cutting the subflooring.

/

After we tore the flooring out, and got to the steel box at the end of the rainbow (so to speak), it was time to lay some new plywood. A Home Depot run supplied us with two sheets of 3/4 inch CDX plywood. We prepped the floor by grinding away broken screws, mopping and bleaching the steel box, and filling holes left from hardware with simple silicone caulk.

OSHA can suck it.

Roughly 4 continuous feet of measurements that varied by a 1/2 inch.

The sub-flooring under the bench seat and the counters had to stay, but getting a close cut to the structure was very difficult and producing a straight cut ended up being impossible for us, given the tools and skills at our disposal. Measurements through this area were many, but we ended up needing to cut multiple times anyways. 

Measurements written on floor.

Two geniuses, hard at work.

Chelsea, Shawn, and I tried really hard to get all our cuts right, but in the end it didn't make much of a difference. Right angles and straight edges didn't play nice with the hacked up remnants of sub-flooring.

Right angles, drawn with the best intentions. 

Getting the pieces to fit tight and right was laborious, and accomplished through trial and error. Eventually, our carpentry resembled sculpting as we traded measuring tapes for sharpies and made blade-width cuts to fit around weird ridges.

Taking it back for cut number 19...

subflooring out.

/

Chelsea and I have been attacking this project with a motto:

Where we can do nothing, do nothing.
Where we do something, do it right.

If we don't need to fix or change a piece of the Campbulance, we won't. An example of this would be the bench seat structure and the majority of the sliding cabinets. We can't improve upon the existing structure without an unreasonable amount of effort, so we're leaving them as is.

We planned on leaving the majority of the flooring by simply peeling off the original laminate, and sanding down the 3/4 inch plywood that made up the subfloor. We spent hours on this "save-the-sub-floor" project. I suppose, in the back of our minds, we knew that the right thing to do was tear the old plywood out, but we had a variety of excuses to keep us from this.

Then Shawn showed up.

Shawn's my R2 buddy. We were rookies at Vail together on Mountain Safety, and rookies at Timberline as well. He's the only one with whom I'll paddle many stretches of advanced rivers. When we're in a boat, he's the confident/overconfident one, and I'm the chickenshit. It works great. 

He was the one that pushed us to pull the floor. I'd heard arguments against it; I need to hear his for it.

Chelsea gave us eyepatches! For safety!

Shawn is performing last rites on the sub-flooring. It went quietly.

Shawn did a tricky thing. He talked us into cutting out the flooring most affected by the dry rot. After the first, the first, move towards removing any peice of the sub-flooring, I was hooked. It was coming out of the Campbulance, and it was coming out now.

Neither or us could figure out how the magical cutting wheel worked. We used it anyways.

Sawdust is an excellent foreground.

With our powers combined...

We didn't know it, but we're fighting a screw.

We used a circular saw, many pry bars, even more hammer, a ball joint separator, and sweat to pull the floor out. We thought that it was only held down by adhesive, because we couldn't see any screws, but lo and behold it was the exact opposite. No (useful) glue, and hidden screws everywhere.

No adhesive. Just hidden screws.

Very proud.

HEY ASTRAL (maker of that shoe), SPONSOR ME.

That's a seam, not a cut.

Pulling hard, but didn't want to break anything.

That cut became a HUGE problem.

Cutting along the cabinet line.

Pulling it out as hopefully one place.

Crack!

All I see is a reduction in allergens.

 

northbound to vermont.

/

After the Cape we drove north towards Vermont to visit my mum, her husband Tim, and all the animals that have been part of their life (and mine!) for the past decade. We set the navigation app for Norwich, VT, put the Campbulance in drive, and rumbled away.

The spring we saw in NYC had already faded to early spring by Boston, and as we moved north the buds got smaller.  Vermont is just coming out of a long winter; the grass is green, the spring floods past, but the trees still carry a cautious attitude towards the season. The drive was beautiful, nonetheless.

Driving into Norwich, Chelsea and I were trying to coordinate with my mum, and find a place to meet, until she texted us:

“We see you!”

Apparently the Campbulance is easy to spot when you want to see her. We met, and they led us to the build site of the new house, and then on to their current rental, a quaint, old farmhouse with room for the three Australian shepherds (Bear, Flyer, and Piper), the old goat (Puggy), and the cat (cat).

Pantomiming a poop!

"So here's why this isn't a completely terrible idea..." 

Dinner and bed were both excellent. The next day was started with a morning jog, which felt so good after days of relative motionlessness, followed by breakfast at Lou’s Restaurant, and then errands and Campbulance cleaning. The cleaning, which started as heavy vacuuming, quickly turned into light demolition work as we tore down ugly padded panels and other bits useless to us.

Pay no attention to the man behind the shoulder.

Chelsea had multiple flashes of genius, and solved two huge problems. We had been struggling with finding an elegant solution to the placement of the kitchen, which would hopefully have room to include a sink, a burner, and an RV style freezer/cooler. She saved us from a disappointing compromise by noticing that the rear facing airway chair would be easy to rip out, and open up a lot of room with direct access to the exterior storage units. In addition, she found hardware located under the bench seat that was used for carrying an extra gurney in situations that required the ambulance to transport two patients. She’s planning to use that same hardware configuration to support a two person sleeping solution, which was a lot more elegant and refined that my “get-drunk-and-sleep-outside-under-a-tarp” strategy. After all the heavy thinking, we called it a night.

Just as I suspected, a ceiling.

Day two of the Vermont excursion included breakfast with mum at King Arthur’s Flour headquarters, and then a few more hours of heavy vacuuming and bleaching. Also, we finally started to use the cabinets for storage, and it is amazing how just using the feature made the box feel like home.

Christian took this…his talents behind the camera are getting pretty impressive.

We packed up, gave the puppies goodbye treats, pet the goat, looked at the cat, and started the van. A few kisses and tears later, we were west bound, off to Niagara Falls and the Great Divide.

- Christian

pit stop on the cape.

/

Our day on the Cape was well worth the drive. We met my father, Chuck, at his house hours after we escaped the NYC traffic. He was properly stoked to see us. About an eighth of a mile out from his house, dubbed the “Wilton Hilton” after its location and likeness to a hotel for weary travelers, I spotted him, and remarked:

“Look, Chelsea, there’s my dad,” to which she replied,
“I can’t see – oh wait, is that him waving frantically?”

He was waving like a marooned man on an island, hoping the low-flying seaplane (which was slowing to a crawl, and had its signal on to turn left, and was waving back, and calling him by name over the P.A. system) would somehow see him and stop by for a bit.

We were welcomed with snacks and then packed up for a quick tour of my childhood homes, for Chelsea’s sake, and a jaunt down to Craigville beach. Beach chairs, surf, and a blonde ale from Cape Cod Beer were accompanied by Chuck’s stories of my eventful youth (that knife fight at Charles De Gaul airport seemed different to me…).

Returning home we saw my uncle William and nephew John, watched the Kentucky Derby, and eventually cleaned up for an excellent dinner of swordfish and vegetables with Chuck and his girlfriend Beth.

The next day Chelsea and I squeezed in a run/walk through Centerville, did some laundry, and headed out for the nearly-soverign nation of Vermont to check in on my mom, Tim, and all their animals.

- Christian

"this is how Chris gets stuck in Ohio." - Hunter Tuttle

/

It may not have been made completely evident by previous posts, but Chelsea and I have not taken delivery of the Campbulance yet. In fact, with the exception of the two grainy photos posted on this website, we haven't even seen the thing. As of now, all we've done is throw cash at a man in the mid-west, whom we've only met over the phone (we'll call him T-Dub). Our first big Campbulance adventure starts today, as we travel from Vail Valley to Ohio, borne on the backs of airplanes and Chelsea's college friends, to trade a stack of dead presidents for an old van.

T-Dub, the seller of the Campbulance and soon to be previous owner, is a stand-up guy. It was his service/maintenance record that made Chelsea and I comfortable with rolling the dice on this adventure. The conversation that sold me on this particular E350 went something like this:

"So, T-Dub, at the top of your Craigslist ad you've written that the 'AC is bad, rear lines bad' but towards the bottom it says 'AC is good'. What happened to the air conditioning?"

"Oh yeah, I thought the rear lines were bad, but I ended up replacing the compressor, condenser, pump and all the lines anyways."

At which point, I made a delighted frowny face of confusion; frowny because that's a lot of work for non-vital system on a vehicle listed to sell and delighted because it meant that inside the time that the ad was on Craigslist, T-Dub had poured hundreds (if not the better part of a thousand) of dollars into that AC in parts and labor (the AC in an ambulance is extensive). If he took such good care of the AC in a van he wasn't going to own, I could only imagine the rest of the vehicle was babied as well.

I spoke with T-Dub again yesterday, and we've hit another hiccup. The recently replaced, really big alternator went belly up. Luckily a quick diagnostic check on both the van and the part showed the fault lay with the alternator's wiring, and not with Campbulance's circuits. T-Dub scrambled, warranteed the part, and laid down another $50 for an upgrade, with the hopes that the van is ready to roll out when we arrive tomorrow. He even had his mechanic call the parts distributor and request that part was checked before it left the warehouse, to reduce the chance that another lemon alternator is installed. Fun aside: the next two alternators pulled off the shelf were faulty.

I called my little brother last evening to tell him the story. About two sentences in, just after I said, "So now we need to replace the alternator," he interrupted:

"This is how Chris gets stuck in Ohio."

Maybe. Maybe he's right. Luckily we'll be stuck in Ohio in a camper.

So now the mighty Campbulance adventure hinges on the USPS, and the arrival of a big 'ol alternator. We're leaving the valley this afternoon, driven by one of Chelsea's buddies from Epic Mix photo, and then we'll fly out of DIA this evening. Wish us luck!

Lastly, this will hopefully be the final photo-free post. As soon as we actually get to the Campbulance, this site will be inundated with images. Wait and see.

-Christian