Dirtbag Life

OK, this post is actually a bit out of date, but I thought you might like an insight into the dirtbag lifestyle, so I figured I'd still put it up.

Since the completion of the portrait, I have returned to Penticton to resume my parasitic ways at the Skaha Bluffs climbing area. Last time I was staying here there were cheap rates at a nearby campground, which served as a neat social hub to find climbing partners and meant I could charge my laptop and take showers. Having a functioning laptop and being able to take showers are the hallmarks of a civilised life. But during my absence, peak season started in Penticton, a summer resort town, and now the campsites charge an unholy $35 a night for site. So instead I have been sleeping in my van in the carpark at Walmart. I realise that Walmart is a large corporation, and is thus the embodiment of evil and greed and capitalist terror, but they have a North America-wide policy of allowing people to sleep in campervans and RVs in their carparks, which is pretty much the best thing ever.

But before you lose all respect for me because I'm sponging off a giant corporation, save a bit in reserve so that you can take satisfaction in abandoning it too when you discover that this Walmart has a built in McDonald's, and that I regularly steal their WiFi. Yes, I have sold out to our capitalist overlords in exchange for a free place to park my van overnight and heartbreakingly slow access to the Internet.

Sleeping in the Walmart carpark has its advantages (it's free), but there are definite downsides to the arrangement. The toilets (washrooms, for my Canadian readers) are only open from 8am to 10pm, which can mean that a late night call of nature has to be answered in some trees behind the building that are probably part of some one's yard. There is also no running water, so I have to refill my water bottles at a park near the Skaha lake. After several days of this practise, a maintenance person for the park informed me that I was drinking lake water. In a monumental feat of confirmation bias, I have managed to convince myself that he's wrong. There is also nowhere to charge my laptop, but I can use the local public library if it's open, or I can use a power point in the toilet block at the park where I get my water. Of course, actually using your laptop (or just hanging around waiting for it to charge) in a public washroom is off the scale of creepiness, so I have to plug it in, hide the laptop in a bag, and then sit at a picnic table outside and read a book while I wait to make sure the maintenance guy doesn't lock the toilets with my stuff inside. And finally, there is nowhere to shower. This is largely academic, because even at the campgrounds I was at before I didn't actually use the showers very often, but sometimes I wonder if my advanced personal odor might make it harder to find climbing partners.

In spite of, or perhaps because of, these petty hardships, living in a van at Walmart does give me unassailable dirtbag credibility. If I wasn't such a terrible climber I would be the complete package -an inspiration to foolhardy teenagers and a source of anxiety for parents. Indeed, I was once just such a teenager, dreaming of a life lived cheaply, where hygiene and a respectable place in the social order are given up in exchange for more climbing, more skiing, and a less financially secure old-age.Of course, living in a van in a city is only the tip of the dirtbag iceberg. But this small taste has given me hope that maybe one day I too can become a bearded eccentric living in a cave.