption And of course he's got that sweet van of his right over there, which after uh After do some chitchat we'll get a full tour from So guys when your uh Vehicle is also your house and you forget to uh bring all the chairs. You just create a chair So this is setup we got right now. I'm all mic'd up myself I've been up mic'd up in quite a while and uh, we were gonna begin all right, so we finished up the uh interview portion of uh the the filming here of the documentary and uh round two Looks like he's got a nice little shoulder rig there We still got uh the wireless lav hooked up. We're gonna jump outside and inside and uh, see what kind of magic can happen They do exactly that Just finished up a couple parts of the interview Uh, as you can see we got Dylan back there We're gonna look for a little place to do a little skateboarding he's already flown the drone a little bit and uh Once his part of the project is done. I promise I promise we'll do a tour of his rig See that guys that is a little road rash what you didn't see And what he didn't see either is that I bit the dust first time in a couple years, but you know, that's what happens I would say we had a I don't know Almost like gilligan's island a three hour tour. I think it was about three or four hours or something It was so everybody again meet Dylan Uh magister right magaster. All right. Thank you. And uh Aside from also being a van lifer Dylan does these awesome documentaries which maybe you guys have already seen if not You guys need to get over to his channel for sure. There's some of the best mini documentaries I've ever seen and and probably my favorite as far as like van life and alternative living and stuff like that So if we get get a quick little tour of your van, it would be pretty sick. Yeah. Well, thanks for the kind words This is glad if she's a 1994 Chevy g20 Um, I bought her a 65 000 miles now. She has like 85 or 86 000 miles Uh bought her in main We're in washington right now driven her coast to coast driving her up to alaska Whenever I bought her there was a wheel chair lift right here took up all this space And then there was one chair in the back and the rest was open Um had the regular 1994 side paneling on it all that Took all of that out and then built this out cost about three and a half grand Uh took me just over a month to build and added a swivel seat I've got 200 watts of solar 200 amp hour battery bank a gallon of propane for cooking lasts me about three months The solar runs the fridge charges my camera batteries And laptop and then I've got seven and a half gallons so I can go off grid completely for about a week at a time And I average about 16 miles to the gallon. That's pretty good mileage. Yeah, it's not bad And uh, we were talking a little bit, but could you give me a brief rundown of how you got To doing mini docs on youtube. Yeah, so I've been on youtube I've been creating youtube videos since november of 2013 I've gone through about five different channel iterations and it took me Two and a half years before I found a channel that stuck and that's what i'm doing now Yeah, so it just trial and error until I figured it out Tell me about the bed situation and And tell me about the the comforts of living in a van life or maybe not the comforts, you know So the bed I've got three cushions. It's a shredded memory foam made of myself my aunt my lovely aunt carol So the cushions for me. Um, that was nice of her to do And so there's three of them I did that because it sets up into a couch and then I also have compartments under this first section here So that I can get all the to all of those I needed three separate cushions They work all right. I'm working on figuring out how to redo them because after nine months They've been beaten down and they're kind of squished So I'm figuring that out, but I also sleep in a hammock And yeah comforts and discomforts of living in a van definitely It's it's hard sometimes being in such a small space. It's like a little cave Um And not being able to stand is kind of a pain, but it works out Like I wouldn't be able to live my life without this van live my life the way I do without this van But yeah, who knows hopefully in the relatively near future. I'll upgrade my van, but that's all due to be determined What's the pooper situation like? I use public bathrooms. Yeah. Yeah, I did that for the first Few months and I gotta say it's really easy. Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah I don't really have space in here for a toilet. Anyway, and in such a small space. I don't know if I would want one Working on figuring out an outdoor shit shower situation plan on getting like a camp shower, but Yeah, I haven't done that yet Would you be able to do what you're currently doing if you still had an apartment? um, I've never signed a lease before so Probably not Yeah, how does saving money by not paying rent factor into your lifestyle? Yeah, so Whenever I got into a van I Was making like zero dollars And so living as cheaply as possible was definitely a necessity now. I um, I make Enough to survive I make a living and living in a van has made that like way more achievable because You know opposed if you're living in an apartment, maybe you need like four or five thousand dollars coming in a month Whenever I was living in a van that base is much lower. And so the whole Financial stability of it comes a lot quicker and it's easier to Get there because you need less money. What kind of advice would you give a first-timer? um Advice to a first-time van lifer Well, it all depends on like what they're doing if they're moving around a lot Then definitely make sure you have money saved or you know how you're going to be making money because it's a total pain in the butt Whenever you end up someplace and you realize you have no money no job and no potential for money That's a bad place. I've been there don't I mean sometimes you need to get there in order to get where you need to go But I wouldn't recommend it So having like the finances figured out if you're staying in one spot It's much easier because you can just like have a steady job and then you're just saving money um, but uh If you're traveling try not to be a complete loner because that sucks whenever you just buy yourself all the time Try to like hang out with people and you know like if you're an introverted person Be sure to push yourself to be more extroverted. Otherwise you'll spend all of your time alone and that leads to bad places So don't do that. Um, but if you're in a city once again It's just like normal life. Just you're in a van instead of an apartment Do you find yourself being outdoors more like actively doing things? Yeah, I would say definitely more than an apartment Less than I'd like but more than an in-and apartment for sure. Yeah, you really you don't have a living room to just Crash on and you know place to like put all your dirty clothes and three days later you emerge You're here. Yeah, you can definitely lounge in here though. I've I've done some Some lounge sessions watch some netflix, you know gone through breaking bad again, so You know for a second time Sweet, thanks, dude. Uh, today's been awesome. I just want to say thank you again Um, really we should let his videos do the talking because they are Phenomenal, like I said, I'll link them below and I can't wait to see what he comes up with with my interview And I definitely share a lot of things which I haven't shared before in my videos. So hopefully it adds to the video So thanks for coming around. Thanks for having me, man. It's been fun later done That was a vlog. Goodbye. We already hugged it out All right, look at that nice road rash right there. That's now in focus looking pretty gnarly My palms you can't really tell but they were really hurt. Um They're super, uh, red It's having a hard time focusing. There we go. Is that better? There we go. Um feel a little beat up and uh so i'm gonna go inside and uh Eat some dinner and maybe take an Advil or something. So Uh, I'm still uh pretty sore Besides this for my little Uh, doctor's appointment. So, um, I think I'm gonna take a few days off Uh Recoup a little bit and then we'll start to play around with the shower The uh tank uh water tank should be here today Propane tank is back in that box right there Uh, I took it out of the vehicle before I left. You can see the far left side Uh some mounting brackets And then uh, we'll have a little fun and Do a little install. So thanks for watching. I'll see you guys tomorrow