So recently I've realized I've lived in a house basically my entire life, which means more than 80 of my life has been spent in the exact same spot.
When I really put things into perspective, it feels kind of limiting to spend my entire life in the same place when there's so much more to go see and do outside the borders of my hometown.
Basically, I want to travel.
It's been my dream for years now to be able to attain a life of adventure and travel and stuff.
So now that I'm finally ready to move out of my parents' house, I'm going to try to do exactly that.
Growing up, I think I always knew in the back of my mind that I would try to do something like this.
Like from the age of like 13 or something, I'd always create these little mental lists of all the dream destinations or travel locations I wanted to go to, like constantly immersing myself in travel and adventure.
Culture on social media has been super inspiring, but it's definitely going to be interesting to like figure out if if it's actually as attainable or if it's like glamorized and stuff.
I'm just so excited.
This is going to be probably one of the most insane experiences I've ever had.
I feel like everything I've ever known is going to change just like all at once.
It just feels right too.
It feels exactly like what I'm supposed to be doing.
Okay, this is it.
Here we go.
Unfortunately though, there's just one problem.
Between flights hotels, rental cars, along with all the other necessary travel accommodations.
I will have spent my entire life savings on just a few quick round trip adventures that will all ultimately lead me back to where I tried to escape in the first place.
So yeah, I've come to the conclusion typical modern day travel isn't really going to work for me, and I need to figure out a more sustainable way to make this dream a reality.
What if your backyard could look like this?
Or this?
The lure of freedom, travel and simplicity in a snug, self-sustaining van has given birth to a worldwide social media phenomenon.
Hello, I'm Janelle.
I live in a van.
My name is Bob Wells, and I live in a van.
I've lived in this van for about a year and four months.
We've lived here, here, and here in a tiny home on wheels.
So right when you walk in, you've got our kitchen.
Our living room turns into a dining room with just a simple slide of our table.
It has allowed us so much freedom.
It has allowed us to live more intentionally and really think about what it is that we want in life.
You can come, you can go, you can be anywhere you want anytime you want.
It gives you excitement, a sense of adventure, a sense of connection, a sense of meaning, a sense of connection to your own self.
So I think I want to live out of a van.
I started looking for a van at the beginning of 2021 with little to no idea what I was getting myself into.
This one is so cute.
Aww.
1.94.
Oof.
This one even has like a shower, a toilet, a microwave.
The color is so cute.
Aww.
Look at that, there's a little smiley face.
So I'm out here trying to look for vans right now online, but I don't know I know next to nothing about cars, car brands what type of vehicle I should even be like looking into.
I have no idea what I'm doing with car stuff.
The only thing I really did know at this point was that the van needed to be under 10000, which I thought was reasonable.
However, because van life has become such a popular phenomenon in these past few years, it was extremely difficult to find a van for a good price that fit my requirements.
Okay, so I have quite a few requirements of things that I'm gonna need in a van and then things that I'm gonna be looking for.
I definitely wanna make sure it has an automatic transmission, because I don't know how to drive stick and it seems complicated to learn how to drive stick.
I barely even know how to drive.
So also just something that gets somewhat decent gas mileage would be appreciated, considering I'm already going to be on enough of a budget after I make the purchase to get a van.
I want to actually be able to afford to travel in the van with gas and stuff.
Also something with low miles on.
It would be nice because I know the higher the miles are on like an older vehicle, the more likely it is to break down.
Room to stand up would be so nice.
I am very short, so that shouldn't be super hard to find something that's tall enough.
But I just don't want to be crammed the whole time, so it'd be nice to find something with a high top.
A place to store food and just kind of like a cooking area with like a stove would also be nice so I don't have to like spend more money eating out all the time and I can actually just make food in the van.
A bathroom area as well would definitely be a must since I'm going to be living out of this thing.
A bed is definitely a necessity or just like a sleeping area.
I'm trying to make sure that the bed though, doesn't take up too much room.
A desk area too for like, editing and eating.
The van also just needs to be like somewhat aesthetic and artsy.
I want it to actually have like character to it.
There needs to be quite a bit of storage or at least as much as possible to fit in a vehicle.
That'd be nice.
After figuring out what my requirements were.
It gave me a better idea of what to actually look for when starting to do research.
So I've been messaging some van sellers back and forth today on and off.
There's definitely been like one or two vans that have kind of stood out to me so far.
I just don't want to rush into anything and I really want to like take my time with this whole decision because it's, I don't know, it's kind of a big risk and I just want to make sure I'm like properly evaluating my options with everything.
I think I've scrolled through like every van possible on the market right now.
Like I, I don't know how I have not found one that's gonna work yet.
Holy shit.
But after like five months of searching nearly every day, I started to get a little impatient.
The first van I almost got could have worked great.
I kind of regret not getting it honestly, but it just felt like it was like too soon and it wasn't the right time.
And then the second van I almost got.
I had like the cash out and everything.
Everything was set in stone.
And the day before I was about to buy it, apparently the engine blew up, or blew a gasket or something, I don't know.
So I guess it worked out, I didn't get it, but it still sucks because I really liked that van.
The third van I almost got.
I really had my heart set on it, but apparently the guy, even though he has it listed for sale, he's apparently still working on all the mechanical aspects of it, so that's not gonna work out either.
Apparently it won't like be done in time.
And then the fourth van was just very expensive and i was about to take a risk and then it sold last minute, so that was clearly not meant to be.
I'm glad i didn't spend that money.
And then this fifth van apparently is all the way across the country, but i'm about to just do a whole ass cross-country road trip apparently, if it's this hard to find the damn van.
The sixth van, don't even- bro, like don't even get me fucking started.
There was just an unbelievable amount of failed attempts trying to actually buy a van, but it all ultimately worked out, because just when I started to think all hope was lost.
Okay, holy shit.
I was not expecting this right now, but I'm about to put down a deposit on a van.
At this point, i don't even think it had fully hit me yet that this was finally happening.
Okay, i just got the cash out and everything this is actually happening.
It doesn't even feel real.
It's about a four hour drive to the part of washington the van is located in.
I'm in central oregon, so it's gonna be a bit of a road trip to get there, but it should be worth it.
So let's go get on the road.
There it is.
There's the van.
Holy shit.
I just gave the seller the cash, which means it's officially mine.
Like, I officially own this now.
This is insane.
Like, I'm gonna be living out of this.
It wasn't even until I saw the van in person for the first time when everything fully started to process.
I was spending my life savings to travel in a van and this dream had finally become a reality.
Yeah.
So this is it.
This is the van guys.
I officially own this.
This is officially mine.
I'm naming it Spiffy because I met the guy that I bought it from in the parking lot of this restaurant called Spiffy's and the name is just kind of ironic because I think the word Spiffy means like fancy or luxurious and clearly it's not the fanciest thing it's from 1990s so also i guess this is the first official episode of the entire van life series borderless I'm literally in the middle of the road for the shot.
This is not safe at all.
We're all good, sorry.
It's so awkward, bro.
Some lady threatened to call the cops earlier too.
I've spent almost the past year now working on this entire series.
Literally.
I have over like 500 hours of footage to go through and edit, but I genuinely could not be more excited to see everything come together and show you all what I've been up to.
Before I get too ahead of myself though, I feel like it only makes sense to explain why I even want to live out of a van in the first place.
Obviously one of the main reasons is just traveling and adventuring and stuff.
I think I've always loved going on little trips and everything as a kid and I wanted to make sure that I could do that a lot when I was older.
From the age of like 12 or 13 or something.
I worked really hard to make sure that I would be able to do something like this and something that I loved with my future.
I think growing up, I just saw how miserable my parents were, working a nine to five, and it made me want to do everything I possibly could to make sure that that wasn't me and that wasn't my future, and I was happy with what I was doing.
There's so many luxuries and things that I take for granted in my day to day life, living in a house.
And I think van life, even though it's going to be stripping away those luxuries I think it's going to be it's going to make me not take things for granted and just appreciate the small things.
And, in general, just experiencing things outside of what society deems to be normal or what lifestyle society deems to be socially acceptable.
I think is what I'm looking forward to.
Also the Christopher McCandless End of the Wild story has been a huge inspiration.
My mindset going into everything just because that whole story such a beautiful, powerful story.
That's a whole different topic.
But like, I just think I related to him in a lot of ways.
I feel like I grew up in a house that really really valued materialism and materialistic things.
Money was kind of like my parents' way of showing love.
So it's made me a bit resentful towards materialism and things of value or like the value society puts on these things, if that makes any sense.
I'm sure these thoughts will unravel a bit more, like during van life and everything.
But i just know as of right now i need to get the out of my parents house.
So yeah, in the next episode of Borderless I'm gonna show you guys more of the inside of Spiffy and everything.
But so far it's been a great van.
Just give her one second.
Come on, Spiffy, no!
Oh my God, .
So believe it or not, the van hasn't actually broken down yet.
The smoke is actually just an editing effect possible thanks to my sponsors, Storyblocks.
Honestly, I don't even know if that was believable at all, but if you believed it, you just got hashtag pranked.
Okay, I gotta stop with the smoke editing effects.
Thanks to Storyblocks' demand-driven royalty-free stock asset library, I've been able to save a lot of time and money in post-production.
Not only do they have over a million different 4K or HD video and audio effects, but they've also been increasing diversity and representation in stock footage.
And the best part is, if you sign up for their all-access plan, you get an unlimited amount of downloads and are protected from copyright because of their royalty-free licensing.
I personally think anyone making videos or telling stories would greatly benefit from signing up for Storyblocks, so there's a link in the description if anyone is interested in checking them out.
So yeah, thank you so much again Storyblocks for helping me make this film possible. fucking dies the tree the tree be careful out of a van ew that was so bad it's the behind the scenes of the van reveal natalie's currently on her hoverboard oh my god so guys i borrowed my little brother's hoverboard to get some cinematics of the van right now literally about to like ride on this street like this I don't know about this shot.
This is kind of an interesting creative choice for this.
My neighbors think I'm crazy, I'm pretty sure, but it's okay.
It's okay.
Holy shit, this is so cool.
Really?
Yes.
Oh my god, oh my god.
Don't fucking hit me.
Holy shit, oh my god, i swear to fuck i will fall off.
Okay, something could work, maybe working hard.
Sometimes i question on days like these where it's like super windy, like should i just shave my fucking head?
This is so, so fucking stupid.
Trying to make it like interesting, trying to do some like euphoria type shit.
I have my camera taped to the damn ceiling right now, trying to be like rue, where she's like it's like the scene, where she's like doing a line.
Oh my god.
