Once I reflected on basements, now I am thinking about vans.
I took a walk last week, noticing all the vans I passed parked on the road. A year ago, Jake and I were shopping for vans online so that we could have a home for the road, and a vessel for tours. That mission is on pause, yet still I dream of living out of tiny, mobile spaces for one purpose or another. I’ve always found comfort in the sense of nowhereness that vehicles give me. They are an undecided, a transition, a possibility, and they are often very warm in the sun, even when it’s cold out.
Snacks in vans, then and now
Vans! A home away from home. We had a ’90s pale blue van when I was a kid, and later bought a gold van off of our neighbors. I think this was an essential purchase for carpooling, and for our annual road trip to North Myrtle Beach. Sonja was there — she remembers. There were essentials that had to be gathered ahead of the 10-hour drive. Snacks, diaries, CD players covered with stickers and a book of CDs to accompany them. We used to have CD burning parties and trade collections — The Vines, The Strokes, Weezer, Jimmy Eat World. You also needed to have a pillow, or a sweatshirt that could serve as a pillow, although it was best to have both. Magazines and books were ideal add-ons.
The drive itself seemed full of potential. There was a lot you could do in a day, even from the second row of a seven-passenger van. M.A.S.H., heart-to-hearts, catching up on journaling, listening to one of you newest CDs.
It delights me to report that the activities in our small, rented Toyota Corolla just this last year were not so different from those we shared in my parent’s van in the early aughts. In some sense, we had driven across the country before, but this time we were more organized, more prepared.
How many miles have I driven with Sonja, or with my parents, or with Jake? My mom and dad were no stranger to the highways, and believed in the value of adventure far from home. Dad drove me all the way up to Ann Arbor just to take me to an of Montreal concert — on a school night, no less! And the next year, my mom took Sonja and me up to Toronto, as casually as another parent might offer a ride to the mall.
In my family, vans were not just for traveling, they were for dining. Car picnics were a simple delight to me and my brother. Our growing bodies had raging appetites which my mom would sometimes satiate with a little Taco Bell or Wendy’s run on the way home from school. And then, once the van was in park in our driveway, we’d choose to linger a little longer for the thrill of having a quesadilla in a leather-trimmed bucket seat.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve eaten Taco Bell in a van, because my back seat lunches didn’t stop there. Now I’m some form of a grown-up and I am still opting to live a life where I eat lots of cheap meals in a vehicle. It’s part of the DIY touring musician starter pack.
Every band has their own unique eating patterns, and each teaches me something new about how to take care of myself on the road. In general, one is never as prepared as one wants to be to head out on tour, so sometimes a snack bag is just a mix of perishables from your fridge and old granola from your cupboard. On my first tour ever, I took on the “mom” role and fixed us up with a cooler of apples and hummus and cheese sticks and such. You’re lucky if you have a faux-mom like me in your band.
During Strobobean’s fall tour in 2019, our bassist Brianna opened my eyes to a new standard of eating on the road. She had brought more substantial snacks, like hard boiled eggs, and a huge jar of salsa which she’d hold close like a warm cup of coffee, dipping her chips one at a time in the back seat. Instead of driving through a new roadside eatery each day, we made occasional grocery runs for bagels and cheese and “Woohoo!” discounted chicken fingers. By the end of that tour, I was obsessed with cold, breaded chicken.
On the other side of the snack spectrum, there’s Leggy, my best example of how quickly you can get to know someone by driving around the country with them. Leggy taught me that you could easily customize what goes into your cheesy bean and rice burrito at Taco Bell by using the self-order kiosk, and they instilled in me a senseless sentimentality for large iced coffees with cream from Dunkin'. Damn cute pink and orange straws.
Did I know at age 15 that I’d be occupying the very same seat behind the driver in another minivan from the same generation 15 years later, doing almost exactly the same thing, for weeks out of the year? No I did not. I’m not sure that my adolescent self would be into that. I don’t know that she’d think I was cool or interesting. She had quite the attitude.
A song for you
A song that makes me think of being in vans.
xo
Katya
Bri is so good at snacks and bringing homeness to tour.
Made me smile! Looking forward to future van trips with you.