Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 6: Toilet

The Toilet Paper Incident, circa 1981.

I created a bedroom in my Prius.


But I didn't want just any old bedroom. I wanted an en suite bedroom.

Toilet instructions in Thai restaurant in Tbilisi, Caucasus Georgia. August 2011.

Enter the Luggable Loo.

The Luggable Loo is a toilet seat and lid that you snap onto a five-gallon bucket. You can buy the items separately or you can buy the seat/lid/bucket package. It is less expensive to buy the items separately.

Luggable Loo. Photo source: Disaster Supply Center

Except for extraordinary circumstances, I plan to use my car loo only for urination. And furthermore, in most cases, only at night.

Toilet in Vakhtangisi, on Georgian-Ajerbaijan border. March 2012.

Obviously, I don't need a five-gallon container to collect my urine for an overnight. I am not a horse.

Typical toilet in Dubai, UAE. January 2012.

To manage the urine collection more elegantly than a splash waterfall into a cavernous bucket, I inserted a funnel-and-laundry detergent bottle catchment system into the bucket, an idea I learned from a vandweller named Crysal Vanner, as you can see in the video below:

I tested it in my bathroom at home, numerous times. Perfect!

• Both the bucket and the catchment system are stable, i.e. no dangers of tipping over or sliding out of place
• The catchment system is easy to pull out and it's easy to pour the contents into a real toilet
• The laundry bottle is large enough to accommodate even the most prolific nights, unlike that coffee can I used in the tent that one time in Cave Springs Campground in Arizona a long time ago, about which I had felt darn smug before I realized just how much liquid one can produce in one night, not to mention what happens when the can tips over

I placed my toilet on the floor behind the driver's seat. When just driving around, it fits just fine there. However, to use the toilet en suite, I need to pull the driver's seat forward quite a bit, then tilt the seat forward, as well. These actions give me the space I need to actually sit on the toilet.

I'm not enthusiastic about having to move the driver's seat forward so much at night. Although I can - barely - get into the front seat at that position, I don't think it's possible to drive in that position, which means that if I need to make a fast exit, I lose time in repositioning the driver's seat. (Of course, that is probably a moot point, as it takes rather more time to extricate myself from my bed and then make my way to the driver's seat. By the time I get to the point of having to adjust my seat position, any bears or zombies will have likely already delivered a mortal swipe.)

I'm on the look out for a 3.5-gallon bucket that I hear is also workable with the Luggable Loo seat, but I've not yet found one. In theory, this will give me more wiggle room in the "bathroom," which will reduce the front seat adjustment and will also free up some valuable real estate in the floor space behind the front seat.

But other than that - Chez Prius is almost ready for an inaugural road trip!

"Almost" because I've still got some window curtaining details to iron out.


Related posts: 

A New Vehicular Mate, Part 1
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 2
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 3
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 4
A New Vehicular Mate, Part 5: Bed


And following this Part 6 of the New Vehicular Mate series, I'll rename the series Chez Prius.

Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 5: Bed

Prius car camping. October 2019.

After months of youtube watching to see how car-campers did the:

• Bed
• Window covering

....  I was ready for and executed my maiden camp voyage.


It was only for one night, and there were a couple of minor glitches (as was to be expected), but overall, it was a successful mission.
 

Bed

I bought a 3-inch foam pad for about $25 at Home Depot. Measurements = 72" x 24." This was a perfect fit both length- and width-wise for my 2012 Prius V. 

I wrapped the pad in a twin-size mattress cover, using three sheet-grippers on the flip side to keep it tidily in place.

Atop the  mattress cover, I placed an old sleeping bag, in which I cocooned a twin-size flat sheet, folded lengthwise, meaning that my body lay between the two folded halves of the sheet. I only zipped the foot of the sleeping bag, leaving the rest unzipped. In this way, I could easily fold both top layers off of me to get in and out of bed or to regulate my comfort level if things got too warm or too chilly.

Prius car camping. October 2019.

The head of my bed sat atop a folded blanket + two plastic storage bins, as you can see below:

Prius car camping. October 2019.

You'll notice that the bins and blanket support the head of the 'bed.' To get the bins and the full length of the foam pad into its slot, I had to pull the front passenger seat all the way forward.

The Sterilite bin dimensions are:

Because I'm relatively short, I may be able to fit comfortably below the top of the folded-down back seat. (Note that I removed the head-rests.) I'll check this out in the future.

So how comfortable was the bed on my first night?

I'd give it a 90% thumbs-up. I felt the glimmerings of a dull backache in the early hours of the pre-dawn, but that's not enough to go on yet.


Window covering

I don't plan to stealth camp, so I'm not concerned about making it appear that my car is unoccupied while I'm inside sleeping.

After a lot of over-thinking, a little experimenting, and many hours of watching youtubers share their schemes, I'm pretty happy with using a mix of strategies.

In the photo below, you can see examples of four methods I used:

Prius car camping. October 2019.

1. I cut out a panel from a roll of Reflectix that I bought at a Lowe's or Home Depot
2. I bought a pair of window "socks" via Amazon (more on these later in this post)
3. I bought some magnets - small round disks + some smallish rectangles - and draped a shawl over the front driver side window. The window frame on the inside is metal, and I placed several magnets under the top edge and one or two on the side edges. 
4. On my car, the passenger side design is such that I could loop one end of a bungee cord to the front windowshade, run it through the front-seat and back-seat ceiling-edge hand grips, and hook the other end to the infant-seat buckle ledge that is along the ceiling edge behind the rear passenger seat. Using clothespins, I hung another shawl so that it ran from the front window to the end of the back window. Or, I should say, I could have done that, but I chose to leave the back passenger window with just the window screen sock so I could have a cross breeze between the two back passenger windows. 

Prius car camping. October 2019.

Above you can see I used the Reflectix for the rear window, as I did the triangular windows in the back bay area of the car.

Prius car camping. October 2019.

And although the photo immediately above is a repeat of the long-view bed shot I posted earlier, now that we're talking window coverings, take note of the bungee cord and clothespin set-up on the right.

Also note that I stretched a bungee cord in the front seat area across the width of the car. It was as good a place as any to experiment with an internal clothesline, and in this case, a towel holder. It had the additional benefit of offering a second line of privacy behind the windshield AND obscuring the blinking security dash light. In the windshield, I had placed my usual sun shade disks.

None of the window coverings required permanent changes to the Prius. Nor did they require any handywoman skills, other than the cutting out of the Reflectix. 

The window screen socks were fine for me camping, however, if I'd had a light on inside the Prius, they would have offered no privacy. Which is why I wanted the second-line option of the shawl clothespinned from the bungee cord on one side of the car.

I liked that I could see out of the car through the window screen socks much better than someone could see in. In fact, without lights on inside, someone would have had to press up hard against the window to see much of anything through the window screen sock.

On the other hand, the screen sock not only keeps out flying little biters and ear buzzers, it stops some of the breeze, too. I didn't have my windows rolled down all the way with the screens on, so I'll try that out next time. Also, I'll likely invest in a small usb fan to push some air flow across my head.


Glitches

Ceiling lights. The default setting for my ceiling lights is to go on when I open my doors. Not good in a campsite scenario, at least not for me. My fix: Slide the ceiling light buttons over to the "off" position so they don't power on when I open the doors.

Beeping. Because I had my key with me and because I was in a car, I defaulted to locking the car while I was inside and ready to sleep. But the Prius door (at least not the back door) doesn't automatically release when you pull the inside door handle. This means you have to press the unlock button on the keyfob, which means, yes, there's the double beeping sound when you unlock it. Which is not being a good neighbor to folks in nearby campsites.

It's not like I was ever able to lock my tent, so I will just not lock my car when I bed down for the night in the future.

Heating/air conditioning. One of the Prius superpowers is to be able to manage one's little habitat climate so it's cozy inside when outside it is too hot or too cold. Although the car powers on silently when engaging only the battery, it does emit some sound when it periodically switches on the engine to recharge the battery. A number of parks, like Organ Pipe National Monument, where I tried out my camp bed the first time, are very very very quiet parks. And if one is in a generator-ok site, the generator use is restricted to two hours in the late afternoon-early evening and two hours in fairly early morning. So ..... what does that mean for running my Prius when it's too hot or too cold? I don't know yet.

Conclusions

• It was a wonder to be able to break camp so quickly the next morning!
• Looking forward to my next outing.

Related posts: 

My New Vehicular Mate, Part 1
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 2
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 3
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 4

Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 4: Empty

Empty car, Tucson, Arizona. May 2019.

Now that I've moved into my digs-for-a-year, I have an empty car. It's the first time in six months. Six months.

The empty car is my new vehicular mate, my Prius. Which I've come to believe is darn cute.

Once I scooped out all of the stuff, I put the rear seats down to protect the upholstery. I climbed in and stretched out in the back to imagine how it will be to sleep in the car when I camp next.

You can see the collapsible walking poles I bought for the treacherous paths in Caucasus Georgia; the sleeping bag that is so old, you'd have to do radioactive dating to ascertain its age; and the door mat that I found at Lake Catherine State Park, left behind by a previous camper.

Related posts: 

My New Vehicular Mate, Part 1
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 2
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 3
My New Vehicular Mate, Part 4

Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 3

My new vehicular mate. Highway 9, New Mexico. January 2019.

Relevant posts:

• Goodbye, Dear Old
• Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 1
• Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 2

By now, I've driven my new car for a month

• From Opelousas to El Paso
• From El Paso to Columbus, NM, and back
• From El Paso to Las Cruces and back
• Around El Paso

Learning curve on driving

A very cool car trick: The hill assist. When stopped on an incline, whether at a stop light or when backing out of a slanted parking spot, I can depress the brake pedal, hold it there until a beep sounds, then move my foot to the accelerator without the car rolling back on its own.

Spidey-spatial sense: It was only today when I realized that, yeah, I'm feeling natural about where my car boundaries are within my driving lane. 

Where to stop my 'nose': The Prius' front end slopes oh-so-elegantly down from the windshield base. Result: When you're in the vehicle, it's a crazy design flaw that you can't see where the front end ... ends. I don't know, maybe a tall-ass driver can, but not me. 

2012 Prius v profile. Source: Automobile Mag. Yellow marker added.

Here's an image of what it looks like from the driver's seat:

View from Prius v front seat. Source: caricos.com.

Right. Where's the nose? What's the point of expensive gew-gaws like rear cameras if you don't do something so simple as design some passive visual cues for the front end - not only for parking, but for ensuring you're in the middle of a lane?

As I get more experience driving the Prius, my internal radar is getting a sense for how far to pull in to a parking spot without a wheel stop. This is good; it's reassuring.

I don't yet have a sense for where to stop when I pull into a spot with a concrete, front-bumper-hating wheel stop. I'm hopeful that day will come.


Stuff I didn't know before I bought the Prius

Prius rage. Perhaps a real thing in some places, don't know. Regardless, it has given me pause. I do remember when Prius first came out, and I did do a lot of internal eye-rolling at how smug Prius owners seemed to be about their alleged kindliness for the Earth. Without considering the carbon footprint of throwing away one's older vehicle and building a new vehicle.

Built-in GPS. The tedious and pedantic mindset of the installed GPS in my Prius is just as annoyingly lame as the plug-in Garmin I had a few years back. Fortunately, I bought an air-vent clip-on thing for my phone, so I just use Google Maps from my phone.


Does it seem like I'm caught up in some negativity about my new car? Yes, maybe. A temporary phase, I'm sure. I'm chalking it up to unmet expectations based on assumptions that may not have been realistic. For example, I assumed that a 2012 vehicle would have all the features a 1995 vehicle had.


Some love


Yesterday, I felt my first little surge of love. It happened when I pulled on to I-10 from the ramp. Ohhh, there was some pick-up-n-go there - nice.

The driver's seat is super comfortable.

I've tricked out my center console with small organizer things, so now I've got order among chaos to hold stuff like gum, salt (of course), pens, Crystal Light packets, tire gauge, comb, etc. Speaking of the console, this post by a 2012 Prius v reviewer made me laugh out loud:

Toyota says the deep center console can fit 23 CD cases. In other news, my cubicle has desk space for a typewriter, two slide rules and a Victrola.

It's too soon to tell what my average gas mileage will be, as my car is pretty loaded with stuff pending my relocation destination. Also, I haven't learned many of the tricks long-time Prius owners employ to eke out higher rates. However, I see promising signs.


I've been reading the manual. 

Maybe I'll update my car info in a month or so.

Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 2

Relevant posts:

• Goodbye, Dear Old
• Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 1

After the long prequel in Part 1, I'll get to the point in this here Part 2: I bought a 2012 Prius v. 

About the 'v'

The 'v' is no mistake. It's lowercase 'v' and stands for, hell, I don't know, maybe the 'v' sound for how Germans, Russians, Ukrainians and others like to pronounce 'w,' which would be for 'wagon,' which is what my new-to-me Prius is.

It does not stand for the Roman numeral five. Which would be uppercase 'V,' anyway.

A couple of things that keep me awake at night

• The car has more mileage on it than I would have preferred. 
• The cost to replace an aged-out, dead Prius battery is flipping expensive! I'm taking a gamble that the battery in my Prius has a lot more life in it. 
• Normal buyer's remorse - what as-yet-unknown car problems lurk under the hood, just waiting to leap onto my savings! Did I pay too much? Should I have done this instead? Or that? 

The key thing

This is the first car I've owned that doesn't have an actual key that you use to open a door or turn an ignition.

Instead, I've got this squat, hard lump of a thing that I still have to carry around with me everywhere I go, but I don't have to actually pull it out of my purse or pocket. The latter situation requires me to un-learn a muscle memory. And the thing requires batteries. And we all know what batteries do.


Surprise misses

I actually have to manually move my front seats forward, whereas my 1995 Camry had electric forwarding/reversing. I wasn't expecting this backward step. Not a big deal - just a surprise.

There is no place in the front cabin to hang a trash bag. Nope. No knob, nowhere. It's even a thing for discussion. This is kind of a big deal; it will be annoying until I find a graceful solution.

The Prius' ground clearance is disappointingly low, albeit slightly greater than the Camry. This took me aback at first, as there are countless resources on camping and even living in Prii (yes, that seems to be the usual plural form). A friend helped me push past this disappointment, however, when he pointed out that most cars have similar ground clearances as the Prius. So it was a good reality check for me.

The storage pockets in the front doors are stingy, even though each has a round-out specially designed for a water bottle. There's not good space in the doors for maps or gloves.

There's no drop-down storage cup for loose change, which I had in my Camry. Instead, there's a slide-in thing for cards. The slide-in card thing is good for parking-garage tickets, toll booth tickets, and maybe c-store/grocery store loyalty cards. Maybe an auto insurance card. But I'd rather have the change holder.

Oooh, too soon to tell, but transferring my worldly goods from my Camry to the Prius .... it's possible my Camry had more cargo space than the Prius does. If so, that's a disappointment. I've got additional gear (suitcases, etc.) in my temporary lodgings, so I won't have the full story til I'm fully moved out of my current home stay.


Learning curve

There is a learning curve to driving a Prius. More to come on this, I reckon.


Coolness

• The generous size of the two glove compartments. 
• Roomy storage console between the two front seats. 
• Front-seat passenger has their own cupholder. 
• The drop-down pocket in the roof for glasses.
• The flat-bottom cargo space in the back that I'll be able to use to sleep in the car when camping! Can't wait! 
• The possibility of having heat or a/c while camping! 
• Fun accessories to buy, like window screens for camping!

Cautious enthusiasm

I am ready to be enthusiastically in love with my new car. For the moment, however, I am cautiously, quietly, fingers-crossed maybe-it-will-be-so-great mode.

I barely know how to turn on the radio yet.


Neutrality

The color of my Prius is OK. The same held true for my Camry. The benefit of the ho-hum color is that my car looks just like 75% of the cars on a parking lot, therefore it doesn't capture untoward attention. The downside is that I don't feel a rush of esthetic pleasure when I approach it.

Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 1

Having said goodbye to my 1995 Camry, yesterday I brought home my new vehicular mate.

This marriage didn't happen under ideal circumstances. 

One: I was on the road, on the first leg of an extended travel itinerary to my next year's stay out west. This meant:

• I didn't have the luxury of time to look at all of the area's inventory among dealers and private sellers; 
• Once I left the area, I'd lose easy access to the seller to rectify any problems that cropped up shortly after I bought the vehicle; 
• There was an uncomfortable squishiness about knowing/deciding in which state - and how - to title and register the new car - yikes

Two: It had been close to 20 years since I'd bought a car! I was a born-again virgin.

Three: I entered into the marketplace alone, a different experience than I had when buying my used Camry. So no personal advocate, "bad cop," or doubt-soother.

Four: And to speak plainly about it: I didn't bring a dick with me, my own or someone else's. I didn't have a man with me. And, yes, I think that still matters in the car-purchasing world.

Five: In my perfect world, my Camry would have lasted me until the point when I'd decide to live outside the US for a year. This would mean I could defer the purchase of any new vehicle indefinitely.


On the other hand: 

One: I had a past relationship with the dealership I chose to buy my car from. My experiences with the dealership had been positive. Based on my travel patterns in recent years, it is likely I'll return to the area in the future. Furthermore, I have friends who live in the same community as this dealership. I shared this information with the dealership. Consequently, I felt some reassurance that the dealership would deal honorably with me.

Two: In the past 12 months, knowing my Camry's life with me was entering its twilight years, I'd done some research into my next vehicle. My main criteria were:

• Camping-friendly. In other words, I could sleep comfortably in the vehicle.
• Good gas mileage. 
• Hybrid engine - for mileage, but also for interior climate control while camping.
• Generous cupholders! 
• Large-capacity cargo space for my annual relocations.
• Higher ground clearance than the Camry, thus reducing the worries about undercarriage scrapings, etc.
• Reliability, of course.
• Affordability.

I dreamed of a Ford Transit for a future life as a full-timer, but ..... maybe some day.

Grounded in more immediate realities, a Prius wagon topped my short list, which also included wagons or SUVs such as Subaru or Toyota RAVs.

So I didn't start my vehicle search totally at ground zero.

Three: Notwithstanding Point Five in the bummer section above, an envie to re-do a road trip to Alaska in the summer of 2020 has been ticking in the back of my mind. To make that happen, I knew I wouldn't be able to do it in my Camry. (Note: My daughter and I took a road trip to Alaska in the early 90s.)

Four: Notwithstanding - again - Point Five in the bummer section, I've come to enjoy my recent pattern of living for a month out of the US as an intermission between two US-based resident years. (See Antigua here and Mexico City here, for example.) Therefore, I felt OK about investing in a car at this time.


Next up: Rootless: A New Vehicular Mate, Part 2

Goodbye, Dear Old

Hwy 380 outside Carrizozo, New Mexico - Valley of Fire vista. October 2012.

Last week, it came time to say goodbye to a stalwart friend. 

Being rootless and, therefore, a minimalist by necessity, I don't have a lot of stuff. And I don't think I have much emotional attachment to the bulk of the stuff I do have. There are exceptions, however, due to sentimental memories associated with an item, or by the longevity of our relationship.

Here, I said goodbye to a crossover bag that had accompanied me to so many festivals and travels.

My "festival" bag.

Here, I said goodbye to an airbed. To my accumulation of Mardi Gras beads. To my cherished, red chairbed.

My red chairbed in New Mexico and Louisiana.

Here I said goodbye to my Nokia brick phone (and its symbolic content of human connections, literal and figurative) given to me in Caucasus Georgia.

My Nokia "brick" in Caucasus Georgia. 2011-2012.

But today my goodbye is big. Really, really big. 

I've had to say goodbye to my car, my 1995 Toyota Camry.

The car I bought when it was already more than 10 years old. The car I bought when I lived a whole different life than I do now, a rooted one, when I had a:

• Mate;
• House; and a
• "Regular" job. 

I bought the car with a little more than 80,000 miles on it. I'm releasing it with more than 240,000 miles on the odometer.

It was a comfortable car. Because it was an older vehicle, I had no worries about someone singling it out for nefarious doings. I loved all things about this car except for three - the:

• Stingy cupholder that was far too particular about what it allowed in its space;
• Low ground clearance, which made it not-so-handy on uneven roads (well, sort of roads); and
• Expensive sensitivity of the driver's side door handle. (I think I bought THREE replacements.)

I saw the world in its side mirror.

Sunset view from my side mirror, I-10 from Texas to Louisiana. September 2017.

 And through the rear mirror.

View of Monument Valley through my rear window. November 2008.

• I ate breakfast, lunch, or dinners in it. I snacked in it.
• I spilled stuff in it. 

• I slept in it.
• I camped with it.
• I got lost in it.
• I found my way in it.

• I meditated in it, solved all of the world's problems in it, imagined futures in it, re-imagined pasts in it. 
• I sang in it, swore vile epithets in it, cried in it, laughed in it, worried in it, yelled at the universe in it, and asked it questions it could not answer.

• I parked in it, crept in it, sped in it.

• I laughed with others in it, argued with others in it, and enjoyed companionable silences with others in it.

• I saw suns rise and suns set in it.

• I saw innumerable dead creatures on the roads from it.

• I drove by hundreds of past death scenes in it, memorialized by descansos, crosses, signs, flowers.

I loaded, unloaded, loaded, unloaded, loaded, and unloaded the Camry.

My car packed for year in El Paso. August 2016.

My car packed for year in El Paso. August 2016.

Goodbye, dear old.



A slide show: