Interestingly, the older I get, the more I opt for convenience. Guilty as charged. Back in the day, if I had to relocate, whether, across the country or town, I’d recruit an army of friends, and we’d pack a U-Haul truck and do it ourselves. Now? I wouldn’t move without hiring a moving company. I used to love camping … you know, leaky air mattresses, the hard cold ground, and all the work of setting up camp and then breaking it down. I’ve become weak. Soft.

Now when I camp, while I’m not rocking a $100K+ Sprinter van, I roll up in Nacho the MTB Van, and I’m set. I still have a long ways to go before my build-out is complete. It’s been tiny incremental steps to converting it from an 11-passenger van to a bona fide camper van. While I don’t have a bed in it, I have the next best thing: a hammock. Whenever I’m camping (or glamping), and it’s time to go to sleep, all I need to do is hang my hammock, climb into my sleeping bag, shimmy myself onto the hammock, and I’m set.

The best part of sleeping in a van is making coffee the following day. Usually, when I get to where I will be camping, I set up and organize everything in my van. I set up my coffee, cooking area, sink, portable toilet, and whatever else I need to do. So when morning arrives, I slink out of my bag, click on the burner, and begin making coffee.

Because I’m in a van, I’m not overly concerned with packing too much. That means I usually toss in a few different ways to brew coffee … pourover, AeroPress, and more. It’s one thing to brew coffee at home, but I love the adventure of brewing coffee in my van. I savor it more. It means more.

A few weekends ago, I attended the Evergreen MTB Festival in Port Gamble, WA. Apart from my bike, the most important thing I packed was my coffee set-up. The weather was perfect too … nice and cool as I was maybe 100-200 meters from the ocean. Since I’m nestled into my hammock, I sleep surprisingly well. I get a good 8+ hours of blissful sleep.

The first thing on my mind when I woke up was coffee. Click on the gas burner, add a water kettle, grind the coffee, and prepare my pourover. Methodical and meaningful. Simple.