New look, New adventure
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that over the past couple of years I've fallen absolutely in love with road tripping in my 2002. Based out of LA, I've driven the CA coast up to Oregon and back twice, zig-zagged throughout the entire span of the Sierras, taken countless trips to the Bay Area exploring every possible route there, visited every CA national park, every forest (except one), every desert, driven all the officially designated scenic routes, and then some. Going out and getting lost in this car had turned into my absolute favorite hobby...by a long shot.
I've been working from home for the last few years as well, mostly sitting at home in front of the computer all day every day in my tiny LA apartment, and have finally started to wonder what the heck I'm doing. If I have the opportunity to work remotely, shouldn't I at least be out there doing what I enjoy most in life: exploring new places? I've spoken to others in my line of work (computer graphics) who have had success working full time from AirBnBs, and after looking into some options I discovered the cost to book a month in most cities is actually CHEAPER than my LA rent.
So yeah, the plan is to work out of AirBnBs for 1 month at a time in various cities, then at the end of each month have the opportunity to take an epic road trip through some place new to reach the next destination. I have the first 6 months booked out already, and have just departed LA this past Friday! I'm in Monterey, CA right now for the week to check out some festivities, attend Legends, Breakfast Club Rally, and the Rolex. I'm camping at the race track Thurs-Sun, and then Sunday morning I hit the road east to Fort Collins, CO which will be my first stop for the month of September. I'm giving myself a full week to meander from Monterey to Fort Collins, taking several days to explore a bunch of Utah.
From there it will be New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, then back through CA to Sonoma, then on up to Oregon. That’s all I have booked for now, but if I make it that far and am still loving it, I anticipate going up into Canada briefly before diving back down through Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah. And from there, who knows!
Over the last few months I've been busy making a number of tweaks to the 02 to expand the cargo capacity. Luckily the rear seat had already been deleted by previous owner Mike D, so I had a pretty clean slate to work with.
In the trunk I hand made two custom roadie style cases: one to hold my computer and camera gear, and another to act as a camping supply loadout.
For my clothes I had three heavy duty duffle bags custom made to fit the dimensions I had to work with, and then to support them I designed and welded up a little luggage rack.
The center section of the rack is hinged to allow access to the camping and emergency supplies below. Not pictured here, but I also made new trunk floor panels which are broken up into smaller access panels, allowing me to easily retrieve smaller stuff stashed in every nook and cranny around the spare wheel.
Like I said, the rear seat was already deleted in my car, which was fantastic for hauling supplies during my previous 2-3 long road trips around CA. However it was always a pretty big unorganized mess back there, so I knew I'd need to improve on that for any sort of long term use. I used extruded aluminum to put together a framework which houses 3 drawers, has hinged access from the top, and has space for the cooler. It's pretty spacious back there, so behind the drawers is room for 2 toolboxes and then tons of spare parts nestled into any crevis I could find.
